Today nearly everyone wanted more detail on the blacksmithing socket patterns we talked about yesterday. In fact, five individuals inquired:

Do blacksmithing sockets stack with enchants?

The answer is yes. (At least for gloves and bracers -- there are currently no enchants available in the game for belts.) Please, there's no need to keep asking. Really!

Orno had a question about a different blacksmithing pattern I didn't know about until he mentioned it:

Is Socket One-hand Weapon able to socket main-hands and is it also BS only?

Though this ability has been data-mined from the expansion files, it isn't currently available from trainers. So the pattern is either a random drop or it simply hasn't yet been added. Either way, we haven't run into anayone who knows it to confirm one way or the other. Sorry, Orno, but you know as much as anyone about this one!

For more of your questions -- and our answers! -- read on! But if you're the sort who wants to avoid spoilers, turn back now. We're aiming to avoid major story spoilers, but this feature is all about beta content and we can't talk about the beta without giving a few things away.

Aurion asked....

I've heard that Rogues will be able to keep their combo points even if the mob is dead and can use them on the next one, is it true?

Though it is impossible to predict what Blizzard may or may not do tomorrow, in the present build, combo points function exactly the way they do on the live realms: the combo points you gain are target-specific.

ironlade asked....

How fast do Death Knights generate runic power? I've been looking at the skills and some are like 50-70 runic power so if the gain of power is slower than rage a lot of the skills are going to be unused.

A Death Knight gains runic power by using runes. You start a round of combat with six runes and their use is primarily limited by their cooldown. In playing my Death Knight, this felt much faster than gaining rage: though you're restricted from immediate use of aiblities requiring runic power, you'll quickly build up

James asked....

What about items such as the Frozen Shadoweave and Primal Mooncloth sets? Sets that rely on whether or not you are healing. Are they the same stats with different set bonuses?

They are unchanged except for the spell power change -- which effects all gear, past and present. If it had +healing on it, it now has spell power. If it had spell damage on it, it now has spell power. The convesion of damage to spell power is about one to one, whereas the conversion of healing to spell power is about two to one. (Before anyone reading this starts to panic, they've greatly improved the coefficients for healing spells -- my heals are hitting significantly harder than they do on live, with all the same gear.) Other stats, however, are the same.

Do you still need to be spec'd to either shadow tailoring or mooncloth to use the other? Does it even matter?

The spec requirement still stands.

We received a couple of questions about vanity pets. Desitine asked...

How does it work with pets that are attached to an item? Like say the bloodsail hat?

and h8rain asked....

Or pets that require reagents?

I don't have any pets that are attached to a specific item, but I do have a couple of Winters' Veil pets that require a reagent to summon. These pets do not go into the pet interface -- they remain an item in your inventory and still require a reagent to summon. This considered, I'd guess that pets that are attached to an actual, usable item would function similarly.

Gune asked....

I remember hearing in a podcast that one of the devs at WWI hinted that we might be getting duel talents specs and be able to switch between them in wotlk. Has anyone heard about this? Did I misunderstand the comment or maybe it was a result of one of my crack-induced colmas? I have not seen anything regarding this in any of the beta info I've read.

You're remembering correctly. At WWI (and some time after), there was public talk of Blizzard implementing some way to have two talent specs per character, to ease the pain caused by respeccing back and forth from PvP to PvE every week. However, there's not a hint of such a feature on the beta realms yet.

Dave, who is clearly losing patience with me, asked....

Are there any changes in Azeroth except SW? Like the Sentinel Hill inn's roof fixed? Lakeshire's bridge? Anything on Horde side?

After taking a whirlwind tour of Azeroth, I can safely say that there's very little changed. There's the new Stormwind Harbor, Dalaran relocated, Naxxramas relocated (and Ebon Hold appeared), and the new Straholme wing to Caverns of Time, and new Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Undercity to send Horde off to Northrend. But towns in Westfall and Redridge are still rebuilding. (Seriously guys, how long does it take to fix a roof or build a bridge? They built a whole harbor in Stormwind while those workers have been slacking off!) Uldum is unchanged. The expidition into Un'goro is still stranded in Un'goro. The Cenarion Circle are still in Silithus fighting off an unending invasion of Silithid.

The old world is relatively static, the old story the same for the benefit, perhaps, of players just jumping in for the first time.

Satanael asked....

I am very interested in playing a Death Knight as a MT in the expansion and I would like to know how they are stacking up in the beta as a tank... do they have what it takes to be a end game tank thus far.

I haven't had the opportunity to do any serious raiding in the beta (as you might guess, everyone's keeping busy questing and leveling), but from the few instances I've run, Death Knights seem to be perfectly capable at tanking. Of course, there's a lot of difference between a casual entry-level 5-man run and an end-game raid: time will tell us whether Death Knights are viable in the long run.

However, it's clear Blizzard wants them to be. Blue poster Ghostcrawler tells us:

1. Our goal in Lich King is for all 4 tanking classes to be viable.
2. We would like for tanking to be a little more fun. I'm going to leave this vague on purpose, but it is definitely a concern.
3. In 5-player instances, most warriors, druids, paladins and death knights should be effective tanks. The healing specs may have a harder time than the dps specs. Arms wariors, Fury warriors, Ret paladins, Ferals and most DKs should do fine.
4. In 5-player heroics, the expectation is that the tank has a heavy investment in tanking talents and appropriate gear. Arms warriors might have trouble tanking a heroic unless they overgear the instance.
5. For raids, we want all 4 tank classes to be viable. If your group has e.g. a Prot paladin and Feral druid as main tanks with appropriate gear and reasonable skill, you should be good to go.
6. This is a shift in philosophy for us. Previously, we sometimes tried to steer Ferals as being better off tanks than main tanks. We also expected specific classes to appear in the raid. Our new assumption is that you might have any of the 4 tanking classes as a tank. We are trying to achieve as much parity as we can among the 4 tanks without making them too similar. If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed.

Tags: aabt, ask-a-beta-tester, beta, tweet-this, wotlk, wotlk-beta, wrath, wrath-beta

Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King, Blacksmithing