They really need to implement a warning when you try to zone in to a heroic/raid that would save you on zone-in, asking are you sure - hit Yes and you zone in and are saved, hit No and you don't zone in, you're still unsaved. Or some way of clearing an ID if you haven't been present for a boss kill or similar event.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. It'd be much less confusing if Blizzard universally labelled their Raid Dungeons as Non-Heroic and Heroic; rather than 10 and 25.

EDIT: Some of the "Heroic Raid Achievements" are really cool.


* Heroic: The Spellweaver's Downfall
--- Defeat Malygos.

* Heroic: A Poke In The Eye
--- Defeat Malygos on Heroic Difficulty with fewer than 21.

* Heroic: Arachnophobia
--- Kill Maexxna within 20 minutes of Anub'Rekhan's death.

* Heroic: Besting the Black Dragonflight
--- Defeat Sartharion the Onyx Guardian.

* Heroic: Kel'Thuzad's Defeat
--- Slay Kel'Thuzad (25 player) in Naxxramas.

* Heroic: Less Is More
--- Defeat Sartharion the Onyx Guardian and the Twilight Drakes on Heroic Difficulty with fewer than 21.

* Heroic: Make Quick Werk Of Him
- Kill Patchwerk in 3 minutes or less.

* Heroic: Sapphiron's Demise
--- Slay Sapphiron (25 player) in Naxxramas.

* Heroic: The Arachnid Quarter
--- Defeat the bosses of The Arachnid Quarter of Naxxramas (25 player).

* Heroic: The Construct Quarter
--- Defeat the bosses of The Construct Quarter of Naxxramas (25 player).

* Heroic: The Dedicated Few
--- Defeat the bosses of Naxxramas with less than 21 people.

* Heroic: The Fall of Naxxramas
--- Kill every boss in Naxxramas.

* Heroic: The Military Quarter
--- Defeat the bosses of The Military Quarter of Naxxramas (25 player).

* Heroic: The Plague Quarter
--- Defeat the bosses of The Plague Quarter of Naxxramas (25 player).

* Heroic: You Don't Have An Eternity
--- Defeat Malygos in 5 minutes or less on Heroic Difficulty.

Am I the only one that thinks the "kill X heroic raid boss with 20 or less" is there with the intent of creating a challenging progression path through the 25 man dungeons for guilds focused on 10 man content, since if you were running 2 groups, you could use a night or 2 to combine them? Obviously, the 25 man guilds could do the same, but the way the numbers work out, it seems like they might be using that as incentive for the smaller guilds to try heroic content.

I always interpreted it to be the opposite, as in the sense of outgearing the instance, and having the ability to revisit it. Sort of how people have been doing "races", so to speak, to get the fastest clears and boss kills. It really kind of derives directly from that type of competition, wherein you can prove our progression with an alternate ability.

I don't think so. As far as things goes , you would most likely need to clear it with 25 man a few times to have a grasp of the mechanics and have the gear, also if it is balanced around 25 people, having 20 man would mean that you are likely needed to outgear the dungeon.

Maybe Naxx 25 could be cleared by those who does the T8 25 man, which leaves you having to wait for T9 10man to have the gear to clear Naxx25 with 20man.

Patchwerk died shortly after going into berserker rage with 21 in this instance ID, and I don't think the raid was anywhere near fully T7-geared yet. Then again, tuning is still probably all out of wack; who knows what the final plan is supposed to be like.

There's both undermanning AND zerg achievements though (Patchwerk, Maexxna timed achievements for example). Even though both of them require some outgearing (and perhaps at this point some out-skilling as well) you'd require more than one raid reset and different overall rosters to nail all the achievements. Pretty interesting.

I'm pretty sure that they've done that on purpose because of complaints about loot dropping that would then be sharded every other time it drops because its only useful to 1 spec of 1 class, i.e. spelldamage mail, only good to elemental shamans. I personally welcome this change. If you deserve the item the most (higest dkp/bid, loot council) you will still get it.

What I'm about to say now might be a bit controversial by Vanilla WoW and TBC standards, but...

Blizzard have now stated a few times already over the past few days that they also want "mana" to be an issue for caster DPS classes. By the standards of vanilla and TBC WoW you might still have the idea to prioritize +mp5 and +spirit gear for healing classes. But healers are not the only ones that will be struggling with mana efficiency anymore in WotLK. Atm I can honestly see mages and warlocks stacking up spirit and mp5 gear as well once there will be some fights that last longer than 4 minutes (and if Blizzard doesn't improve the mana efficiency of certain talentbuilds any further).

At least that is what Blizzard has been hinting towards over the past few days.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Tons of spirit on the Naxx balance gear

Both spurs and the enchant are no longer needed when you pick up a riding crop as they do not stack with it. So I do not see them as stacking with whatever the riding crop is replaced with either. This is a good thing since most players probably do not want to go back to having to carry around a set of riding boots and gloves.

Another possible implementation for the next mount speed booster would be an item that you simply have in your inventory that boosts the speed of whatever mount you are on. Though I like the idea of it just being something you put in a special slot on the mount pane better.

It does a few things for Blizzard, both in the long and short run.

