1.12 out today/tomorrow

[Tsunami]

Eh? Why on earth are level 40-50 instances getting nerfed? Sometimes I wonder how Blizzard makes these descissions on how to spend their time and energy. This one just has me stumped.

I have to admitt that I think the Basilisk Man in ZF was pretty ridiculous and too hard for a level 46 party. Fast respawns around him, his heal and three waves of spawns did that.
You could get lucky on Zum'rah and get 4 spawns, or he could summon 8 or even more (yes, I saw him summon these - no one was outside his hut). This "luck thing" made me hate him, although the rest of ZF is pretty nice.

Maraudon and Uldaman however, I never had problems with.

Edit:
Guards seein through vanish means my little level 40 characters will mainly be killed by hunters using FD. I wonder when that will change.

[MongoJerry]

A guildmate reports that there was a sealth fix to Renew that makes it so that only the most powerful Renew sticks on a person. So, a person with a Rank 9 renew that ticks for 375 won't have their renew overridden by someone with a Rank 10 renew that ticks for 350. This is a very nice change -- one of those "it's about time" things.

[Kevin]

A guildmate reports that there was a sealth fix to Renew that makes it so that only the most powerful Renew sticks on a person. So, a person with a Rank 9 renew that ticks for 375 won't have their renew overridden by someone with a Rank 10 renew that ticks for 350. This is a very nice change -- one of those "it's about time" things.

That is great. I'll have to see if it does that with rejuv too

[vor_lord]

A guildmate reports that there was a sealth fix to Renew that makes it so that only the most powerful Renew sticks on a person. So, a person with a Rank 9 renew that ticks for 375 won't have their renew overridden by someone with a Rank 10 renew that ticks for 350. This is a very nice change -- one of those "it's about time" things.

Excellent! What about talented vs. untalented? As the best-geared priest in our raids, my untalented renew is bigger than many other priests' talented renews.

[Klaus]

So, has anyone been able to verify that the +30 spell damage enchant actually works for healing as well? I want to know if someone who got the recipe before the patch can now enchant my benedition/anathema with something that will help both staves. I even have to mats, but I'm a little scared to spend them.

[Arnulf]

So, has anyone been able to verify that the +30 spell damage enchant actually works for healing as well? I want to know if someone who got the recipe before the patch can now enchant my benedition/anathema with something that will help both staves. I even have to mats, but I'm a little scared to spend them.

Can you have two different enchants on the staff?

[Ynir]

...I'm glad to find out they've sold their souls to the abomination that is iTunes.

This, and the coded game cards, are the thin end of the wedge.

"Quest: Hoopla Walmart wants you to scan in barcodes from 320 Klondike Bar wrappers. Rewards: [Ring of Commerce] and 3g 56s"

[Monkey]

This, and the coded game cards, are the thin end of the wedge.

"Quest: Hoopla Walmart wants you to scan in barcodes from 320 Klondike Bar wrappers. Rewards: [Ring of Commerce] and 3g 56s"

If only those were bar codes from alcohol, then the game could drive you to drink...and reward you for it!

Edit: Upon further consideration, it seems like the next step is actually an iTunes UI mod that would allow one to shop for songs and add them to the current playlist without alt-tabbing. Shortly after that, we'll discover that playing different songs will lower your threat generation (music soothes...) or gives you a temporary buff to faction reputation (goth music raises Undercity rep by 10%).

[lfd]

Can you have two different enchants on the staff?

No. Up until a relatively recent patch, transforming the staff actually removed whatever enchant you had on it; at least now the enchant is carried over.

The subtitle of this thread is "It's patch week!". That's turning out to be annoyingly accurate. The European patch today was an utter farce, going 6 hours beyond the already-very-late "realms back up" estimate of 16:00 CET for the first sites to come back up. Now 5 of the 6 european wow sites are up. Guess which one my server is in? Yes, the godawful Paris Data Centre, which is still down 23 hours after maintenance started.

Number of Blizzard blue posts on the subject? One. Made at 16:15 CET. I'm fed up of this.

[Monkey]

No. Up until a relatively recent patch, transforming the staff actually removed whatever enchant you had on it; at least now the enchant is carried over.

