Posts with tag breaking

Heirloom Shields looking good for patch 5.3

by Olivia Grace May 1st 2013 at 3:00PM

Heirloom shields are looking good for patch 5.3, according to a tweet from Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street:

@addohm No known issues with them at the moment. Looks positive for 5.3.
- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 30, 2013

Heirloom shields were amongst the things that didn't quite make the cut for patch 5.2. Blizzard Senior Community Rep Jonathan "Zarhym" Brown posted the following a little while back on the official forums by way of explanation for their absence:

Zarhym

Heirloom shields were originally planned to be added in patch 5.2, but, unfortunately, due to a late-breaking bug with these items which prevented them from properly scaling with level, we had to remove them. We still want to get these shields in the game and plan to do so in a future patch.

source

Filed under: News items

Developer Q&A on Thursday, April 25

by Sarah Pine Apr 24th 2013 at 2:00PM

Yesterday evening the WoW official blog announced there there will be a CoverItLive Q&A session at 5:30 pm PDT with Blizzard developers Dave Kosak, Ion Hazzikostas, Brian Holinka, Cory Stockton, and Greg Street on the subject of Mists of Pandaria's gameplay and design. Familiar community managers Bashiok, Crithto, Daxxarri, Rygarius, and Zarhym will be your friendly neighborhood moderators for the event. The session is scheduled to last around 45 minutes, though I'm certain many more minutes worth of questions will be asked!

I'm excited to see this event come around, Blizzard has hosted a few CoverItLive chats in the past and they're always very interesting to see. The real-time interaction is fun and gratifying, and we always learn new things about the game and Blizzard's approach to development. For those of you who may not have seen one of these before, you can check out WoW Insider's transcripts of previous live developer Q&A's to get a sense of what to expect:

Get your questions ready for Thursday, and we hope to see you there!

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

Patch 5.3 PTR patch notes for April 22

by Olivia Grace Apr 23rd 2013 at 12:00PM

The latest set of updates to the latest build landed on the Blizzard blog last night, and there are some more pretty big changes coming in on the PTR. As well as the usual class balance fixes, which bring some more number balancing to Atonement for discipline priests, as well as to paladins' Battle Healer, there are some fairly notable quality of life changes being made to the older content in this expansion.

Experience needed to increase from level 85 to level 90 has been reduced by 33%.
Players no longer need to have defeated Grand Empress Shek'zeer to enter the Terrace of Endless Spring in Normal difficulty.

And what's more, for current content, there is a substantial change to the acquisition quest for Mogu Runes of Fate.

Reduced the number of Lesser Charms of Good Fortune needed for the Mogu Runes of Fate weekly quest to 50, down from 90.

The experience nerf and the Lesser Charm change are the most interesting here, and it seems like Blizzard might be rethinking some of their earlier ideas on how hard the grind has to be in order to encourage players to stay and level their alts. What do you think?

Hit the break for the full notes.

Filed under: News items

Patch 5.2 Hotfixes for April 18

by Olivia Grace Apr 19th 2013 at 12:00PM

Some like it hot(fixes), and we're no different here at WoW Insider, so when the latest batch dropped we just had to share. We actually posted about one of these changes, regarding the Shado-Pan assault trinkets and their PvP use, earlier today. Let's jump straight in to this latest batch.

Blizzard

Classes
Warlock
Destruction

Fixed an issue where targets of Havoc were receiving more damage than intended from Immolate.

Quests

Eyes of the Thunder King: Engaging Unblinking Eyes and Focused Eyes will now place all members of the raid in combat, preventing players from releasing when they die.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
Throne of Thunder
Ra-den

Fixed an issue where it was possible to have 2 instances of Unstable Vita active during the Ra-den encounter.

Twin Consorts

Crane Rush now deals 5 million damage, down from 30 million damage in Raid Finder difficulty.

Items

Brutal Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault now grants a reduced bonus of 4400 to Strength, down from 8800 Strength, and the effect duration now lasts 30 seconds, up from 15 seconds when the effect is activated in PvP combat.
Tyrannical Primal Diamond when socketed to a bind-on-equip helmet now causes the helmet to become soulbound.
Vicious Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault now grants a reduced bonus of 4400 to Agility, down from 8800 Agility, and the effect duration now lasts 40 seconds, up from 20 seconds when the effect is activated in PvP combat.

Bug Fixes

Resolved an issue where Capacitive Primal Diamond's effect was not activating properly.

source

Filed under: Hotfixes

Legendary Meta Gem restrictions for upgraded items

by Olivia Grace Apr 17th 2013 at 1:00PM

The Legendary meta gems, added in patch 5.2, as the reward from the latest part of Wrathion's quest chain are getting quite the reputation. Amongst others, top EU guild Method asserted that these items were key to their World First Ra-den kill, as the buff they provide to gear, particularly the proc, is so substantial.

