Introducing the Battle.net Gift Card, The Dual Hydra Melee Wizard, Curse Weekly Roundup
MLG/ManaGrind Tournament #25 Review, Funny and Lucky Moments #38, Decklist Recap: Limited
Monarch Brightwing Skin Preview, Technical Alpha Tournament Policy, Bundles and PricingWarlords of Draenor - Build 18156 Minimap
The new build made some significant changes to the Draenor's minimap. You can find the previous version of the map here.
Mists of Pandaria - All Character Achievements Complete
It appears that ?????? of Razuvious-EU has managed to complete all of the regular character achievements, along with 205 of the ~340 Feats of Strength.
According to him, Realm First of every class on the same day by transferring to a low population PvP realm and multiboxing while his guild killed anyone trying to level before him.
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
One thing that confuses me is all the +20% damage increases. Surely damage increases are meaningless due to balancing?
Some of them are transformative. Some are just something to make dinging 93 a bit cooler. (WatcherDev)
So why are the Draenor perks random order? It's unbalanced and lacking customization, what's the pro?
It's a reward for leveling, not character customization. With choice, people can become paralyzed about what's 'right'. (Celestalon)
Will there be new glyphs?
Yes. Currently about 80, give or take. (Celestalon)
Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)For Unholy Death Knights You are knocking down the Unholy Might cause of better secondaries any chance at a deeper explanation?
That's heavily tied to our damage balancing pass, which hasn't started yet. (Celestalon)
Is the goal with AMS soaking to only allow a maximum of 100 RP to be possible from a fully absorbed shell? Big nerf to soaking.
Yes, intentionally. (Celestalon)
Is the rationale because you'd like to reduce GCD locking by DKs, or because you don't like balancing us around AMS soaking?
Both. (Celestalon)
If seraphim depletes all the runic power we have, how will we build up enough to get a Verdict or SoR off before it expires?
It's long enough that you'll be able to. Don't forget Haste! (Celestalon)
Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Why aren't balance druids bringing CoE? looks like they get fewest buffs/debuffs w/ motw and spell haste
They bring Haste, Stats, and Physical Damage Vulnerability. (Celestalon)
Why is starfall hitting more targets? stars are capped at 20? why ever use insect swarm? does it a insane amount of dmg?
Stars are capped at 30 with that. Insect Swarm accelerates your rotation, and does a lot of damage. (Celestalon)
Insect Swarm could be made spellstorm damage as well.
Since it's only cast outside of Eclipse, it doesn't actually matter to gameplay, just matters for kit. (Celestalon)
Does the Balance version of DoC give you a Starsurge from hitting Eclipse or casting the instant Healing Touch?
Casting the instant HT. (Celestalon)
So Dream of Cenarius talent is just +20% Healing Touch? Seems pretty lackluster honestly
It's not intended to be a DPS gain anymore. It's for better off-role ability. (Celestalon)
Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Hunter's Distracting Shot removed, possible to see it as a minor glyph? I'd be very sad to see the clutch plays go ;_;
Raised the range of Growl so that you can use it in that way, for the majority of cases. (Celestalon)
Losing Widow Venom while other classes are keeping their MS debuffs- is the effect going to be baked into another ability?
Pets (including non-exotics) can apply it. (Celestalon)
why no Execute mechanic for Surv hunters, not Kill shot, but smthg else? 1 extra charge of "LnL" from BA when target below 30%?
Not every spec needs to have an execute. In fact it's a pro that you have an option that doesn't. (Celestalon)
Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator).Is the idea with the redesigned Frost Bomb that we cast it only when we have FOF charges?
Yes. May not be mentioned in the patch notes but it only triggers from FoF'd Ice Lances. (Tried all crits early in testing, was OP) (Celestalon)
So Basically, pattern is now FOF proc -> Frost Bomb (if you have the talent) -> Ice Lance -> Ice Lance
And it lasts 12sec, so keep using FoF procs while it's up, yeah. For min/maxing, you can leave FBomb down, and pool FoFs. (Celestalon)
If Incanter's Flow is on average 15% increased damage, why would I want to spec into Rune of Power?
Valid point; just haven't tune a precise tuning pass yet. (Celestalon)
Could Nether Tempest have a chance to generate arcane charges? Increased cast time on blast looks like a pain for PvP.
See Perks. It becomes faster with charges. (Celestalon)
NT multi dotting was way to proc missiles, hence charges in PvP, now NT 1 target only = less procs, less charges.
Only the most recent NT ever proc'd missiles. Your multidotting wasn't giving you any additional AM procs. (Celestalon)
Brain Freeze has to make FFB instant cast or the spec will be ruined IMO.
Frost's rotation was overwhelmingly instants, which caused numerous problems. Turning one of them into a cast time may feel... (Celestalon)
...like a nerf, but actually is better in the end. Encounters demand less movement, casting can be a thing in PvP, Haste valued. (Celestalon)
Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)So will eminence still be tied to a crappy range and statue?
