Okay so it’s pretty obvious that I’ve left this section of 60FPS totally dead but I haven’t been playing WoW for quite a while now. Regardless when the expansion finally does come out I do plan on giving it a go.

For all you number crunchers out there here’s the most up to date Talent Calculator from WoWHead for Cataclysm.

Cheers.

As always I keep my eyes on WoWHead to find out if they updated their PTR site with the next talent calculator for the next patch, and this isn’t just a patch, this is THE PATCH. Patch 3.3.0 folks, this is it, Icecrown Citadel at last. I’m sure the Lich King is relieved to since he’s been literally sitting on his ass for almost a year now just watching us slay blue dragons and kill Kel’Thuzad over and over again.

Not only is there a new talent calculator but Blizzard has also released a sneak peak view to the new Tier 10 armor sets.

Considering the fact that now I’m playing a hunter instead of my Warrior, Death Knight, or Priest I find it exciting to look at the new changes in store for Hunter and Pet talents as well as pets receiving 100% of their master’s resilience!

To check out the new talent calculator click here.

Cheers and sorry about not updating at all lately, haven’t been playing much to be honest.

Sexy Draenei holding a Repurposed Lava Dredger

Patch 3.2.0 is right on top of us and I’ve updated our Heirlooms Item List to include all the new chest pieces and the 2 new weapons being added.

• The chest pieces will each cost 40 Emblems of Heroism
• The 2 handed mace Repurposed Lava Dredger currently has placer stats on WoWHead’s PTR site and should cost 65 Emblems of Heroism
• The 1 handed mace Venerable Mass of McGowan doesn’t have a confirmed price yet as far as I can tell but it should be safe to assume it will be 40 Emblems just like the other 1 handed heirloom weapons

The new Heirlooms combined with other changes like Druids/Shamans getting Travel Form/Ghost Wolf at level 16 should really make low level twinking interesting. Not to mention the changes to PvP Experience.

Updated List of Available Heirlooms

Some other noteworthy talent changes are those going to be done to shamans like:

• Maelstrom Weapon:  Now also has a chance to reduce the cast time of Hex.
• Shamanistic Rage:  Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman’s attack power, down from 30%.

Interesting changes throughout the patch notes in general, shame I probably won’t be playing anymore to see them through XD

My apologies for not updating the blog at all, I’ve been on Vacation in London and Amsterdam and have begun to play WoW less and less. Expect a couple of posts in the future closing this chapter of my gaming life as I have come to the conclusion that it’s finally time for me to stop playing this game after 5 years.

You can check it our at http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent

Opening Screen to the Isle of Conquest

Alright so i’ve obviously have been out of the loop for a while. Just today I stumbled upon the latest patch notes on the test server and my first impression is that it looks good overall. What stands out the most to me obviously are the PvP changes and the NEW BATTLEGROUND! The isle of conquest!

Besides the new battleground other important big changes are:

• Shaman totem queuing system with a spell to stomp 4 totems at once
• Death Knight talents/abilities getting gutted (AGAIN, surprise surprise!!!)
• Profession buffs
• More mount changes (Level 20 normal mount, level 40 epic)
• Experience from PvP
• Arena Season 7
• New 5, 10, and 25 man Instance
• and the Argent Tournament of course (something I don’t really care for)

I’ll get into what I think about all the new changes during this week in an attempt to revive the blog a bit and shake the dust off.

Here’s the official thread by Blizzard on the Isle of Conquest:

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. But as insignificant as it may seem, this is no ordinary place. A sound of thunder as waves crash endlessly against rocky cliffs; a sound of fury as swords clash on the blood-stained fields of this island on the edge of forever.

Welcome to the Isle of Conquest.

The ongoing struggle between Horde and Alliance has turned many once peaceful (and some not-so peaceful) places into theaters of constant war. The Isle of Conquest is the latest such place, set to be the location of a battle of epic proportions over the island’s precious resources.

An Alliance and a Horde general are fighting for dominance, overseeing the action from the safety of their keeps. Whichever side manages to eliminate the enemy general first will triumph on the island; failure to protect your leader will bring shame, dishonor, and defeat. There is no peace accord here, and it’s an all-out war between the factions.

