Well it’s been another busy month with the class changes that were announced for Cataclysm! Not to mention some new items added to the Blizzard store that has some in a tizzy. I’ll have this news plus some sillies and my thoughts on two of the class changes below!

In the News

The big news in the past few days has been the release of the Celestial Steed and Lil XT in the Blizzard online store. And it’s a bit of an understatement to say that both were a hit. From what I’ve seen though I think the mounts may have sold more, and that only means that Blizzard will be happy about their profits for this month. Not to mention I think that they are for sure going to stick with having these micro transactions for the game. And with a mount as detailed as the Celestial Steed it makes me wonder about future mounts that they may release. I have not personally purchased the mount or the pet, but I have a few friends who have and they have no regrets about purchasing them!

As I’ve mentioned previously, Blizzard has been releasing more info about some of the pre-Cataclysm events like the taking back of Gnomeregan and Echo Isles. They’ve also been updating the Cataclysm website with info on the city of Vashj’ir and Mount Hyjal. Both will be accessable in Cataclysm and from the screen shots they’ve put up look pretty cool. Vashj’ir will have interesting mechanics for players as we’ll be exploring the area underwater and there will be some new underwater mechanics to the game. Both locations look like they’ll be great places to level and explore, and I’m very intrigued to see how underwater play is going to work and pan out.

It was also announced that Recruit a Friend will have a new reward coming soon: the X-53 Touring Rocket. This mount will replace the current Zhevra mount. Bashiok did say that the change would come in “just a few days” but last I checked the Recruit a Friend page it was still listed as the Zhevra. The good news is that if you do have any un-redeemed codes from RaF you will be able to use them to claim the rocket once it goes live.

And for TCG fans, Cryptozoic (new new publishers for the TCG) announced a new Wrathgate expansion that will drop May 25th. The expansion will allow players to recruit important figures from the Argent Crusade like Tirion Fordring to fight with them as well as new crafting materials for armor for heroes to use. This also means that there will be some new loot cards: Landro’s Gift, Statue Generator, and Blazing Hippogryph. I’m usure what the first two may be, but we now know where that fiery hippogryph mount will come from!

Last State of Azeroth I talked about the new Stormrage book. Well I now have my review of the book up for you to check out! It has some interesting stuff in it, but it wasn’t as strong as a book as I’d have hoped. It did however make me more excited for the new novel (novels?) coming out this fall that will deal with pre-Cataclysm events!

Cataclysm Class Changes

Many people were waiting this past week or so to read up on all of the class changes that will be taking effect in Cataclysm. There is some rejoicing, some skepticism and some unhappy players out there with these changes. Unfortunately as I have not been able to play all of the classes in the game, I don’t want to try and do an analysis for the classes I’m not familiar with. I will however link you to all of the blue posts for the changes, and I will touch on the two classes I am most familiar with: Hunters and Death Knights.

Links to the class changes: Priest, Warlock, Warrior, Hunter, Druid, Death Knight, Paladin, Shaman, Mage, Rogue

To start with I’m going to talk Hunters. My main is a Hunter, and when I heard at Blizzcon ’09 that we would no longer have to use Mana I was excited! Having to deal with mana regen is annoying and unless I have an addon installed, I tend to forget when to switch back from Aspect of the Viper back to Aspect of the Dragonhawk. But after reading the class changes for Hunters I’m now slightly worried about the new Focus system. Mainly the fact that hunters Focus regen is only 6 per second. Rogues get 10 Energy per second regen, why is it so low for Hunters? Granted Steady and Cobra shot will regen 9 Focus per shot which ups the regen to approximately 12/second, I’m still a bit nervous about the change. I think I’ll just have to get hands on with the new system before I can really make a decision on how I feel. For all I know it could actually play fine.

I am happy about the removal of ammunition from the game, though I’m sure that the people who make ammunition aren’t too happy about loosing out on making some gold. I do hope that the stats of the weapons will be changed accordingly in order to offset the change. Another great change that I cannot wait for is the active and stored pet system. You will be able to have three active pets that you can switch between when out of combat and a “large number” of stored pets that you will have to go back to a Stable Master in order to exchange. The new abilities for hunters aren’t as exciting to me, but I do like Camouflage for use during PvP. Not sure if it would find too much use in PvE but I could be wrong.

