And no, we didn’t get an invite. Luckily though, lots of other people did, and they’re all queueing up to show you what’s in store. Just to start off the inevitable barrage of Cataclysm news and announcements, a YouTube video created by EnhancementReznik has been posted to show all the changed zones in the upcoming expansion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA3lNoBKPkE

Give it a watch, guys. The new zones look fantastic, and Blizzard have really pulled of the damage caused by Deathwing.

Good clip here guys of the 25 man Halion encounter.  Looks funky! there is certainly enough things to not be standing in.  Also this guys UI, I want that, give me that UI baby!

Having been over both trees, I’m no closer to a decision. For this post, we’ll take a look at the Priest talents, focussing on the Discipline tree, since that’s the one I have the most experience with. The Discipline tree has seen some huge changes in the early tiers, and the changes are interesting to say the least. From the addition of Power Word: Barrier to a slew of DPS talents, this is not the Discipline tree that we’ve been used to during Wrath. Not by a long shot.

The two Tier 1 talents are the same as they always have been, Twin Disciplines for boosting damage and healing… and the amount absorbed by Power Word: Shield! That’s right, Twin Disciplines now boosts absorption by 5% on top of the current effects. Or at least it finally tells you in the tooltip that it does, anyway. Unbreakable Will is the same good old PvP talent that it always has been.

Tier 2 now holds Improved Inner Fire and Martyrdom , no change there. Focused Power has been moved up from Tier 6, and is joined by a new talent called Penitence, which is a 3 point talent. Penitence increases the critical effect chance of Smite and Penance. Sounds weird, right? You wait until we get to Tiers 4 and 5.

Tier 3 still features Inner Focus and Improved Power Word: Shield, but has a new addition in the form of Atonement, 3 points. Atonement is… interesting. When you deal damage with Smite, you instantly heal a nearby low health target for 45% of the damage. Repeat after me: Erm, what?

Tier 4 gives us Evangelism, which requires Penitence. Evangelism increases the damage done by your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance spells by 4% and reduces the mana cost of those spells by 6% for 15 seconds. 2 points, stacks 5 times. Now… I’ll forgive you for yelling “But that’s for levelling, you idiot!” Bear with me though. Tier 5 holds a surprise. Tier 4 still holds Mental Agility and Improved Mana Burn, so it’s not all strange territory!

Tier 5… the most important set of talents that I’ve ever seen. Ever. We’ll start with the boring one: Enlightenment. Increase total mana and health by 6%. Ok? Ok. That’s that bit done. Now, for the good stuff:

Archangel: Consumes your Evangelism effects, instantly restoring 3% of your total mana and increasing your healing done by 3% for each stack. Also allows you to channel Penance while moving. Lasts 18 seconds.
That, ladies and gents, is insane. And you know what? I love it. We don’t yet know whether it’s an on use effect (I’m guessing so), or whether it’ll have a cooldown. I’m sure it will though.

The other amazing talent that we’ve been waiting for is…

Power Word: Barrier! Summons a holy barrier on the target location that absorbs 293.25 damage done to party or raid members within it each time they take damage. While within the barrier, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. The barrier lasts for 15 sec or until it absorbs 1955 damage.

That’s the new stuff, pretty much. Soul Warding has moved down to Tier 6, and is now a 3 point talent that reduces the cooldown by 3 seconds and reduces the mana cost of Power Word: Shield by 15%.
Everything under that is exactly as it always was, bar a little fiddling around of positions. The old staples of Rapture, Divine Aegis, Grace (with some changes to the stack effect, IE it now provides a 12% buff to healing), Pain Suppression, and of course Penance are still present.

Now, I may be reading the signals wrong, but I suspect that what’s happening here is that Blizzard are trying to push us towards a bit of combat healing. It’s not a playstyle that suits everyone, so it’s going to be very interesting to see how people react to this preview.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea. I’m not just saying that for the sake of agreeing with Blizzard either. I love dealing damage while in a healing capacity, not for the big numbers or anything like that, but for spicing up the encounters. This kind of meld between offensive and defensive spellcasting is perfectly suited for the Discipline tree. The DPS talents in the Discipline tree are perfectly complimented by a few similar talents in the base of the Holy tree. Talents like Divine Fury, and Searing Light which reduce the cast time and boost the damage of your DPS and Penance spells respectively. Divine Accuracy on the second Tier, which increase your chance to hit with Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance.

