More Token Time!

Hot off the presses is an extension for Brewfest (in the US at least, should also be in the UK).

Brewfest is a time of year where the focus is placed squarely on the celebration of fun and food. In order to give everyone enough time to truly experience this event (and after some fine tuning on the part of the event organizers), we will be extending the event two additional days. The festivities will end on October 5th at 11:59PM, so don’t miss it!

(Source)

Two extra days won't seem like a lot, but the extension allowing you to net 80 more tokens is a pretty conservative estimate. If you got to 200 and thought you didn't have the time to complete the achievement you should still be able to get it done.

Remember though, don't buy anything until you have 350 Tokens. Then buy the Brewfest Garb needed for Disturbing The Peace, do a little dance, and sell the garb back to any vendor for a 350 Token refund. Finally, go and buy the Brew of the Month Club Membership Form for 200 Tokens, and perhaps even the adorable Pink Elekk pet for 100.

Mount hounds will also be pleased to hear that this gives you 2 additional days' worth of attempts at the dastardly Coren Direbrew, he of bloody-low-drop-rate-and-hexed-rolls-mount fame.

Fans of the Brewfest Seasonal Garb can also use this additional time to raise the tokens and buy each item outright.

Happy Ram Racing!

All Powerful She May Be, But Her Spelling Sucks

"Remeber, Remeber how to spell 'Remember'"

I'll let her off with her spelling of Reveler, she may be British ;).

3.2.2 Seal of Command Notes.

Just a few things to mention:

Seal of Command should now be used in favour of Seal of Righteousness in virtually every (PvE) circumstance. You should only be using SoR in AoE situations anyway, but in these circumstances SoC should now be able to pull out a meaningful DPS lead,

Seal of Command's cleave effect range seems to be roughly melee range, i.e. ~5 yards,

One target cannot be hit with multiple SoC cleave effects from the same source,

As indicated, Seal of Command's cleave won't work with Divine Storm or Hammer of the Righteous, but the basic SoC proc continues to work with these skills

Seal of Commands' Cleave will break Crowd Control,

The Cleave effect counts as an AoE attack, and AoE-damage reducing effects will affect this proc (e.g Factions Champions in TotC),

Seal of Command should henceforth be known as "Seal of Cleave"

ADDED:

SoC Cleave procs will chain to nearby attackable neutral NPC's, so be cautious

Taking the talent is a tough call, the trade-off largely depends on your raid make-up. If present in Moonkin heavy raids should drop points from Swift Retribution, Warrior/druid heavy ones will look to Vindication, Paladin heavy ones probably won't be picking up Imp Blessing of Wisdom. SoC's probably worth it, but will stimulate many a lively discussion.

Have fun with it :).

ADDED: It strikes me that I haven't really distinguished between PvP abnd PvE. Personally, I think that the relatively weak Judgement damage of SoC continues to push SoR as the superior skill. Breaking CC certainly doesn't help either.

BRB, Vomiting IRL.

I hate Brewfest. Really, seriously hate it.

It's not the endless grind for Brewfest Tokens which makes me think that trying to get the Violet Protodrake is a futile exercise.

It's not missing out on a Brewfest Mount or Direbrew Remote in every single roll, no matter how many times I run that git Coren.

It's not even listening to those Goblins sing every time I step just outside Orgrimmar. Actually, that's kinda catchy.

No, it's that god damn fucking awful in game drunk effect. What were those bastards thinki-

..

thinking? "Oh, you want to do the 'fight off the Dark Iron' daily? Sure, but first we need to stick a blur effect filter over the whole of the screen so you can't see a damn thing, and then put a pulsing pincushion distortion effect over the whole damn scene. And if that wasn't bad enough, you won't be able to walk in a straight line, adding to the wonderful sense of up-chuck inducing nausea."

Oh, but I'm cunning. I'll turn off the blur filter so all I have to deal with is that damn pulsing. But that just lulls you into a false sense of sec-

..

security, whilst I can see clearly the screen continues to pulse in my periphery and walking still isn't straight. Cue 'I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fi- PASS THE FUCKING BUCKET!!'.

