Mage's season2 gear update

The season2 mage gear had incorrect stats when released, so the blues said it would be corrected on a future patch. Hortus said the fix is on PTR. Kryax posted it.

The fixed gear has more intellect and they removed armor bonus. Makes sense, considering that mages take less melee damage than other cloth users and mana is a critical issue.

CHEST
228 Armor
+57 Stamina
+21 Intellect
30 Crit rating
26 Resilience
35 Spell dmg

HEAD
185 Armor
+52 Stamina
+26 Intellect
20 Crit rating
33 Resilience
42 Spell dmg

LEGS
200 Armor
+52 Stamina
+36 Intellect
29 Crit rating
30 Resilience
49 Spell dmg

GLOVES
143 Armor
+43 Stamina
+20 Intellect
19 Crit rating
23 Resilience
36 Spell dmg

SHOULDERS
171 Armor
+46 Stamina
+15 Intellect
14 Crit Rating
23 Resilience
36 Spell Dmg

Netheran compared the sets.

The difference between S2(current) and S2(new) is
-910arm
7sta
36int
7crit
5res
6dmg

compared to S1 gear, the new S2 has
87arm
13sta
33int
7crit
9res
23dmg

2.2 PTR news - warlock flying mount?

People at MMO-Champion played again with the WoW files and found this. Some saying it's the new warlock flying mount lol.

They also posted some screenshots of new designs and where the old AQ enchants will be available now. The new gems are REALLY good.



New Violet Eye rewards.


All images from MMO-Champion.com.

2.2 patch notes

Ah.. the DOT nerf.. but.. WHERE IS THE TEXT SAYING CHANGING GEAR IN ARENA IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE???!! Sigh... And they didn't fix my hood... Anyway.. I already commented about DOT nerf.

Other than that, I compiled what I think can change arena games a bit.

• They also reduced the duration of all crowd controls to 10sec max.
• Reduced the duration of blind to 8sec, the cooldown to 1min (talent makes it 45sec cooldown) and it no longers requires reagent. So expect rogues to do better now on all brackets, and can probably be as good as locks for 2v2 now.
• Blessing of Freedom cooldown is now 25sec and the duration can be extended by 4secs with talents. This is really nice if you don't have a paladin in your team and have dispelers like me =).
• Blessing of Sacrifice now has a 1min cooldown.
  
• Well.. they fixing the resilience calculation, so expect to take more damage now.
  

Other changes with original text:

• Power Regeneration: Any effect which triggers a change in your rate of power regeneration (Mana, Rage, Energy, Focus) will now cause an immediate reward of some power at the old rate of increase, and then begin new "ticks" of power at the new rate approximately 2 seconds later. This was done to improve functionality of abilities such as Evocation and Innervate so that they did not have wasted "ticks".
  
• Mac Movie Capture: the Mac client can now capture in-game video to QuickTime movie files using a configurable choice of codec (H.264, Motion JPEG, or Pixlet), resolution, and frame rate. Two new entries have been added to the Key Bindings dialog for start/stop recording and for cancellation of a recording. For more detailed configuration options please see the Mac Options panel in game. Mac OS X 10.4.9 and QuickTime 7.1.6 or better are required. Not all machines have enough performance to smoothly capture video at high frame rates; end user experimentation will be required to find appropriate settings for each system.
• Cyclone: Paladin Auras, Trueshot Aura, and Aspect of the Pack will now be automatically reactivated when Cyclone wears off of a victim who had one of the abilities active.
• Mangle: The duration remaining graphic will now display properly for Mangle after it has been refreshed on a target. It will also no longer sometimes apply the Mangle debuff to nearby targets when the Mangle victim is killed by Mangle.
• Entangling Roots: It is no longer possible to have more than one rank of this spell active on a player.
• Sword Specialization: This talent's free extra attacks can no longer trigger additional extra attacks.
  
• Greater Blessing of Kings, Light, Might, Salvation, Sanctuary and Wisdom increased to 30 minutes.
• Guardian's Favor now increases duration of Blessing of Freedom by 2/4 seconds.
• Pain Suppression: This talent will now reduce the chance for any buff on the Priest to be dispelled, rather than reduce the chance of dispelling buffs cast while it is active.
  
• Formula: Enchant Chest - Major Resilience: Corrected a tooltip error.
• Formula: Enchant Cloak - Dodge: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Lower City Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  
• Formula: Enchant Cloak - Greater Fire Resistance: The reagents required for this recipe have been adjusted to better match the level 70 content.
  
• Formula: Enchant Cloak - Greater Nature Resistance: The reagents required for this recipe have been adjusted to better match the level 70 content.
  
