Hit Rating For Spells And Mages Explained

There really isn’t an easy way to completely understand hit rating.  There are so many variables involved when it comes to talents, abilities, resistances, and the fact that Blizz has a tendency to change their mind from time to time (such as making all hit rating just plain hit rating instead of both mele and spell hit rating, whew!)

But since you are probably looking for spell hit rating we’ll just leave it at that and separate out the different classes so that you can find what you need without having to root through some huge table (if you can even find one that makes sense).

So here we go with Mage Hit rating and caps.  To keep thing simple we’ll just go straight for the kill shot and not go into some tedious explanation of combat ratings and all that other what-not.  So here goes.

In order to maximize your DPS you need to get hit capped before you worry about anything else.  For every 26.232 hit rating you will gain 1% DPS.  There is simply no other stat that matters more until you hit the cap.  Once you ARE hit capped, more is worthless and then spell power (up to about 4k spell power for mages) haste and crit become more valuable.  Be sure to see our post on Making Gear Decisions For Your Toon.

So now that you know you must be hit capped to maximize your DPS,  we need to talk about what the heck the hit cap is.  You’ll hear two terms when people talk about the hit cap.  One is the hard cap, the other is a so-called soft cap.  The hard cap means that you have reached a point where more hit is worthless, the soft cap is a term used for abilities past which point have diminishing returns.  There is no such thing as a soft cap for hit rating.  You are either at the hard cap, or you are not capped and need to get there.

The absolute hard cap for hit is 446 Hit Rating = 17% in the tooltip

The hard cap represents the amount of hit necessary to ensure that you never miss.  That means the hard cap is a 100% chance to hit any and every mob in the game.  It may not seem like a big deal to have a 1% chance to miss, but if you miss on a big, fat Arcane Blast for 15K it will seriously erode your DPS in a big, fat hurry.  Now let’s talk how to hit the hard cap without having to get to 446 hit rating from gear and gems.

We’ll start at the top and work our way down.  For every one of these things you have available, your hard hit cap for spell hit drops to the next number down.  Just find yourself in the list and you’ll know how much hit you need to have to be hit capped and never miss.  Keep in mind that anything that adds +% chance to hit does not necessarily show up in the tooltip (like +17%), so the hit rating is a much better way of looking at things.

• Dranei or Dranei in Party – Hit Cap = 420

• Mage with Precision OR Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 368

• Dranei or Dranei in Party Mage with Precision OR Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 342

• Arcane Mage with Precision AND Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 289

• Dranei or Dranei in Party Arcane Mage with Precision AND Arcane Focus – Hit Cap = 263

There are a few levels past this if you do a lot of 25 man raids, or have just the right combination in your ten mans.  If you always run with a druid that uses improved faerie fire or a shadow priest using misery you can get by with just 210 hit rating.  And if you happen to be a Dranei or have both a Dranei AND SP/ImpFf in your raid you can do as little as 184 and be capped.

Keep in mind that heroic Presence is party only, so folks may be fighting to get the Dranei in their group, meaning you might not always be able to count on this buff – plus it’s a 30 yard range so on fights with a lot of movement you may be out of range for it from time to time.  Your best bet is to stick with the absolute cap of 289 unless you ARE a Dranei (in which case you will always be in your party and can’t get out of range without some wicked bipolar debuff) in which case you can always be safe with a hit rating of 263.

The bottom line is this.  If you are an arcane mage your basic hit cap is 289.  If you are a Dranei or always party with a Dranei your basic hit cap is 263.  Everything else is just gravy.  Now, the more gravy you get, the more hit rating you can drop in favor of other stats.  But the reality is that it’s much harder to balance staying just barely above the cap than it is to find a bunch of gear without hit on it.  It can be tough to get hit capped when you first hit 80, but later on you’ll be looking for nearly every chance you can find to dump hit for spell power or haste or just about anything else.

One more factor to consider, however is that many bosses will have a certain amount of resistance to one or multiple schools of magic.  In the end the balancing act can be almost impossible to hit precisely between just enough hit to overcome both the regular combat hit rating and any resistances a boss might have.  It’s not a bad idea to just go for 289 as a mage and anything above that is going to overcome a certain amount of resistances that might be present.  But it would probably not be a great idea to carry around a hit rating of 350 at the expense of spell power or something else.  You can get anal retentive about it if you wish and figure it out for every boss, but only if you have a lot of time to kill.

So there is hit rating for mages made simple.  If you are arcane, your goal is 289 add in Dranei and it’s 263.  Once you get hit capped it’s far better to try to stay as close to 289 or 263 as you can (and still be over) and then use the Simcraft Engine to figure out what else you should be stacking and how much.  The less hit you can get away with and still be over the cap, the more of those other DPS stats you can stack which will really bring your DPS up to Domination levels.

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With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.

Despite what you may believe, it’s not easy leading a guild, ask any leader who’s guild has been around for more then one or two patches. We’ll be covering various aspect of Guild Leadership over the coming months. Dominating is more than just about DPS and gear.

In the last few months there have been quite a few things going on in-game for Dominate. With new leadership, sometimes you also get new ideas. One of the biggest challenges that any guild faces on a regular basis is dealing with the guild bank, funding it and allowing access to resources.

For starters you should know that it costs nearly 10,000 gold (9350 to be precise) to get all 6 possible bank tabs so before you gripe about your rights as a member, rememeber that someone paid for the bloody thing. Every guild has it’s own system for keeping it filled and it’s own ideas about how to use it and who should have access. Of course for most guild the problem isn’t distribution of wealth, really, the real challenge is Acquisition of said wealth to distribute.

Just as in-game we strive to give you tips and tricks to make your gaming experience more enjoyable, so too in this series we’ll share with you some things that we’ve picked up along the way.

There is no single way to fund the guild bank just as there is no single way to spend the resources in it. Cataclysm will make this significantly easier with the option to tithe members whenever they loot anything. Until then, here’s a nifty and fun little way to go about it.

