Rolling Restarts, DreamHack, Defense Cap Guide

Rolling Restarts - 11/27

This is likely to fix the Lake Wintergrasp bug which prevents Horde from capturing it.

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

We will be performing restarts on all US realms on Thursday, November 27, beginning at 5:00am PST and all Oceanic realms at 12:00pm PST (7:00am AEST, November 28). Each realm will be down for approximately 15 minutes and the overall process last about 1 hour.

Blizzard @ DreamHack

Quote from: Wryxian (Source)

DreamHack Winter is back, and Blizzard Entertainment will be there! We've partnered with TeliaSonera to give this year's attendees a chance to play Blizzard's upcoming StarCraft II and the recently released World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

You'll find us next to the DreamArena, where Blizzard representatives will be on hand to answer questions, chat with players, and demonstrate the games. We'll also be running several contests featuring great prizes, including the Lich King's legendary sword Frostmourne -- though don't be surprised if Arthas himself shows up to try to stop you from winning.

This year's DreamHack Winter takes place from 27 to 30 November at Elmia in Jönköping, Sweden. For more information on the event, visit the DreamHack website. We look forward to seeing you there!

DreamHack website: http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw08

Blue Posts

Knockbacks (Source)

We understand the problem here and have heard it from many players, especially tanks. The knockbacks can be useful when leveling or in PvP, but they do annoy some dungeon and raid groups.
We are talking about adding minor glyphs to the spells with knockback effects. They would add some small benefit, cooldown reduction perhaps, in return for removing the knockback.

Parry Hasting (Source)

The reduced swing time for a creature's next swing after it successfully parries an attack still exists in the game, and the vast majority of all creatures in WoW use the mechanic. Note that we have the ability to flag specific creatures to not be affected by this mechanic if we so choose for balance purposes. An example of such a creature would be Patchwerk, a very high melee damage dealing raid boss.

Dying in Violet Hold and releasing (Source)

I'm examining possible solutions for how to get players who die and release back into the event area. What seems simple in concept can sometimes be really tricky to implement.

"Mote" clouds in Northrend (Source)

Yes, there are clouds similar to those in Burning Crusade. The engineering goggles and mote extractor still work on these new clouds.

Hunter (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)

Longevity Bug (Source)

We're aware of the Lovegevity bug. We'll get that fixed and then adjust the dps as necessary. It should be a choice equivalent to a Devilsaur, but we don't want the Spirit Beast to be far and away the best pet choice. I don't think any of you are asking for that, but sometimes my quotes have a way of being taken out of context. :)

Paladin (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)

Auras remaining on GCD (Source)

I posted some time ago that we weren't sure we were going to go through with this change after all. We really didn't like the idea of a paladin having to (or being asked by the group to) keep say Devotion Aura up but swap to the fire resist aura just before an incoming PoM Pyro in PvP or a dragon breath in PvE.

Auras are supposed to be something you generally choose before a battle, not a reactive ability like Spell Reflect that you swap in and out of depening on what is happening in the fight. Getting rid of the GCD makes them feel like you are supposed to use them reactively.

Shaman (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)

More on Shaman changes (Source)

The Unrelenting Storms change was less about trying to fix (non-existent) mana issues and more because that talent was pretty severely underbudget. You can't always compare talents between classes, but in this case you could find similar talents that gave a lot more for only 3 points.

We still have some plans to do more with totems, but those will be a little longer coming.

We'll have to monitor the LB vs. CL choices. It's not a bad situation if you favor CL more on group pulls and LB more on single targets. This will be a good thing to evaluate on the PTR.

As always, I'm just reporting changes that the class designers came up with as a group. Feel free to give them the credit for anything you like and me the blame for anything you don't.

We don't want to announce when this patch will go live for the reasons we usually don't announce such things. But you will see the changes in the next minor content patch, which is not the same as a hotfix or weekly maintenance, but isn't the same as a major content patch with a new raid either.

Guide: Reaching the Defense Cap

We've published a new guide called Reaching the Defense Cap which was inspired by a thread in our forums.  The guide is a compilation of various tanking items from level 80 instances, reputations, etc. that you can acquire to reach the defense cap of 540 -- allowing you to be uncrittable versus boss encounters.

Hopefully those of you that celebrate Thanksgiving have a happy and safe holiday.

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