We might have had more news today -- if Blizzard's beta servers could stay online for more than five minutes consecutively. We've been staring a lot at the "World Server Down" message since Blizzard rolled out patch 8905 late last night (or early this morning, depending on how you look at these things). Let's start today off with more on Inscription. A new beta patch went up last night with a few changes, including....

• "Pomaces" have been renamed "Pigments" and have shiny new icons that look less like dust (they were various colors of enchanting dust icons) and look more like... well, I suppose, pigments.You can judge for yourself what you think they look most like.
  
• New Glyphs for Shamans, Warlocks, and Warriors.
• More Glyphs with realistic, skill level appropriate material costs. (Though the majority of them still need the exact same ink, herb, and one of each kind of parchment.)
• The Glyph cooldown has been changed. Though applying a Glyph still starts an hour cooldown, the cooldown is only for that Glyph, specifically. So if, for example, my Paladin applies Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom, I cannot apply Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom again for an hour. However, I could instantly swap six healing Glyphs for six tanking Glyphs -- I'd just have to wait to switch back to my original healing Glyphs. (And, of course, I'd have to have a new set of healing Glyphs to swap to, as removing them to put in tank-oriented Glyphs would destroy them.)

And, though apparently not new, several people in the comments noted that a Glyph can be removed by shift right-clicking -- however, this still destroys the Glyph in the process.
For more of your beta questions -- and our beta 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.

Cruces asked....

From a healer's point of view, I understand that spells will get a huge casting cost and we loose downranking, but that won't be a biggie in raids where you'll have 2-3 raid mana batteries, but what happens to 5-mans? Will healers be able to cope with this in instances where you may not have a mana battery with you?

I have successfully run 5-man instances in the beta without a mana battery of any sort. It's not impossible, just different. Max rank heals seem to be inching towards a thousand mana a cast around level 70 -- and they'll no doubt be there or higher by level 80 -- but there are some mitigating factors. First up: the change to healing coefficients that came with the switch from +healing and +spell damage to spell power means that all of your heals are hitting harder than they do now. Also, mana regeneration has received a tweak which seems to be helpful... at least a little bit. Instead of a chunk of mana appearing in your mana pool on arbitrary time intervals, mana constantly regenerates. Whenever you have less than a full mana bar, your numbers constantly tick up, up, up.

From a less practical point of view, Blizzard doesn't seem to want to push specific classes on us. Their tanking philosophy these days seems to be that any class should be able to tank efficiently -- so I doubt they're planning on making specific classes required to complete

Promethus asked....

I was wondering about some of the achievements, for the ones like finish every group dungeon in Classic WoW and every raid in classic WoW, do they give you a list of any sort to mark off what ones you have done and ones have not?

Yep! Any achievements with a number of different components has a list which is automatically marked when you complete each component -- see the screenshot above as an example.



Dightkuz asked....

Borean Leather is the new leather type, so I presume there will be an equivalent to Knothide Leather Scraps also, which I guess is Borean Leather Scraps? Considering that Frostweave Cloth can be turned into Bolt of Frostweave at 350 Tailoring, I suppose that Borean Leather Scraps can be turned into Borean Leather at 350 Leatherworking also?

Yes, at 350 Leatherworking skill, you can turn 5 Borean Leather Scraps into 1 Borean Leather.

Andostre asked....

I have some alts that haven't reached 375 in their crafting skills, yet. Am I still going to have to start hunting for Primal Nethers and Primal Mights to get there once the expansion starts? The grinding involved in that will probably net me a level or two, XP which would be more fun to get questing in Northrend. I remember that when Burning Crusade started, many of the recipes that were dungeon and world drops became available through a trainer...

Though I'm not seeing old world patterns (at least not in name), there are plenty of new patterns that use new Northrend materials starting around 350 skill. This should make the trek from 350 to 375... and beyond!... easier, no Primals required.

J asked....

Here's one for the tankadins regarding spell power and gear: with the new stamina = spell power talent, will tankadins absolutely need spell power gear and weapons anymore? I can see the threat generation being enormous if we keep the same mechanics as now, but I noticed that some of the threat talents have attack power figured in. Just wondering if tankadins will now get just as much benefit out stacking a ton of stamina and using what has been thought of as the standard warrior tanking gear with defense, attack power, and a fast, powerful defense weapon and shield as opposed to continuing to stack spell damage?

In my experience, my Paladin, when tanking, tends to wear almost entirely Warrior gear to begin with -- with the exception of a spell damage weapon. Of course this means I wind up with less spell damage, but unless tanking content under my level, it's always been worth it for the extra defensive stats. However, this new talent nearly triples my spell damage in tanking gear -- and I cannot sufficiently sing its praises. More damage (and thus more threat) for the same mana? Mana returns from blocks, dodges and parries with the new Blessing of Sanctuary? Yes, please! There's no aspect of tanking this doesn't help.

Tags: aabt, ask-a-beta-tester, beta, glyph, glyphs, inscription, tanking, tweet-this, wotlk, wotlk-beta, wrath, wrath-beta

Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King, Inscription