Ask a Beta Tester: Draenei, titles, and more glyph discussion

Any new storylines for the Draenei?
I haven't seen any major representation for them throughout Northrend, no massive plots just focusing on them, but they do have a presence and they are right there alongside the Alliance and the Argent Crusade. In some of the early quests, you do some unraveling of a cultist plot, and it's the Draenei fueling the investigation. Apparently thousands of years of the Legion trying to infiltrate your ranks makes you pretty good at sniffing out spies. A lot of their quests are that sort of thing, lending support to the Alliance rather than leading the charge like they did in Outland.
There are a few other quests that show that the Draenei are starting to grow accustomed to Azeroth, and are settling into a calmer life there. They're not fleeing exiles anymore. Azeroth is home to a lot of them these days, so they'll fight Azeroth's fight, and some of them just plain want to live life. Explore and go on whimsical adventures like the rest of us.
Jake asked...
Are Prot Paladins having less downtime now with the buff to Blessing of Sanctuary?
Most definitely. The effect on Blessing of Sanctuary is incredible, and makes Protection Paladins even more powerful at AOE grinding, though I haven't found many spots to do that yet since the 'end game' zones are not currently open. There's bound to be a fantastic Undead-grinding location in Icecrown, but we can't get there yet. Downtime in 5-man dungeons is dramatically better as well, it vastly helps 'mana starvation' from being overgeared for a dungeon. You won't need to get half naked to tank something below your gear level anymore, thankfully. For those of you not familiar with the updated Blessing of Sanctuary, and since the Wowhead link lacks the most recent version of the ability, here's the spell description:
"Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3% for 10 min. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of maximum mana. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time."
It's an amazing tank blessing now, for all of the tanking classes.
onetrueping asked...
I can haz rep?
No rep for you!
Everyone that has ever existed asked a bunch of glyph questions, so I'll try to give a rundown.
As I said yesterday, you can use 3 Major and 3 Minor glyphs. If you are a Scribe you get an extra glyph slot. You can only use one of each individual glyph, so you can't use three Glyphs of Renew, for example. To slot a new glyph, you must destroy the old one, just like gems. You cannot remove them without destroying them. You cannot change them without destroying them. You probably can't put a Minor Glyph in a Major Glyph slot but we don't know this for sure, since zero Minor Glyphs have been implemented as far as we know. Glyphs are used via purchasing the physical glyph from a Scribe, right clicking on it, then clicking an empty circle on your glyph pane. Yes, Scribes can put glyphs on the auction house. If you missed yesterday's Ask a Beta Tester and didn't see the picture of the page in your spellbook, here it is again. The large circles are for Major glyphs, the smaller ones are minor.

Meethan asked...
Is Hammer of Righteousness a spammable ability?
It has a 6 second cooldown, so you can't tank just by smashing your face on your Hammer of the Righteous button. You'll be using it regularly in a rotation with your other tanking abilities, but you won't be using it exclusively.
Aquen asked...
Is Honor going to be reset or just arena points?
I do not believe we have been given a definitive answer on this, but Honor wasn't reset with the release of The Burning Crusade. I don't imagine it would be reset with Wrath of the Lich King. If that changes, we'll keep you updated.
roadcloak asked...
If I already have a title and I qualify for a retroactive title via achievements, or gain a new title later, do I get a choice on which to keep? Can I later swap to the one I want the most?
Gaining a new title doesn't get rid of an old one, unless it's something like Arena titles which only last for an arena season. All titles that you earn are added to a dropdown menu. You can see an example from my current title pane below. I fail at getting retroactive titles on my main apparently, but it shows off the menu decently enough. You can only choose one at a time.

That's all for us today, hopefully it helped clear a few things up! Keep the questions coming, and we'll do the same with the answers. Just leave any questions you might have in the comments section below!
Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Wrath of the Lich King, Inscription