Submitted Anonymously

GuildLotto

The basic premise of this strategy is exactly the same as most state lotteries. everyone who wants to, buys a “ticket”. At a set date, there is a “draw” and the winner takes home a large purse (say half the pot) and the other half goes to the guild bank . You can take this concept and tweak it all you want, I’ll just detail how we at Dominate are going about it.

There will be a lottery (4 actually) that anyone can buy into. Out of all the money accumulated from “ticket” purchases, half will go to the winner and half will go to the guild bank for mats, flasks and reagents to help fund the raiding (or whatever special project you have in mind)

Dominate will host 4 lotteries:
The Lowbie lottery:

- Only open to those who don’t have a toon past 70
- Only 1 entry per person/human being (not character, not account)
- 5 gold entry
- 2 winners (50% and 25% of the pot respectively)
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

Leveling Loto:

- Only one entry /human player
- Open to anyone in the guild
- 25 gold buy in
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

Raider Loto:

- Only one entry /human
- Open to anyone in guild
- 100 gold buy in
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

There will also be an EPIC Lottery:

- Only 1 entry /human
- Only open to those who raid, are present or contributing in some way to Guild Raids.
- 1000 gold buy in
- 1 draw/MONTH (On the first of the month?)

Game Rules:

In order for this to work it has to be administered in fairness, impartiality and with complete transparency or you may as well just disband your guild right now.

If you ever lose the Respect and the Trust of your guildies, you are Finished as a guild Leader.

If you decide to play the Lottery you will be assigned a number (sequentialy) that will be yours as long the lottery is in place. There is no easy way to do this quickly and fairly in-game so we have to accommodate the rules of participation to the in-game mechanics available to us. In that respect, once a guild member choses to participate to the Lottery they will be attributed a number (sequential seems easiest for our purposes) and that number will not change (for admin purposes)

• All ticket purchases should be sent to a single character, created specificaly for this purpose: “<Guild>Lotto” character preferably from your main toon, stating which characters you are contributing for (Name your Alts) .
• Draws will be made from a /roll 1-xx (Where is the number of contributors) from that toon: <Guild>Loto.

• The Guild Bank will be aloted the first number to every lotery (roll 1 = Guild bank wins) but will re-roll for the lowbie Loto. Should the guild bank win a roll , the entire sum gets rolled over to next week’s Jack Pot

• If someone doesn’t want to play that week or doesn’t pay in time for the roll, and their fixed number comes up all the money is rolled over into the pot for next week’s “bouble jackpot “

• All roll will be made in the presence of at least 3 witnesses, Idealy in a raid group so everyone who’s interested can see the actual roll.

The purpose of this lottery is to supply the guild bank with sufficient funds to help out the Raiders with Flasks, Reagents, Enchants, pay for repair bills and whatever else the guild need. After all it’s a lot easier to raid when your gear is enchanted and socketed and you have flasks and repairs are paid for.

Just as there are rules for the lottery so too should there be basic rules for the administration.  Here are some guidelines:

1. Full disclosure and complete transparency (Not optional)
2. Clear, pre-established rules/guidelines as to where the money will go and who will have access to it.
3. A spreadsheet with everyone’s positions (numbers) will be made available to everyone in the guild as well as the totals for each jackpot. Web site, FTP, in-game mail, e-mail … whatever it takes.
4. Communicate with your members. Informed guild mates are trusting guild mates.

Everyone has his/her own idea of how it should be done, we’re just trying to share some ideas. Feel free to add your ideas on how you fund your guild bank, I’d love to hear about other success stories out there.

6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Blizzard has finally revealed how Icecrown raid will act at launch.They are going  a ToC-type route. Content will be released over several weeks, below is how the raid will work.

__________________________________________________________

Quote from: Daelo – Blizzard Lead Encounter Designer (Source)

Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing very well over the last few weeks, and this has been a huge help to the encounter design team. We want to thank everyone who has logged onto the PTR and tried the encounters there.

As we’re now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, we wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point we can’t give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I’ll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana’thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana’thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell’s effect if they so wish.

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This move by Blizz is a smart one, to keep content from being cleared to fast. This way even the most top end guilds will have to wait before they can knock the Lich King off his throne. As was the case with the Release of ToC, it gave every guild a chance to build up to the later encounters at the same pace as the Hard-Core Raiders. Leveling out the playing field as it were.

The max counter on the Big-Four and having to beat Arthas on regular to start Hard Modes will make it more fun and offer a new take on raiding. Blizzard is essentially applying their ToC formula to an actual 10-25 man raid, as opposed to ”encounters”. In retrospect it seems that ToC reveals itself to be a test for a new format of end-game encounter.

Another fringe benefit of this type of growth is that it will allow all players the necessary time to pick up the rather rare Emblem of Frost necessary for the Tier-10 gear. I also suspect that this latest tier won’t really be an option if you want to stand a chance against Arthas.

The format used in Icecrown will allow Blizzard more time to develop the next expansion by stretching out this patch over several weeks as well as allowing them the necessary time to fix the bugs they inevitably create when tweaking existing content.

This should keep players busy for a while, at least until a certain Black Dragon performs a global, elemental jail-break. I’m still curious to see just how long this patch will last based on how fast guild are progressing through content.

All in all however it’s always nice to see Blizzard respond to user feedback and continue to cater to their clients.

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You just can’t beat this spec when it comes to DPS in PvE content.

It is the most controversial, talked about, and argued about character to date in World of Warcraft. You either hate them or love them but either way, right now, they are Dominating in DPS … if played right. What we’ll show you over the next few days may be a cookie-cutter build you can find on several servers and websites but it still is, hands down,  the best build for your DPS DK. While Blizzard has made been changing the DK since he was released a year ago, one thing has remained the same: The Blood DK is still the best DPS build for damage output … Period!

Over the next few days, I’ll show you the ins and outs of the Blood Spec DK.

Now I do have friends that are Unholy, and their DPS is reasonable, although I’m not sure if they’ll still be my friends after this (Cheers! Anibow)

Talent Spec:

First off your build will be 51/00/20 and here is how you do it step by step. I will show you the link to get you started but in order to be very successful you have a few things to do.