Holy, whilst containing DPS boosting talents, simply does not have the same synergy as Discipline when it comes to slipping in some Smites or Holy Fires whilst healing. Discipline is a mobile spec, you can run around the place without people dying in the time it takes to get from A to B. The addition of Atonement and Evangelism, and especially Archangel show a desire to get Discipline Priests doing more than just spamming bubbles and firing off Penance every 12 seconds.

If our Discipline tree looks anything like this preview when Cataclysm launches, I’ll be a very happy Priest.

Ah yeah, just as some food for thought… don’t expect it to last but, Discipline may well have another trick up it’s sleeve if Blizzard are feeling really generous:
http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#bVI0uGhckhsffRtMEzcc00000000M

There’s a single free point there. I’d like to draw your attention to a signature Holy talent on Tier 5. Something to think about, eh?

Blizzard has released information on the new talent trees for Druids, Priests, Rogues and Shamans.  We have started threads on our forums and would love it if you guys would jump in and start discussing what these changes could actually mean for you and your class.

Druid Forum

Priest Forum

Rogue Forum

Shaman Forum

We will add the other classes as the information comes out.

Check out the Cataclysm talent calculator on the link below too!

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#h

Let me introduce you to our brand spanking new website background!  We’ll be running this background until the next expansion comes a long.

Pray tell! We want to know what you guys think, if you can do better then feel free to contact us!

Ah, on the note of contacting us, we could really do with more writers to bolster the rate at which posts hit the site, if you think you have what it takes then hit the link above ‘blog for us’ or if you lazy click here

One final thing, on the topic of posts, we’ll be working hard over the coming months to really gear the site up for Cataclysm and that’s going to mean more and more super wonderful posts by our team, so stay tuned.

As most of you know, the friends and family alpha is currently live and incredibly locked down. Ok, maybe its not all that locked down – because we have a torrent of information leaking out and it would appear that the client downloader is publicly available. Now I’m not going to say where you can get it, but lets just leave it up to your google-fu to figure that part out.  KEEP IN MIND THIS IS ALPHA AND EVERYTHING IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, lets look at the very first glimpse of professions in Cata.

General:

All professions will go up to 525, this is in line with every other expansion so far. Expect early recipes to cost the same mats current ones do. New title seems to be “Illustrious Grand Master”.

Mining:

• Toughness buff is up to 120 stamina.
• Smelting: Ebonsteel, made from Pyrium bars and Obsidian Shards. (Titansteel 2.0)
• Smelting: Pyrite – Looks like all the pyrite we’ve been throwing around northrend can be smelted! Time to go back to Ulduar and shoot some down! (No, not really on the shooting down.)

Herbalism:

• Lifeblood is up to 7200 over 5 seconds, well played flower pickers, well played.

Alchemy:

Only one recipe was found for alchemy so far, and it is:

• Transmute: Elemental Fusion – Transform the six elements into a random single element.

This is either Primal Might 2.0 or its some kind of “Take six crystallized pieces and make a random eternal.”  Too early to tell yet.

First Aid:

It looks like we will have 3 types of bandages this time around! Listed below are names and “Embersilk” costs. (We can assume Embersilk is the new Frostweave.)

• Dense Embersilk Bandage – (x3)
• Heavy Embersilk Bandage – (x2)
• Embersilk Bandage -  (x1)

Skinning:

• Crit bonus is up to 80!

Still weak compared to the other prof bonuses, but I expect to see an arctic fur equivalent that will make up for that.

Tailoring:

6 new rare cloths to make! Each has an element tied to it and I’m very excited to hear what blizz has in store for these pieces. All of them are on a week-long cooldown.

• Dream of Azshara (Water)
• Dream of Deephome (Earth)
• Dream of Hyjal (Life)
• Dream of Ragnaros (Fire)
• Dream of Skywall (Air)
• Dreamcloth (Shadow)

Enchanting:

I’ve saved enchanting for last since it is a HUGE list. To be honest, I will be amazed if some of these make it to live. It looks like Blizz is moving back towards PROC’y enchants like we started to see more of towards the end of this expansion. It also seems like they are adding more choice as to where you want put certain stats, and even entries to increase the new mastery stat.

