Currently 15.77 hit rating, crit rating, haste rating or expertise give an effective 1% of that stat.
Has anyone been able to figure out the exact value that will be needed at level 80 yet? In the beta lvl 77 was the highest available level limit I think. Logical deduction might be possible, unless the new values are non linear.

* Combat rating system - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
* Random Ravings of Warcraft: Hit and Expertise


Currently blacksmithing seems to be the same as enchanting raid value wise for rogues. 2 sockets, or 2 rings enchanted. I suspect (though can't as of yet verify) you can't add sockets to weapons which already have a socket. Blacksmithing would allow the use of hit rating gems though, which the haste or AP enchant would most likely be inferior to.

Jewelcrafting, depending on which gems are useful to you, and what'll be added BoP wise would give 10 stats per gem. Probably hard to get near the +40 stats of the other 2 professions.

Skinning gives 25 crit rating, which is a clear 15 stats less than either blacksmithing or enchanting would be able to. Still, it's a lot more positive than it currently is. Hopefully engineering will get some useful trinkets, otherwise i'll probably be sorely tempted to pick up blacksmithing or inscription for more stats.

There are some funny floating gas ball type things in one or two places near some elementals, not sure if they're intended for the same purpose or if they're just for looks, though.

One way to do it would be to give players who complete a quest access to an instanced greenhouse or mine. Have it reset on the same schedule as heroics, and don't allow nodes inside it to respawn until it resets, but let herbalists and miners earn the right to a daily pile of nodes that isn't guarded by mobs and that they don't have to compete for.

(I've been wanting this since 2004, could you tell?)

Yes, we have.

WoW Forums -> Combat Ratings from 70 to 80

Can anyone in beta comment if Blizzard have done any kind of performance tuning in Wotlk compared to TBC? Basically does Wotlk run at higher framerates on the same system at the same settings? I was/am always a bit disappointed in the framerates I get with WoW sometimes considering the hardware I run it on, it's still possible to drop down to 30-40 FPS which I find odd when in other areas I can get anywhere from 100-400 FPS.

Im actually getting less fps atm on beta, and thats with zero addon usage

Because of the nature of how they are just building onto the graphics engine instead of creating a new one, you're most likely never going to see a performance increase at any time. I knew people that ran Vanilla on max settings that had to run BC on average and at times minimum settings. Blizzard is continuing to add new things to take advantage of new hardware (more particle effects, the new shadows system, etc), but old hardware at best will be able to keep running the status quo but more likely will just have to turn more and more features off.

However, WoW still runs on and looks better on far lower system settings than any of the other major MMOs on the market today, and still can "wow" me from time to time with truly impressive graphics. And bear in mind, all MMOs suffer from dealing with massive levels of unpredictable volume that single player games never have to. A single player game can keep 100 things from showing up all at once, sometimes in WoW it just happens, and that's usually when things grind to a halt to try and catch up. As often as not it's a memory bottleneck more than anything else.

When it comes to system hardware, I don't think WoW uses any large textures so video card memory isn't crucial, but system memory can make things run a lot smoother. I noticed an obvious difference going from 1 gb to 2 gb memory, and 2 to 4 gb might show just as much. If you have a choice where to spend your upgrade money, I'd make sure you have the maximum amount of memory your system can support first.

One of the European MVPs, Schwick, posted some information about the enchanting scrolls people can make through Inscription. I'll just post the relevant quotes:

Also as I'm pretty sure people were curious about the Scroll of Recall:

Source: WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Warcraft Beta Weekly - Episode Three

Which video card are you looking at? 512MB on a low end card would be wasted. Also it depends on what resolution you plan to run at anything over 1280x1024 I'd probably get a 512MB card but only if it's not a low end card.

Warcraft doesn't require much to run; it probably never will. What it does need is a good deal of system ram- I went from 1 gig to 2 pretty recently and the difference was pretty amazing. I don't think you would benefit much from 512 megs of video card memory if your only focus is Wow.

Looks like beta is getting a new build today, should be interesting to see the changes.

WoW Forums -> Scheduled maintenance 7/28/08

Right now, I'm more or less thinking about a machine similar to this: The Dell Online Store: Build Your System

So if you look at the video card options, you have a choice of:
1. ATI Radeon HD3650 256MB
2. Radeon ATI HD 2600 XT 256MB
3. ATI Radeon HD3870 512MB GDDR4

I can afford a max of $1300-$1500 on any new machine, and that includes a monitor, tax, shipping, etc. Hopefully, Dell will have a going-back-to-school/fall sale soon, because the way I'm speccing my machine, I'm having to drop productivity apps and the sound system in exchange for the 512 MB video card version.


I don't suppose Dell would let me have one of those snazzy WoW-custom laptops for free? Would make this choice easier


Thanks, I didn't realize that. The machine I'm looking at is loaded with 2 GB of RAM, but I'll consider going to 3/4 GB RAM.