See the complete Build here (Including Glyphs)

While leveling, the first 20 points will go into your Blood Tree like this:

Butchery – Rank 2/2
Whenever you kill an enemy that grants experience or honor, you generate up to 20 runic power. In addition, you generate 2 runic power per 5 sec while in combat.

Subversion – Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike chance of Blood Strike, Scourge Strike, Heart Strike and Obliterate by 9%, and reduces threat generated while in Blood or Unholy Presence by 25%.

Bladed Armor – Rank 5/5
Increases your attack power by 5 for every 180 armor value you have.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization – Rank 2/2
Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 4%.

Dark Conviction – Rank 5/5
Increases your chance to critically hit with weapons, spells and abilities by 5%.

Death Rune Mastery – Rank 3/3
Whenever you hit with Death Strike or Obliterate there is a 100% chance that the Frost and Unholy Runes will become Death Runes when they activate. Death Runes count as a Blood, Frost or Unholy Rune.

While leveling, then you will put 13 points into the Unholy tree like this:

Vicious Strikes – Rank 2/2
Increases the critical strike chance by 6% and critical strike damage bonus by 30% of your Plague Strike and Scourge Strike.

Virulence – Rank 3/3
Increases your chance to hit with your spells by 3% and reduces the chance that your damage over time diseases can be cured by 30%.

Epidemic – Rank 2/2
Increases the duration of Blood Plague and Frost Fever by 6 sec.

Morbidity – Rank 3/3
Increases the damage and healing of Death Coil by 15% and reduces the cooldown on Death and Decay by 15 sec.

Ravenous Dead – Rank 3/3
Increases your total Strength by 3% and the contribution your Ghouls get from your Strength and Stamina by 60%

Then back to Blood to finish it out, then to Unholy to finish it.

Bloody Strikes – Rank 3/3
Increases the damage of Blood Strike by 15% and Heart Strike by 45%, and increases the damage of Blood Boil by 30%.

Veteran of the Third War – Rank 3/3
Increases your total Strength by 6%, your Stamina by 3%, and your expertise by 6.

Bloody Vengeance – Rank 3/3
Gives you a 3% bonus to physical damage you deal for 30 sec after dealing a critical strike from a weapon swing, spell, or ability. This effect stacks up to 3 times.

Abomination’s Might – Rank 2/2
Your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes have a 50% chance and your Death Strikes and Obliterates have a 100% chance to increase the attack power by 10% of raid members within 45 yards for 10 sec. Also increases your total Strength by 2%.

Bloodworms – Rank 3/3
Your weapon hits have a 9% chance to cause the target to spawn 2-4 Bloodworms. Bloodworms attack your enemies, healing you as they do damage for 20 sec or until killed.

Hysteria – Rank 1/1
Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30 sec. The target is Enraged, which increases their physical damage by 20%, but causes them to lose health equal to 1% of their maximum health every second.

Improved Death Strike – Rank 2/2
Increases the damage of your Death Strike by 30%, increases its critical strike chance by 6%, and increases the healing granted by 50%.

Sudden Doom – Rank 3/3
Your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes have a 15% chance to launch a free Death Coil at your target.

Vampiric Blood – Rank 1/1
Temporarily grants the Death Knight 15% of maximum health and increases the amount of health generated through spells and effects by 35% for 10 sec. After the effect expires, the health is lost.

Heart Strike – Rank 1/1
Instantly strike the target and his nearest ally, causing 50% weapon damage plus 368 on the primary target, and 25% weapon damage plus 184 on the secondary target. Each target takes 10% additonal damage for each of your diseases active on that target.

Might of Mograine – Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Death Strike, and Heart Strike abilities by 45%.

Blood Gorged – Rank 5/5
When you are above 75% health, you deal 10% more damage. In addition, your attacks ignore up to 10% of your opponent’s armor at all times.

Dancing Rune Weapon – Rank 1/1
Summons a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 12 sec, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight but for 50% reduced damage.

Now you may be asking,  Why do I need to build in this order? Why can’t I just go Blood all the way then do Unholy? The answer is pretty simple when you look at your rotation.

We will cover Rotation and Glyphs, gemming priorities, enchants as well as some explanation over the next few days.

… To Be Continued!

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Best DPS Raiding Spec For Elemental Shaman In Best In Slot T9 Level Gear

Last time we looked at the Ele Shaman in T8 gear, and this time we are turning up the heat all the way to true end game gear.  Shaman itemization gets better in T9 gear, which means Blizz did a little better job at balancing things out a bit.  T9 Shaman in Elemental spec with BiS gear still will not match the very best geared mages and rogues, but this spec will do just 300 DPS shy of even the most ridiculous cookie-cutter mage.  And no, AoE on big gobs of trash doesn’t count – we’re talking single target boss fights, since they are the only things that count.

Profile

This time you’ll see all the epic gems and the Meta activated.  We’re not sure about the glyph choice for the T8 set either, that’s just what the Simcraft engine says does the most DPS.  You can expect about 9,500 DPS in an extended boss fight in perfect stand still and cast conditions.  Since that hardly ever happens, at least you can expect to do a good, solid 5-7k depending on how much moving you have to do.  For instance, you’ll do a lot more DPS on the Twin Valkyr than Beasts just because you move so much less in that fight and can just sit there and blast away.  The toon in the sim also uses enchanting, but you could definitely get more mileage out of JC/BS, but that is just common knowledge right?

http://profiler.wowhead.com/?profile=14636542

Glyphs

• flame shock
• Lava
• lightning bolt

Priorities

As always, throw the idea of rotations out the window and look at priorities. You’ll return to more of a traditional cycle in T9 and use Chain Lightning, but you need to stick with Thunderstorm when it’s up (which means getting in range and can get tricky, but you’ll figure it out) as well as stay on top of searing totem drops.