Once More into the breach…

Isle of Conquest, a new battleground scheduled to make its debut in the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, will pitch teams of up to 40 players against each other in a massive battle over this small island off Northrend’s northern coast. To win, your team will need to make use of the island’s unique strategic locations including an oil derrick, a siege workshop, and a fully equipped airship hangar. You will deploy devastating siege weaponry on the field; Light have mercy on anyone caught between you and your ultimate target, the general holed up in the enemy keep.

There are five points of interest on the Isle of Conquest for the factions to battle over. Each one offers its own benefits and strategic value. Which one will you claim for your side, and will it be enough to ensure victory?

Capture Locations

Consider your options before storming out of your keep to confront the enemy head-on. Spread throughout the Isle of Conquest are several capturable locations (as seen on the map), each granting a unique strategic advantage to your team.

The Oil Derrick: Located on the northwestern end of the island, this smudge in the Frozen Sea produces enough black gold to run a thousand siege engines. Taking this resource garners precious reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it.

The Cobalt Mine: This snow-covered assembly, located on the southeastern end of the island, hides untapped supplies that must be harvested. Taking this resource grants reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it.

The Docks: The western shore’s docks will further expand your selection of siege weapons with the devastating new Glaive Thrower and the Catapult. Unleash the destruction of the Glaive Thrower upon the walls of the keep, or launch your invading party over the walls to assault the keep from within.

The Airship Hangar: This sturdy steel structure stands on the peak of Mt. Conquest overlooking the eastern side of the island, allowing players to board the airship docked there. This devastating weapon of war is capable of raining death upon the heads of your enemies and destroying enemy defenses. Once onboard the airship, players will find it comes equipped with parachutes enabling a strike team to drop into the enemy keep from above.

The Siege Workshop: Situated right between the Alliance base and the Horde base, this siege workshop occupies a strategic hot spot. Seizing it grants the controlling party the ability to utilize an arsenal of siege vehicles perfectly suited to reducing the enemy keep’s walls to dust and ashes.

Graveyards: There are five graveyards in the Isle of Conquest that are attached to different points of interest on the map: the Horde base, the Alliance base, an oil spill island in the center of the map (attached to the siege workshop), the northeast corner (attached to the airship hangar), and the southwest corner (attached to the docks).

Main Objectives

The Keeps: The Horde and Alliance keeps sit at opposite ends of the island. These citadels host four easily accessible defensive cannons set on the ramparts, capable of unleashing hot fury onto oncoming attackers. Additional explosives sit safely stowed in the base of the keep along the back wall. At least, they’re safe as long as they don’t fall into enemy hands. If they do, though, they can be employed to bring the stone walls down from within.

The General: Holed up behind the keeps’ massive walls, the generals command their forces from a position of relative safety. Should the keep fall and the general be slain, the Isle of Conquest will fall to the victor.

Reinforcements: Isle of Conquest uses a reinforcements system similar to that of Alterac Valley. The clock is ticking and every individual counts. If too many of your comrades fall to the enemy the battle will end in defeat. Killing enemy players will reduce their reinforcements by one for each kill, Once your faction’s reinforcements reach their limit, so too does your bid for control of the island and the wealth of resources you’ve fought so hard over.

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. A test of strength. A chance to prove your might, to crush your enemies, to make a difference, a chance for endless glory and conquest.

Will you seize it?

No more nitro boosts in arena QQ (

My nitro boosts no longer work in Arena? Huh? We all might’ve heard this was being considered but it didn’t make it’s way into any of the patch notes, yet the change happened anyway… The loss of boots aren’t the only ninja changes that Blizzard pulls over our eyes, the ninja nerf to Mana Burn last month is also notable: “Mana Burn has been reduced to 10% mana burned (up to a maximum of 20% of the Priests mana), down from 13% (max 26%)”. For the most part however most of the ninja changes Blizz sneaks in aren’t nerfs or buffs but simple bug fixes with PvE encounters or abilities/spells that weren’t working properly.

So where are the ninja patch notes then? Right here. Of course! A totally visible and easy to find post on the US Forums -_-

What kills me about these changes isn’t getting nerfed for balance sake but that it doesn’t get documented into the proper patch notes. Sure, most of what’s in that forum post is just minor bug fixes but things like the nitro boosts nerf really should’ve been in a proper patch note. Why? Well unlike minor bug fixes a tiny little change to something like the nitro boosts causes this:

Top 2vs2 Combos (2009/05/31)

Compare this chart to the ones from my post earlier this month and it’s obvious something has changed. All the druids learned how to play? Of course not, what happened was that the overpowered combo that was rogue/priest has lost it’s advantage. All the higher rated rogue/priests where/are engineers. The general strategy for them was to burst someone down while CC another and thanks to engineering they where both able to do that and the nitro boosts gave priests what they lacked the most: mobility.

