Tanking Changes

by Stagmo, 5 days ago

From MMO Champion:

Crygil wrote:

We are making some adjustments to tank survivability based on what we’re seeing in Icecrown Citadel. We feel this is particularly important in preparation for upcoming Heroic attempts. This is tricky and occasionally subjective, so we might very well make more adjustments as we get even more data. Paladin: Sacred Duty now provides 2 / 4% Stamina, down from 4 / 8% Stamina. The cooldown advantages of the talent remain unchanged. Death Knight: Frost Presence now provides 8% Stamina, up from 6% Stamina. Icebound Fortitude now provides 30% base damage reduction, up from 20% damage reduction. For a geared tank with high defense, this translates to 50% damage reduction, up from 40%. It’s important to note that we aren’t trying to single out paladins here. We like the tank balance of warriors and druids at the moment, and we have a larger sample size of warrior tanks that we can compare. Another solution would have been to buff warriors, death knights and druids and then increase boss damage accordingly. Obviously, that would have been a much larger change with greater risks and a longer delay. Though Ardent Defender is always a possible target for changes, we like that this talent provides such a distinction between warriors and paladins. Rather than have all the tanks have the same health, armor, avoidance and cooldowns, we’d rather have four unique tanking classes rather than just superficial or artistic differences. Yes, that design is harder to balance, but we think class distinction is ultimately more interesting, which is better for the long term health of the game. The goal remains to have all four tanks be viable for any encounter, assuming sufficient gear and skill, and any differences in performance on individual encounters to be minor. “Minor” is obviously a subjective term. Please note that the death knight change will result in a small survivability increase in PvP, which we think is appropriate. We chose it partially with that in mind.

Thank you Diri, Velo, and others!

by Mithoron, 7 days ago

I would like to thank everybody who has donated so far to the guild funds...the few donations we've gotten this week alone will keep the Ventrilo and website servers up for several months!

For those donating, please send me a PM on your real name so I can sort out who has donated. I know Diri and Velo have donated but have a few others whose e-mail addresses I do not recognize and would like to update the Guild Donations page with your recognition and my thanks!

Happy patch day.

by Kishpa, 7 days ago

copy paste from http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22748761862&pageNo=1#1

Dungeons & Raids

•Icecrown Citadel

•Frostwing Halls, the final stronghold of the Scourge and their Lich King, has been added.

•Halls of Stone

•Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted.

•The Forge of Souls

•The Devourer of Souls will now cast Mirrored Souls less often.

•The Spell Reflect ability has been altered on several creatures. It now has a cast time, only has 2 charges, and has a 75% chance of reflecting spells.

•The Nexus

•Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.

•The Old Kingdom

•Elder Nadox now only gets one Ahn’Kahar Guardian during the encounter.

•Jadoga Shadowseeker now only ascends once during the encounter.

•Several enemies between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar have been removed or had their pathing altered.

•Pit of Saron

•Players can now zone back into the instance if they are dead while encounters with Krick and Ick or Forgemaster Garfrost are in progress.

•Utgarde Pinnacle

•Skadi the Ruthless can now be removed from his drake with 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.

•Svala Sorrowgrave now casts Ritual of the Sword 1 time during the encounter, down from 3.

•Vault of Archavon

•Toravon, the latest boss to join the Vault’s giants and masters of the elements, is now accepting challengers in 10- and 25-player formats.

•The Violet Hold

•The time between a boss being defeated and a new portal opening has been decreased.

PvP

•All healing abilities (including items such as potions) will be decreased in effectiveness by 10% when in Battlegrounds, Arenas, or Wintergrasp.

•Arenas

•Season 8 has officially begun featuring all-new rewards!

CLASSES
Druids
•Talents

•Balance



•Earth and Moon: This talent now increases the druid’s spell damage by 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.

