Fun Soloing instances on the PTR

Hey folks, I spent the day soloing regular instances on the PTR. With the new divine storm spell that damages up to 4 targets AND heals you for 20% of the damage done, many instances are now soloable. Today I've done:

Hellfire Ramparts
Blood Furnace
Underbog
Stockades

Can't do them on heroic, just regular but it's pretty spiffy soloing one of these. Usualy takes under half an hour if you don't stop to loot every corpse. Shame all the blue items are BOP.. otherwise I could give them to my alts :)... I'm including a good shot i got of me tanking about half the mobs in the stockades

A tie

Hey folks,

I "think" I may have seen this once before in a 2's game.. but now I have a screenshot of it. Last night my 3's team was playing and we tied. Kyllia (our rogue) was our last man standing, but had only about 20% health. The opponent's team had a hunter left with around 70% left.

I figured our chances were slim, but we cheered Kyllia on, and he managed to close the gap. I thought he'd die any second but instead the hunter's life kept shrinking. Suddenly the the summary screen comes up and... a TIE!

FYI if you ever receive this. A tie gives no points AND DOES NOT COUNT AS A GAME. We were at 9 games going into this and stayed at 9 games after.

We wound up facing the team again during the next match. Fortunately we beat them :)

I beat a Gladiator on the PTR

That's right folks. Last night I was outside of the SW gates, which seems to be a gathering place for duels. On of the many duels I fought was a Rogue with a Gladiator title. The match was close, with me down to maybe 10% health but I won!

The Gladiator informed me that he did everything correctly as far as he was concerned (no messing up of keys, popping trinkets at the wrong time, etc) so it was a valid win. That's not to say we're totally OP...... Here's how it's been breaking down for me so far:

vs Rogue - Usually win, down to 20% or less life at the time
vs Druid - If ferrel, I win easily if it's resto I can win but not guaranteed
vs Mage - Can only win if I have my bubble available, and it's not guaranteed
vs Shaman - Same as mage
vs Paladin - 60/40, whoever manages their bubble and cooldowns better wins
vs Warlock - So far it's mostly losses, they have to many fearing abilities and I can't get close enough without the DOTs killing me, bubble or not.
vs Warrior - Not enough matches to test, preliminary results are promising but Titan's grip is broken on the PTR

Glyphs

Hey folks, I started messing around with glyphs on the PTR, I'm not going to go over the various kinds, other blogs I link to do that nicely.. but I did have to look up some questions, including how to equip glyphs... so I'm pasting a Q&A on them below... taken from a wow forum post.


Q. What are glyphs?
A. Glyphs are similar to enchants however they buff your spells/abilities/talents in widely different ways. Everyone has 3 glyph "slots" open to them. These slots are viewable on a separate tab in your spellbook.

Q. How do I equip glyphs?
A. Just right click on the glyph and select a slot to put it in.

Q. It says I need a Lexicon of Power, what is that?
A. Ask a guard in a major city. The Lexicon is a giant floating book which works like a Mana Loom, just stand near it to equip your glyph. Not all glyphs require a Lexicon.

Q. Are glyphs stackable?
A. No, each glyph is unique.

Q. What happens to glyphs I equip?
A. Equipped glyphs are removed from your inventory. You can have a maximum of 3 equipped glyphs. If you already have 3 equipped glyphs, you can overwrite an equipped glyph the same as an enchant or gem. Overwriting destroys the equipped glyph.

Q. What are minor glyphs?
A. Minor glyphs are not currently implemented as of build 8962. Minor glyphs affect spell effects or ability effects. A prime example is the Penguin glyph for mage's polymorph. REPEAT: Minor glyphs are not currently implemented.

Q. How do I train Inscription?
A. Go to any major city beside Shatrath and ask a guard.

Q. How do I skill up from XXX? There are no trainers in the City!
A. Depending on your level, you can train in major cities. For higher recipes, there are additional trainers in Honor Hold or Thrallmar.
** Edit: Bliz broke trainers in all areas in build 8970. Training above 125 seems to not work.

Q. What is required for Inscription?
A. Herbs. Lots of herbs. All levels, all kinds.

Q. ZOMG, I see you have a skill of 400+, how did that happen?
A. In previous builds, it was possible to craft high end glyphs using very low level herbs. In build 8962, all high end glyphs (above level 350 Inscription) require Northrend herbs.


Q. AWESOMESAUCE! Can I have that glyph?
A. Probably not. Many people are asking for glyphs that are only craftable using Northrend herbs. Any scribe who has a 350+ skill level cannot make high end glyphs.