First of all, it allows for the consolidation of gear types, something they had already clearly stated they wanted to achieve. It allows for less RNG-ish type loot drops that no one wants, and encourages a type of raid scenario where you will almost always benefit from completing a raid zone that is on semi-farm status. It also lifts burden on the development end, allowing them to follow stricter guidelines for class balance, item creation, talent design and their impacts on PvE and PvP.

Speaking a bit more on PvE impacts, DPS classes have long held the trend to maximize their DPS in the mentality that they deal the most damage possible in the period the fight lasts. But never have we had the issue of a wipe because the DPS didn't last out (not to be compared with the DPS not being high enough, like Patchwerk and Brutallus type fights, or even a fight with a random enrage timer). We're talking about DPS literally not lasting the full course of the fight.

What this does, is add a couple things for Blizzard to utilize. A soft enrage type mechanic, where the longer a fight goes on, the less chance you have to kill the boss, because your DPS may drop off dramatically after a certain point. In a word, you have your own gear checks, you setup your own enrage timers. At some point, your raid damage and healing simply will not be renewable anymore.

Additionally, caster damage gets some what of a damage cap. And since melee DPS just got nerfed with all the buff / debuff changes, not too much is required to bring it in line with caster damage. But now that casters must balance endurance stats with sheer damage stats, their DPS numbers are more in check.

And this allows for Blizzard to keep a stronger sense of progression through gear. It will slow down inflation, and allow for content to progress slower in terms of expected DPS jumps between tiers of progression.

This would imply some serious changes to the mage talents. Frost has 0 use for Spirit at the moment as it won't run oom and I find it highly doubtful that Fire Mages will run around with Mage Armor all of a sudden. Furthermore they just changed the Warlock Armor again to a percentage based regen, so I doubt they will stack Spirit just for the 30% conversion to spell damage.

I'm pretty sure that Blizzard themselves aren't 100% sure how they will get Locks and Mages to really want Spirit at the moment, hence their asking for feedback on the Mage talents and their recent change to the Warlock armor.

EU server has been a stress test since it went closed beta. The lag is really ruining the experience to test everything out. I can't understand how they are able to open more spots without giving us a second/third server like US.

I haven't seen anyone commenting the new human racial:

"Every man for himself"
Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. This effect shares a cooldown with other similar effects." Haven't seen any confirmation on the news sites yet.

Source: New Beta Patch Changes, Affix/Frst Interview | World of Ming | GAMERIOT | WoW Riot | World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, WoW, TBC, WotlK

It was brought up a few pages back, but people were more interested in the BoAccount items.

Basically it's 'Allows humans to equip a third trinket in PvP' making humans still pretty desirable as a PvP race.
It's also very nice for fights like Archimonde and Eredar Twins. Can't think of any encounters where it's useful in Naxx, unless you can trinket Webspray. (?)

I would've liked to see some small bonus to this racial to make up for the loss of resilience though, mostly on behalf of classes that really needs it, like priests, warlocks etc.
Maybe a 2-second immunity to character control loss after activation, or increased run speed for 3-4 seconds, but maybe I'm asking too much.

As long as I get to keep my Diplomacy and sword/mace expertise, I wouldn't mind either (old) perception, feign death or a free PvP trinket.

Unless you gemmed all your gems into resilience, you could easily make up for it by swapping 2-4 sockets for full resilience gems. Speaking in terms of healing, it would take 4.5 gems to get the 45 resilience, resulting in 99 +healing. In the trinket slot you could place a trinket that has more value than that. If you are using a blue trinket it's only a 44 +healing loss on gems, which any lvl 70 blue trinket in the game already beats. So I would definitely consider it to be a buff, although you could argue that that buff is not as great as other racials.

I agree it's a nice racial.
In addition to the PvP trinket I think the most used trinkets by your average arena healers would be Battlemaster's Perseverance or Essence of the Martyr assuming the average player doesn't have access to Illidan loot. (Momento)
Basically you break even in healing if you gem for the lost resilience by not using the PvP trinket, but gain a nice on use effect.

Edit: Eh, guess I had a point to make as well. Even though +297 healing for 20 secs or 278 AP for 20 secs is quite nice (Martyr or Brooch), I still wish this racial had a small bonus as I mentioned in the above post. I'll leave it to more competent people to decide weather or not it's needed.

This racial does scale very nicely with your gear, so the better trinkets you have to chose from, the better the racial get. I guess that's something to consider as well.

This is starting to make me angry, do humans really need this buff? Racials just need to go away.

You are aware that we lost the old Perception, and that Fall of Humanity was removed, right? And that this new racial shares a cooldown with the PvP trinket?
It's a very nice racial, but I will trade you this one for your AoE-silence, any day.

Actually, perception was removed as it was the only racial that Blizzard's statistical data showed to increase a player's rating.

In other words, the rest of the racials are relatively balanced. I can't say I disagree.

Was not aware fall of humanity was removed, but thank god. Are humans still keeping their mace and sword specialization racial? I pve mostly so my aoe silence is slightly usefull.

Yes. Racials that have not otherwise been mentioned are staying the same.

It also returns 6% of your total mana, so I would say it's more than slightly useful, especially if mana consumption and regen are going to be the important mechanics that Blizzard has said they will.