Shamans
•Talents

•Elemental Combat

•Shamanism: This talent now provides 4/8/12/16/20% extra spell damage to Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, up from 3/6/9/12/15%, and 5/10/15/20/25% to Lava Burst, up from 4/8/12/16/20%.

Warlocks
•Talents

•Affliction

•Shadow Embrace: This effect can now stack up to 3 times, up from 2. However, the periodic healing reduction effect has been reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10% per application.

•Demonology

•Demonic Pact: The damage bonus granted the warlock by this talent has been increased from 1/2/3/4/5% to 2/4/6/8/10%. The buff granted to a raid or party by this talent remains unchanged.

•Destruction

•Conflagrate: The damage-over-time effect of Conflagrate has been increased to 40% of the spell’s total damage, up from 20%.

•Empowered Imp: The pet bonus damage provided by this talent has been increased to 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.

•Improved Shadow Bolt: Damage done by Shadow Bolt increased by 2/4/6/8/10%, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.

Warriors
•Talents

•Protection

•Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same.

•Devastate: This ability now deals 120% of weapon damage, up from 100% of weapon damage.

•Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.

•Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

User Interface

•The party leader is now referred to as Guide in chat when a group is formed via the Dungeon Finder.

•Fixed a bug where players with Raid Assist capabilities were unable to perform a Ready Check.

•Fixed a bug where the first couple of tutorials were not displaying upon logging into the game.

Items

•New strength-based melee DPS rings are now available from representatives of the Ashen Verdict.

•Tier-9 Sets: The Aspirant vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds have worked out a deal with merchants in Dalaran so that all item level 232 set pieces will now be available on armor vendors in the city. Set pieces which require trophies will still be available for purchase only from vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds.

•Tier-10 Balance Druid 4-Piece Bonus: Fixed a bug to allow for this bonus to properly trigger.

•Tier-10 Elemental Shaman 4-Piece Set Bonus: Redesigned. Successful Lava Burst casts now increase the duration of Flame Shock on the target by 6 seconds.

•Tier-10 Tank Sets: The gloves and chest pieces for warrior, death knight, and paladin tanks have had their stats adjusted slightly to provide additional armor value.

•Tier-10 Warlock 4-Piece Bonus: This bonus should now correctly be applied to the warlock’s pet.

Technical Support

•The cvar ‘processAffinityMask’ controls which CPU cores are available for the World of Warcraft client to use. Previously the game client was limited to 2 cores as a default which players could override in the configuration file. In the past this provided a performance boost on some CPUs and operating systems. We have identified several systems that are experiencing severe performance issues with this restriction and have removed it. Players who would like to restore the old behavior can do so by updating the Config.WTF file by adding: SET processAffinityMask "3".

Site downtime...

by Mithoron, 10 days ago

GL_Support wrote:

UPDATE: 11:05am 1/30/2010 The DDOS attacks to our system we're nearing 1 gigabyte per second this morning and we took more extreme measures to fight the DDOS attack and took Guild Launch offline. The DDOS attack has subsided for the most part and we have verified that systems are operating normally. We will continue to monitor the situation. This DDOS attack has subsided once and then come back so we will have to keep monitoring. We very much appreciate your understanding while we deal with this. DDOS attacks are difficult to defend against and take time to mitigate. If you want to have more information about new releases, system downtime info, beta invites and even t-shirts then follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/guildlaunch ORIGINAL INFO At about 9:20pm Guild Launch experienced a Denial of Service attack that led to very very slow page loads. Our network engineers are taking the appropriate steps to alleviate it. However, it may take some time. Bear in mind that furiously reloading pages will just make matters wore. We very much appreciate your patience while we deal with bad neighbors and build a better fence. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/guildlaunch if you would like to be able to get this sort of info first thing and at a place where we can deliver the news even if there is problem with Guild Launch. It's a great resource for all of us. Plus, we give away T-Shirts sometimes... and provide more info than just downtime info (since that's rare anyway) such as Beta invites and requests for feature input. -Stephen

(View Post) | 0 Replies | (Post Reply)

Feel free to donate to your favorite guild!

by Mithoron, 13 days ago

It is that time of year again where I want to give a reminder if you find yourselves with a few extra dollars to feel free to hit the DONATE! button to the left.

