The Queue: Soul Shard parade
by Alex Ziebart 
Apr 3rd 2009 at 4:00PM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.In yesterday's intro, I mentioned WoW Insider's April Fool's joke. Sillily (it's a word now), I didn't actually include a link to it, and there were people writing that they had no idea that we even did a joke and couldn't find it. Well, here it is! Now, let's begin, shall we?
Sorano asked...
"In the Argent Tournament, is it possible to champion other cities than the ones attached to your race and faction? Could my Tauren Warrior try and earn the favor of Gnomeregan to obtain a sweet Mechano Strider? I've always wanted one of those for my tauren warrior."
Your Tauren isn't going to be able to get a Mechanostrider, sorry. You can only champion the races on your overall faction. In your case, you can only champion Horde races. You'll need to do Tauren first, then when you've 'finished' with the Tauren you can choose to branch out to the others. At least, that's how it worked when I was doing it on an earlier iteration of the PTR. I don't think it's changed, though.
Somewhat related to this question: There were people in the comments yesterday suggesting you couldn't champion a race until you were Exalted with them, and that's just not true. You don't need to be Exalted with anyone here. In fact, part of the purpose of this event is to help you get Exalted with them without slaving away in the runecloth mines.
Doulmagnus asked...
"Is the same thing as the ammo bags gonna happen to the warlock soul shard bags since they are upping the base number of shards to 32, which is the biggest bag you can get right now for them. Is so, why make a pattern for the bag available only after grinding out Ebon Hand rep?"
The ammo change and the Soul Shard change are working in two entirely different ways. Soul Shards aren't stacking differently like ammo. Soul Shards still stack one at a time, but you can only carry a maximum of 32 Soul Shards at a time. This is because they changed how Drain Soul works. You have a chance to generate a Soul Shard every time Drain Soul ticks, so if they didn't put an upper limit on the number of shards you generate, your bags would fill up with them unless you had a mod deleting them all as they were created.
A raiding Warlock will probably still want to carry an Abyssal Bag around for extra room for all of the shards. The non-raiding non-PvPing warlock probably doesn't need a big bag like that, because you probably don't need 32 shards.
Jobu asked...
"I have a new question that I don't think I've seen the answer to anywhere. Does the +10% XP bonus that the Bind on Account Heirloom shoulders give apply to leveling hunter pets? I'd like to get some confirmation before dropping the emblems on them. Thanks!"
I don't think it applies to pet, but it's nearly impossible to outlevel your Hunter pet these days, they need dramatically less XP than you do to level up. If you're leveling your Hunter, yes, buy the Heirloom shoulders. They're wonderful. If you're a level 80 Hunter thinking about buying Heirloom shoulders for the purpose of leveling up new pets, no, it's not worth it.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: Warlock, Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
SeanOr101 Apr 3rd 2009 4:07PM
Good questions, Good Answers.
Happy Friday everyone!
Raaj Apr 3rd 2009 4:10PM
Recruit-a-Friend's triple monster kill XP works for hunter pets, so I'd imagine the bonus on heirloom shoulders does as well.
Jillemixie Apr 3rd 2009 4:14PM
Well, the pet was "recruited" so to speak, but it is NOT wearing the shoulders.
Raaj Apr 3rd 2009 4:18PM
He's not wearing any of my other gear either, but he's certainly receiving a bonus from it.
Shinn Apr 3rd 2009 6:14PM
Pets do NOT receive bonus XP. Just checked on my 78 hunter and came here to post.
Hollowheart Apr 3rd 2009 4:21PM
Speaking of soul shards. What's the chance of Drain Soul creating a Soul Shard?
Barbasol Apr 3rd 2009 6:04PM
Last I checked on the PTR (a few weeks ago) it was around 33% so about a shard every 3 ticks or 9 seconds. If you are just farming shards, it doesn't seem to help that much as you can instead just kill a mob in that amount of time and then you get loot as well. That's actually good though, gathering shards should not be trivialized. And easier farming would just be a workaround... what we need is to be able to gather enough during raids/pvp that farming isn't needed.
This change seems like it will mainly come into play on bosses during drain soul executes. It remains to be seen how well this will help progression for non-affliction locks who want to optimize dps.
PvP still needs help. I'd like to see Drain Soul tick every second to make it more "bursty" and desirable to use in pvp. Waiting 3 seconds for a tick is just too long. The chance to get a shard could also be increased for honor targets, as we really need to be getting multiple shards per target to prevent shard loss in PvP.
