New test realm patch notes.

[Sir_Die_alot]

AFAIK, all quest rewards (like the 14 slotter from Uldaman) are BoP, not BoE.
-MB
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Definantly the deviate hide pack. Never got the 14 slotter from Uldaman.

[Kevin]

Oh, and the new dual wield spec takes 15 points in Fury to get, 20 to max. Makes me wonder if getting one handed spec and that would do anything significant to your DPS and rage generation. Since I already dual wield wield in def stance for various reasons as it is.

[mjdoom]

Be very very wary of this.
Best bet is (once this goes live) is for those of us with this quest done to go repeat it ASAP. It would make for some pretty embarassing moments when going on a MC raid and everyone wonders why you died in the lava.

QUEST RESET.

Do it again when this goes live. Just a heads up so you dont forget it when all the other goodies are in.
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I'm still not certain exactly what it means that it had to be opened to all players again. I would suggest getting a few chars (Flyndar included being the dwarf priest) over to the test server and making a raid and attempting to zone in. If this is done on the test server the lockout is unimportant. It could probably be done with only 2 people (any party can be converted to a raid) and we could just verify whether or not they can still zone in. I know I never got the option to do that quest, it was just "complete" for me before I ever did it. I wonder if I am going to have to do it now or not.

- mjdoom

[Treesh]

Ported Aleri over there today. I like the shorter cooldown on holy nova. It really shouldn't be any shorter than the 30 seconds though. And every single one of GG's stuns hit me, despite having unbreakable will maxed. Every revenge, every concussion unless he hit me too quickly right in a row and it made me immune (only happened once). Really doesn't seem like they fixed it like they claimed to have fixed it, but again, it was too small of a test to tell definitively. GG was allowed to switch out his weapons during a duel, but I don't think he tried trinkets since trinkets aren't allowed to be switched while in combat and that's the only other "inventory equipment" I can think of swapping besides armor.

Love the pet bars added to the group bars in the default UI. A random hunter was nice enough to let me see what it looked like. The pet bar is a little small (I run at a smaller UI scale than 1), but still much easier to mouse hover heal than the damned nameplates!

I didn't test much else with her.

[Kevin]

New patch notes.

Looks like Warriors and Warlocks are getting some nice changes. Vanish will also work better supposedly, and several new towns will be added. Oh, there was one other thing, battlegrounds are in, including the one located in Ashenvale that you might have seen with the WoWMapViewer.
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After doing some testing with Gnolack and Aleri I'm not convinced the anti fear and stun talents work. Aleri had 5 points in her talent, Unbreakable Will, so a 15% chance to resist a stun. I hit her with 10 concussion blows and 18 procs of improved revenge. She never resisted a single one of them. She was immune to them twice because of the DR timer having kicked in that far because we didn't wait long enough, but she never resisted one of them.

Of course I'm assuming that it will put a resisted on her screen or in her combat log and it is hard to tell with revenge since I only have a 40% chance to stun. However if I hit concussion blow it landed, there was one time it reported a miss. We need more trials, but I'm just not convinced these talents are fixed yet.

[Olon97]

Oh, and the new dual wield spec takes 15 points in Fury to get, 20 to max.  Makes me wonder if getting one handed spec and that would do anything significant to your DPS and rage generation.  Since I already dual wield wield in def stance for various reasons as it is.

I'm trying out that build on the test server at the moment. Still suffers from the "no TM" syndrome of course.

Early impression (without collecting some data) is I'm a little underwhelmed.

Here's some theorycraft on the build for normal attacks:

Case 1: Base (no talents)
DW damage = mh dmg + 0.5 * oh dmg
(ex. /w 2x40dps weapons and 840 AP, 75% hit, 112 DPS)

Case 2: Just DW Spec
DW damage = mh dmg + 0.5 * 1.25 * oh dmg
= mh dmg + 0.625 oh dmg
(ex. /w 2x40dps weapons and 840 AP, 75% hit, 121 DPS)
~8.8% better than w/o talents.

Case 3: With DW Spec & 1H Spec
DW damage = 1.1*mh dmg + 0.5 * 1.1 * 1.25 * oh dmg
= 1.1 mh dmg + 0.688 oh dmg
(ex. /w 2x40dps weapons and 840 AP, 75% hit, 134.1 DPS)
~19.7% better than w/o talents, 10.8% better than just DW Spec.

RageForHitting = damage / (0.5 * level) (not sure if this is exactly right, but definitely ballpark)

At level 60 in these example cases, that means 3.73 rage/sec without talents, 4.03 rage/sec with just DW spec, and 4.47 rage/sec with both talents. So you gain 0.74 rage/sec, but lose the opportunity to get 0.4 rage/sec with Anger Management - so only 0.34 rage/sec more than an arms player dual wielding non-specialized weapons.