But there's some confusion around regarding their usage. A cursory glance at the tooltip indicates that they can be socketed in any item with an ilvl of more than 504. A poster on the EU forums has asked today for explanation on why his ilvl 496 helm, which he had upgraded to ilvl 504, is still considered too low-level for the gem. Blizzard Community Manager Draztal responds as follows:

Draztal

Quote:

Is it intended that you aren't able to socket upgraded gear prior to 5.2 with the legendary Meta? I have a 496 helm upgraded to 504 but it still denies that it is high enough to be socketed. Some dev feedback be appreciated.

Yes, it is intended that you can't put the legendary meta gem on an upgraded 496 helm, but the developers are currently discussing how upgraded items may behave down the road.

No promises or any specifics we can share at this time, though.

source

What's your take on this? I suspect that it's potentially born of an issue with the way upgrades are designed. It seems odd that, while the item has the required ilvl, an error is still generated. Perhaps it's an effort on the developers' part to ensure the Legendary meta can only be equipped in gear obtained from Throne of Thunder normal mode, or last tier's heroic gear.

Ghostcrawler tweeted the following, which seems slightly contradictory to Draztal's post, but does clarify Blizzard's intent:

@xxvanitasxx1 The intent was always for Throne of Thunder helms. Apologies that we did not communicate that intent well.
- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 17, 2013

Given that we've had reports of the gem working in last tier's Heroic items, it seems a little odd that upgraded gear should be excluded. Nonetheless, forewarned is forearmed, so we thought we should inform you!

Filed under: Raiding

Patch 5.2 hotfixes for April 16

by Olivia Grace Apr 17th 2013 at 12:00PM

The latest set of hotfixes are here, and as you'd expect, a lot of them relate to the Throne of Thunder raid, the last Raid Finder wing of which opened yesterday in the US, and today in the EU. Amongst the abilities and elements which have suffered nerfs, Durumu will now pause for longer after his "Eye Sores" -- the maze of purple doom -- before starting up his regular attacks again. Tortos' whirl turtles have now had an issue removed where, just occasionally, they would proceed towards the boss at what seemed like a glacially slow speed, even when kicked in a timely fashion!

What's more, there have been several nerfs to heroic boss abilites, which implies that, with the world first race over, heroic progression might not be going quite as quickly as the development team had imagined. Again, these are targeted nerfs to specific abilities, and to a few bugs, such as Iron Qon's champions trying to reposition themselves. However, Heroic Primordius has taken a flat 11% health nerf in both 10-man and 25-man heroic difficulty.

There have also been several adjustments to the procs of the Legendary meta gems, with changes being made to both Clearcasting and Fortitude which should allow them to function correctly. Hit the break for the full changes!

Filed under: Hotfixes

33% off the Battle Chest for this week only!

by Olivia Grace Apr 16th 2013 at 4:00PM

Battle Chest discounted for this week only!

For this week only, ending April 22, the Battle Chest is available on the battle.net store for just €10. This basically equates to a third off, save the euro cent, and this is reflected in the sterling price of £7.99. Based on our past experience here at WoW Insider, we are fairly confident in asserting that a US sale will follow shortly, and we'll update this post to reflect that.

Why should you purchase a Battle Chest? You're already playing WoW! Well, imagine if more of your friends played WoW, too. This is a great way to get started, and do remember that, of course, given the recent addition of Wrath of the Lich King to the Battle Chest, and the change meaning that all players can play all races, there's a whole lot of WoW here for your money.

This is also a great way to get your hands on a mount, the Obsidian Nightwing to be precise, and as we investigated here at WoW Insider a while back, Recruit-A-Friend a pretty reasonable way to buy a mount. You also get some sweet leveling bonuses, grantable levels, 300%XP, that sort of thing, and you get the chance at a Scroll of Resurrection, when those next come around.

Update: The Battle Chest is now also on sale in the US for $10.

Filed under: Blizzard

Patch 5.3 PTR Patch Notes for April 15

by Olivia Grace Apr 15th 2013 at 6:00PM

The latest set of patch 5.3 PTR patch notes has just dropped, and boy is it a doozy. There are some pretty significant changes in there, so let's dive right in to the highlights, as ever the full notes are after the break.

Shado-Pan and The August Celestials daily quests no longer have a faction prerequisite to be Revered with the Golden Lotus.
A Test of Valor: Reduced the amount of Valor needed for this achievement to 3000 Valor Points, down from 6000.
Tyrannical weapons no longer have a conquest-earned prerequisite to purchase them.
Picking up the Alliance or Horde flag while in a Rated Battleground now increases damage taken by 50% for characters in a tanking specialization, and increases damage taken by 20% for characters in a non-tanking specialization.
Demonic Gateway cast time has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 5 seconds, and can now be attacked and killed by enemy players. Each gateway has 100% of the summoning Warlock's health, and 100% of their resilience.
Living Bomb's periodic damage has been increased by 121%. Its explosion damage has been reduced by 78%, but now scales with additional periodic ticks added by haste, and hits all nearby targets (up from 3).
Shuriken Toss now deals 100% more damage in the initial ranged attack, damage is no longer doubled when used on targets farther than 10 yards away, and energy cost has been increased to 40 energy, up from 20.