And then, you can't get rid of the effect quickly once you finish the daily. It's beyond them to put something clever in like making coffee dispel the effect. So I have to wait for ten bleeding minutes for the smashed/drunk/tipsy effect to wear off before I can do anything else, preferably >50ft away from the PC monitor.

This achievement grind can't end soon enough. Halloween is up next, which can't be that ba-

No Pink Elekk Quest in EU Realms.

Ah, that explains things. A sharp-eyed player on the EU forums was wondering why the Pink Elekks on Parade and Wolpertinger quests, specifically stated by Kisirani to be back in this year, weren't available. One member stated that they were specifically bugged in the EU, and Wyxian replied:

This is unfortunately not correct. The Pink Elekk and Wolpertinger quests are deliberately not available in Europe. Though we would like to have them available here too, this isn't possible I'm afraid.

(Source)

No doubt due to the objections of a particular state within the EU. So, quite apart from anything else EU players are down 40 Tokens (the usual reward for the Pink Elekks quest). I'm guessing that PEoP isn't a daily otherwise it equate to 40 tokens per day.

So, that should explain the disparities on US and EU Token totals.

Grind Every Day for the Brewfest Achievement?

You need 550 Brewfest Tokens to complete the achievement, i.e. 200 for entry into the Brew of the Month and 350 for the three pieces of dress.

Day One, you can comfortably gain 85 Tokens.

Every day thereafter you can gain 25 tokens from the two dailies around the Brewfest camp.

At odd intervals (but at least once every day) you can do the Brewfest Keg Delivery for 2 tokens every turn-in. 7-8 Turn-ins are comfortably attainable, 11-12 is probably the Horde maximum (Alliance may be able to squeeze out a couple more due to a shorter path). Assume an additional 15 tokens per day on average.

Brewfest is 14 days long.

Approx. number of days required after the first = (550-85)/40 = 12 Days.

So, miss 3 days and you'll have great difficulty completing the achievement. Am I missing something?

(This is presupposing that the Costume Purchase refund is fixed, otherwise you only need 350 tokens.)

About that Pandaren Monk Mini-pet.

Updated 04/11/09

Looks like I was wrong. ;)

--

You must have seen the Pandaren Brewmaster Mini-pet by now. The model has been datamined in 3.2.2 and looks awesome. Don't take my word for it though:

So, where will you see this? Well, it won't be for the 5th Anniversary, we're getting the super-cute Onyxia Whelpling to commemorate that date. It's unlikely to be for the Brewfest either, the holiday is awash with pets, mounts and a title already. Plus the first load of Violet Protodrakes are due. But still, a Coren Direbrew uber-rare drop (al la the Scorchling) is not beyond the realms of possibility. However, I think there's a better bet.

The World of Warcraft Magazine.

Blizzard are very good at incentivising real world purchases with in-game rewards. Just look at the TCG, you can be sure that if the Brewmaster was a TCG reward Upper Deck would be proclaiming it from the tallest tower. The only upcoming event as yet not accounted for is the release of the first issue of WoW-The Magazine, also due some time around WoW's 5th anniversary, and the enthusiasm for it has been muted to say the least. This would be one way to get the manic collectors salivating.

So, a cool mini-pet for the $39.95 1 year subscription. Tempted?

Want a DPS Relic? Don't Have the Tokens to Spare? Use Honour!

Obviously, the best raiding Ret Libram is the sexy, wonderful and fantastic Libram of Valiance. Everyone loves an effective 200 passive Strength from the Relic slot but it comes at a price: 25 Emblems of Triumph.

For those not yet well advanced in TotC-10/25 and regularly smacking up Koralon EoT's are hard to come by and worth their weight in gold. If you're not DPS as your main spec you should rightly baulk at the price, at least until there is no more main-spec gear for you to buy. So, what Libram should you go for?

Not This One.

Well, the best choice was previously the Libram of Radiance, but 25 EoV's = 25 EoC's and so it comes at a very high cost. Don't rely on getting lucky with this as a drop, the drop rate is atrocious. And anyway, there is a better option.