Now that using the nitro boosts is out of the picture the 2vs2 scene has gone back to it’s old-school days where druids kite and peel you to oblivion while they’re warrior friend wears one of you down. Despite the fact that plague strike has been nerfed pally/DK is still a strong combo and a force to reckon with and probably one of the few combos able to out-cheese the cheesy of all cheesy combos, warrior/druid.

It’s almost like Blizzard wants every season to have the same combinations dominate. I’ll admit that the nerf to the boots was necessary but it’s just ridiculous how druids come out on top when they’re given breathing room.

The breakdown of the materials needed:

• 12 x Titansteel Bars
• 40 x Handful of Cobolt Bolts
• 2 x Arctic Fur
• 1 x Salvaged Iron Golem Parts
• 8 x Goblin-machined Piston
• 1 x Elementium-plated Exhaust Pipe

I’m not going to get into how much the bars, bolts, or fur costs because it varies from server to server but more or less it’ll cost somewhere between 1500 and 2500 gold. The Titansteel Bars are made by miners (on a 20 hour cooldown), the Cobolt Bolts are made by engineers and are the cheapest of the materials needed, and the Arctic Furs are skinned and usually go for 100g. Needless to say, the price and acquisition of these materials are the least of your worries…

Now the fun part. What the heck is a Goblin-machined Piston? or a Salvaged Iron Golem Part for that matter?! These materials are all obtained from a vendor in Northrend and can only be purchased if you’re an engineer who KNOWS how to make the bike. The schematic alone costs 400g and requires exalted reputation with Alliance Vanguard or Horde Expedition. So, if you’re not an engineer you’ll either have to find one to run around and buy the materials for you (and build it for you as well) or buy them off the auction house.

The Salvaged Iron Golem Parts are sold by Roxi Ramrocket in K3 at the base of the Storm Peaks for a whopping 3000 gold. That’s right, 3K gold, ironically sold at K3.

The Goblin-machined Pistons are also sold by Roxi Ramrocket and they cost 1000 gold each. After doing the simple math you’re probably grimacing and holding back your wallet to find out this comes out to be another 8000 gold to the bill.

The last part needed is the Elementium-plated Exhaust Pipe which is also sold by the same damn goblin costs 1500g. No wonder these things cost so much, she has a friggin’ monopoly!

Summing it all up:

So ~14000 gold is the estimated value of the hog/chopper and this is assuming you’re an engineer or the engineer who makes it for you doesn’t charge you! Don’t lose hope though, since the latest content patch all of the items sold by the craft goblin Roxi also drop off of bosses in Ulduar (10 and 25 man). It’s been confirmed to drop off of XT-002 Deconstructor and Flame Leviathan so far, however an engineer has to “engineer” the items off of the corpse. So if you’re an engineer lucky enough to get into Ulduar you’ll be sitting on a veritable gold mine of spare parts! Damn I wish my warrior was better geared…

Arena Ranking at SK-gaming

After a couple of weeks of the new season SK-gaming’s famous arena ranking page shows us how the new season is molding and forming. The results are disturbing and comforting at the same time. Let me explain myself…

What’s disturbing is that I don’t even know what season it is anymore, according to the statistics it feels like we’re back in Season 3-4 where PMR (Priest, Mage, Rogue), Priest/Rogue, and Warrior/Druid all reigned supreme. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer the new or rather *old* diversity over the joke that was Season 5 (DK/Paladin or fail) but it’s regretable how with just a few key class changes everything has turned upside down. Yet again Blizzard’s dream of “everyone being PvP viable” is thrown back into their face, this time with a nostalgic aftertaste to it.

The comforting part is with the return of the old-school comps a feeling of “everything is back to normal again” flows over me. All is zen once more in WoW PvP, ever since the cataclysmic asteroid that was the inclusion of Death Knights. What’s more despite the fact that the return of these old overpowered comps makes it even more difficult for alternative comps to rise up, the strategies to counter them are still similar to what they where before. So now, after finally having gotten used to having Death Knights into the mix we have to rethink our strategies back to 6 months ago where Druids would spam Cyclone while his Warrior Mortal Strike’s you in the face.