• Enchant Weapon – Landslide – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase attack power by 120 for 10 sec when striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Power Torrent – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase spell power by 40 for 15 sec when casting spells or striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Windwalk – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase dodge rating by 60 for 10 sec when striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Heartsong – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase haste rating by 350 for 15 sec when casting spells or striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Hurricane – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase haste rating by 350 for 15 sec when casting spells or striking in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Elemental Slayer – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes disrupt elementals  when struck, dealing Arcane damage and silencing them for 5 sec.
• Enchant Weapon – Avalanche – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes deal Nature damage to an enemy struck in melee.
• Enchant Weapon – Mending – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes heal you when striking an enemy.
• Enchant Chest – Exceptional Spirit – Permanently enchant a chest to increase Spirit by 40.
• Enchant Chest – Greater Stamina – Permanently enchant a chest to increase Stamina by 75.
• Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats – Permanently enchant chest armor to increase all stats by 20.
• Enchant Chest – Mighty Resilience – Permanently enchant chest armor to increase resilience rating by 40.
• Enchant Chest – Stamina – Permanently enchant chest armor to increase Stamina by 55.
• Enchant Chest – Mighty Stats – Permanently enchant chest armor to increase all stats by 15.
• Enchant Boots – Assassin’s Step – Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and Agility by 25.
• Enchant Boots – Lavawalker – Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and mastery rating by 35.
• Enchant Boots – Mastery – Permanently enchant boots to increase mastery rating by 50.
• Enchant Boots – Precision – Permanently enchant boots to increase hit rating by 50.
• Enchant Boots – Major Agility – Permanently enchant boots to increase Agility by 35.
• Enchant Boots – Haste – Permanently enchant boots to increase haste rating by 50.
• Enchant Boots – Earthen Vitality – Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and Stamina by 30.
• Enchant Bracer – Greater Critical Strike – Permanently enchant bracers to increase critical strike rating by 65.
• Enchant Bracer – Greater Speed – Permanently enchant bracers to increase haste strike rating by 65.
• Enchant Bracer – Greater Expertise – Permanently enchant bracers to increase expertise rating by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Exceptional Spirit – Permanently enchant bracers to increase Spirit by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Precision – Permanently enchant bracers to increase hit rating by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Dodge – Permanently enchant bracers to increase dodge rating by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Critical Strike – Permanently enchant bracers to increase critical strike rating by 50.
• Enchant Bracer – Speed – Permanently enchant gloves to increase haste rating by 50.
• Enchant Cloak – Greater Critical Strike – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase critical strike rating by 65.
• Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase Intellect by 50.
• Enchant Cloak – Protection – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase armor by 250.
• Enchant Cloak – Critical Strike – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase critical strike rating by 50.
• Enchant Cloak – Intellect – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase Intellect by 30.
• Enchant Cloak – Greater Spell Piercing – Permanently enchant gloves to increase spell penetration by 50.
• Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery – Permanently enchant gloves to increase mastery rating by 65.
• Enchant Gloves – Mighty Strength – Permanently enchant gloves to increase Strength by 50.
• Enchant Gloves – Greater Expertise – Permanently enchant gloves to increase expertise rating by 50.
• Enchant Gloves – Exceptional Strength – Permanently enchant gloves to increase Strength by 35.
• Enchant Gloves – Haste – Permanently enchant gloves to increase haste rating by 50.
• Enchant Gloves – Mastery – Permanently enchant gloves to increase mastery rating by 50.
• Enchant Shield – Superior Intellect – Permanently enchant a shield to increase Intellect by 35.
• Enchant Shield – Blocking – Permanently enchant a shield to increase block rating by 40.
• Enchant Shield – Protection – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase armor by 160.
• Enchant Ring – Agility – Permanently enchant your own ring to increase Agility by 50.  Enchanting your ring causes it to become soulbound and requires 475 Enchanting skill to remain active.
• Enchant Ring – Greater Stamina – Permanently enchant your own ring to increase Stamina by 75.  Enchanting your ring causes it to become soulbound and requires 475 Enchanting skill to remain active.
• Enchant Ring – Intellect – Permanently enchant your own ring to increase Intellect by 50.  Enchanting your ring causes it to become soulbound and requires 475 Enchanting skill to remain active.
• Enchant Ring – Strength – Permanently enchant your own ring to increase Strength by 50.  Enchanting your ring causes it to become soulbound and requires 475 Enchanting skill to remain active.