• flask type = frost wyrm
• food type = fish feast
• flametongue weapon
• water shield
• mana spring totem
• wrath of air totem
• speed potion
• elemental mastery
• flame shock
• lava burst (only when flame shock is active)
• searing totem
• chain lightning
• lightning bolt
• thunderstorm

Damage Sources

Here you can see the graphs for how all of this works over the course of a fight.  You’ll notice that although Searing Totem doesn’t do a huge percentage of overall damage, it does the most damage per execute time.  This means that it does more damage for the time it takes to cast  – you spend one global cooldown for 60 seconds of damage output.  Pretty efficient if you ask me.  Those two trinkets are seriously potent as well, but good luck getting your hands on even one of them since every PD spell-caster in the game would sell  their mother to get them.

Pawn Scale

( Pawn: v1: "Shaman_T9_57_14_00_258": HitRating=3.94, SpellDamage=1.78, CritRating=1.42, HasteRating=1.28, Intellect=0.50, RedSocket=45.71, YellowSocket=62.97, BlueSocket=31.48 )

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Best DPS Build For Maximum DPS With Best In Slot T8 Level Gear For Elemental Shaman In WotLK

Since we’ve had so little overall information about the Shaman class, we thought it would make a perfect beginning for our DPS profiling series.  Even if you don’t have a Shaman, you’ll probably end up being surprised at a couple of the points you’ll find here, and it will make you foam at the mouth to get the post for your class and favorite build.

The elemental Shaman has been a little low on the DPS charts for a while, and is showing no signs of making a serious run at rogues and mages anytime soon.  However, that doesn’t mean you won’t want one in the raid.  An ele shammy will buff the locks and mages another 500 dps or so from totems, so they get part of their DPS from the buffs they give to other classes.  The more casters you have, the more you need an Elemental Shaman in the raid.

It turns out that the real key to best DPS in T8 gear for the Elemental Shaman is to skip the T8 legs and one spell completely.  It will make a huge difference in your DPS overall, although this will certainly apply to single target pulls such as Boss fights and not trash quite so much.  So let’s take a look at the build and show you how to begin using these guides.

First, take a look at the build profile from Wowhead:

http://profiler.wowhead.com/?profile=13000116

When the page loads, you’ll see the doll slots all filled up with best in slot gear, so you can know what you’re looking for from all those dungeon runs.  We will post the T9 current version next, but for those of you without a bagillion Emblems of Triumph and no Trophies the T8 version of BiS is a great place to start.  At the bottom you will also see all the enchants and gems you will want to use (or epic versions of course where available).

In the tab at the top you will see the talent tab where you can check out the full build along with glyphs choices, although the glyphs are also listed here:

Glyphs:

• flame shock
• lava
• lightning bolt

The next thing you need to do is know what to use and when.  Don’t think of things in terms of rotions any more, but rather in terms of priorities.  In the following list, use things in the order of the list from top to bottom, refreshing as things higher up in the priority list become available.

Priorities:

• flask type = frost wyrm
• food type = fish feast
• flametongue weapon
• water shield
• mana spring totem
• wrath of air totem
• speed potion
• flame shock
• lava burst (only if flame shock is active on the target)
• searing totem
• lightning bolt
• thunderstorm

Now, of course you’re going to drop all of your totems at once, but you will need to refresh searing totem every minute.  The other thing you will notice is that you will not be using chain lightening at all in this spec.  Rather, you will just cycle through and hot flame shock every time the cool-down is up and fill in the spaces with LB, and oddly enough, Thunderstorm.  Thunderstorm will require you to be almost in melee range, and as you can see in the charts below it actually barely registers when it comes to damage.  In other words, TS will only come into play in a few fights but can fill up a cool-down in the rotation from time to time.  You can see the damage graphs from the Simulationcraft Wiki for all of this below.

And, finally, you can always make gear choices a whole lot easier with Pawn.  You can download pawn from either WowMatrix or Curse and keep it updated easily enough.  Pawn will give every piece of potential gear a score while you work toward best in slot so that you can keep the same build and priority list while you collect gear that matches the best in slot stats closely enough.  This will keep you from having to tweak and test your rotation and gear choices and get used to what you are doing.

Pawn Scale:

( Pawn: v1: “Shaman T8 57-14-00″: HitRating=3.02, SpellDamage=1.59, HasteRating=1.39, CritRating=1.13, Intellect=0.38, RedSocket=36.85, YellowSocket=48.32, BlueSocket=24.16 )

So there you have the Max DPS build for the Elemental shaman in T8 equivalent best in slot gear.  Next time we’ll bring the Shaman up to T9 level and then move on to the other classes one at a time.  As always, you can leave your requests for which class we do next in this thread and we’ll post the most requested in order to help you Dominate.

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As the World Of Warcraft Turns

How History Affects Play In World Of Warcraft Just Like Real Life

When you were three years old, you probably had a stuffed animal that you slept with every single night.  If you’re as old as I am you might have gone through the mind numbing experience of playing retarded games like “Chutes and Ladders.”  You might have done some of the particularly stupid stuff we did (not to mention dangerous) when we would buy several thousand (yes THOUSAND) bottle rockets around the 4th of July to . . . get this, shoot at each other.  Yes, we even went so far as to take PVC pipes and make shoulder mounted rocket launchers to improve our accuracy – sigh.  (And if you do anything of the sort your parents should knock you upside the head and not blame me for giving you a dangerous idea – it was seriously dumb and I hope you’re not).

In the early 1900’s the big band sound was all the rage – I doubt any of you have a single tune from that era on your Ipod.  In certain ancient civilizations drinking urine was pretty chic.  The early 80’s brought us fondue parties, and we’re all certainly glad cell phones aren’t the size and weight of bricks any longer.  If you’re wondering if there is any point to all of this it’s that each of us experiences life in a completely different way, and each generation moves through the experience along a unique path.  What is cool today is going to fall right into the nerd ditch in just a few minutes.

There are a few of us who have played every game that Blizz has ever made.  Diablo was the first game to really do the online multi-player thing.  That was way back in the day where just about the only internet connections outside of gigantic metropolitan cities was a 28k dial-up (ick).  Needless to say the original B-net was pretty lame for those of us in the rural category.    Beyond that, you could play all the way through the entire game in about 30 hours – even the first time through.  It was fun, but fairly linear, and then you made a sandwich and played Nintendo.