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Nick S Sep 1st 2008 11:09AM
How is spirit affecting Arcane Mages in the beta? Is it stackable, how much can be found on available gear, and what kind of effect does it have on DPS?
Roxton Sep 1st 2008 11:34AM
I did actually reply to your comment on this the last time you posted it, so ctrl-c, ctrl-v:
The original plan for the arcane tree was to have awesome DPS at the expense of mana efficiency, and to combat this by having mana batteries in the raid and lots of spirit (with things like mage armour and arcane meditation to allow regeneration while casting). There were also arcane talents to convert spirit into spell damage. Thus arcane would be a weaker tree in starting raids, as you couldn't fit enough spirit, int AND damage and hit.crit ect on to your gear, but in larger raids where you might have two shadow priests ect, and better gear, it would suddenly become extremely strong. This was the idea, as far as we know, for TBC too, but they buggered that over with the removal of damage tax for fire and frost (which was a good thing ofc, it just had a bad side effect because they didn't re-level arcane). Now, it looks as though we're going to get some spirit on gear anyway, but we no longer have the talents to convert it into damage. So it's all a bit confused.
So in answer to your questions:
Yes, spirit is stackable for mages, but only because of mana issues, and we don't know how those are going to turn out - the arcane tree has changed to be a lot more mana friendly (no more empowered arcane missiles for instance).
As for the gear, as we're sharing gear with priests now because the designers are too lazy to do proper itemisation, I'm guessing we'll have a lot of spirit. However, we haven't seen much gear yet.
As for what kind of effect it has on dps: for mages, none at all. There was originally an arcane talent that converted 50% of your spirit to spell damage, but that's gone now. All spirit means now is that you'll be able to do your dps for longer.
dotorion Sep 1st 2008 11:09AM
Does Northrend have a 'level requirement' like Outlands ?
I mean, there is a level requirement to enter the Dark Portal. Is the same true for the boats/zeppelins/goblin submarines/whatever gets you to Northrend ?
lehtinen Sep 1st 2008 11:27AM
They said in one of the 'Ask a Beta Testers' that no, there is not a level requirement but there will be no content(Quests, etc.) until level 68+.
Edboy Sep 1st 2008 12:26PM
68
Drakkenfyre Sep 1st 2008 11:10AM
Incoming 10 questions still asking if you can remove/swap out/change Glyphs, lol, j/k.
TTFK Sep 1st 2008 11:43AM
This should answer some of those questions: A 1-300 Inscription guide is on the wiki now:
http://www.wotlkwiki.info/index.php/Guide/Inscription
Drakkenfyre Sep 1st 2008 12:33PM
I was referring to the fact that despite being answered over and over, people are still asking if Glyphs can be swapped out or changed, lol.
And that guide is nice, however it's only a leveling guide, and not a FAQ for Glyphs in general.
Roxton Sep 1st 2008 11:23AM
I'd just like to point out that the title changing system has always been like that. This is supposed to be ask a BETA tester, not http://www.wowinsider.com/category/ask-wow-insider/
Iwanttobeasleep Sep 1st 2008 12:44PM
I'd like to point out this has already been pointed out, and addressed.
obo Sep 1st 2008 2:35PM
I'd like to point, but I lost all my fingers in a trolling accident.
lolwut Sep 1st 2008 11:16AM
Ok so with glyphs, they can't be casually changed around?
For example if I respec + change my gear accordingly for *pvp* (but use pve glyphs + do pve) and face an equal opponent, am I doomed to fail just because the opponent has an advantage with glyphs? e.g. reduced cd on stuns which can win an arena match.
I'm really worried, it's not really like gems, but really defines your goal, disallowing you to do something different :S
Neko Ali Sep 1st 2008 11:28AM
Well, how 'swappable' glyphs are is going to depend a lot on how much it will cost to produce them. If it costs very little money to replace a glyph, and especially if they stack like scrolls do, you could easily swap between your pvp set and your raiding set, or put in a glyph for a fight the way you might drink a protection potion to deal with a boss's elemental damage.
On the other hand, if a major glyph turns out to be a serious investment like a blue or purple gem is, then you won't want to be changing them. So the real question will be, how much will glyphs cost?
lolwut Sep 1st 2008 12:07PM
I'm having to pay 100g a week on respecs alone just so I can enjoy the content of pvp, even with 1 respec 50g is more than enough, but having to pay for 6 additional glyphs on a 'cycle' with price fluctuating/lack of the item I need - it's not as reliable and wouldn't look foward to that...
frank Sep 1st 2008 12:39PM
I don't remember the source, but I believe a Blue posted that swapping out glyphs was expected to be rather cheap. I'm thinking like 5-10g each (after the market settles down a few months in at least).
There's cheap enough that they gave swaping glyphs a one-hour cooldown.
vlad Sep 1st 2008 11:16AM
roadcloak is dumb :)
its the same way titles are handled now and have been handled for over a year.
RogueJedi86 Sep 1st 2008 11:44AM
Not dumb, just uninformed. Blizzard has made titles so rare, that 95% of your player base has had no experience with them, and wouldn't know how they're handled. That's Blizzard's fault, not roadcloak's.
Legather Sep 1st 2008 11:17AM
Are we seeing (m)any 2h weapons that are more inclined towards DK tanking: a 2h axe or polearm with parry rating or a 2h sword with defence rating for example? Or are DK tanking stats being mostly awarded through armour?
Does a DK dual wielding 'traditional' 1h tanking weapons experience an advantage in this regard?
Malkeior Sep 1st 2008 1:08PM
I wouldn't think that Blizzard would make a 2h tanking weapon group just for DK's if they can avoid it.
RogueJedi86 Sep 1st 2008 11:22AM
You say the new Blessing of Sanctuary is a great thing for tankadins, but wouldn't the lack of reflective damage on it now hurt aoe-adins more than it'd help? If you don't have problems with mana, that lack of extra aoe is gonna hurt.