Lead Encounter Designer Daelo announced something earlier involving the Icecrown Citadel coming out in patch 3.3 that is causing a lot of debate and whining especially within the tank community. The developers are implementing a spell in the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon called Chill of the Throne which will affect every creature inside the raid. Chill of the Throne will allow these creatures to ignore 20% of it’s melee target’s dodge chance. So if you normally have 30% chance to dodge, you’ll only have 10% inside the Icecrown Citadel.
Before going into the issue itself, I just find it quite interesting …read more

The World of Warcraft development team have an interesting idea they’re playing with concerning how Haste affects DoT and HoT spells. It’s an experiment that we could begin to see starting patch 3.3 though Ghostcrawler said that it we might not see it at all, depending on how the testing works out.
At it’s current state, the only real effect haste has on DoT’s and HoT’s is lowering the global cooldown and the devs want to make haste a more attractive stat especially for Restoration Druids, Affliction Warlocks and Shadow Priests who use HoT’s or DoT’s more extensively than other classes …read more

One of the items I remember seeing when the Cataclysm expansion was announced was the removal of spell ranks. Nothing much was really said about it except just that. With the announcement of the simplification of stats for the expansion, it’s no surprise that they are going to simplify spells by removing the ranks.
The thing that looked like an obvious advantage of the removal of spell ranks was that you’ll only need to learn the spell once and you’re set for life. The accumulated savings a player will have by not having to spend for so many ranks, especially on …read more

If you’ve been checking the official forums frequently over the years, you probably would have encountered several threads about rogues complaining about their Vanish ability being broken and that it should be fixed. This isn’t just pointless complaining as even Blizzard acknowledged that it isn’t working properly. Vanish has had several improvements over the years but never truly has been fixed. As it is now Vanish is on a three minute cooldown and instantly puts the rogue into an improved stealth while also removing movement impairing effects. That’s all fine and dandy… if it works all the time.
Ghostcrawler mentioned that …read more

There’s been some talk again in the forums about the new Warlock soul shard system that Blizzard said they were working on. The idea behind the new system is to change something that’s not really necessary and possibly even annoying and turn it into something that’s cool and therefore would be used more as a core class mechanic.
Right now it’s still very vague as to how exactly this would work. I was thinking that since the warlock is a pure DPS class, the new use of the soul shard would also be used to boost their damage. In the Warlock …read more

With the recent release of patch 3.2 it’s now officially ok to talk about patch 3.3 and the Icecrown Citadel. Besides, there’s really something mind blowing that was released about the Citadel anyway. As you all know, the Icecrown Citadel is the lair of the Lich King and will be the venue for players to raid when patch 3.3 comes out. Based on what Blizzard has said before, the Citadel will have a raid dungeon and a 5 man dungeon (much like how Ulduar is composed of the raid that was released in patch 3.1 and the 5 man dungeons …read more

It’s time to close out the class Q&A feature with the Priest class having the spotlight. This feature is meant to answer questions about the thought the development team has for the class going forward. As usual Ghostcrawler answers the questions for the community. You can find the Priest Q&A here.
Priests are not a jack of all trades, master of none healer. Priests are strong and versatile healers and the only trade off is knowing how to manage the many spells that priests have since a lot of them have these small niches.
Shadow priests used to just a leveling …read more

We’re down to our last two class Q&A’s and it’s time for the rogue class to have the spotlight. As you know these class q&a’s are really more for knowing what the development team has in mind for the classes going forward especially in terms of design philosophy. You can see the whole Rogue Q&A here. As usual it’s Ghostcrawler giving the answers.
Rogues used to be the the class with the best dps but now Blizzard has been pushing them into being more normal and having some utility instead.
Blizzard is very happy with the combo point/finisher system that rogues use. …read more

Blizzard is almost done with the Class Q&A feature which started with the Shaman class and now it’s time for Hunters to take the spotlight. As you may know, the Q&A feature is there to find out what the development team is thinking about the classes for patch 3.2 and beyond. They go through things like design philosophy and changes they want to make or are thinking of making.
Hunters are unique in that they are the only ranged damage dealers that rely on the mostly physical damage of their ranged weapon rather than spells. But what also makes them unique …read more

I think that with the PTR being up for quite a while now and with the class Q&A’s coming out faster, it might be a sign that Patch 3.2 is coming soon… at least sooner than I originally thought. It’s the Warrior class’ turn to go under the microscope and see what Ghostcrawler and the development team has to say about the class moving forward.
The devs think that one of the things that make the Warrior class interesting is the Rage mechanic, specifically the way rage can convert into damage which converts to rage and so on. It’s a design …read more