I loved Starcraft, but didn’t get around to Warcraft until the middle of 2006 (after a couple of years of non-stop D2).  I figured if I was going to get into WoW, I needed to go back and play WC, WCII, and WCIII so that I would understand the storyline and all that kind of goop.  You know how much it helped me?  Zilch, Zero, Nada.  I learned next to nothing from playing the three prequels – at least nothing that actually accelerated my play in WoW.  I still get lost in the lore, but who gives a crap if it doesn’t make me a better healer.

And when it comes to playing the game, the very best players are those who play well NOW.  It’s kind of fun to think back about how unbelievably hard Kara was the first week it came out, but does it really make you a better player if your guild is falling apart now and you are still slogging through Ulduar?  You still think you’re leet  just because your old crew pwned Kara?

Pardon another small digression at this point.  You don’t have to listen to me at all.  I’m just a dood writing for a small web site about a game.  But one of my favorite writers ever – Mr. J.R.R. Tolkien had a theory about history and what it really means to any story.  He said (and I quote very loosely here) that:

…if you are going to write about someone walking down a road toward some mountains that the author needed to know who built the road, everyone that ever walked on it and everything that had ever happened in the mountains ahead.  Those little references to past history gave weight and depth to the story even if the reader never comprehends them all….

After his death, Tolkein’s son found this huge chest full of little notepads.  They were full of handwritten stories from Middle Earth that have been published as the “Books of Lost Tales.”  In them, Tolkein tells the full story of middle earth from creation all the way through the Lord of the Ring trilogy in poetry and prose.  Call them his own personal expansion of the Silmarillion.  They are amazing, and by far his best stories were in that back history and not in the last story (that’s just Lawbringer’s serious inner Tolkien geek talking though).

Some of his best tales were those he never intended anyone to read.  All those stories just gave him what he needed to create what is arguably the best fantasy trilogy ever written.  But whether or not YOU know all the history of Middle Earth will have very little impact on your enjoyment of reading LotR for the first time.  I read LotR about 15 times before I discovered the Books of Lost Tales.  And while reading the past history HAS given me more enjoyment of the final story, it hasn’t made me a better reader.

My whole point of this comes from something that most of you should know is one of my pet peves.  It never fails – every time Blizzard changes something about the game – and I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME, some doofus is going to write something that looks almost exactly like this:

Blizzard is just ruining the game for everyone.  Now you can get all this epic gear too easy and I remember how hard it was when I had to use a hammer on my old keyboard in VC just to get this one spell to work and now people get all these better graphics and rogues are stupid the new races suck because goblins have voices that bother me . . . . . .

…ad naseum.  You get the point.  The problem with this is that not a single one of those people actually live their OWN lives that way.  It bothers me because it couldn’t be any less intellectually honest.   It’s untrue, silly and just an excuse to gripe out loud in public and I don’t really like people like that in RL, so it REALLY bugs me when people punk about a game.  Sigh to the nth degree.

If those people really believed the juice they were pouring, they would go back and play all of the same lame games their parents played when they were growing up.  If your ability to enjoy the “WoW” experience is completely dependent on having “experienced” the same thing that people 4 years ago had to experience in the same ways they experienced them – how much MORE true would this be in real life?

But we certainly don’t see people hand spinning thread to make fabric to make their own socks – now do we?  I mean, how can you really appreciate socks if you never had to make your own socks like your great-great grandmother had to do?  You don’t deserve socks, and the fact that you can get better socks these days than ever before at basically any store in the country for super cheap just makes socks worthless and stupid and I hope that socks go out of business because cheap and good socks have completely ruined the footwear industry.

Apply this spurious thinking to virtually anything in any part of your real life and you’ll see just how silly it gets almost instantly.  If the game didn’t change you would have gotten bored out your mind three years ago and be stuck playing LotR or AOC right now because WoW would be a non-entity.  But it doesn’t mean that every new player HAS to play every stinkin’ thing that has ever been important to the game in order to have any fun or be any good at the game like it is right now.  They don’t make high school football players play in leather helmets just to experience the way it was back in the day.

Back in the day was lame compared to right now.  40 man raids were a pain in any piece of anatomy you care to mention.  The game right now is better than it has ever been and the next expansion will make it even better.  I know this is true because if the game wasn’t getting MORE fun then LESS people would play it.  You cannot sell a crummy product for 8 straight years.  Change is necessary and good the vast majority of the time.  Blizz gets griped at 24/7/365 and they use that input to change things that need to be changed and ignore the silly stuff.  If you’re so smart, go form your own company, develop games and see how that goes.

Most games fail because they do not stay fresh.  They keep the same old same old content and people get bored of it in about 2 hours.  WoW is good BECAUSE it has changed so drastically.  It more accurately resembles real life in that way.  Players that are new to the game can see the history they have missed when they ride through  the northern part of Deadwind Pass and wonder “what the heck is down THAT road?” But that certainly doesn’t mean they ever have to do Kara in order to have an appreciation for how good the game is.

When Cataclysm hits, it will be be a little sad for me to see Darkshore destroyed.  I’ve spent so many freakin hours in Auberdine it’s not even funny.  But it will give ME a better appreciation of the new content.  I agree with the goobers that having been through things gives those of us who DID go through them a better overall appreciation of the storyline, but that depth of understanding doesn’t make us better players.

Plus, on the flip side, if the level cap was still 60 and we were all still grinding it out for our T2 – the game would REALLY be dead.  THAT would ruin the game.  Not changing would kill the game.  Moving content forward so that even those of us who have done almost everything still have something to work for is NOT going to kill the game.  And every time the game moves forward, you have to go back and keep some balance so that the new player has some hope of doing the cool stuff at the end.

In all reality the reason Blizz does change the game is for YOU.  Yes, you; the guy standing in the back griping in a solid stream about how Blizz is ruining the game.  If you still had to level up the same old way you always did and do the same old dungeons you’ve always done you would stop paying your monthly fees and actually quit (we could only be so lucky).  Blizzard changes the game to keep the pros and old-timers interested.  Your leveling envy for the new guys who have it easier is just an envy complex and you should grow up and get over it.

