Daily Blue Posts – DoTs, Glyphs, Balance and More

DoTs Critting?
Originally, we liked the fact that dots didn’t crit. It’s one of the things that made them different from other types of spells. In turn, it meant that classes and specs that focused on dots cared about different stats than other classes. We think it’s interesting when say a ring drops, and the group has to speculate about who would get the most benefit out of it.

We are changing our minds about that design though, because it does make it hard to keep everyone scaling well with gear. A lot of raid buffs are based around adding things like crit and haste, which not everyone cares about to the same degree

Inscription Glyph Implementation
Glyphs are the product of a trade skill so we want to slowly release more over time.

Balance…70 vs. 80
L80 is our first priority, but we’ll respond to anything that we think needs attention at L70 over the next few weeks. No need to fill up the rest of this thread with what *you* think needs attention.

Experience Rewards for Battlegrounds?
No answers available. These are features we would like to implement in the future. Queuing from anywhere would likely be the first to come, though I could not say when at this point.

Paid Character Transfer News
The paid character transfer and name change services have been temporarily taken offline to relieve database stress. We hope to reactivate them in the next few hours.

Brewfest Achievement – Binary Brew
It will remain a part of the meta-achievement for Brewfest. As I said, some achievements take time to complete. This is one of them.

Heroic Violet Hold Fixes
The issue where Xevozz would hit the party for huge amounts of arcane damage has been resolved. We also added a behind the scenes spell that will give the tank of Ichoron some additional threat to keep the healer from pulling aggro quite so easily.

WotLK Shaman Changes – Build 9038

No big surprises here, earlier this week Ghostcrawler announced the enhancement shaman changes. There’s no question, the change to maelstrom weapon is a nerf, but one which needed to be implemented. The underlying isseue with enhancement was its incredible synergy with several elemental abilities, lava burst namely. This caused many enhancement shamans to consider wearing elemental gear.

Blizzard recognizes this mistake and has begun shifting some of this synergy out and providing additional melee specific buffs to the tree. It may remove some of the overall utility from the enhancement build, but I would expect the damage should remain approximately the same.

Shaman

Elemental

• Improved Fire Nova Totem – Changed to 50/100% chance to reduce movement speed for 2 seconds. (Old 50/10% chance to stun for 2 seconds)

Enhancement

• Flurry - Haste increased by 5% (Now 10/15/20/25/30) (Old 5/10/15/20/25)
• Dual Wield Specialization – Chance to hit while dual wielding doubled (Now 2/4/6%) (Old 1/2/3%)
• Maelstrom Weapon – Chance to reduce cast time changed to 100% for all ranks (Likely a tooltip bug and was changed to PPM)

Wrath of the Lich King Paladin Talents

Well, we’re finally hearing some of the updated wrath of the lich king paladin talents. Below are a listing of all currently updated talents on the beta client.

Holy

Blessed Hands (20 Points Required in Holy, 2 Ranks) – Reduces the mana cost and increases the resistance to Dispel effects of all Hand spells by 15/30%

Infusion of Light (35 Points Required in Holy, 2 Ranks) – Your Holy Shock critical hits reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light spell by 1.25/2.5 secs.

Sacred Cleansing (40 Points Required in Holy, 3 Ranks) – Your Cleanse spell has a 10/20/30% chance to increase the target’s resistance to Disease, Magic and Poison by 30% for 10 sec.

Enlightened Judgements (40 Points Required in Holy, 2 Ranks) - Increases the range of your Judgement spells by 10/20 yards.

Judgements of the Pure (45 Points Required in Holy, 5 Ranks) – Your Judgement spells increase your casting and melee haste by 2/4/6/8/10% for 30 secs.

Beacon of Light (50 Points Required in Holy) – The target becomes a Beacon of Light, healing all party or raid members within 10 yards for 2000 over 15 sec.

* Rank 5: Level 80, 2330 mana, 1.5 sec Cast

Protection

Hammer of the Righteous (50 Points Required in Protection) – Hammer the current target and up to 2 additional nearby targets, causing $s1% of weapon damage as Holy damage. This ability causes high threat.

Retribution

Heart of the Crusader (5 Points Required in Retribution, 5 Ranks) – In addition to the normal effect, your Judgement spells will also increase the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Sanctified Retribution (20 Point Required in Retribution, 1 Rank) – Damage caused by targets affected by Retribution Aura is increased by 2%.

Sheath of Light (20 Points Required in Retribution, 3 Ranks) – Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power and your critical healing spells heal the target for 20/40/60% of the healed amount over 12 seconds.