Underwhelming in theorycraft too.

[Treesh]

She was immune to them twice because of the DR timer having kicked in that far because we didn't wait long enough, but she never resisted one of them. 
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Was it twice? I guess I was just looking so hard for that little word "resist" that I didn't count the other stuff accurately. ;)

[Icebird]

I've copied over my warlock and priest to test.

My priest is most excited about the addition of pet health bars to the party frame.

There has been a fair bit of griping from warlocks about their class here, but we did pretty well in this patch. Shards from players in PvP is great for the battlegrounds. (Still room for improvement of course but getting them at all is a big deal). Lots of changes to Demonology which I may respec on the test server just to test out.

Siphon life... More damage... and instant cast! This change was unexpected. but very much appreciated. With the exception of Immolate, almost all of our DoTs are instant cast now. In large battles we'll simply slap this on everything that moves: a bit of damage to them, quite a biit of health to us.

Pet speed has been increased, although I've heard reports of pets randomly disappearing even when close by. Hard to tell if its a bug, or related to instability on the test server.

Overall I'm pretty excited about this patch.

Chris

[Hillary]

New patch notes.

Looks like Warriors and Warlocks are getting some nice changes. Vanish will also work better supposedly, and several new towns will be added. Oh, there was one other thing, battlegrounds are in, including the one located in Ashenvale that you might have seen with the WoWMapViewer.
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After Quark's numerous attempts at Vanish in LBRS the other night, them fixing vanish is a very welcome change indeed. Everyone can benefit from that.

[Raelynn]

I'm still not certain exactly what it means that it had to be opened to all players again.  I would suggest getting a few chars (Flyndar included being the dwarf priest) over to the test server and making a raid and attempting to zone in.  If this is done on the test server the lockout is unimportant.  It could probably be done with only 2 people (any party can be converted to a raid) and we could just verify whether or not they can still zone in.  I know I never got the option to do that quest, it was just "complete" for me before I ever did it.  I wonder if I am going to have to do it now or not.

- mjdoom
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It seems to me that the notes mean the quest becomes available to all characters again, but only the priests actually need to do it. Everyone that has already done it will keep the actual "finished" status, but the quest will be available again.

I agree with you though. It seems that the best course of action would be to test on the Test Realm where the lockout doesn't matter. It's very likely that either I'm misinterpreting their words, or I'm interpreting them correctly, but it's bugged.

[MongoJerry]

I like the shorter cooldown on holy nova.  It really shouldn't be any shorter than the 30 seconds though.

Unless they put the cooldown back to 5 seconds the way it was in the beta, I don't see Holy Nova ever being useful. It was nice for a couple of weeks in the beta when I had Holy Nova and a bunch of +damange items. I could help out the mages doing damage in the Lyceum. Of course, I was doing about half to one-third the damage that mages could do, but it was nice to be able to contribute. Then, they made it so that +damage items didn't help Holy Nova at all and then made the cooldown 60 seconds just so that they could make sure that no one ever used the skill, I suppose. Now, +damage items help a little but still not much, and the cooldown has been reduced. It's still not worth the investment to go all the way up in the Holy tree to get. Get the cooldown back to 5 seconds, and I'll consider it, though.

[mjdoom]

I logged onto the test realm briefly earlier and ambled around thorium point quickly to see what was there. It seems like some more of the potential for that zone has been realized (and some relatively easy kill quests for people hitting their 50s) and there is more to do deeper into the Slag Pit. I did notice one interesting quest reward though that was a trinket that could be used to remove bleed effects. Other then rend and that wound warrior ability (wow, my memory is failing me, "open wounds"?) are there other bleed effects in the game? Is it worth having this trinket around situationally or is it so marginally useful that it's not worth it? Any opinions?

On a side note, I think that having a flight point into SG is going to be very nice. It will help with getting to Blackrock Mountain more quickly at the very least. Of course now the SG key quest is pretty much only good for the fun little story and the experience...

- mjdoom

[MongoJerry]

There has been a fair bit of griping from warlocks about their class here, but we did pretty well in this patch. Shards from players in PvP is great for the battlegrounds. (Still room for improvement of course but getting them at all is a big deal).

There are tons of NPC's and beasts running around and dying in the Battlegrounds. I don't think warlocks are going to have any problems with a shortage of shards.

[mjdoom]

It seems to me that the notes mean the quest becomes available to all characters again, but only the priests actually need to do it.  Everyone that has already done it will keep the actual "finished" status, but the quest will be available again.