That’s all for now! I’ll try to keep up with any new updates that arrive. Talent Tree Changes coming later this weekend!

I kid, I kid. Icecrown is a challenging instance, or at least, it was. About a month or two ago, I stepped into the grand Light’s Hammer hall and gazed upon Tirion Fordring and the knights of the ashen verdict. The Damned clashed against their might just down the hall and a giant skeleton with the words “Lord Marrowgar” lied in wait at the end.

We quickly set forth in taking down the guards, making our way past Marrowgar and Deathwhisper, boarded the funship and spent a good hour learning how not to get hit by a blood beast before bringing the Deathbringer to his demise.

The next week, I went in again to notice King Wyrnn standing there and a nice fuzzy 5% boost to damage, health and healing taken. Honestly, that 5% felt right. For people in 10 man ToC gear and some 245 badge gear – it was enough to make it through. The 5% pushed us into some of the harder bosses, since the 5k/6.5+ required for festergut was no longer an issue.

Then came the 10%. We pushed through to the Blood Queen, Putricide and Sindragosa, and most pugs should now be able to clear festergut.

Yesterday, we welcome the 15% buff. This will almost certainly increase the chances of me seeing the Lich King (without being in a hardcore guild) and bring a lot of the people who are undergeared into the second wing.

My only concern now is – is it too much? I know the new blizzard philosophy is for everyone to be able to see the content, and I do agree with that. But a lot of the fun of raiding, at least to me, lies in its challenge.  Its set to be at 30% by the end of this buff cycle, but at that point it would be pretty hard to NOT one shot the first 2 wings, even with a bad pug.

The sky is falling! But Ill be enjoying my 15% buff anyway, and I hope all you people who are struggling on a boss push through this week. Good Luck and let me in the comments how you do, what your thoughts are, etc…

Its amazing how time flies in the good old World of Warcraft.  the midsummer fire festival is here again!

The festival is a great time to jump back into WoW and relight that old flame every WoW player has.  This year players can take part in the usual stuff which includes players collecting Burning Blossoms awarded by completing various quests in order to purchase Fire Festival-related merchandise, ranging from food to the coveted Brazier of Dancing Flames. /dance to that :p

The major addition this year is Ahune, the Frost Lord.  He is a new special level 70 boss which can be summoned from within the Slave Pens dungeon.  Killing him will result in several epic drops including event exclusive pets.

I’ve dropped off playing WoW again recently, this looks like a good time to jump back on the old WoW Train.

You can find all the info you need over at http://www.wowwiki.com/Midsummer_Fire_Festival

Hey all, its patch day again!

Now before you go running screaming into the night and threatening to cancel your account, lets note that its just a minor patch – but it brings some nice changes.

Big General Changes:

• The long awaited equipment manager has made it live.
• Gear now scales SotA and Wintergrasp vehicles.
• Wintergrasp quests are now weekly instead of daily.

A few class tweaks and bug fixes in the full notes included after the jump.

General

• When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).

• Equipment Manager
• New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small Champion’s Seal and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply).
• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

PVP

• Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Lake Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator’s gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level.
• All Lake Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and Stone Keeper’s Shards rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate.

Death Knights

• Improved Death Strike: This talent now also increases the healing from Death Strike by 25/50% and the tooltip has been adjusted to reflect the actual functionality after the hotfix in 3.1.0.
• Ghoul Frenzy: Now has a 10-second cooldown.

Druids

• Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid’s base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
• Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.

Hunters

Mages

• Mirror Images: The images summoned by this spell will now target the creature that most hates the Mage, and should no longer cast Fire Blast or Frostbolt on targets that are affected by crowd control debuffs that break immediately on damage unless they are already casting these spells when crowd control is applied.

