I'd prefer to see the cooldown of ironshield potions and the like increased instead. Putting them on a separate 10 minute cooldown would reduce your need to one per attempt at most, and would still let you get that extra mitigation for enrage phases.

This a frequently proposed solution. It doesn't even have to be dodge--massive armor for 15s would be perfectly functional.

It solves both of the current problems with Ironshields:
--You use them every two minutes, resulting a huge consumable bill.
--You use them every two minutes, which requires no thought at all.

Does anyone actually find farming for 50 mana potions/haste potions per raiding night fun? They reduced elixir stacking, but didn't do the same for potion spam. A larger cooldown combined with increased personal mana regeneration or greater effect from the potion would go a long way in reducing it. People will look for any edge they can get, so slightly toning down the effects won't reduce their use that much. It also creates an imbalance between classes, since mana potions may be absolutely necessary for some specs, and some other potions a slight improvement for other classes.

I'm perplexed by the enchanting wands. I like the idea of enchanting giving an upgradeable wand, similar to blacksmithing weapons in TBC, but the current implementation makes no sense. All versions have identical stats the only difference being that each upgrade gives additional weapon DPS. I'm guessing these are just placeholders while they work on itemizing WOTLK raids, and instead of 25 void crystals as an upgrade reagent there will be some sort of raid drop similar to nether vortex/heart of darkness/sunmotes. If this is the case, perhaps blizzard is trying to push enchanting on those magic users (mages/warlocks/priests) who would logically (from an rp standpoint) have it as a tradeskill?

Yeah, that's exactly what I assumed too. From the pics on mmo-champion, the epic wands even had the exact same stats as some blue wands too. I think they're just placeholders, and the same for the voidcrystal mats, and eventually they'll end up as Stormherald-alikes for ranged casters.

Try not to put too much thought into the obviously incomplete items currently showing up. The stats from the blue level 75 wands are probably correct, but they don't change any on the datamined epic ones. The only point that matters is that enchanting will have BoP wands similar to the current Blacksmithing weapons, so it's pretty safe to assume they will be best in slot (at least to start) and possibly require some sort of raid drop progression. They no doubt decided to do wands as enchanting already had made them in the past, so it's not creating a new concept so much as reviving an old one.

One interesting thing is that they are making bop craftable items for use during leveling, so it will be interesting to see if the new group of BS weapons starts around level 75 as well. They seem to be putting clear effort into making each profession have benefits to having beyond just the ability to create things for others, which is nice to see. It looks like they want every profession to have a gear benefit as well as an improved enhancement.

My hope is that they will combine the new badge system with the crafting idea, rather than the current system of pattern drops, and have the patterns and unique added mats be bought by the badges from each tier. I also hope the armor follows a similar upgrading system as the weapons do now, rather than just being insanely powerful from the start.


Edit responding to the post below: I absolutely love the idea of craftable relic/totem/idols, both BoP and BoE, I agree it would fit well with enchanting, and I hope they do it. It's very true that enchanting is a profession any class could have and that is an excellent idea that would make it useful for more classes.

Off the current topic a bit, but the official WoW site talent calculators have been updated to include Wrath talents.

Possible glyphs for inscriptions. it looks like this is still being heavily worked on, but it should give an idea of what direction they want to go in. -

Minor Glyphs-
Glyph of the Penguin - Spell - World of Warcraft
Glyph of Thorns - Spell - World of Warcraft
Glyph of Wild Endurance - Spell - World of Warcraft

Lesser Glyphs-
Glyph of Moonfire - Spell - World of Warcraft

Greater Glyph-
Glyph of Natural Force - Spell - World of Warcraft

I hope so too. Maybe enchanting could have specialisations like other professions; with one type getting the upgradable wands and the other getting some kind of improved self-only enchants. I'm sure I'm not the only warrior who dropped mining for enchanting back when the +4 stats on ring recipie was made easier to get, I'd hate to have to drop enchanting and relevel mining for the stamania bonus.

If you look at Warlock and Enhancement Shaman changes, you can see one reason why. People will be regemming immidiately because desired stats will change with Wrath. Shamen will replace their Str gems with Agi to save their epic items from being seriously underpowered. Locks may have to do the same with Spirit.
Then again, the jump in gem power may be propelled by economical and balance reasons we have not seen yet.

With the apparent (or maybe it's just because I - and probably many other - have much better gear now) lower 'gear gap' between, more powerful gems and enchants are a good way to still increase power, and, perhaps more importantly, generate a bit of economy without waiting for Naxx tiers to come into play.

Talking about economy, it seems that new quests have around the monetary rewards around 4-5g and ~15g for large quests? I am actively avoiding lore/quest spoilers, so I haven't really looked into it, but that is quite an increase from the ~2-5g rewards from Hellfire Peninsula questing, right? Are we looking at 10,000g at level 80 :P?

Wow, that Wrath pushback glyph is incredibly strong. It actually gives 125% pushback resistance, which means you get an extra talent point out of it if you don't care about Starfire stun. Pretty nice.

Bloodlust apparently stacks with the new haste WF totem for the shaman, but what about the other party members, as "Non-self % based haste spells will no longer stack with each other. " (2.4 Patch Notes)

I've tested it and Bloodlust does stack with WF Totem for the other members of the party.

Demoralizing Roar

Would that mean it gives 10 rage per use? :P

The fact the glyph is called "Moonfire" might throw us a hint as to something not being 100% Kosher :P

Swift Retribution and the Improved Boomkin effect would be the two other haste effects that are largely dependent on stackability.

e: clarified talents

Just sniped this off the official boards: .

If this change stays, it would make gearing alts far easier (especially if it stays for the lvl 80 version).

I'm sure we'll have Badge of Heroism or something else at 80 that's BoP.

Previous minus rage cost to spells talents/items that went below 0 stayed at 0 sadly.

I had -3 rage revenges with the Wrath 5 piece bonus + the Focused Rage talent in the Burning Crusade beta. Funky tooltip but no rage gain that I can recall.

Recent blue post tells us that everybody with beta codes from 2008 Worldwide Invitational or the 2007 BlizzCon are in for the Beta. Here's hoping that more of advanced theorycrafters can now get in and enjoy new stuff.

Rage costs in the spell database typically multiply the actual listed value by 10. The glyph actually reduces the rage cost by 2.