• Formula: Enchant Cloak - Stealth: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Cenarion Expedition Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  
• Formula: Enchant Cloak - Subtlety: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Thrallmar Quartermaster and Honor Hold Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  
• Formula: Enchant Gloves - Superior Agility: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Keepers of Time Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  
• Formula: Enchant Gloves - Threat: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Sha'tar Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  
• Formula: Enchant Weapon - Greater Agility: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Violet Eye vendor.
• Various crafting recipes have been added to the Violet Eye faction vendor.
• Enchanting
  Nexus Transformation: This recipe to transform a Nexus Crystal into a Small Prismatic Shard has been added to some Enchanting trainers.
  
• Small Prismatic Shards: This recipe to transform a Large Prismatic Shard into 3
• Small Prismatic Shards has been added to some Enchanting trainers.
  
• Large Prismatic Shard: It is no longer possible to gain skill points in Enchanting from this recipe.
• Six Demon Bag: The damage spells cast by this item no longer benefit from a player's bonus spell damage effects.

What does this mean: "Items that are indicated as quest items in their tooltips and have a "use" or "equip" ability will not work in PvP arenas."? What quest item you can use that really makes a difference?

The full patch notes can be found here.

Zul'Aman, the next 10man raid instance

Tigole posted about the new raid instance in Ghostlands (blood elf area north of Eastern Plaguelands) that will go live someday... I looks really cool. I think it'll be a 3 days reset like ZG.

"I've been following a lot of the reactions on the WoW forums as well as the fansite forums to our announcement of Zul'Aman. I've noticed that there's a little bit of confusion as to some comments that were made in various articles that said that (I am paraphrasing here) "Zul'Aman will be more casual than Karazhan."'

Of course, what most of us in the WoW community have come to realize over the past few years is that the term "casual" means different things to different people. In fact, I am at the point where I try to avoid using the term at all. I've come to discover that most players consider themselves "Casual" when it supports their argument and likewise, they think of themselves as "hardcore" when convenient. We have the largest Casual Hardcore (or Hardcore Casual) community of any MMO out there!

All joking aside, the clarification is this:

--Zul'Aman will be a 10-person raid zone
--Zul'Aman will be on a quicker reset than 7 days (some might call this "casual")
--Zul'Aman will be MORE difficult than Karazhan and drop better loot (some might call this hardcore)
--Zul'Aman will feature 6 bosses and it's our goal that you can kill them all in one night -- perhaps 2-3 hour clear times (some might call this casual)
--Zul'Aman will not have a key requirement. Nor will it have an attunement quest\ (some might call this casual)
--Zul'Aman will have a VERY challenging timed quest for those who choose to participate in it. This *will be* hardcore and will be very rewarding. Players do not have to engage in the timed run (very similar to the Baron run in Stratholme)
--We're tuning the first boss in Zul'Aman to require less raid coordination than some other raid bosses. He will still hit very hard so you'll need to be geared properly but it won't take 15 minutes to explain the fight. It will be a simple yet challenging fight. The other boss fights get more complex and challenging from there. If players want a basis of comparison, imagine the tuning of ZA started around Nightbane/Prince difficulty and ramped up from there.

ZA is a very cool looking zone. It will feature brand new troll models -- Forest Trolls. They are very impressive looking. There will also be a large amount of brand new item art in the zone. We'll get screenshots of this out soon.

I know this question is going to come up so I'll answer it now -- Yes, you can totally skip Karazhan if you're an amazingly elite guild who doesn't have time to key up for KZ yet can face the challenges of ZA without gearing up in KZ. Have fun storming the castle." - Tigole

More information can be found here (IGN) and here.

Resilience and DOTs

So Blizzard finally posted their solution to DOTs doing too much damage on arenas. Yeah.. resilience WILL AFFECT DOTs after the next major patch. Not only that, you'll not be able to change gear after arena opens, only weapons/off-hands/ranged weapon will be allowed to be changed.

This mean a reduction of 10% damage from DOTs for someone with 400 resilience. IMHO, it's not that bad for locks and I think the change on gear swap is more important than DOTs being affected by resilience. We'll see the results of this change after the patch.

"In the next major content patch, the combat rating, resilience, will also reduce the damage dealt by damage over time (DoT) effects. As it currently stands, each new tier of equipment adds to the amount of damage DoT abilities have, yet that damage is not mitigated through combat ratings found on typical equipment. This change will help ensure that DoT effects do not scale too well compared to other damage mechanics.

The amount of damage reduced will be equal to the critical chance reduction effect that resilience grants." - Eyonix