Next up for me are Death Knights. The big news that came out of this is Blizzard designating Blood as the official tanking spec. Personally I’m glad that they designated a specific tree for tanking as since Wrath hit I’ve seen so many different tanking specs from each tree, and even differing opinions from players about what specific build is best and what build they personally preferred. Even with finding a DPS spec was a bit of a hassle depending on where you looked or who you asked.

Blizzard has also said that they plan on retuning the Rune system that DKs work with:

The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra “storage”), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.

Now I’m still not sure on how I like the Runic system, but depending on how these changes work it may help out with those who complain about how horrible the system is. Another good change is the new ability Outbreak which will instantly infect a target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague with no rune cost. This is good for when you have to re-apply a disease after it’s been cleansed. Dark Simulacrum, which applies a debuff that allows the Death Knight to copy the opponent’s next spell cast and throw it back at them. It will only work with spells that can already be reflected, and I think adds a neat new strike. Since I mainly DPS with my Death Knight I will be intrigued to see what new builds come out, and hope that Unholy stays as a viable spec. What can I say, I love having a zombie pet!

I am working on a Mage and a Druid, and from what I’ve read of the new changes it looks pretty good, but I haven’t leveled either high enough to do many Battlegrounds or raid, so I’d rather wait to comment once I’ve got more of a feel for them.

Developer Chat

The developer chat happened this past Friday, and it was pretty interesting. We got some more info on Cataclysm as well as some more explaining on specific class mechanics. MMO-Champion has it all arranged nicely by category and class so I highly recommend checking it out over there if you missed it.

Old screenshot using the default UI

One of the good things I saw in the dev chat was them talking about re-doing the default UI.

We would like to update the default Blizzard UI. It has some fatal flaws, such as not being able to show buffs and debuffs simultaneously. We probably won’t ever go as crazy as some of the mods out there just because they provide a ton of customization, which is one of the things players like about them. We do think players deserve a raid UI that is fully functional for those players who just don’t like to install a lot of mods. We hope to get this change in for Cataclysm, but we’re changing the UI for the spell book, talent pane, professions window, character stats, guild, friends and probably a dozen things I’m forgetting, so it’s just a matter of how much time we have.

They also confirmed that crowd control will be making a return in dungeons and raids. They shall also continue to have a separate heroic difficulty for raids for those serious raiders who are looking for a challenge. And for those classes who use idols and relics, there will be changes made to that system to make them more agnostic. “In other words, there might be a +strength relic that a death knight or paladin might want to equip. We think that will let us add more of them to the game without them being so specialized.” I think it’ll also help when someone who may be new to their class is trying to figure out what relic they should equip based on what proc or stats it may have.

The last change that was mentioned I think is great news is that the Druid tree of life model is getting a new model! The only hint given to us from the chat was “think Ancients of War.”

All in all it gave us some good info and may have clarified some of the changes coming to the various classes. I look forward to when they have the next one!

Comic Relief

I also come with some more silly things! One of the first is an animated GIF I saw posted on WoW.com. It parodies those new Old Spice commercials, and I must say is a rather convincing guild advertisement.

Next up is a great little comic by Noxychu at Wowhead. It talks about all of the whining about Blizzard selling mounts, as well as the joy that many are getting. The full comic is here and there are also some fun wallpapers if you’d like a new desktop.

Next up in case you missed them are the April Fools pranks that Blizzard “announced.” My favorite was definitely the Equipment Equivalence Number they mentioned would be in WoW. And Tidy Plates seemed to like it enough that he created an addon that makes it an in-game reality! Granted it may not be with all of the features Blizzard listed, you can at least have a visual representation of how awesome your gear is compared to others. You can download it from WoWInterface here, and be warned this does require you to also have the GearScore addon.

Call to readers!

If you have any tips, tricks, news or funnies you would like to send in to be included in the next State of Azeroth please send an email to steph@gamingangels.com!

This is Steph signing off until next month. Glory to the Alliance and Lok’tar Ogar to my horde brethren!

Thanks to Necrotic Designs for the awesome banner!