Sanctified Wrath (35 Points Required in Retribution, 2 Ranks) – Increases the critical strike chance of Hammer of Wrath by 25/50%, reduces the cooldown of Avenging Wrath by 30/60 secs and while affected by Avenging Wrath 25/50% of all damage caused bypasses damage reduction effects.

Swift Retribution (40 Points Required in Retribution, 3 Ranks) – Your Retribution Aura also increases casting, ranged and melee attack speeds by 1/2/3%.

The Art of War (40 Points Required in Retribution, 3 Ranks) – Your damaging Crusader Strikes have a 5/10/15% chance to cause your next Judgement spell to cause double damage.

Righteous Vengeance (45 Points Required in Retribution, 5 Ranks) – Increases critical damage bonus of all attacks by 3/6/9/12/15%

Divine Storm (50 Points Required in Retribution) – An instant weapon attack that causes Holy damage to up to ${$i-1} enemies within $a1 yards. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totalling $s2% of the damage caused.

Rogue Arena Enchant Guide

Determining the best enchants is no easy task. With so many available options out there it can be difficult to really understand the reasoning behind each choice. Since arena season 1 started enchanting theory has basically shifted from 100% defensive (stam and resilience) to 100% offensive (crit and attack power).

This change is basically due to gear getting better and better, to the point that without any defensive enchants you could still be at nearly 11,000 hp and 400 resilience unbuffed.

We’ll just go slot by slot.

Helmet
Easy decision here, simply because there are really no other options. Glyph of Ferocity. Attainable via revered reputation with Cenarion Expedition.

Shoulders
Another easy choice since it’s the only option. You’ll want to get the shoulder enchant available to you through your primary faction choice (aldor or scryers). Scryers’ get the following enchant at exalted, Greater Inscription of the Blade. Aldor can get this one, Greater Inscription of Vengeance

If you aren’t exalted yet you can just pickup your lesser level enchant, respectively.

Weapons
Without a doubt, Enchant Weapon – mongoose on both your off hand and main hand weapons. Though executioner is a nice option, especially from the PvE perspective, it just isn’t effective enough against enough classes to really make the enchant worth it in PvP.

Basically, any class with mail or plate armor is going to have so much armor anyway it’s not going to matter if you’ve got some extra armor penetration. However, all classes are equally susceptible to the haste, additional attack power, and crit that mongoose procs provide. For this reason, mongoose is the better enchant.

Cloak
Enchant Cloak – Greater Agility (+12 agility), in keeping with our offensive minded stats we definitely want to go with the agility over anything else.

Chest
Enchant Chest – Exceptional Stats aka +6 all stats, once again offense, offense, offense! If you are still trying to gear up your rogue with the optimal arena and honor pieces you may want to use Enchant Chest – Major Resilience instead, but once you’ve got up above 350 resilience I think it’s better to start shooting for the offense.

Bracer
+24 attack power, Enchant Bracer – Assault. Much better than your alternatives in +12 stamina or +4 all stats.

Gloves
You’ve got a couple of options here, and I really think the choice will depend on your spec. For combat and mutilate rogues, I’d suggest going with the +26 attack power Enchant Gloves – Assault.

However, for 41 point shadowstep rogues you’d be better off picking up the +15 agility Enchant Gloves – Superior Agility. Comparing 26 AP to 15 agility I think the AP has it by a hair (just my personal preference for raw AP over random crits). But with +15% agility from sinister calling the +15 agility pulls ahead by a bit.

Legs
If you can afford it, and you should be able to since you’ve read my book Zuggy’s Gold Mastery Guide, you’ll want to pickup Nethercobra Leg Armor (50 AP and 12 critical strike rating).

Granted it’s a bit expensive, but well worth it. Of course, if you can’t afford this one you can always pick the lesser Cobrahide Leg Armor enchant.

Boots
As far as the boot enchant is concerned I think the only real option is Enchant Boots – Surefooted (10 hit rating and 5% snare resist).

Some may argue that the stam and run speed is superior, however I typically go with the run speed meta gem, and if I don’t have that I’ll have the talent in assassination. Either way, I think you’re going to be better off with surefooted over anything else, the hit is nice, but more than that the snare resit is awesome.

Ring Enchants—-enchanters only!
In all honestly, I think both Enchant Ring – Striking (+2 damage) and Enchant Ring – Stats (+4 all stats) are very close.

If you really want to get picky though I think it really comes down to your spec. If you’re shadowstep go with the stats, since this provides agility you’re getting a bonus from it. For mutilate I’d go with the +2 damage, and combat is purely a toss up (though +4 all stats would be my personal preference).