Season 7 just started, and there's been a new development: PvP Relics's are now available for Honour! I've mentioned before that the PvP Libram's are great for PvE but previously they've required an Arena Rating and Arena Points to gain. In a PvP Season transition the old second highest tier (now 3rd highest) is usually made available with Honour, but that hasn't included Weapons (much to my chagrin) or Relics. The same is true this year, with one exception: Deadly Relics can now be bought with Honour Points and no Rating requirement!



WoWHead is still (wrongly) listing these items as requiring an Arena Rating of 700 and some Arena Points. However, all Deadly Relics can be bought from Zom Bocom, the Apprentice Arena Vendor in the Dalaran Underbelly, for the low-low price of 15300 Honour Points. Okay, it's still something of a grind, but well worth it for Relic using DPS Off-specs and maybe a few Healer specs too (the DG Holy Libram for example gives 334 additional Spellpower to your FoL for example).

The Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude is worth 120 Passive AP. It's not a patch on the Libram of Valiance, but definitely the next best for players with no access to the Arena.

Thanks go to new WoW-Blogger Ayrlyn and her blog 'The Light, and How The Swing It'.

Yay, 3.2.2 Bug Fixes!

The Test Realm Patch notes have been updated to include a couple of crucial bug fixes for Paladins.

Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.

Seal of Vengeance is currently quite a bit buggy. Individual debuff stacks are accumulated for each SoV user, but size of the damaging proc isn't determined properly. When there is only 1 stack on the target the damage of the weapon proc is scaled by the size of this stack, which can cause some rather interesting effects with Divine Storm when you have a Prot and Ret Paladin in the same raid. Great huh?

Well, not so great. You see, the flip side to this bug is that when there are two or more debuff stacks on a particular mob the size of the proc is determined by the smallest stack size. This isn't so bad for the Ret Paladin as long as he is the only Ret Paladin in the raid as he's always the slowest at accumulating stacks anyway, but it can serve to throttle the threat generation of any Tankadins in the raid.

So, rejoice! A useful bug fix. But wait, there's more!

Paladin Tier-9 DPS 2-Piece Set Bonus: Now grants the correct chance for Righteous Vengeance ticks to be critical strikes.

Not many people have two pieces of Tier 9 as yet, but those cool dudes at Elitist Jerks discovered that the 2-Piece Tier 9 wasn't working properly. Here's that bonus:

2: Your Righteous Vengeance talent now has a chance for its' damage to be critical strikes.

After a number of exhaustive tests on target dummies and raids it was determined that the current chance for your RV dot to crit is 3-4% with this bonus. Clearly, this is blinking low, and makes 4* Tier 8.5 a little better than 2*ilvl 232 Tier 9. It's presumed that the 'correct' crit rate is your melee crit rate, which should be upwards of 40% raid-buffed. Even if, for some idiotic reason, spell crit rate was used the crit rate for the DoT would only be ~5% less. With a crit rate in this ballpark Tier 9 2-piece is a must have.

This may also impact on the optimum FCFS rotation. Currently Crusader Strike takes priority over Judgement, especially if you have the Tier 8 four-piece bonus. The two abilities have always been nip and tuck though especially in the age of Tier 7, and as gear level increases so Judgement has closed the gap. Because Tier 9's set bonii tends to benefit Judgement more than CS, prioritising the former over the latter may result in a higher DPS. This is especially the case in encounters which involve a lot of target switching.

Eeek, I may have to update that chart soon.

Two Piece Tier 9 also increases the relative value of Crit Rating. You won't be stacking it in favour of Str, Hit or Expertise, but you may want to consider a +10 Str/+10 Crit orange gem if it grants you a socket bonus of more than +4 Strength.

--

There is one slight disappointment, but it still counts as a bug-fix (or exploit fix) I guess.

Libram of Obstruction: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.

Libram of the Sacred Shield: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.

Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category.

No more hot-swapping Librams for damage or mitigation any more, not that it was ever a huge issue on the damage front because it also reset your swing timer and activated a GCD.

