Hopefully we can get some good parses from some Blood Elves, *coughArikahcough*, who aren't using the Venture Co. Libram, as it's still jacked.

As for Auras, I does seem like the ground effects are more... colorful if anything, less monochromatic it seems.

They're more colorful.

Actually, mine is simply superimposing the animation for Ret Aura over the other ones. It actually looks kinda cool with the "spikes" of Ret aura and the circles from Resists at the same time. Originally I had thought that by taking one of the improved talents (SaRet, Imp. Devo, Imp. Conc) it made your Auras display that animation over all your auras, but after a bit of fiddling that doesn't seem to be the case. Thus I have to assume it's just a bug.

And I was getting all hopeful that we'd be going all Warcraft III with our auras.

I BEEN LIED TOO!!!! SHENANIGANS!


You can delete this one then.

Seal of Blood is definitely where it's supposed to be. Results from hitting the dummy on the PTR...



I was only buffed with Might and a Flask. Judgement of Blood is bugged as it's yet to be nerfed.

Wait... was that PTR or Live? If thats PTR, then it's way over what mine were.


and I really doubt a flask and might = like, twice as much judgement dmg.

Definitely the PTR, I'll edit to clarify.

T8 got it's itemization shifted a bit, for the worse. The DPS stats appear to be a wash along with the loss of a bit of stamina.

Valorous Aegis Battlegear
+24 Strength
-40 Stamina
-16 Hit Rating
-21 Crit Rating
-3 Expertise Rating
-13 Haste Rating



Conqueror's Aegis Battlegear
+27 Strength
-41 Stamina
-15 Hit Rating
-19 Crit Rating
-4 Expertise Rating
-14 Haste Rating

So Yeah... Belf Pallies get an uber SoB, with a buffed seal and unnerfed Judge.

Alli Pallies get the anti-uber SotM with Nerfed Jedges and Unbuffed seals. Awesome.

That T8 change bugs me, yes strength is our best stat (all though possibly second to hit and expertise in 3.1, definitive numbers not out quite yet I would say), but due to the way itemization points scale adding more strength on strength heavy items doesn't actually necessarily make them better.

We know from gems that strength, crit, hit, expertise, and haste all cost the same amount when it comes to itemization, stam costs less (you get 1.5 stam per 1 pt of the dps stats). Running some quick napkin math, it cost us 79 "stat" points to gain 27 strength. Even though strength is extremely strong for us, if the new values if those 79 pts were thrown into the secondary stats we could have actually come out ahead from losing our stam, now it appears that we simply lose our stam, and get no real DPS gain in return. Just imagine, those 79 pts could have been something like 15 hit, 15 crit, 15 expertise, 15 haste, which would have easily been a higher dps return than just 27 strength.

After further inspection I also wonder if some pieces were simply over budget and may have been fixed. The chest lost stats across the board, -1 str, - 7 hit, -8 crit, +7 stam (???). 7 stam is no doubt cheaper than the 16 dps stats.

I was wondering the same thing. Admittedly it reminds me why Blizz sometimes hates showing their product before release. If we were shown the new stuff, and not the old stuff, we would be perfectly happy, but now that we've seen the old stuff we are upset that the new stuff has been nerfed. Does someone who knows the ilvl equation know how accurately these things are working right now for our T8?

Judgement of Blood damage is bugged. It has yet to be nerfed. The Seal damage does appear to be working correctly though. Then, can we assume Judgement of the Martyr is dealing the correct damage but it's Seal is being wonky?

This is my guess.

Thats what it looks like... As much as I'd love to say the JoB numbers were right



Here's my live numbers, same gear, same lack of buffs, etc. Just testing judgements, and it's a pretty big gap between live and PTR.

Blood calculates damage based solely on your damage range. For auto-attacks, faster and slower weapons should even out in terms of SoB damage. However, CS and DS both proc Blood so having the slowest weapon with the highest DPS yields stronger Blood procs versus those from a faster weapon with equal DPS.

Your logic is clear, but I'm still not sure how every 0.1 sec slowness translates to ~30 dps increase.

Lets say I have 2 weapons:

Axe of Frozen Death
Binds when picked up
Two-Hand Axe
341 - 513 Damage Speed 3.60
(118.6 damage per second)

vs

Ingvar's Monolithic Cleaver
Binds when picked up
Two-Hand Axe
332 - 498 Damage Speed 3.20
(129.7 damage per second)

Which one would yield a higher dps?
According to this thread, the Axe of Frozen Death is slower than Ingvar's Monolithic Cleaver by 0.4 seconds.
This makes it ~[118.6+(4x30)]=238.6 dps, clearly way above that of the Cleaver's 129.7 dps.
Should I use the Axe over the Cleaver?

You are confusing DPS, with weapon DPS, a straight DPS boost (which is whaty the ~30 number is) cannot be compared to your weapon DPS.

In your specific case I would take the lower DPS but significantly slower weapon, weapon DPS isn't nearly as important as average damage (since DS, CS, seal, and judgment damage are all atleast partial based on weapon damage).


Bottom line? Look at the damage range on weapons, which ever has the highest average damage will be the better choice.

Edit: Late

I take it these new fangled changes to SoB/SotM means that gems like Etched Monarch Topaz have more value until we acquire near-cap with hit... yeah, i know that "gem strength" is the usual, but considering the new changes, perhaps gemming pure strength initially in 3.1 might be slightly against our dps output now until we hit the caps needed. Obviously gemming none-stack stats (Haste, Expertise, Crit etc) is never seen in a good light again stack stats (Str, Agi etc), but from my take on these changes getting Exp and Hit cap is gonna be more important than it was 24 hours ago now. Please slap me on the face if my thinking has gone awry.

Capping hit from gear only is easy even pre 3.1, correct me if im wrong but the hit cap wont be changed in 3.1?
Expertise will be harder, but still, gemming/enchanting for exp instead of STR/AP dosent seems reasonable to me. You wont get significant boost to expertise from this, but you will loose significant amount of str/ap.

I agree its not all that hard to get hit capped from current gear, but considering until yesterday most of us had spent 0 effort getting hit capped, due to it not being necessary, that without farming for even more hit/expertise gear between now and 3.1, gemming for some hit/expertise initially might not be out of line. Especially considering getting hit capped will be even easier come 3.1,

Trying out different specs and i'am pretty sure that i will go for imp devotion aura and 52 retri for pve.

Then i saw the new aura mastery. I read this as it will improve the effects of all other auras by 100% = retri aura's efect will be 6% damage and 6% melee and spellhaste for 10 seconds. Or do they mean that retriaura will just tick for 500 for 10 seconds instead of 250 or whatever it does.

Unless they changed Aura Mastery in the latest build it only affects the baseline effects of the auras.

Do keep in mind that Improved Devotion Aura is not stacking with the Tree of Life aura of a resto druid.

I was thinking about the SoM/B changes and the fact that it still has 10% recoil on seal dmg... Given that SoM is borked, as is JoB, do we know that the recoil on seal dmg isn't also borked and is supposed to be absent?

(edit: clarified recoil)