The subtitle of this thread is "It's patch week!". That's turning out to be annoyingly accurate. The European patch today was an utter farce, going 6 hours beyond the already-very-late "realms back up" estimate of 16:00 CET for the first sites to come back up. Now 5 of the 6 european wow sites are up. Guess which one my server is in? Yes, the godawful Paris Data Centre, which is still down 23 hours after maintenance started.

Number of Blizzard blue posts on the subject? One. Made at 16:15 CET. I'm fed up of this.

Well, your server could be like Magtheridon--Up but missing all characters. Although it is unlikely this is anything other than temporary, I have begun to contemplate what I'll do if it isn't. Maybe I'll write the Great American Novel instead of playing WoW. How about that! Who wants to read a Monkey-Novel? I have this great idea for a story. It's about these two gnomes who find a bracelet of power...

[Chesspiece_face]

Maybe I'll write the Great American Novel instead of playing WoW. How about that! Who wants to read a Monkey-Novel? I have this great idea for a story. It's about these two gnomes who find a bracelet of power...

hmmm. i thought it took 100 monkeys to write a novel...

[Monkey]

hmmm. i thought it took 100 monkeys to write a novel...

Actually, all of my WoW playing is accomplished using a Basic Array of Networked, Asynchronous, and Redundant Simians (BANAnRS).

Here's a photo of the data center during the recent downtime:

[MongoJerry]

As mentioned on the Lurker Lounge front page, eagle eyed observers (in other words, not me) noticed a few differences between the patch notes posted by Nethaera and those that were included with the download of the patch. Two items that were added in Nethaera's post were:

Flasks and player buffs should now be behaving according to the priority system. This means flasks should no longer be the first buff erased when a player exceeds the current 32 buff limit. The general buff priority philosophy is: Flasks, Stances and Shapeshifts > All other Buffs.

This is a big and very needed change for guilds attempting difficult raid encounters, where main tanks are buffed up to the very limit -- such as when guilds attempt Patchwerk or Maexxna in Naxxramas. In addition to the visible buffs on players, there are hidden buffs associated with things like shapeshifting and stances. For example, warrior Defensive Stance actually causes three hidden buffs on the player related to damage reduction and threat generation. This is fine and is a mechanism normally hidden to the player. However, in encounters where guilds attempt to maximize all buffs on their tanks, it was possible for procs such as Inspiration to knock buffs such as flasks and Defensive stance off the main tank, frequently with disasterous results. This is definitely a good change.

We added Auto Self Cast as an option that if checked makes all friendly target spells automatically cast on self if you dont have another valid target selected when you cast it. (You can be fighting an enemy and stun them and use a bandage and it knows automatically that you meant to use it on yourself, even though you dont have yourself targeted).

This is an interesting new option. I'm not sure if I'll use it, but it's nice to know it's there.

[Watto44]

As mentioned on the Lurker Lounge front page, eagle eyed observers (in other words, not me) noticed a few differences between the patch notes posted by Nethaera and those that were included with the download of the patch. Two items that were added in Nethaera's post were:
This is a big and very needed change for guilds attempting difficult raid encounters, where main tanks are buffed up to the very limit -- such as when guilds attempt Patchwerk or Maexxna in Naxxramas. In addition to the visible buffs on players, there are hidden buffs associated with things like shapeshifting and stances. For example, warrior Defensive Stance actually causes three hidden buffs on the player related to damage reduction and threat generation. This is fine and is a mechanism normally hidden to the player. However, in encounters where guilds attempt to maximize all buffs on their tanks, it was possible for procs such as Inspiration to knock buffs such as flasks and Defensive stance off the main tank, frequently with disasterous results. This is definitely a good change.
This is an interesting new option. I'm not sure if I'll use it, but it's nice to know it's there.

The changes to buff priority are indeed timely. (I would have assumed they would have been implemented at the same time as debuff prioritising. I can only assume that Blizzard, like me, only became aware of this problem recently...)

The self-cast changes? Meh, I'll keep my seperately hotkeyed macros thank you very much. (Actually, I'll hold onto DAB's selfcast functionality, but macros work just as well.:))