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Mists of Pandaria: LFR Changes
There's been a lengthy thread on the official forums about LFR, and Blizzard shared some of their upcoming changes for Mists of Pandaria:
They are hoping gear designed for LFR in future tiers is a small step up from last tier's normal mode gear, not a replacement for last tier's heroic gear.
If harder bosses on normal/heroic difficulty have an ilvl boost to reflect that difficulty, that ilvl boost will not apply to end-boss loot in LFR.
Terrace of Endless Spring
and
Heart of Fear
LFR were initially three queues to be released on the same date, a month after MoP's release. Instead these three LFR queues will have a staggered release, one week after the other.
Hello my fellow non-murloc creatures of Azeroth,
Please allow me to chip in with a few updated bits of information about LFR, I hope that you view this as an improvement and a step in the right direction over the current version of LFR. We do hear you and your feedback is seriously taken into consideration each time we decide to apply any change to the game.
We know that competitive players seem to dislike the idea of having to go through LFR to
Live
Mists of Pandaria: Legendary Weapons Preview
The updated version of the guide for 5.1 can be found
here
Mists of Pandaria introduced a legendary that all classes can complete, a drastic change from the rogue-only weapon of Tier 13. Players acquire one of nine "Sha-Touched" weapons from Tier 14 raids, completing a series of quests with
Wrathion
to acquire special +500 stat gems. We don't know the whole quest chain yet, but the first part will let you put a legendary gem in an epic weapon, which isn't a bad start. Datamined icons with legendary names and
Breath of the Black Prince
imply that the final result will be a legendary weapon.
Right now, all of these base weapons have versions and unique colors from LFR, Normal, and Heroic difficulty. You can complete this
initial quest series on any difficulty including LFR
and put the legendary gem (can be purchased from Wrathion multiple times) into Sha-Touched weapons on any tier.
The goal is for players to be rewarded with something really special that stick with the legendary questline through multiple content patches.
Video Preview
Live
Pandaren Character Customization and Mogu'shan Vaults Preview
Blizzard released several Mists of Pandaria previews this evening: check out the overview of
Mogu'shan Vaults
, the first raid open to players in Mists, as well as the Pandaren character customization page that has dozens of possible combinations.
Neon hair streaks
for all!
We’ve just released not one, but two new previews for Mists of Pandaria!
The new
pandaren customization page
allows you to explore the vast number of unique looks for your pandaren characters. Check out all the hairstyles, fur colors, faces, beards, and earrings at your disposal either at character creation or in the barber shop to set your own character apart. Pick from any of more than 200,000* possible combinations!
We’ve also released a sneak peek at the
Mogu’shan Vaults
, one of the high-level raids that await you and your friends in Pandaria. Learn more about the history of this ancient site and dis
Live
Mists of Pandaria: Valor Point and Gear Acquisition Preview
This latest beta patch added some major boosts to gearing up quickly in Mists:
Valor of the Ancients
and
Elder Charm of Good Fortune
. In light of these additions, we've broken down all the changes to
Valor Points
in Mists of Pandaria and all the new ways you can acquire them.
Valor of the Ancients
and
Elder Charm of Good Fortune
Two big ways to increase your loot acquisition per week were added in recent beta patches.
Valor of the Ancients
: All characters on that realm now earn 50% more Valor Points when one character is capped. However, the maximum cap is now 3,000
Valor Points
, down from 4,000. This is great for alts or players who aren't sure what character they want to commit to more in early Mists. With account-wide achievements, it's great to have multiple characters geared enough to swap into raids to fill a needed role.
Elder Charm of Good Fortune
: Whenever you kill a raid boss, a UI window will ask if you want to spend a
Elder Charm of Good Fortune
on an extra roll. You will get another shot at the boss' loot table and win something extra--gold, gems, flasks, and possibly epic loot for your spec. 3 can be acquired each week from
Elder Charms of Good Fortune
, and
Lesser Charm of Good Fortune
can be acquired from compl
Live
Mists of Pandaria Preview: Scott Mercer and Ion Hazzikostas Interview
Blizzard just posted two important news stories. First off, they have a very in-depth interview about the raids in Mists of Pandaria. There are some important tidbits shared in this discussion:
Mogu’shan Vaults will be the first raid and it will probably be delayed up to a week on release, so there is less pressure to hit level cap as a raider.
The other two raids will unlock weeks after Vaults to give raiders even more time acclimate.
Lore has been really thought out this time around. The instances should ideally flow into each other, as opposed to back in WotLK where they felt so jarringly different. For example, you'll fight the Sha of Fear at the end of one raid only to have her flee to the next.
The raid rewards players with items with the following item levels: item level 476 for Raid Finder, 489 for normal mode, and 502 for Heroic.