---

No-one knows when 3.2.2 is due. The more cynical amongst us may be of the opinion that they're using it to bridge the gap to Icecrown Citadel (otherwise known as 3.3), and a delay in the Dev cycle for 3.3 will tempt Blizz into releasing 3.2.2 later. On the other hand, this is the first major patch since 3.2 and so warrants sorting out all the bugs and exploits that patch created as well as the additional content. Whatever the reason may be we shouldn't expect 3.2.2 next week, and it may well be October before it hits live.

The Insidious Nature of Dual-Specs.

Am I the only one spending more time on my secondary, rather than primary spec?

Jana was, is and continues to be my main. I've gathered gear in the stated desire to Raid as Ret, but I haven't been able to Raid as often as I'd like and probably not stamped my identity as a DPSer on the Guild. But of course I still want to Raid, and acquire gear which will improve my raid performance (even though we're nothing like a front-line hardcore guild). How do you get gear outside of Raids? You guess it, Heroic and their associated Emblems. But DPS are a dime a dozen in our guild like many others, so what do I do?

Yep, I volunteer to tank.

"What could it hurt?", I rather naively said to myself. "I'm still Ret, and this Secondary PvP spec isn't exactly seeing much use." I had bought the Dual Talent ability with a spare 1k gold I had lying around but hadn't gained a huge amount of use from it. Also like many others I abstained from PvP until Druids were banned for being unkillable. Healing was out of the question, not only because I hate healing on my Paladin but also because I ritually destroy all healing gear I come across.

(by 'ritually destroy' I of course mean 'sell to the nearest Goblin'. Sure, I hate the very idea of Paladin healing, but I have to fund my desire for whelplings somehow!)

It started innocently enough - a quick Violet Hold run. No drama, no deaths, all good. Utgarde Keep was next, and predictably it was a walk-over. Heroic after Heroic followed, and pretty soon I was tanking more than I was DPSing. I even volunteered to off-tank an alt and emblem run in Naxx-10. Suggestions from well-meaning guildmates to make tanking my main spec didn't help my state of mind and annoyance. The one saving grace, and the reason why I'm not tanking in Raids that I do attend, is that tank gear requirements are relatively high and that you don't need to take 5 tanks to a 25-man.

Other Paladin guildies who run as Primary - Prot, Secondary - Holy are being pushed into the Healing role because of a relative lack of Healers on at odd times. They're treating it with good-natured joviality but I feel guilty every time I ask one of these guys to heal as I tank a Heroic.



Dual Talent Specs are a frustrating feature for hybrids. On the one hand, it gives the purchaser a huge amount of added flexibility and convenience, but on the other you can very easily be pressured into a role not to your preference. So it is with me. Be very careful when buying the ability and make sure that the secondary spec is one that you can live with, you may be using it more often than you'd like.

Holy Wrath Blah Blah Hotfix, Blah Anub'arak Blah.

Yep, we have a new Hotfix. Via Daelo, Blizzard Dev:

We just deployed a hotfix to modify Holy Wrath so this spell has the same diminishing return mechanics that other player stun spells and abilities currently have. This will prevent Undead creatures that we wish to be susceptible to stun from being permanently stunned if you include enough Paladins in your raid who then rotate their Holy Wrath casts.

This will affect the difficulty of Anub'arak, but we didn't want the "right way" to defeat this fight to involve bringing five Paladins who glyphed their Holy Wrath spell.

(Source)

I'm not exactly sure how Holy Wrath's stun diminishing returns were overlooked for this particular fight, the new Glyph and nature of this encounter seemed tailor made for each other. Using Holy Wrath rotations to deal with otherwise near untankable adds is innovative and a different role from those Paladins are used to (especially Holy Paladins). The method also changes up rotations significantly, no bad thing for bored Rets. But hey, if it trivialises content or makes stacking a particular class necessary I guess a hotfix was required.