Q. But I saw Dudeguy over there selling that glyph!
A. They probably made their high end glyphs prior to build 8962 using low level mats. I had a few of those but I gave them away to people without realizing it.

Arena is up on the PTR - Screenshots!

Hey Folks, so I played my first new arena matches on the PTR, "Dalaran Arena" (below) and "Ring of Valor" (the 2nd pic). I also respecced for the shorter stun time. Here's my impressions

DA - You enter in a sewer grate and you need to jump off it to start the match. After a few seconds though, I was somehow shot thru the air across the screen to the grate you see on the right of the photo. I wasn't actually in combat though, just landed in the other grate. At that point I saw my oponents had actually started to the grate left of me. (Our starting areas were on the same side, just one got the left grate, one the right)

The arena is large, with boxes to jump on and a waterfall that spews water at least once per 20 seconds. (I didn't keep count, was busy kicking ass :) I stood next to the waterfall and it knocked me back a little, but no apparent damage. I'm not sure what would happen if I actually stood in the center of the waterfall.

This arena reminded me a little of the ring of trials. It started you underground, and your platform rose up to the center. Wher were were imedialty met by two shamans with full totems. We were maybe 15 yards away from each other at the start, so their totems took full effect. I also noticed that the shamans were able to keep full health with no problems. I havn't looked at the new shaman builds, but it seems that either my random partener realy sucked, or shaman heals have been buffed quite a bit.

Anyway, every so often, flames woudl shoot from the sides of the arena, I hear they will cause damage if you go thru them, so wait for the flames to die out if you want to cross. There are also small pedistals that rise and fall slowly, you can climb up them. Overall this arena is much smaller, and I think will be fast and furious, while the sewers will be good to steath classess

That's it for the moment, I'll try to get more then 2 matches in and give some more descritpions if i can. If you have questions, ask them and I'll try to answer

I"m healing for up to 6k

Hey folks.

My character copied to the PvP realm this morning and the BG's we working. Sadly I forgot to head to a trainer beforehand and was missing most of my judgment spells, and I was redoing those toolbars again... but here's my top two observations of the morning, before the server went down (again)

#1) ALL classes are doing more damage, I'm taking crits of 2-3k fire damage all the time, and even DOTs are taking 400-500 off per tick. I'm also doing more damage... but the point is everyone's dying faster

#2) My heals are I N S A N E. My Flash of light seems to be a minimum 1,300k heal, with crits aboce 2k. Holy light is going for over 6k!!! Did I mention I'm a friggin ret pally?!? If heling is going to be like this, putting 5 points into spritual focus will make you almost invincible.

Oh, one last thing... I never ran out of mana in my first BG on the PTR.. hell I never got below 50%

More to come.

First thoughts on the PTR

Hey folks,

So my character copied over today, but I've been getting disconnected a LOT. The server is slow, and currently outlands are down, BG's are down, Arena is down. So I havn't actually got to do much of anything except get new spells and talents set up. Here's what I think you'll notice right away

PTR SPECIFIC - If you copy a character get ready for a lot of lag, and your talent trees are set to zero so reset them right away. You also cannot load mods into the PTR so you're stuck with the default wow interface. I was also asked to rename my character, after asking most/everyone is asked to do this for the PTR, it doesn't affect your live character.

WOTLK GENERAL - There is a new mount window. If you want to mount up on the PTR, and I think in WOTLK, you need to hit SHIFT+P to access the mount page, then drag a mount icon onto your toolbar, or keep going back to the mount page to click the icon. I was also told that once you drag a mount icon onto the page, you can delete the mount from your bag. Havn't actually tried it yet, but will do so later to double check.

PALADIN SPECIFIC - Sanctity arua is gone. I don't remember reading that before, but there is no sanctity aura for ret pally's. That makes Retribution aura the only offensive aura available. You'll want to put some talent points into it now I think.

My crusader aura seems to be always on, in addition to whatever combat aura I choose.

I have access to the blood elf paladin mount.

I did go after a couple 63 level mobs just outside shat, the damage seemed to only be white, even though it was spell damage, but the average hit was about 1,500k. I don't belive that was a crit.

That's it for now. More later if I can stay on without being disconnected for more then 5 min

WOTLK released Nov 13th - New talents coming sooner

Hey folks, blizzard has annouced that the new expansion is out on the 13th, that's less then 2 months! Patch 3.02 (that's the one with all the new tallents) is on the PTR right now and should go live sooner, perhaps next month.

There have been plenty of changes to the Ret talents and so far there look to be two viable builds. there are so many new, jucy talents however that it's going to take some time to figure out what works.

I've put in for a character copy and am downloading the client today. I should be up in about 2 days according to the copy que. I'll report back on the new talents at 70 shortly after.