There’s also a new mount that can be obtained by defeating Elegon, a celestial dragon found deep within the Vault:
Reins of the Astral Cloud Serpent
.
Other than that, Blizzard also confirmed that
Brewfest
will be delayed so it doesn't make players feel rushed to experience Mists of Pandaria as well as do the holiday. This is welcomed news, as mo
Live
Mists of Pandaria Interviews and News Round Up
Blue Posts
Blue posters were hard at work yesterday, covering a variety of topics: LFR's new loot system, item squish, female pandaren, DotA-style battlegrounds, new models, and as a bonus--a creative blog covering Mists' content features. Here's what's new since yesterday's coverage:
Female Pandaren:
There will be many more options for her hairstyle, face, and features. There will also be options to have a long tail, or a more traditional pandaren stub tail.
Archaeology:
Can teleport to dig sites after finding an artifact, and can dig more times at a single digsite.
Inscription:
Players can level by making staves and wands now.
Factions:
Craftsman tokens from new faction currencies allow you to buy items like fun toys or pets.
Elder Tokens:
Allow players to purchase new items, convert to Valor, or buy Charms of Good Fortune--allowing players to buy another go at a boss' loot table
Proving Grounds:
A solo instance that allows players to try out their new rotations while getting achievements.
Live
Interviews with Greg Street, Cory Stockton, Tom Chilton, and J Allen Brack
We had a chance to sit down with Cory Stockton and Tom Chilton for exclusive interviews about Mists of Pandaria. Lore from
Tankspot
got to sit down with Greg Street (Ghostcrawler) and J Allen Brack. Their answers are great and we've transcribed all of them down below.
However, in case you just aren't
that
into reading, we've also uploaded videos of all four interviews as well!
Make sure you also read our huge guide
and
the Mists of Pandaria official FAQ
for even more information!
Cory Stockton
Tom Chilton
J. Allen Brack
[url=
http://www.wowheadnew
Live
Patch 4.3.2 Live Today
It has taken its time, but 4.3.2 is finally hitting servers this week!
A controversial patch, this one introduces gradually scaling zone buffs to
Dragon Soul
that recall back to the ones Icecrown Citadel had--a 5% buff will be added to the instance for raids who which to take advantage of it. There are also several encounter specific nerfs that aim to allow different raid compositions for the instance's final heroic modes and several class balance tweaks.
As Blizzard has said prior
, this will be the last patch of Cataclysm before a pre-Mists of Pandaria world event, so this patch also marks the beginning of the end for this expansion!
<div xmlns="
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
class="detail"><p>During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the “Power of the Aspects” spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make
Live
Dragon Soul: A Guide to Gearing up in 4.3
4.3 launched this week; it's time for another guide to gearing up in a new patch. As usual, this guide does not aim to provide a BiS set of heroic Dragon Soul gear for each class and spec; rather it analyzes the new loot in the context of current options for several different playstyles.
There's two notable new ways to acquire gear: Looking for Raid and expanded Valor Point loot tables.
Looking for Raid:
Players can now queue up as a group or by themselves to join a 25-man raid. These raids will not have a lockout and they will drop tier 13, although the stats will be lower than a normal or heroic 25-man. The LFR system operates much like the current dungeon finder and even minimizes the raid itself, splitting it in half, so players can only queue for half of an instance at a time. Players need a minimum ilvl of 372 to be eligible to queue.
Valor Points:
While players cannot purchase Tier 13 pieces with Valor Points, the vendors sell ilvl 397 items for practically every slot. Those that aren't covered by points are covered with new BoE craftables. The idea is to have Valor Point gearing become an alternative path to normal-mode gearing.
This guide covers the following types of loot:
[
Live
Raid Lockout Changes Being Tested in Taiwan and Korea, Other Regions Someday
So in Taiwan and Korea lockout timers are going to be adjusted to reset twice a week--the interesting news is that these may come to other regions at some point. This is a pretty significant change in store, though they do not have a time frame yet for US or EU regions.
The new raid lockout changes for Taiwan and Korea adjust the lockout timers for the patch 4.0 and 4.2 raids. The lockout timers for these raids will now reset twice weekly instead of once. These raid lockout changes are being made to allow players to raid more often and get more chances at epic loot drops. Players will be able to down current Cataclysm raid bosses twice a week, accelerating players’ progression.
We are testing these new raid lockout changes in Taiwan and Korea first. Our goal is to expand this change to other regions in the future, but we don’t have anything further to announce at this time with regard to North American implementation.
Live
BlizzCon 2011: Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator, Today's Panels, and More
Today was another huge day, so we have combined this post into a day two guide--nothing was quite big enough to stand out on its own.
However, we have some pretty big news here at Wowhead. All weekend, we had a huge focus on Mists of Pandaria, and our team manned up and worked overtime on a special project.
