I believe stopcasting Mind Flay to not waste a Mind Blast CD was theorycrafted to rarely lower dps unless you can always stop cast right when the last tick happens which is very hard to do in practice even under ideal latency conditions.

I thought they stated there would be no more badge rewards?

They also stated there would be an expansion every year. They stated the old pvp titles would never come back (then later on suggested that maybe they might at a later date.) Take statements like that with a large grain of salt.

I recall them saying there'd be no new badge rewards, like 2-3 weeks ago, quite a sudden change of mind. Either way, unless it's just filling some itemization holes, they better rework 2.0 rewards as well,as they lag behind quite badly, while not being much cheaper.(that goes double for 2.1 headpieces, which were worse than "second sight" helmets) If new items are clearly superior, there's another round of "welfare epix" complaints coming.

Let's not go there.

Between that and the continuing debacle that is whether or not the Hyjal/BT attunements will stay intact, we could spiral out of control.

As far as Badge rewards go, my guess is they're looking at more things like the Battlemaster's trinkets, or potentially some itemization fillers (weapons?).

WoW BlueTracker: Badge of Justice

The post says no new "gear", the under development page says new "rewards". Sounds like epic gems to me.

That could mean anything, and we all know what happens when we start playing semantics with CM words.

This will be a very welcome change.

Yeah, on second thought I think I'll take it to WoW General. Please feel free to use WoW Forums -> Please don't make new Badge rewards ilvl 141 for all your crying-about-unconfirmed-new-Badge-rewards needs.

They haven't announced anything regarding this no, but that would be very welcome if they did make a 3 drop minimum on each boss.

New BG dailies will be a lot of fun, that BG daily has been the most popular daily to do in my guild at least.

I wouldn't read too much into the wording of the CM replies, they've contradicted, restated, corrected, misled intentionally and non-intentionally so many times that no matter what they say you have to expect that it is what Blizzard currently feels at the moment, nothing more. It is always subject to change.

I've got a thread going on the official boards fishing for an answer on the CoT Portal:
WoW Forums -> Caverns of Time Portal - Mage Only?

Here's hoping we get a bit more info, but this will definitely be a very nice addition. Having it be the current idiocy of Thunderbluff --> Gadgetzan --> Run to CoT (or the Alliance having to do some insane loop from Darnassus or whatever) has been a pain. These kind of changes are the best kind; makes it more convenient for everyone.

Getting back to mana and haste:
Haste doesn't improve your normal mana efficiency, but what it does do is allow you to dump your entire mana pool faster, for exactly the same damage. Now, if you were to look at a 1-hour fight or something where your mana pool is stretched well beyond its limits, this actually does increase your regen and therefore your total damage doable. If you hit OOM faster, you spend more time outside the five-second rule. If you look at long-ass cycles of dump your mana pool and regen, haste lets you dump your mana pool faster while regen stays the same, allowing you to edge in an extra dump cycle (even if it's a smaller one).

This is, of course, an absolutely negligable effect. Most classes don't OOM with enough extra speed to get in the regen for even one extra nuke, on those fights where they OOM at all, mainly because no one has any spirit to speak of. For all intents and purposes, haste lets you do the same amount of damage per mana pool, but faster.

Except haste isn't free. You're going to have to give up something (damage or damage indirectly) to get it.

Is this a joke? First of all, you're talking about a one-hour fight; secondly, I think you're actually arguing that going OOM faster increases your DPS/DPM.

Haste has tangible benefits, but increasing your total damage because you can sit around and regen longer (while dealing how much damage?) is certainly not one of them. Additional haste gear will strike a balance between optimal DPS and time-to-OOM, but as other people said you're sacrificing traditional DPS stats for it.

Hmm, that's a welcome change, I wonder if I should turn in the Jaina Proudmore teleporting quest now... I don't think there will be any need for it if I can teleport to the Caverns but you never know...

I know it pretty much obsoletes my gnomish engineering Teleport : Gadgetzan trinket.

No offense, but this doesn't sound entirely plausible. I'm 3/4 T6, and I use a fiend every fight--there's no way you're going full boss fights with a full rotation without using a fiend or pot.

I wanted to bold that to basically say "Isn't that what haste is?" And if the answer is yes, you're not giving up anything in a perfectly itemized world.

If you can do X amount of damage in X amount of seconds, and by swapping a piece of non-haste gear for a piece of haste gear you can then do Z amount of damage (X+Y - Some net increase) in X amount of seconds, you're not giving anything up. The final result is doing more DPS, and if through modeling, parsing, and raiding, you are able to do more DPS with certain haste pieces, it doesn't matter what you give up. The net result is things die quicker.

This sounds extremely basic and simple and I realize most people fully understand this including yourself, but haste right now is about to begin a new phase of examination in the theorycraft realm. A lot of people for some reason think "Damage, Hit, Crit" and then "Oh, haste, that's that other stat where you must make sacrifices to get it". Granted yes - there isn't itemization currently where it 'feels' clumped up with hit and crit, but it'll most likely be much more combined in the near future with 2.4 and Sunwell. Even now though there are some items that are better, at least in theorycrafting, than their non-haste counterparts.

A lot of people have a view of it as a way to just dump mana faster at some cost of dmg/crit/hit, but I'd be curious to see the modeling of haste on even a downranked damage spell, and what break points would make sense to downrank on long fights if it was even necessary. This in a sense (with enough haste) could possibly give you an entirely different way to gear up and still achieve some of the same net results. You'd still have the option of upranking on a shorter fight if mana really is an issue. I've personally been thinking about this for Moonkin Wrath spam and how it'll interact with Nature's Grace and so forth (or weaving in Starfire when you do crit).

Sorry about my little haste break-off / rant, but I feel there's a lot of power and options haste will be opening up soon (at least with Casters, DPS and Healing alike).

Doesn't the change to honor qualify? Kills are worth more honor (no more DR until you hit 50 kills) and you get the honor instantly. Since grouping up with people is more likely to get you more kills (honor), people have more incentive to stick together.

Main drawback of that particular change is that it will probably encourage more pointless brawling... but sometimes that's the funnest part of PvP.


On a different thought, the PvP dailies have done a decent job of giving PvPers incentive to win; the info suggests they'll be adding more dailies of that type (One per BG per day, maybe?), which should help a little.



Overall, the changes push PvP from "be in a BG for a whole game and you earn honor" to "be in a BG and kill stuff and you earn honor".

I doubt it'll make PvP any worse than it is. = P

It's definitely plausable -- the only 2 fights where I absolutely have to use shadowfiend and/or mana pots are Council and Illidan.

I chug mana pots on Council like it is my job.

It is very likely describing the PvP warlord/marshal gear that is buy-able through outland reputation levels. It may be a good idea, we'll see - implementation is everything. It eliminates the paper-thin AFK excuse of 'PvP is no fun without PvP gear'. As long as it isn't sporegar rep, isn't revered/exalted rep needed, etc. no one should have a particularly valid complaint. Some further built-in redundancy in gear acquisition would be for the best, Epic PvP cloaks available through (HIGH!) honor/marks AND badges; 25 man class trinkets available through Raiding and badges/exalted rep/gold. Giving people choices is generally a good idea, not with everything but with enough to encourage cross-play.