Speaking of Druid/Warrior, which I foresaw would make a comeback this season, here’s another chart of how the class representation has also taken a deep dive into retro-insanity.

Most popular classes

It almost gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to see paladins and death knights fall back down and to my unexpected surprise Priests are the new arena champions. I only leveled a priest because I always wanted one, little did I know that my little twink project would become my main PvP monster today.

Currently I’m doing 2v2 as Disc with my Enhancement Shaman arena partner Luar. We finally hit 1500 and I bought some Deadly Shoulders. It’s an odd combo but we have high hopes to get into the 2k+ this season. That is unless we have no way to counter priest/rogues and druid/warriors in the upper brackets XD

]]> http://wow.60-fps.com/2009/05/11/season-6-out-of-the-fire-and-back-into-the-oven/feed/ 0 http://wow.60-fps.com/2009/04/18/preparing-for-arena-season-6/ http://wow.60-fps.com/2009/04/18/preparing-for-arena-season-6/#comments Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:08:00 +0000 Yiedra http://wow.60-fps.com/?p=893

The new Arena Season is just around the corner, besides sharpening your swords and stocking up on hot pockets here are a few things I think any rookie or seasoned player should be aware of. With the new changes done to Paladins and Death Knights in particular we should be seeing a change in class compositions with the new season. A huge relief since I personally think Season 5 was an imbalanced disaster where you either where a Paladin or a Death Knight (Survival Hunters and Resto Shamans also had some success) or you might as well just sat the season out on the benches.

What’s changed that’ll change the different kind of compositions we’ll be seeing?

1. First of all Plague Strike no longer removes HoTs (Heal over Time) effects. This is one little change but this ability turned the tables around in Season 5 for Resto Druids who previously reigned supreme in previous seasons. Because of this I’m predicting a revival in Druid representation this Season.
2. The next under represented class were Warriors, who simply didn’t have the face smashing simplicity of Death Knights to keep up with their dark plate wearing brethen. A couple changes have been seen to Warriors, particulary buffs to their Arms tree and most importantly a new ability:  Shattering Throw! *Insert sweet Paladin tears here* Warrior/Druid may very well be the ultimate anti-Holy Pally/DK combo now.

Many other changes have been done to other classes as well but these two changes should cause the most ripples in the Arena  class composition pool.

Besides expecting a slight paradigm shift of class combinations what else should we do to prepare?

• If you haven’t done so already, turn in all your Arena Points for Commendations of Bravery. Each Commendation of Bravery costs 100 Arena Points and grants 200 Honor Points. Why bother? Well, ALL ARENA POINTS WILL BE RESET WHEN SEASON 6 STARTS ON THE 21st! Yeah, a little part died in me as well when I found out but you might as well stock up on what honor that you can and buy any new gear you can before next maintenance. You can still buy Arena/Honor gear that requieres rating, keep in mind it will consider the rating you last had before Season 5 ended as your limit.
• Keep doing Wintergrasp every chance you get. With Patch 3.1.0 came new items to the Wintergrasp vendors including epic belts, chests, and some very attractive trinkets. There are 5 Titan Forged Rune trinkets that are like your basic “PvP Trinket” to remove CC effects but instead of resilience come with hit rating or spell power. Oh and all the new items are iLevel 213, which means they are compareable to Deadly gear.
• Expect to do more than just 10 games next week. Blizzard has decided that this season we’ll all start at 0 rating but retain our previous team ranking. Essentially if you play well you’ll be back up to your old rating in no time but if you’re horrible you’ll probably suffer more than usual and end up with a rating even further from 1500. Either way, everyone will have to do roughly 50+ games to get their rating back to where it “should be”.

Of course as with any sort of competitive game all the gear in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t get some solid practice in with your Arena partners so skirmish a bit, discuss strategies, and good luck next Wednesday! D

After almost 5 months since the release of Wrath of the Lich King the first real content patch finally has gone live and with it all our fears and hopes collide as everyone scrambles to try to get onto their respective servers. I’m not going to delve much into the details about errors and issues this patch has but I will say that so far it doesn’t seem to be as bad as Patch 3.08 considering the sheer amount of content that’s in this one. For the most part the few bugs I’ve encontered so far haven’t been too grim although there’s one issue with the new dual talent system and talent windows that I find amusing. Some of my talents after having “learned” them will later appear grey as if I never learned them such as on my Death Knight who has 0/1 Heart Strike. I know I have the ability because it’s on my bar and I can’t use it yet the talent GUI shows that I don’t have it learned. That’s not even the worst part, last night while switching between talent speccs on my priest (yes she finally hit 80 a couple weeks ago but I haven’t pained myself to update >.<) one of my speccs “unlearned” itself and I had to reapply talent points mid-fight in Old Kingdom!