Paladins

• Blessing of Wisdom and Greater Blessing of Wisdom: Now grant 92 mana per 5 seconds to prevent being overwritten by Mana Spring Totem.
• Exorcism: Can no longer be used on player-controlled creatures.

Priests

• Divine Hymn: Healing and healing scaling reduced by 30%. Buff on affected players changed from 15% to 10%.
• Renewed Hope: Effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Soul Warding: Mana cost reduction is now 15% down from 30%.

Warlocks

• Conflagrate updated: Consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 12 seconds of your Immolate, or 8 seconds of your Shadowflame. In addition, the increased critical strike chance of Conflagrate provided by this talent no longer requires the Immolate effect to have 5 seconds or fewer remaining on the target.
• Fire and Brimstone: Now increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 3/6/9/12/15% on targets afflicted by Immolate, and increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate by 5/10/15/20/25%.
• Nether Protection reduced to 30% damage reduction, down from 60%.
• Sacrifice (Voidwalker) redesigned: Sacrifices a portion of the Voidwalker’s health, giving its master a shield that will absorb X damage for 30 seconds. While the shield holds, spell casting will not be interrupted by damage. 1-minute cooldown.
• Shadow and Flame: Now also includes Shadowburn.

Warriors

• Juggernaut: Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 25%, down from 100%.

Items

• Glyph of Innervate: Has been adjusted to grant the Druid 90% of his or her base mana pool over 20 seconds.
  Glyph of Mass Dispel: Now only decreases Mass Dispel cost by 35%.
  Glyph of Rapid Charge: Reduced to 7%, down from 20% cooldown reduction to Charge.
• Arena weapons with an item level of 239 have had their rating requirements increased to 2350.
• Darkruned Battlegear 2-Piece Set Bonus: The bonus critical strike chance for Frost Strike and Death Coil has been increased from 5% to 8%.
• Furious Gladiator’s Staff and Furious Gladiator’s Greatstaff: The agility values on these two items were too high. They have been reduced by 50%.
• Glyphs
• Guise of the Midgard Serpent: The base attack power on this item has been lowered to balance it against items of a similar quality.
• Increased the health and mana restored from Northrend food and drinks.
• Most scopes now have a level requirement and will bind the item to which they are applied.
• Nightsong Garb 4-Piece Set Bonus: Chance for Insect Swarm to trigger an instant Starfire changed to 15%.
• Scourgeborne Battlegear 4-Piece Set Bonus: The runic power gain has been reduced to 5 runic power from 10 runic power.
• Ulduar 10-player hard mode weapons have been updated to item level 232.

Professions

• Jewel of the Sewers: You can now fish in all parts of the Dalaran sewers for this quest.
  Phantom Ghostfish: Can now be caught from Nettlefish schools in Sholazar Basin.

User Interface

• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Bug Fixes

• Anti-magic Shell: Tooltip error corrected.
• Blood Boil: If no target is available for Blood Boil to hit, the spell will now cast and consume a blood rune but generate no runic power.

• Maim: Rank 2 of this ability is properly considered a stun and can be escaped by Blink.

• Go For The Throat: Explosive Shot critical strikes now trigger this talent.
• Lock and Load: The tooltip has been corrected to display its actual chance to occur.
• Rabid: This Hunter pet talent no longer lists a percentage chance to be triggered, as that chance varies by the attack speed of the pet.

• Divine Sacrifice: Damage done to the Paladin while this is active will no longer cause the effect to break early, and if it is dispelled or cancelled early, the damage counter will reset correctly the next time the spell is cast.

• Shadow Dance: Issues with action bars and ability use arising from using Stealth while Shadow Dance is active have been fixed.
• Tricks of the Trade: To prevent exploits, this ability can no longer be cast on non-player targets.

• Demonic Sacrifice: This spell will no longer appear in any Warlock’s spellbook.

• Swordguard Embroidery: Now correctly increases ranged attack power.
• Tailoring

• Ulduar
  • Hodir should now reset in a timely manner if a group fails to kill him.
  • 10-player bosses that drop Runed Orbs will also sometimes drop the recipes that use those orbs.
  • The Spark of Imagination: Characters that release in part of the boss room will no longer be ported to Westfall or The Barrens.