I agree with you though.  It seems that the best course of action would be to test on the Test Realm where the lockout doesn't matter.  It's very likely that either I'm misinterpreting their words, or I'm interpreting them correctly, but it's bugged.
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I briefly checked this earlier but the only thing I can report at the moment is that the quest was available for Flyndar to pick up. I need another person or two to actually test the ability to zone into MC.

- mjdoom

[oldmandennis]

There may be pleanty of NPC's in Alterec, I don't think there are any in the XR. My matches there lasted about 20 minutes, so plan your shard consumption accordingly.

[vor_lord]

One of the changes I thought would never make it happened.  Wands are now auto-shoot!

Sadly, it's already heavily bugged.  The wands still incurs the "invisible" universal cooldown, so now with the shooting toggled on, you can't cast any spell because you're always "doing something else."

Hopefully, this issue will be resolved before patch time, because it will be annoying to have to move simply to be able to cast a spell.

Even better, maybe this will get the devs to fix this bug, which has existed at least since retail, and probably longer.
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I hope the autoshoot doesn't mess up my wand + dagger combo for my priest. To be honest I'm not sure I like autoshoot for wands. I like to be able to stop wanding and instantly respond to a heal or shield if something unexpected happened, and if I have to move to do it it will be a bit annoying.

[Icebird]

Unless they put the cooldown back to 5 seconds the way it was in the beta, I don't see Holy Nova ever being useful. It was nice for a couple of weeks in the beta when I had Holy Nova and a bunch of +damange items.  I could help out the mages doing damage in the Lyceum.  Of course, I was doing about half to one-third the damage that mages could do, but it was nice to be able to contribute.  Then, they made it so that +damage items didn't help Holy Nova at all and then made the cooldown 60 seconds just so that they could make sure that no one ever used the skill, I suppose.  Now, +damage items help a little but still not much, and the cooldown has been reduced.  It's still not worth the investment to go all the way up in the Holy tree to get.  Get the cooldown back to 5 seconds, and I'll consider it, though.
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Mongo,

You seem to still be thinking of Holy Nova as an AOE spell which it isn't at all.

Holy Nova is an alternative group heal to Prayer of Healing.

Compared to Prayer of Healing, it heals about half the damage (around 400 at rank 3) for about half the mana cost. According to Fangtooth (I think) its supposed to be more mana effcient than Prayer of Healing. Where as Prayer of Healing needed 3 targets to justify the mana cost, Holy Nova only needs 2.

Plus its instant cast versus the 3 second cast time of Prayer of Healing.

The damage is simply a little extra bonus rather then the reason for the spell. Plus both the healing and damage generate ZERO threat.

You've played a priest more than I have, but I imagine there were situations where you would have liked an instant cast zero threat group heal. (Group healing on the run to name just one example). And you still have Prayer of Healing when 1 Holy Nova every 30 seconds isn't enough.

Chris

[Chesspiece_face]

I thought that too, but I'm pretty sure that duels still put you in combat which prevent most armor swaps anyway.  Maybe there was a bug with that?
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I'm pretty sure that hunters could use Feign Death in a duel to get out of combat. If so they could switch any of their items around until their opponent hit them again to bring them back into combat.

[Quark]

Other then rend and that wound warrior ability (wow, my memory is failing me, "open wounds"?) are there other bleed effects in the game?  Is it worth having this trinket around situationally or is it so marginally useful that it's not worth it?  Any opinions?
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Probably Rupture and Garrote, the Rogue abilities.

[Treesh]

Unless they put the cooldown back to 5 seconds the way it was in the beta, I don't see Holy Nova ever being useful.
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That's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but I happen to like holy nova. It's not a "use all the time" skill, but it can come in handy. I've used it to heal up our mages and do some damage and it doesn't cause any aggro whatsoever. Yeah, it doesn't reduce aggro, but at least I can heal the entire group instantly and without causing additional aggro. Generally it goes out if I want to top off the group's hitpoints and a prayer of healing feels too slow to really help. I hit that and then if people besides the main tank are still hurt or still getting hit, I do prayer of healing. Most of the time though, that quick flash is enough to give everyone enough hitpoints to last until I can finish the prayer of healing. It may have really, completely sucked in the past, but it has its utility now. Granted, it's of limited utility, but it does have utility.

And I'm done talking about priests on these boards. People don't die under my watch very often so apparently I'm doing something right, but the feeling I get from these boards is that I have no clue in hell. Someone kick me the next time I try to give some kind of perspective about how my priest in particular plays. <_<