Anyway, the upshot of the hotfix is that the Glyph of Holy Wrath is no longer useful due to these diminishing returns, the DPS increase of choosing it specifically over another Glyph option probably isn't that high given GCD conflicts. In fact, other AoE stuns such as Shockwave and Shadowfury should now see greater use in this particular encounter, making Holy Wrath of limited use yet again except for the damage.

Was Paragon's four Paladin World First really trivialising it?

No small number of guilds are going to have to re-think their Anub'arak strategy, and it puts something of a pall over the two 'World Firsts' if they 'abused' Holy Wrath in this way, this screenshot indicates that Paragon used Holy Wrath extensively. Perhaps the real rush to the final World First in Heroic Mode can now start.

As an aside, the number and frequency of Paladin hotfix nerfs really serve to justify the opinion that some of the encounter Devs don't have much of a clue of Paladin abilities. That doesn't exactly fill me with optimism given the current development of a new expansion.

About That Armour Pen Nerf...

Direct from the mouth of Ghostcrawler:

The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems.

In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.

This change is largely for PvE reasons, though we won't cry at all if melee damage in PvP drops a little as a result.

We're letting you know now so that this doesn't feel like a stealth nerf, assuming it goes live. While you might disagree or be frustrated by the change (though I also suspect it won't come as a surprise to many players), we ask that you try and keep your response to something appropriate for these forums.

Great. Cool. Fantastic. This sort of stat stacking was always a risk given that the more you stacked APen the better the return was, coupled with some classes/specs still inflicting the majority of their damage as Physical. However, Armour Pen, previously tied for last place in Ret Melee stat priority at Tier8 gear levels (approaching the value of Crit Rating when you have oodles of it) is now back to being dead last. That makes thing very simple for us: generally avoid Armour Pen items unless they are an upgrade to the next gear Tier.

Just one thing though...

For Pete's Sake can you please stop putting it on all sorts of essential upgrades in Tier 8 and 9, upgrades that Blood/Unholy/Frost DK's, Warriors and Ret Paladins use. Stick it on Warrior and DK Tier sets, Blacksmithing crafted items, all that stuff. But stop using it on those shared items when for some (Warrior, Blood DK) it's a quality stat and others' it's dross.

This goes double for Weapons.

And triple for Ret Tier 9. Seriously, what idiot chose to stick Armour Penetration on our Tier 9 chest? Yes, it's still Best In Slot, but only Spellpower would make the use of item budget on this item more nonsensical for the spec.



And don't get any ideas from that for Tier 10.

Thank god this stupid stat is gone from items in Cataclysm.

/rant

Koralon The Loot Piñata

So, Season 7 has just started on Live Realms and with that we get obligatory New PvE Content in the form of the third Vault of Archavon boss, Koralon the Flame Watcher.

Now, I hope I won't be insulting anyone when I say... my word this guy's easy to kill. I mean, seriously easy. Order of Sarth 1D easy.

The encounter is essentially a gear check. There is some of the usual 'Don't Stand in the Fire' environmental effects and tank positioning is pretty key so melee can spot the fire, but apart from that it's a DPS race. Koralon has a stacking buff which increases his damage by 5% that he casts every 20 secs or there abouts, and obviously he'll eventually one-shot the tanks. The better geared your two tanks are the more time your DPS will have to take him down, but you definitely want decent DPS. No-one with the De-Raged Waraxe need apply.

Healers will have to be on their toes, and you may want err on the side of bringing along one too many rather than one too few. Three healers will probably be the norm in the 10-man version, 2-healer setups will be tough to pull off because of all the raid damage flying around. Obviously, Fire Resist Aura or Totem will greatly improve your chances as it mitigates a big hefty wodge of that fire damage.

As usual, Bloodlust is a premium ability, especially in the 10-man version.

Koralon will drop Tier 9 in 10-man versions and 9.5 in 25-man versions. I suppose that Relentless Gladiator gear will only drop in the latter and Furious (thanks for the correction chronic) will drop from the former.

Mad props to those guilds able to achieve Earth, Wind and Fire. Killing all three within one minute is awesome, probably another one of those 'impossible' achievements that we all hear so much about.