Yes, but that's good for you, you can use it to your advantage. (Celestalon)
Why Clash? Dealing with casters will suck so much without it. It's one of the more fun BrM tanking abilities.
We cut Clash because it was redundant with their other stuns and Roll. We'd rather you Roll more (see Draenor Perks). (Celestalon)
Last Q/comment, and least. RE: Mistweaver: why no chi gen from SoM and CJL now?Don't understand the intent
Several reasons. Biggest is to fix mana for Mistweavers. Now, more mana = more chi gen, by a significant degree = more chi ... (Celestalon)
...spenders. That means spirit increases all parts of your healing, which is a good thing. (Celestalon)
You can get some baseline amount of Chi from cheap sources (ReM, EH), still, so you won't be chi-starved. (Celestalon)
Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Will holy pally still be just absorb healing like currently ? and disc priest aegis. with the nerfs hope this is nerfed
No, we're aiming to significantly tone down how much of Healadin throughput is absorption. We'll balance Disc and Healadin power. (Celestalon)
Retribution's passive perks are a bit passive, mostly just damage increases. Any chance we can see more interesting effects...
We tried to strike a good balance of interesting vs simple, but I agree, Ret is more on the simple side. (Celestalon)
.Commonly, we used the Draenor Perks as a place to make tweaks to rotations that we wanted to make anyway. Better to... (Celestalon)
....ease into those rotational changes that way. In some cases, such as Ret, we were happy with their rotation as is. (Celestalon)
Will seal of insight still provide 10% spell haste?
No; Seal of Insight no longer provides any haste, but a Holy passive (don't recall which one offhand) does instead. (Celestalon)
(Reason being that we are only doing full Haste, not Melee Haste or Spell Haste anymore, but only want Holy to benefit from it) (Celestalon)
And will haste work the same for all classes now or still no haste for melee dots?
Still no haste for melee DoTs because they're not spells, you get increased resources from haste instead. (Celestalon)
Will that include the haste buff now that its nerfed to 5%?
Yes. The 10% Attack Speed raid buff has been replaced with 5% Haste. (Celestalon)
Rogue (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Combat FoK bonus seems underwhelming compared to Sub/Mut. Chance of changing it?
They have Blade Flurry on top of that. (Celestalon)
interested in the thoughts behind fist/swords being able to be used for dispatch and daggers for sinister strikes? No compliants
Intended to be 'okay' to use in case you are over a tier behind on the optimal weapons, but not optimal. (Celestalon)
Hey. Hey you. Hey. I don't see several key major rogue glyphs in the auto-learn list.
Auto-learn glyphs were chosen based on usefulness while leveling. (Celestalon)
Read as back front and 2 sides.so no back stabbing from the front. which makes a certain sort of sense
Backstab is usable from the left, right, and back. Not the front. So 270degree usability radius. (Celestalon)
On the topic of Rogues: woo for making Assa viable with other weapons than daggers! Awesome!
Kind of. It's *possible*, but not *optimal* to play Assassination with non-daggers. (Celestalon)
With Mind-Numbing and Paralytic gone, can we rogues have another poison? So there's, y'know, a choice?
We're considering the limited poison situation. Instant Poison does work for Venom Zest at least, BTW. (Celestalon)
So again why is it a conditional worse version of a level 45 Monk talent as our ultimate mega one?
Because different classes are different. They're weaker than you are without it. We balance the... (Celestalon)
...power of characters *with* talents. Talents don't need to be balanced cross-class. (Celestalon)
Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)No mention of Earth Shield in the patch notes. Surely you are scrapping that, it's such a pain with multiple Shamans!
Multiple Earth Shields can stack, not a pain. (Celestalon)
So you are changing Earth Shield so 2 can be on the same target at a time finally?
Yes. (Celestalon)
No Healing Tide Totem and no Unleashed Lightning. Can we expect elemental shamans single target to be bought significantly up?
Yes. (Celestalon)
Is the ULE-Healing Rain buff being built into the baseline spell, or is HR just effectively getting nerfed 30% from that change?
Do you not think Healing Rain needs a nerf, compared to live? (Celestalon)
Also Unleash Weapon was listed in mobility damage skills. But Unleash Fire/Frost/Wind no longer deal damage so uh... wat?
They don't *directly* do damage, but they are a significant net damage gain. (Celestalon)
Any chance elemental could retain moving lightning bolt? Would be good to know now if I need to reroll for WoD Progression.
You don't need to reroll. Elemental will be balanced around that change. Yes, we know it's a huge change. Sky isn't falling. (Celestalon)
Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Have there been any changes to the planned non-interaction between GoSacrifice and Demonic Servitude?
Planning to indeed make it a bad idea to Sacrifice your Big Demon. However, we're working on new abilities for the Doomguard/Infer. (Celestalon)
Just read that Drain Soul is being removed from warlocks, but no mention of how Soul Shards will be replenished. Clarify?