I realize with the expansion coming out and our current economic status less than ideal everybody is strapped for cash, but it's your donations that keep this site, the Ventrilo server, the WWS site, and other guild-related costs going. In the past we have sent flowers in sympathy and get well wishes to members, we have provided real life rewards and prizes, we have helped those in need who never thought to ask of it such as Drkdragon's flood fund.

Looking at the current balance we're fine through the next few months (current balance at $129.00); however, that being said, we've all seen how bad things sometimes happen.

I don't ask everybody to give, and I don't try to single people out; however, if you find it within yourself to be able to even afford a $5.00 donation it will help! And if you cannot, I of all people understand and do not fault anybody for it...so do not feel bad if you cannot help out currently, just keep us in mind in the future!

I would also like to thank those who have offered donations in the past...both previous members of the guild and current, you have all helped out keeping the site and guild running above and beyond and I appreciate all everybody has done for it! Thank you!

Just click the Donate button on the left-hand side and follow the directions!

Thanks again!

Icecrown Citadel 10 mans

by DrRon323, 14 days ago

After considering the amount of content in Icecrown Citadel and that we are dedicating 6 hours of 25 man raid, we have decided to dedicate 6 hours to 10 man content as well.

To accomplish this, we are now scheduling ICC 10 for Saturday and Sunday at 6pm server time. These runs will be three hours each.

ToC will now be scheduled for Mondays at 7pm server time.

Wowhead Cataclysm Guide

by Hamond, 25 days ago

Wowhead released a compiled guide of everything that has been released about the new expansion Cataclysm. You can see it here at Wowhead's Cataclysm Guide

Armory Updates

by Stagmo, 26 days ago

From the World of Warcraft Armory:

Every character profile now has a 3D model viewer that displays the character in his or her currently equipped gear, and accurately displays the character's physical features, hairstyle, and helm/cloak display as they appear in-game. Mousing over the character model window brings up a control panel with the following controls (try it now with the character to the right!):

• Camera controls: To rotate the camera around a character, click and hold the left mouse button while moving the mouse left and right, or click the arrow buttons in the top left of the window. To zoom in and out, use the mouse wheel while hovering over the character window, or click the zoom buttons in the top left of the window. To move the character within the frame, right-click and drag the character in the window (or on the small square in the bottom left corner of the window).
  
• Animations: Each character has a selection of animations that they can perform. Use the arrows next to the animation's name to cycle through them. The available animations are determined by the character's class and currently equipped weapons.
  
• Capture pose: If you are logged in, you can set the default pose of any character on your account. Use the camera and animation controls to create a pose, then click the save icon to set it as the default. All visitors to the character's profile will then see the character in that pose.
  
• Play controls: The rewind, pause, and fast forward buttons allow you to fine-tune a pose for a character.
  
• Fullscreen mode: You can view the character in a fullscreen display against a selection of backgrounds. All controls will continue to function in fullscreen mode.
  
• Embed: You can embed a standalone, interactive version of the character's model viewer in a compatible website, such as a social networking site, guild website, or forum.
  
• Options: Extra options include selecting a background in fullscreen mode and toggling the display of a character's helm, cloak, or tabard.

Here is Antarin's Profile as an example.

Rockets and Deathknights, Oh My!

by Stagmo, 27 days ago

Congrats TEW on our first Kills of Gunship Battle and Deathbringer Saurfang (25 man), and Congrats on I've Gone and Made a Mess!!!

Congrats TEW on our first kill of Lady Deathwhisper (25 man)

by Stagmo, 28 days ago

Congrats TEW on our first kill of Lady Deathwhisper!!!