For people like me who have 3 active characters that they play on this patch is hell! The reason why is because I had to give them all new talent points/make new glyphs etc… and I decided to respecc my warrior Arms and so spent some time purchasing PvP gear and enchants/gems to go with her new specc. Good thing there are new dailies with the new Argent Tournament to help fund all this tri-character gold sinks I have at the moment.

At heart if you haven’t noticed by now I’m more of a casual player/PvPer than a hardcore raider (although I use to be at one point) so what are my plans for all my characters? For now I’ll get into what I want to dual specc and how I’ll play with each character.

Yiedra – Warrior

• At the moment I respecced her Arms-PvP even though I have gimpy Arms/PvP gear at the moment. I decided on 60-11-0, I didn’t get improved slam or sudden death since one is situational and the other has been nerfed. Although I my have to reconsider on improved slam at least since I lack a rage dump. I’ll have to play around with the specc for a while since I haven’t been Arms since my Arena days in TBC.
• My second specc will be Protection-PvE to tank in instances/raids when I get the chance and will probably be a variation of what I’ve been using so far, something like 5-8-58 or 12-8-51 for maximum punishment and threat. I personally think the 2nd specc is better once you have enough mitigation gear to make up the talents lost in Prot.
• I’m still not sure but I might swap out my Death Knight for my Warrior to do 2v2 with my Holy Paladin partner Somnium.

Xiedra – Death Knight

• I have no idea what my second specc will be to use as dual specc, in fact, I’m not even sure what my first specc will be since the talent trees and abilities have been changed considerably enough to change the playstyle. Everyone has been min-maxing for weeks but to be honest I think it’s still undecided what THE new PvP specc will be. So for the moment I’m sticking to my earlier theory-crafting and specced Blood 52-2-17. Yeah I messed up, I should’ve put 5 points into Necrosis instead of 2 into Epidemic (forgot that they increased the base duration of diseases, doh!)
• After playing around with the new Death Strike and the it’s glyph, I’ve found it does just as much damage if not more than Obliterate and it heals! So going deep into frost as blood isn’t nearly as advantageous as unholy except for 2 points in runic power mastery to give our DRW 3 seconds more uptime. I didn’t test using Obliterate with it’s 20% more damage glyph but I would imagine it would be about the same as Death Strike, however the overall advantage unholy gives for PvP outweighs the benefit.
• Taking a point out of Blood and putting it into Corpse Explosion could also be viable for a little bit more burst in arena but without Gnaw it will probably be difficult to pull off.
• Frost also seems to be totally viable for PvP and my prediction is that Blood and/or Frost will be the new PvP speccs for 1 reason: They each have an undispellable and easily applied snare. Blood requires melee range (and a glyph) so Frost’s Chillblains may be the way to go… ranged hamstring QQ.
• My second specc will probably be a PvE oriented DPS build once I figure out a build I enjoy that does decent DPS.

Ziedra – Priest

• Yeah she dinged 80 a while ago and she’s been a busy bee collecting PvP gear and PvE gear.
• My first specc with my priest is Disc-PvP (60-11-0). Although I’ve theory-crafted over and over again the possibility of using Holy to PvP with I can’t for the life of me convince myself to use Holy just for one spell (Body and Soul) considering the overall utility Discipline gives. I could be wrong and I do plan to at least try it out for a week or so to see if it is viable, considering my arena partner is an Enhancement Shaman it’s a bit redundant considering she has newly revamped Cleansing Totem and Earthen Power. Although having snare immunity and a speed bost is a peeler’s dream come true. Cleansing Totem and Abolish Disease combined will already have Unholy Death Knight’s cryinig a river.
• The second specc is Shadow-PvE (14-0-57) since I can heal instances just fine with my Discipline specc so I opted for Shadow for the utility it brings and it’s fun.

Stay tuned, there’s still a ton more for me to write about the new patch. New Arena Season, class changes, new glyphs, and more XD