You would roll your eyes so far back in your head you would never find them again if teachers these days said the same stupid stuff they used to say to my generation in high school: “you can’t use a calculator because if you never learn to do math on paper you won’t be as good at it.”  Dumbest thing I ever heard.  If we are supposed to NOT advance we would all still be skinning animals for their tallow to make candles just to have some light after the sun went down.

It’s even worse when the argument co-joins two disparate thoughts such as: “Don’t use electricity.  The Romans and the Greeks didn’t have electricity and using it makes you weak and inferior.  Sure, I have electricity NOW, but in pre-BC there was no electricity so you should go back and pedal the generator to drive your computer like I had to in fail-ville back in the day.”

Every generation stands on the backs of the work of the previous generation.  We don’t make kids develop their own languages and letters from scratch like someone had to 7,000 years ago.  We advance by taking what was done before us and then using that knowledge to do things quicker, better and faster than ever before.  But the jealousy of “how easy it is these days” always comes out.  Sure, I had to use a slide rule, but the reason we don’t use them any more is because it would be a waste of time and effort when there are far better methods of solving mathematical problems these days.  Sure, you had to figure out how to lead a 40 man raid on Onyxia, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should have to go back and do it exactly the way you did it.

You blazed a trail.  It was hard work and the next people coming down the road shouldn’t have to cut the same weeds you cut.  The really neat thing about WoW, if you’ll stop and think about it, is that you are becoming part of a fantasy history.  The changes work because the game works better now than it used to and that’s the way things should be.  Gear should get better and some things should get easier as the society as a whole progresses.  You have become part of that progression.  Don’t complain, it’s really cool that someone has enough forethought to sustain a fantasy world that moves enough to not get stale and boring.

Regardless of whether you are one of those people who have their brains plugged in all the way or whether you are in the slightly disconnected from reality group – when Cataclysm hits you are going to have no choice whatsoever.  The storyline is about to take a giant leap forward, and one of the oldest parts of the story – Deathwing – is going to change the whole World of Warcraft permanently – and for good.  And it IS good that the game is getting a complete overhaul.  It means we can enjoy it for another few years instead of having to move on to something far more lame – something where the story line never changes (console games ftl).  I, for one, will be glad when content progresses to the point where I never have to step foot in the Occulus again.

So I don’t want to hear that kind of stuff any more.  You wouldn’t apply that fail logic to anything else in the world (I know people try but that doesn’t make it less silly), and just because you apply it to WoW doesn’t make it less fail.  If you think the game is ruined then for pete’s sake quit playing right this second and plow a field with a mule and walk to school uphill both ways in the snow so you’ll enjoy life more because you have experienced the same way of playing life that your ancestors did – but watch out for the saber-toothed tigers – I hear they are a little tough in PvP.

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Is the Buff to Guilds the End of Guild Alliances?

The news of all the upgrades to Guild systems in the expansion is really exciting; Blizzard has stated they’re trying to make being in a guild more viable and interesting.  It seems like from whatever polls they’ve taken, they’ve gathered that the social aspect of World of Warcraft is something drawing in a large portion of their players, so they’re trying to improve and bank upon that.

So far, here’s a list of the things the Guild Advancement system is slated to have:

• Guild Experience
  Your entire guild will have and experience bar.  Gaining experience for your guild may be possible from things like leveling, gaining reputation, killing bosses, or winning Battlegrounds or Arenas, all on your guilded toons.

• Guild Talent Tree
  As your guild levels, it naturally gains talent points as well.  These talent points can give your guild members a range of very useful abilities, such as reduced durability taken during fights, removal of buff reagents for raid-wide buffs, and even mass resurrection (my inner-raider can’t stop drooling!).
  

  Guild Talent Tree sample, with example talents "Everybody's Friend" which removes reagents for raid-wide buffs and "Penny Pincher" which reduces repair costs by 30%.

• Guild Currency
  Gaining Guild Experience will convert into (somehow) a special kind of currency called Guild Currency.  You’ll be able to use Guild Currency to purchase a vast array of items, from purely cosmetic and fun to very useful.  There’s the possibility it will be able to be used for mounts, standards with your guild’s insignia on it, as well as being used for a guild talent respect.

• Profession Plans
  Profession Plans can also be bought with Guild Currency.  Once a plan is bought, any person of what profession will be able to purchase the plan from their profession’s trainer.  It will also be possible to craft guild heirlooms, which will scale with level just as regular heirlooms do today.  Additionally, an interface is being added so that anyone online can see other online players’ profession levels and patterns (no more spamming, now we can just ask!)

• Achievements
  Just like normal achievements work now, except, naturally, guild-wide.  Achievements for having Grand Masters of every profession and obtaining Legendary items were mentioned.
  

  Guild Achievement examples, showing the "Working as a Team" achievement, where the guild has a Grand Master of each profession.

• News Feed
  Keep everybody up to date on the latest happenings in the guild with the News Feed.  What bosses were killed, what achievements people have earned, what the most recent loot was.
  

  The Guild Professions interface on the left, and General Guild interface on the right, including the experience bar, News Feed, and MOTD.

• Improved Looking for Guild/Recruit Feature
  A new Looking for Guild interface will be included.  This interface will let you better specify who you are and what kind of guild you’re looking for.   Some specifications for the Guild Recruit feature may include the guild’s play style (casual, moderate, or hardcore), common days of activity, class roles needed, and what levels of toons are being accepted.
  

  Looking For Recruit Interface

• Other Guild Invitations to Calendar
  Finally, something many people have been waiting for: the ability to invite another guild to an event on the Calendar.