XeroThree Apr 3rd 2009 9:03PM
Just a thought about gaining a 'soul' shard every tic / few tics... doesn't each mob / being only have the one soul to steal? How can you capture a soul into muliple shards? When a soul is sacrificed to summon a deamon, its the whole soul. Now it seems its like 'Pssst Hey Mr.Felhound, I'll give you a little now, and a little later if your good... if not, no soul for you! Come back one year!'
Seems a little off. Treating it like a craftable regant, not a stolen soul, might as well buy em at a vendor, instead of farming shards, farm coin and buy em. No differance.
Balius Apr 3rd 2009 11:47PM
Think of your soul like jelly, and a soul shard like a jar. You're scooping out a portion of that jelly into a container, creating smaller units from a larger mass.
The change is, apparently, so warlocks trying hard content don't have to occassionally leave to gather soul shards if a boss keeps wiping the raid.
rosencratz Apr 4th 2009 1:32AM
@ Xerothree - I think you'll find that in practice there is a big difference. For one, running out of reagenets is a pain in the ass, where as we can replenish our shards on the run now.
Your argument is confusing though, seems like your disagreeing with both the mechanic and the "rp" reasons as to how it works and use both factors to argue the same point?
Personally i'd rather drain soul a couple of times during trash pulls than go kill 32 things or spend hard earnt gold.
Just consider this, the shard has always been called a shard, it's always been suggested that we were only getting fragments of the soul and so that's just fine, it's not like we're getting truelly powerful demons to summon to justify sacrificing whole souls for either so that covers the "RP" reasons and practicallity helps cover the mechanics... untill the next change ofcourse.
Leejin Apr 3rd 2009 4:14PM
Yes, the shoulders work for you pets... Pet's XP is factored by 1/16th that of the Hunter's overall XP. So, whatever kill XP you gain, 1/16th is given to your pet.
elstor Apr 4th 2009 9:22AM
It was changed right around WotLK to be 10%, to make it faster and easier to calculate
Murdock Apr 3rd 2009 4:17PM
Who is the guild of the month winner? Inquiring minds want to know!
Rob Apr 3rd 2009 4:19PM
Second that you should not buy shoulders just for leveling pets at 80. It takes about 5 hrs or so of questing or whatever to get the pet to ding 80 (from 75). Best way? Run heroics where you overgear it (so the lose of dps from the pet isn't detrimental to the group).
Pfooti Apr 3rd 2009 4:21PM
I'm currently leveling a hunter with the BtA shoulders (almost have the heirloom bow, too). I'm able to keep two pets leveled with me as I go through everything, so it seems like they're getting plenty of XP.
Jonathan Apr 3rd 2009 4:25PM
The 32-slot soul shard bag is the Abyssal Bag, not the Ebon Shadowbag.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41597
Alex Ziebart Apr 3rd 2009 4:38PM
You're right, my bad. Thank you!
Jason Apr 3rd 2009 4:46PM
Indeed it is. One thing Alex said confuses me. he said, "A raiding Warlock will probably still want to carry an Abyssal Bag around for extra room for all of the shards. The non-raiding non-PvPing warlock probably doesn't need a big bag like that, because you probably don't need 32 shards." (I fixed the quote to list the right bag)
Now Alex, are you saying the max number of Soul Shards will be limited to bag size? Seems to me that Blizzard has said that they're considering changing shards to be a Unique (32) item. If the Shards don't stack and if you can create multiple shards off a single mob based on the new Drain Soul mechanics, then isn't it possible that a non-raiding warlock without an Abyssal Bag could wind up filling their bags with Soul Shards? Sounds to me like every warlock would need to carry an Abyssal Bag in order to prevent almost one and a half of their Haris Pilton's Gigantiuqe Sacks from filling with shards, which is crazy.
What needs to happen is for the shards to be Unique (32) _and_ stackable. Then warlocks won't have to carry a soul bag around, raiding or otherwise. The changes to Quivers are making them just as pointless so it's obviously not that big of a deal to make soul bags a useless pattern as well.
Alex Ziebart Apr 3rd 2009 4:56PM
@Jason
No, it's not tied to bag size. I'm saying someone that doesn't need 30+ shards can just stop spamming Drain Soul while questing and not generate tons of the things. :P
Karilyn Apr 3rd 2009 9:19PM
@Alex Ziebart
Personally, I think they should not make a upper cap on the number of soul shards at all, and instead make it so that you can ONLY keep soul shards in soul bags. And make the Voidwalker quest at level 10 give you an 8 slot soul shard bag.
That way, it scales when you level, it doesn't flood over into other bags, and leaves open the possibility for larger soul bags in later expansions.