You are essentially describing me. I'm running WoW on a computer with 512 ram, 128 video card, 1.6 ghz processor. The computer was rock solid when I raided ZG, MC, BWL, Naxx, etc. And that was with max video settings, Ventrilo, Firefox open with 6 separate tabs, etc. Now I have to go to minimum video settings simply to navigate Shattrah. It's completely unacceptable. Either I buy a new computer or quit WoW altogether.


Sounds like a copy of the Shaman Ancestral Recall. I do wish Blizzard would offer the ability to buy a 2nd hearthstone with a completely different hearth point, it's incredibly annoying to get to certain areas, especially if they're in vanilla WoW.

Given those options yeah definitely get the 3870, it's much faster than the other two.

It looks like blacksmiths will be able to make shields now (that one from AQ40 didn't count).

"Cobalt Triangle Shield" and "Saronite Defender" are in this latest build.

Wow, this thread certainly has developed a bit since the last time I read it. (Page 226!)
After playing the beta for a week, I've come up with some concerns/discoveries. Not all of it is sensitive, but I'll spoiler tag the whole lot.



Also, I made a nutshell video of my experiences in Northrend so far, including;
- Titan's Grip DPS
- World PvP with Titan's Grip
- Utgarde Keep
- The Nexus
- Exploration
- Generally awesome/cool looking things I came across in Northrend; such as the Crystalsong Forest, Zul'Drak, The Great Lift and whatever else looks spectacular.
The video is recorded and rendered in the highest possible resolution and quality, so I apologise for the filesize in advance, but the beautiful visuals certainly make it worthwhile.
WotLKBeta1.avi - FileFront.com (~500MB)

I also recorded the bossfights of Utgarde Keep, for anyone interested:
First Boss: firstbossHQ.avi - FileFront.com
Second Boss(es): secondbossHQ.avi - FileFront.com
Final Boss: thirdbossHQ.avi - FileFront.com

In Shatt, that's your RAM. 512 megs of RAM is really insufficient for WoW. I noticed a difference even going from 1.5 to 3 gigs.

As for changing requirements, I'm on a Mac, so it's a bit different. Blizzard continues to work with Apple on the graphics engine and driver compatibility so my fps has generally gone up from patch to patch since the beginning, despite being on a nearly 3 year old mac.

Glyph of Healing Touch - Decreases the cast time of Healing Touch by 1.5 sec., the mana cost by -25% and the amount healed by -50%.

If this is any indication of the way they'll be taking Greater Glyphs, things will get very interesting! A Glyphed Healing Touch is a brand new ability to add to a Resto Druid's arsenal, and depending on how the numbers balance out, might just be potent enough to warrant taking as an expensive flash heal. I wonder if there will be any similar, drastic potential changes for the rarely used abilities of other classes.

Glyph of the Best Buff - Automatically casts Beast Lore on every druid within range, once every 3 seconds. Also allows Beast Lore to affect Druids that are not currently in a Feral form, so that you can finally dispense some much needed justice on those damned nigh-invulnerable trees.

We'll see how it lasts through the balancing pass though, having glyphs that vastly changes base abilities might be hard to balance correctly so they might remove them. However, it is definitely interesting, and will bring much more customizability than gems. In the end gems were just a way to stack a single stat without suffering from item budget limitations(hi +heal stacking on resto druids). But glyphs, they have some potential to change whole gameplay issues. Stuff like a glyph making slam instant, or warlock dots tick faster, or adding AE splash on direct heals. There's a lot of possibilities.

It also gives them a good way to provide new class freebies inside an existing system. Mostly cosmetics changes, but I guess they'll be able to add stuff like resist "gear" in forms of glyph, so you won't need your full set of crappy shadow for the gimmick boss, but just "equip" your shadow glyph that your guild scribe made out of a bop drop from the bosses before. Assuming you can switch glyphs, the system itself as yet to be seen ^^.

I'm sure it's been posted somewhere before; but just in-case you haven't seen it, this is the Glyph panel:


Two little ones, two large ones, and two large ones with golden trim.

EDIT: At a guess, I'd say 2x Cosmetic, 2x Battle, 2x Guardian; for example.
*shrug*

I thought I read somewhere, probably in this thread, that it's something like:

2 major - actual improvements to spells, damage, range, etc.
2 minor - spell reagent cost removed on motw/ai/fort/blessings, group versions of amp/damp, etc.
2 cosmetic - green fireballs, rocket aimed shots, ghostly stealth, etc.

(those are examples, not in-game).

Perhabs the cosmetic ones allow Gnomes to change the appearence of helmets to goggles.

The mage changes look very interesting from a rogue point of view. The new tier 3 arcane talent "Fokus Magic" increases magic damage by the flat amount of 150 for 50 charges or one minute, but costs 1000 mana. If this works on poisons it will push the rogue DPS by a lot. Improved scorch seems to become even better, as it increases also the arcane and frost damage.