As you can see from this Guild Advancement system, a lot has been done to make it beneficial to be in a guild.  Plus, besides encouraging people to be in guilds, it also discourages people from guild hopping; the system is put together to actually encourage guild allegiance.  These days it can be much easier for people to just jump around to whatever guild seems to be doing best, get some gear, and go.  There tends to be fewer people willing to stick around and work (I.E. wipe, pay for consumables, practice) for the final goal, be it downing a boss or winning a Battleground.  With this new system, as soon as you leave a guild, all the benefits you’ve received from being a member are wiped.  The game will still be completely playable, but any professions, heirlooms, or other guild doo-dads you’ve collected during your time will be gone.

What does this mean for Guild Alliances?

Now, while I personally am stoked for these changes (as far as I can tell, they’ll bring nothing but fun in for those already in solidly performing guilds), I fear for those that use the Guild Alliance as their primary way to accomplish high-end content.  These days it’s relatively common for 2 or 3 smaller guilds to band together into an alliance to attempt to accomplish higher end content; 2 or 3 guilds that run their own solitary 10 man can easily form a 25 man together.

Often these guilds stay separate because they simply like having their autonomy; often they’re a small group of friends who play together and have no interest in joining another guild with people they don’t know as well.  While the ability to invite more than one guild to your Calendar is a plus for guild alliances, everything else they’re implementing is basically a detriment.  To receive a guild achievement for a boss kill or Battleground, for example, it was stated that 75% of the guild will have to be present.  This means that any guilds that happen to be accomplishing content as an alliance will likely not be able to receive any of these achievements.  Allied guilds will have separate talent trees as well, separate obtained profession plans.  While these issues don’t keep anyone from playing the game, it will certainly keep them from taking part in many of the game’s new features, at least to the extent that other bigger guilds do.

Cataclysm has a lot of wonderful new features coming that are going to make raiding and general game-play easier and more fun for most of us.  It’s understandable that Blizz wants everyone to take advantage of the social aspect of the MMO (whether it’s to make them more money or to actually help us enjoy the game more), I just hope it doesn’t end up strangling smaller guilds and alliances.  So enjoy the new Guild Advancement system, everyone…it has a lot of amazing new features to offer.  But for anyone in a guild alliance, it may be time to start contemplating what to do when Cataclysm hits.

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One Of The Classic Pre-BC Raids Gets A Big Overhaul

For those of you who have been around since way before the Burning Crusade expansion, this will come as good news – even if it isn’t new news (unless you haven’t heard about it yet).  For the rest of us who never really quite made it into the level 60 raid content, it’s going to be a way to experience for the first time just what a big deal the Onyxia encounter was way back when.

I like nostalgia.  It’s always fun to remember things that used to be so freakin’ hard.  I wasn’t around for Ony, Strat, Scholo, AQ, ZG, and Mag but I do remember doing the lower level instances from the same time period.  That’s why it was pretty exciting for just about anyone to hear that Blizz was going to ramp up Deadmines and SFK to level 85 for Cataclysm.  I’ve always thought that it would be cool if there was actually a good reason other than power leveling alts to do the low level dungeon runs – and having a top level heroic version is just the ticket.

Apparently Blizz eventually figured that out as well, and the very first of these upgraded dungeon versions is the Onyxia encounter.  While I never did it at 60, I’ve been in there a few times at 70 and 80 and can’t imagine what a pain organizing and pulling off a 40 man raid was in the place.  They are even going to leave some of the old flavor about the it since some of the new loot drops will have the same look as the T2 set pieces you used to get in there.  The regular level 60 raid won’t exist any more, unlike the SFK and VC heroics which will retain a low level version – so if you want to see it how it was you need to get in there now.

But the new gear isn’t even the best part of the raid.  We don’t have much information regarding this one yet – but it seems that Ony is also going to have a very small chance of dropping a 310% speed flying mount named Onyxia Broodling.  Talk about a raid people will farm until forever.  Super fast flyers are painfully rare, and this one is going to be a full sized dragon – probably even bigger than the proto-drake you have now.  That’s something to get a little excited about.

Blizz states they want everyone to “experience the frightening horror of deep breaths once again.”  Onyxia was a real challenge back in the day and there is no reason to believe that it won’t be an incredibly difficult encounter with great loot once again.  The loot will be on par with other current 10 man raids, and you will probably be farming for the mount well into the Cataclysm expansion when the raid will get slightly easier after you’ve hit 85 and upgraded your gear even more.  But until then, this addition to patch 3.2.2 look pretty Dominating!

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More News From Blizzcon About Cataclysm Expansion

Now there is way too much to cover to be sure.  Information about Cataclysm is simply dwarfing everything at Blizzcon so far.  We are in the process of coming up with a better way of presenting information that is class specific without repeating ourselves and without just regurgitating every single blue post in its entirety.  In reality the folks at Blizz announce things a little schizophrenically.  So there is no real rhyme or reason to the press releases we’re getting.  But we’re sorting it all into more usable segments.  Plus, the folks at Blizz don’t worry too much about spelling and grammar in their posts.  We know it’s a little odd to correct a quote, but we just couldn’t stand it, so we cleaned up the worst bits.

Here is all of the general news that doesn’t fit cleanly into a category like”Hunter” for instance.  We’ve collected these bits out of four different blue posts – enjoy!

• Level cap will be 85 because developers wanted to focus on the right things: redoing Azeroth and providing more end-game content.

• A new guild advancement system  will let you earn guild perks and level a guild through 20 levels with points to spend in a talent tree. You will access abilities such as cheaper repairs, less durability loss on wipes, or mass resurrection.

• Phasing can now add and remove terrain based on your progress. Coasts will be progressively more flooded depending on how far you are in a storyline for example.

So who are we trying to kill anyway?

• Deathwing, the leader of the Black Dragonflight, will be the main villain of the expansion.

• Deathwing heard the whispers of the Old Gods after the arrival of the Burning Legion.  He eventually grew very powerful and also became very, very crazy.

• His plan was to catch the Alliance and Horde unaware with something so massive that it would bring up the Elemental Planes.

• The Elemental Planes were created by titans to contain the elementals.  They weren’t happy with this decision and some of them, like Ragnaros, got really angry.

Old World

• We all left a little part of ourselves in Northrend and the old world will be much darker than it was to make heroism and brotherhood more meaningful – like Warcraft should be.