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

Method takes down Ra-Den for world first

by Olivia Grace Apr 11th 2013 at 5:00PM

The world first race is now genuinely over, Method have killed Ra-Den on 25-man, with no bugs or glitches, and a full 25-man raid's worth of health. Method Raider Blatty says on his facebook page:

It's over. We'd predicted that we would get him this week, and after two pulls it was done. We are now the only people in the world to have killed the last boss of tier 15.

After the previously reported issues experienced by Asia's 七煌, who apparently switched to 10-man and managed to get Ra-Den to bug out, there was a hotfix implemented to prevent the issue where Ra-Den was apparently able to be kept from gaining many of his abilities.

Many people thought it might be the case that the limited attempts would therefor be removed, or at least that the race would carry on for a while longer. Now that he's down, we can look forward to Method's videos showing off the fight and kill, and see what all the fuss has been about. Method have taken this last boss down ahead of Paragon, who have led the race all along, albeit in the 10-man size, and ahead of Blood Legion, Russia's Eksorsus, the EU's Sanitas and Envy, as well as the US guild, Midwinter, all of whom were on 12/13.

Congratulations to Method!

Filed under: Raiding

Patch 5.3 PTR: Pick your loot for every occasion

by Olivia Grace Apr 11th 2013 at 3:00PM

Blizzard posted yesterday about patch 5.3's aforementioned introduction of off-spec rolls, and it's now in the PTR, so, of course, WoW Insider had to go check it out. Our first observation is that it's slightly oddly positioned, as you can see in the image above, it's in the right-click drop-down menu that comes off the character pane. Once you've located it, it's simply, as you can see, a matter of picking your spec and heading into your chosen content. As you can see above, I'm on a shaman, and so can choose to gear any of my three specs. The "Default" option, as the name would suggest, is the standard behavior of the system: the loot will be for the spec you have entered the instance in.

This system is active wherever the new loot priority system is, so, Raid Finder loot, including Bonus Rolls, and, as the Blizzard post says, Heroic Scenarios and Mists of Pandaria quests. At the moment on the PTR, it is not working for normal scenario loot, I went and did a few scenarios as Elemental with Enhancement loot selected, and got intellect mail every time, which is not a huge surprise given that the Blizzard post doesn't specify non-heroic scenarios. It is a little odd, though, given that many people will start off in normal scenarios, particularly DPS hoping to gear a tank or heal spec, as the queue times are so much shorter.

Of course, this system is not relevant for 5-man dungeons, where you can already roll need on off-spec gear with no detriment to your chances apart from the anger of four other people. Alas, thanks to a mixture of very long queue times and woefully bad luck, I was unable to test this system in the Raid Finder.

Hit the break for the full Blizzard post.

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

Patch 5.2 hotfixes for April 10

by Anne Stickney Apr 10th 2013 at 9:28PM

Yesterday's hotfixes may have been a short list, but today's list, just released on the official blog, are slightly more substantial. While there are a few quest fixes and tweaks, the majority of today's list of hotfixes involve the Throne of Thunder raid. Players that are currently raiding in a 10-man group may want to take a look at the list, because damage has been reduced for many of the bosses and boss abilities.

Just in case yesterday's Durumu changes weren't enough, Durumu's Disintegration Beam now dissipates sooner before reaching the end of the Maze of Death™.
Whirl Turtles on 10-man normal mode Tortos now have a reduced base movement speed.
Both the Brutal Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault and the Vicious Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault have had their effects adjusted in the case of PvP vs. PvE.

Read on for the full list of hotfixes.

Filed under: Hotfixes, Mists of Pandaria

Patch 5.2 hotfixes for April 9

by Anne Stickney Apr 9th 2013 at 9:00PM

Hot on the heels of yesterday's batch of hotfixes is another short and sweet edition of tweaks. Just released on the official blog, today's list primarily concerns the Throne of Thunder raid, with some incredibly welcome changes to Durumu and his baffling maze, as well as a peculiarly specific bug fix for tauren and gnome players.

Rygarius

Classes

Hunter
- Talents
  - Powershot now has a 25% decrease to damage, cast time, cooldown, and focus cost.