Even though the new talents are going to be changed and retooled, we have built an initial version of
a Mists of Pandaria talent calculator
! This was just a
huge
team effort, pretty much everyone worked very hard on it. Thanks everyone for putting in overtime during BlizzCon weekend just to get a visual representation of the contents.
Visit the Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator
.
Oh, and Noxy was also awesome and drew a comic about her feelings about Mists of Pandaria. She thinks you might find it similar to other games on the market...
Mists of Pandaria Talents & Talent Calculator
As we said above,
we made a Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator
! Check it o
Live
4.3 Preview: The Dragon Soul Raid And Transmogrification Rules
The Dragon Soul Raid
World of Warcraft patch 4.3 will offer players the opportunity to take the fight to Wyrmrest Temple and beyond, assisting Thrall and the Dragon Aspects as they seek to bring an end to the Black Dragonflight once and for all. 10- and 25-person raids will get to take on Deathwing himself, with three levels of difficulty to consider and epic gear to claim.
Forged by Deathwing during the War of the Ancients, the Dragon Soul harnessed the power of the other dragonflights, until it was ultimately destroyed. After recovering a version of the artifact from the Caverns of Time, Thrall and the allied dragonflights now rally at Wyrmrest Temple in a desperate bid to use its might to defeat Deathwing.
Created by the titans as a sanctuary for all Dragonkind, the crumbling Wyrmrest Temple is now the final hope for the forces allied against the black dragon Neltharion, once the Earth-Warder and protector of Azeroth, now Deathwing the Destroyer. It is here that the remaining aspects -- Alexstrasza, Ysera, Nozdormu, Kalecgos, and Thrall -- have gathered to empower the Dragon Soul -- Azeroth's last chance to stop the great behemoth. As
Live
Firelands Changes Coming for Heroic and Normal Modes
Much like the nerfs to tier 11 content, Firelands is about to go through some of its own next week; as usual, Blizzard's logic is solid. It's nothing against those who have completed the content, they want more players to see more bosses before they become obsolete. But how do you feel? Is this too soon, as Ragnaros might say--or just right? Where are you at in progression with your guild?
With the final showdown against Deathwing approaching, we’ve been keeping a close eye on players' progress through the current Firelands raid content. Before patch 4.3 is released, we want groups who are working on Heroic-difficulty content to be able to get as close to Ragnaros as possible, and we want players who are tackling normal progression to be able to experience as many of the encounters as they can. To achieve these goals, we’ll be toning down the difficulty of both normal and Heroic raids through hotfixes in the coming weeks. In general, we plan to reduce health and damage of all raid bosses in both normal and Heroic Firelands by around the same percentage we brought difficulty down for the original Cataclysm raids when Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2) wa
Live
Heroic Ragnaros Receives a Major Nerf
With only seven US guilds and thirty-seven guilds killing Ragnaros on heroic mode in 25-man, it was inevitable that Ragnaros would get a nerf. The fight was hard and many guilds three healed it for their kill, mine included.
Tonight, the nerfbat finally landed. Mid-attempt for many, Ragnaros' health was reduced--it's a fight based on health percentages for phase transitions, so this will reduce the second phase probably by an entire seed phase, greatly reducing the encounter's difficulty. Additionally, phase four--the heroic mode phase--allows Ragnaros to heal up for 50% of his health. With his overall health changed this much, it means he'll heal up for a lot less.
On heroic mode, Ragnaros now has 74.2 million on 10-man; on 25-man, it's now 246.9 million from its previous 290 million.
Prenerf Kill Statistics
Taken from
Wowprogress
, here are the statistics prenerf for kills in Firelands. Expect them to change
drastically
this week.
25-man Heroic Mode Kills
H: Beth'tilac (25): 682 (16.14%)
H: Lord Rhyolith (25): 1204 (28.49%)
H: Alysrazor (25): 581 (13.75%)
H: Shannox (25): 2040 (48.27%)
H: Baleroc (25): 428 (10.
Live
Transmogrification Guides, Part 1: Tier Armor (Updated for 5.4.7)
Wowhead is home to the unique
Transmog Set database
and we've got a popular set of transmog guides to help you find your perfect set!
This guide covers the basics of transmogrification, all Tier sets, and how to acquire them. We've include many links to our transmog sets, which can be filtered by each tier and include matching belt and boot options. On each transmog page, we also have new
Filter this Set
buttons up by the
View in 3D
button that opens the set in a new page where you can apply all sorts of filters and view sources for each potential item.