• Every zone will be revamped with new quests, items, and art. The old world will be a brand new experience and you won’t have to deal with the annoying agility/spirit quest rewards anymore.

• Azeroth is now flyable. Pretty much all the zones [sic] will be changed to some extent.  Some of them, like Elwynn Forest, won’t change too much; but others, like The Barrens, will be sundered in two by Deathwing.

• The Wailing Caverns are now a lush and verdant Area.

• Desolace now has a lot more water and a lot of plants can be seen in the screenshots.

• The Horde finally conquered Southshore.

• Auberdine was destroyed and the night elves have set up a new camp north of it. Garrosh wants to expand the horde and has built a fortified camp at the south of the zone.

• Stonetalon has been cleaned by the Goblins.  Azshara will be the new Goblin zone, and they are using quarries in the mountains of Azshara to build their town.

• Apparently Orgrimmar will be rebuilt and reinforced with steel.  It now looks a lot like Garrosh strongholds.

• Undercity has been redesigned to be flyable.  It now looks much more impressive from the outside.

New Zones

7 new zones will be added : Twilight Highlands, Mount Hyjal, Deepholm, Uldum, Gilneas, The Lost Isles, Sunken City of Vash’jir.

Starting Areas

The Worgens and Goblins starting zones levels go from 1 to 15.

Vasj’ir

Sunken City of Vashj’ir will be an underwater zone and was the home city of Lady Vashj before the original sundering.  This is a gateway to the Abyssal Maw. Going through the Abyssal Maw will take you to the Elemental Plane of Water.  Even though the zone will be underwater you will be walking on the sea floor here.  New underwater mounts will be available and should have the same speed as normal flying mounts.

Deepholm

• Deepholm will be the new hub of the expansion and you will have portals here to let you teleport to Hyjal, Uldum, etc.   The Twilight’s Hammer now serves Deathwing and have brought him back to full health in the Temple of Earth at the center of the map.

• Deepholm isn’t really connected to Azeroth, the connection is where Deathwing emerged from the ground.

Uldum

Uldum will have at least two dungeons and is heavily inspired from [sic]  Egypt. The sea at the west of Tanaris was just an illusion created by the Titans and Uldum is actually a brand new zone. It is rumored to hold a super weapon. Uldum is also the home of the Tolvir, a race of stone-like cats created by the titans.

Plane of Fire

Ragnaros used the cataclysm to come back from the Plane of Fire where we sent him and is now besieging the World Tree in Mount Hyjal to burn it down. Malfurion is back from the Emerald Dream. The whole zone (Hyjal) will make extensive use of phasing.

Twilight Highlands

The Twilight Highlands will feature Grim Batol.  Deathwing literally broke open Grim Batol as he emerged from the ground. This is the new Twilight’s Hammer base in Azeroth and both Horde and Alliance will have a new port town with boats here. The Red Dragonflight is still here but has been pushed back to the west of the zone near the Wetlands.

Dungeons & Raids

• The Firelands will be a new raid dungeon.  It will let you go to the Elemental Plane of fire and visit Sulfuron’s Keep, Ragnaros will be there and he’s really pissed.

• Uldum will feature two new dungeons, the Lost City of Tol’vir and the Halls of Origination (a titan city).

• Grim Batol will have a level-up dungeon and a raid instance.

• Skywall (Air Elemental Plane) will have a level-up dungeon and a raid instance.

• The Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep will be back with brand new level 85 heroic versions.

• Blackrock Caverns will be a new level-up dungeon located in Blackrock Spire. This is an entirely new dungeon, new art, new creatures, new everything.

Player vs. Player

• Battle of Gilneas will be a new battleground where the objective is to control the city by controlling as many districts as possible.

• Tol’barad will be a new PvP zone and will also be the most important daily quest hub. Just like Wintergrasp, a battle will happen every few hours and the winning side will get access to the Tol’barad Prison and extra daily quests (the really profitable ones).

• Rated battlegrounds will be added to the game and should get you the same rewards as Arenas.

• New arena maps will be added.

Guild Leveling System

• The idea behind the guild leveling system is to make people want to be in guilds and make people feel better about being in a guild. The goal is to take that feature and make it the best they can. (Guild Talent Trees, etc …)

• You will be able to create guild heirlooms with the new guild leveling system, you can buy profession plans and anyone in your guild can wear that item, it will scale with level.

Raids & Dungeons

• You can’t get Frostmourne because it would take control of your soul. Frostmourne would be playing your character, not you. The weapon has an unique fate and the encounter is going to be mega.

• There won’t be any option to do Onyxia at level 60 anymore after the revamp in 3.2.2.

Cataclysm

• There isn’t any plan to prevent ganking in the contested zones of Azeroth, even with flying mounts available here. This is just part of being on a PvP server.

• They can’t spoil the Thrall / Garrosh storyline, but with the cataclysm raging everywhere, what do you think the world’s mightiest shaman would need to do?

• Northrend and Outland won’t really be affected by the Cataclysm but some of the areas will be updated for the expansion. For example, you will be able to level up Archeology in Outland.

• XP in Battlegrounds need to be fixed because there is a lot of XP leeching in the 71-80 Brackets. Once it’s fixed, it will be improved across the board.

• Multi-passenger flying mounts could be added in the future. They might also allow crafters to craft 310% flying mounts if they already completed an achievement rewarding one.

• Every healer class can now dispell magic, the niches will other debuffs.

• Engineers might be able to craft bows in the future.

• If you already own a 310% mount, you might be able to boost the speed of all your 280% mount to 310% just to let you use the one that you prefer.

• Casters will finally get a Legendary item in one of the first raids of the expansion.

• Cataclysm will change the ways abilities are learned. Abilities ranks are gone and ability will just scale progressively with levels instead.

• Most of the Talent Trees will be changed dramatically, a lot of the passive bonuses will be removed and talent trees should be more fun. (No more “Hurray! Level up! I just got 1% more hit!)

• You will never be able to cleanse the Corrupted Ashbringer.

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