Nightfall. (And there's a Draenor Perk that increases Nightfall rate) (Celestalon)
Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)The way that Gladiator Stance and the talent is worded, it seems like prot warriors who take it will still be able to tank
We did that so that tanks still have 3 talent choices when tanking. If you goto Gladiator Stance, you can no longer tank. (Celestalon)
If you take the Gladiator Stance talent, you can still tank, with 5% extra DR, but none of the offensive benefits. (Celestalon)
Correction: When you take the Gladiator's RESOLVE talent, you get 5% DR in Def Stance, for tanking, and the OPTION to... (Celestalon)
...switch to the Gladiator STANCE to become a DPS, and NOT a Tank. (Celestalon)
Doesn't that lead to tanks going Gladiator Stance when not their turn to get hit, swap back in when their turn?
Can't swap into or out of Gladiator Stance in combat. (Celestalon)
With warrior shouts no longer generating rage, it appears the only way to start a fight with rage is Charge. Is that accurate? @Celestalon
Yes. Charge in to start with Rage. (Celestalon)
Will the Warrior Haste bonus modifier remain, and how will Headlong Rush scale haste with CD/GCD? 50% Haste = 50% reduction?
No, the +50% haste from gear buff on warriors will be removed. Scales just like everyone else. 25% Haste = 1/1.25 = 80% GCDs. (Celestalon)
is gladiator locked out of unwavering sentinel and bastion of defense. also is block being removed or reduced in glad?
Unwavering Sentinel is Defensive Stance only. If you still find that you're able to tank in Gladiator stance, we'll adjust. (Celestalon)
Computers - Setup of the Month (by chaud)
Each month or every 2 months, depending on the hardware evolutions, the lovely chaud will work on a couple of hardware setups for those of you who are thinking of upgrading their computer!
This month
The current SSD prices are stable, with all SSDs under $1 per gigabyte when on sale.
The Haswell CPUs run a little bit on the warmer side. Depending on how much you want to overclock, you may need to spend a bit more for a better CPU cooler like the NH-D14.
Unless you are doing a lot of video rendering or something that is similarly multithreaded, you do not need the 4770K and should spend that money elsewhere.
Make sure to keep your AMD and Nvidia drivers up to date.
Don't hesitate to post any feedback in the comments of that news post, and don't forget to visit the Computer Forum for any extra questions! If you are interested in Folding@home, take a look in our team's thread.
Peripherals/Monitors
ComponentPuppy Dolphin MonitorASUS VS228H-P 22-Inch Monitor - $120ASUS VS248H-P 24-Inch Monitor - $160 KeyboardKensington Pro Fit Media Keyboard - $16Cyborg V.5 - $45 MouseLogitech G400s - $45Razer DeathAdder 2013 - $52 SpeakersCreative A250 2.1 Speaker System - $30Logitech Z313 Speaker System - $37 ComponentNarwhal Unicorn MonitorDell P2414H Monitor - $220HP ZR2440W 24-inch - $312 KeyboardLogitech G510s - $80CM Storm QuickFire XT - $95 MouseLogitech G500s - $50Razer Naga 2014 - $68 SpeakersLogitech Z323 2.1 Speaker System - $50Logitech Speaker System Z523 - $77
Puppy and Dolphin
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Puppy and Dolphin.
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Puppy and Dolphin.
ComponentPuppy Dolphin CaseNZXT Source 210 - $40NZXT Source 210 - $40 Power SupplyCorsair CX500 - $57EVGA 600B - $50 CPUAMD FX-6300 - $110AMD FX-8320 - $152 HeatsinkCooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - $33Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - $33 MotherboardASUS M5A97 R2.0 - $89ASUS M5A99FX PRO - $116 MemoryKingston HyperX Blu 4GB 1333 - $428GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $83 Graphics CardGigabyte R7 260X - $114MSI R9 270 or GTX 660 - $185 / $190 Hard DriveWestern Digital Caviar Blue 500GB - $53Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - $81 DVDAsus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23 Total$561$763 - $768
Narwhal and Unicorn
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn.
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn.
ComponentNarwhal Unicorn CaseCooler Master HAF 912 - $60Corsair Air 540 (Special Layout) - $120 Power SupplyRosewill Capstone 550W - $87Rosewill Fortress 750W - $130 CPUIntel i5-4670K - $210Intel i5-4670K - $210 HeatsinkThermaltake Frio - $64Noctua 6 NH-D14 - $75 MotherboardASUS Z87-A - $140ASUS Z87-A - $140 Memory8GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $8316GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $164 Graphics CardGigabyte GTX 760 OR Gigabyte R9 270X - $260 / $230XFX R9 280X OR ASUS GTX770 - $310 Hard DriveWestern Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $81Western Digital 2TB Caviar Black - $147 SSDSAMSUNG 840 EVO 128GB (Review) - $81
OR
SanDisk Extreme II 120GB (Review) - $90Corsair Neutron GTX 120GB (Review) - $130
OR
SAMSUNG 840 Pro 128GB (Review) - $120 DVDAsus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23Total$1059 - $1138$1400 - $1449
More...