Check out the complete updated series of Transmogrification Guides:
PvE and PvP Tier Armor
Lookalike Tier Without Class Restrictions
Dungeon Armor
Quest Armor
[url=http:
Live
News Round Up: Tyrande Whisperwind, Tier 11 Acquisition, and More
It was an unusually slow Friday today, but it looks like Blizzard has posted the latest story to their lore section--this one is on Tyrande, one of the more overlooked leaders in World of Warcraft's lore scene.
In some exciting Wowhead news, we have a sweepstakes coming up next week that will give our users a chance at some fabulous gaming gear. We'll talk more about that once it's live, but I figured I'd give everyone a little heads up!
On Epics for Casual Raiders
We've offered players who don't raid a reasonable way to gear up, and achieve high levels of power. The JP/VP system makes a lot of sense to us, and gives everyone a pretty good personal progression track in addition to loot drops, and we feel pretty good about the system as it stands. That doesn't necessarily mean that we think that full sets are a necessary part of that picture, though.
We still want to preserve some of the most prestigious PvE loot for players who face down raid content (even if it's a tier behind), and we feel that completing a tier set means that a raid needs to fit in there somewhere. That design makes sense to us, and we want to preserv
Live
News Round Up: Heroic Firelands Hotfixes and More
There were a lot of changes to Firelands tonight--in particular, heroic Baleroc and Majordomo have significantly less HP along with changed fight dynamics.
Heroic 25-man Baleroc is now 196 million down from 217 million while heroic 25-man Majordomo is now 432 million health.
This seems like it's less of a nerf like we first reported and more of a "change."
For example, in addition to lowering health, on Baleroc they also reduced the rate at which stacks are gained from Torment. This makes the fight much harder to heal, requiring either two tanks or more healers from a usually one tank and four healer fight. This changes the fight's dynamic completely.
Heroic Ragnaros Kill Video
Making good on their promise to post their Ragnaros kill video after another guild downed the fight,
Paragon
posted it tonight. Can you count how many healers they used? Hint: not many.
Diablo 3 Beta Slated For By September 30th
A MvP poster said that the beta is supposed to go live by September 30th on the forums today... While this isn't a Blizzard employee, it is someone who knows more than a regular poster w
Live
News Roundup: Hotfixes, Honor Compensation, and Heroic Ragnaros
Paragon got world first heroic Ragnaros which is by no means a small feat! Over 500 tries later, the Firelord was downed. Other than that, we have a huge news round up and some hotfixes which were just posted.
July 19
General
The frequency at which players can use /yell, /say, and any emotes is now throttled to prevent excessive spamming of chat logs from occurring.
Classes
Death Knights
Improved Death Strike now provides 40/80/120% bonus damage, up from 30/60/90%, and a 10/20/30% critical strike bonus, up from 3/6/9%.
Druids
Flight Form now cancels the Leyara’s Locket buff.
Moonfire will now generate Lunar Energy when crossing from Solar to Lunar on the Eclipse bar.
Dungeons & Raids
All bosses in The Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent, and Throne of the Four Winds once again award Valor Points in all raid sizes and difficulties. 10-player bosses award 35 Valor Points, while 25-player bosses award 45 Valor Points. This change does not apply to Argaloth in Baradin Hold. More informati
Live
News Round Up: Latest Hotfixes, Honor Reimbursement, Baine Bloodhoof, and Firelands Talk
The honor reimbursement is still on track for happening next week--if you bought a piece of season 9 gear before it became season 10 ilevel, you will be receiving 4000 honor as compensation.
Otherwise, we have tons of blue posts to share with you. There are a lot of
Firelands
ones, specifically about the design of the encounters and their difficulty. There's also a new story for the lore fans out there involving Baine Bloodhoof.
Update @ 9:40PM CST: Latest 4.2 hotfixes have just been posted!
Latest 4.2 Hotfixes (7/12)
July 12
Classes
Pet Defensive stance will no longer cause the pet to assist the player while a vanity pet is active.
Druid
Rake should again be able to trigger Primal Fury.
Dungeons & Raids
Firelands
Characters who make for a good Dinner Time should no longer be ported to Ancient Core Hounds they are not in combat with when the ability’s effects end.
Fire Scorpion and Flamewaker corpses no longer provide loot or reputation when they’re eaten by Hell Hounds and Fire Turtles.
Live
Firelands Normal Mode and Baradin Hold Boss Strategies
Today we have a list of the boss encounters in
Firelands
along with their strategies--the videos are from our affiliated site,
Tankspot
, and the strategies mostly written by Wowhead with some of TS' strategies mixed in. Hopefully this helps out those of you who are looking to engage and start clearing the zone this reset; it's a fairly easy zone, but it can be hard to progress past a certain point for a lot of guilds.
Remember that
Occu'thar
is also finally live, as the PvP season has started. This means you have an easy loot pinata to check out, even if you don't regularly raid, so be sure to check out
Baradin Hold
this week.
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