Raids, Dungeons and Scenarios

Throne of Thunder
- Durumu the Forgotten
  - Safe spots in the maze of Eye Sores now appear earlier, before the Disintegration Beam starts moving.
  - Adjustments were made to visual effects for Eye Sores to make it easier to see the maze.
- Primordius
  - Mutated Abomination effect once again reduces his damage taken from non-Fully Mutated players by 75% on 10-player and 25-player Heroic difficulty only.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a crash that occured when Gnomes or Taurens log into the game while riding a mount over water.

source

Filed under: Hotfixes, Mists of Pandaria

Potential Patch 5.3 PvP changes from Twitter

by Olivia Grace Apr 9th 2013 at 8:00PM

If you're even remotely interested in WoW PvP, and aren't yet following Brian Holinka on Twitter, you really should be. We've been talking about him quite a bit lately here at WoW Insider, as he's the main agent behind the huge PvP changes coming in in patch 5.3. He's also incredibly responsive, open and helpful on Twitter, and seems to set aside a huge amount of his free time to respond to players' concerns, and hold open and constructive discussions, while not being afraid to fire out some sarcasm crits on the trolls that often haunt those in his position.

He's previously tweeted about the return of the skirmish system, and has been very responsive indeed about the 5.3 changes, and lately he's also been discussing some more confirmed and potential changes in patch 5.3 and beyond.

Now, please do take these changes with a pinch of salt, these aren't even PTR patch notes, but potential changes, some of which are being tested and appearing on patch notes, and some of which are just in the pipeline for the future.

Potential Battleground Changes

One thing that caught our eye here at WoW Insider was a very recent tweet regarding some changes in the the larger battlegrounds such as Isle of Conquest and Alterac Valley.

Filed under: PvP

World of Warcraft to get an in-game browser in patch 5.3, sort of

by Adam Holisky Apr 9th 2013 at 6:40PM

World of Warcraft to get an ingame browser in patch 53, sorta

Coming to WoW in patch 5.3 is an in-game web browser, sorta. We've known for a bit that there's been datamined content that has been pointing to an in-game browser, and today it was announced on Blizzard's official blog that it's a feature coming in patch 5.3. While the press release says "feature-limited," it's a bit more drastic really -- you cannot access any content outside of the battle.net domain, at all. Any links to places like Wowhead or WoW Insider get opened in an external browser.

You can load up the patch 5.3 PTR and access the tool for yourself if you'd like to try it out -- but it is rather underwhelming in its current state. There's not much to do but browse support information; which is helpful sometimes (although the times that I've had to use the support site, I usually haven't been able to get into WoW in the first place).

There is no indication if Blizzard will open up external domains later on.

In-game Browser and Support Tools in 5.3 -- Blizzard Entertainment

We're adding a feature-limited web browser to World of Warcraft that will replace the in-game support system with a direct portal to the Battle.net Support site. Our aim is to give players in-game easy access to the site's robust knowledge base and support contact system.

We've gone to great lengths to improve our website support systems and we want to offer access to all of its robust features in-game. The new browser will make it it easier to find information to help you resolve issues you're experiencing or contact our representatives if you need a little extra help.

We will test this new feature in the 5.3 public test realm (PTR), and we'd like your assistance. Adding a web browser in-game is a new venture for us, and we need you to test it by searching through the support knowledge base and pages to make sure that it holds up in various hardware and network situations. It's important to note that while we will be testing the functionality of this feature within the PTR, we are unable to process support ticket submissions.

To help test and provide feedback, copy your character and download the PTR client.

We'd appreciate your feedback and testing reports to be put into the below forum thread so we can collect and respond to any errors or issues you're seeing.

source

Filed under: News items

Patch 5.2 hotfixes for April 8

by Anne Stickney Apr 9th 2013 at 11:00AM

A new round of hotfixes has been released on the official site. It's a pretty short list this time around, mainly tweaking a few issues with some of the encounters in Throne of Thunder, including Ra-den, and addressing a pesky bug that has been plaguing some players working on Isle of Thunder achievements.

Rygarius

Creatures

Zandalari Beast Handler is now properly seated in a saddle while riding a Direhorrn.

Raids, Dungeons and Scenarios

Throne of Thunder
- Giorgio's Caduceus of Pure Moods is no longer being awarded to Elemental and Restoration Shamans on Raid Finder difficulty or via bonus rolls.
- Primordius
  - During the Primordius encounter, spells which dispel a single harmful effect (Sear Magic, Single Magic, or Mass Dispel) will no longer work if any of the positive effects are active on the target (Improved Synapses, Keen Eyesight, Thick Bones, Clear Mind, or Fully Mutated).
- Ra-den
  - Fixed an issue that could prevent Ra-den from absorbing Essences of Anima/Vita as intended.
  - Engaging Ra-den now resets the cooldown on Reincarnation for Shamans.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where some situations could cause players to not receive credit towards Pay to Slay or It Was Worth Every Ritual Stone achievement after defeating Incomplete Drakkari Colossus.

source

Filed under: Hotfixes, Mists of Pandaria

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