Posts with tag 8905

Good Tuesday Morning, everyone. It's a normal maintenance day today, from 5 AM - 11 AM PDT, so we'll all have plenty of time to browse WoW Insider this week. This week was pretty big on Warcraft cakes for some reason, and also featured yet another Beta build. Look below for more of the latest and greatest WoW news of the past week:

Hot News and Features

• As always, be sure to check out our Ask a Beta Tester articles for the answers to your questions about the Wrath of the Lich King Beta.
• Still looking for a place to camp out at midnight on Wrath release day? How about the 7-11?
• Check out our gallery of some of the coolest achievements coming in the expansion.
• Blizzard has removed all those realm first titles from the Beta, for better or for worse. Probably mostly for the better.
• If you're looking to bolster your social network and step up your game in WoW, check out our list of the 10 people you should know (or be).
• Tirion Fordring: Be sure you know all about the man, the myth, and the legend before the expansion goes live!

The inimitable Matthew Rossi, our burly Shaman and Warrior expert, had his hands full with the overwhelming number of Warrior glyphs that popped up in the new Wrath Beta build. Since the few Shaman glyphs this build got me a little excited -- more than the yawn-inducing Paladin ones last week, anyway -- I thought I'd cover this one while Matt does the heavy lifting with the Warrior changes.

Glyph of Water Breathing
Your Water Breathing spell no longer requires a reagent.
An excellent glyph. I'm a huge fan of these no-reagent glyphs for obvious reasons. Although Shiny Fish Scales are abundant and cheap, they do take up bag space. What I like about these types of glyphs is that they'll literally pay for themselves over time because there's a direct cost. The best part of this? It now works exactly like the Warlock spell and can be used as an additional buff in PvP without worrying about running out of Shiny Fish Scales (e.g., it still consumes a reagent in Arenas).

We were just talking about the state of protection warriors in the Beta, and lo and behond, not only do we get a new prot-heavy beta build to try out, but we also get those long sought warrior glyphs to drool over. So what are the big changes? Well, MMO Champion and World of Raids have the lists but some of the standouts are worth mentioning here.

For starters, warriors get a variety of changes aimed at tanking: Warbringer allows a prot warrior to charge in combat, in any stance, Thunder Clap's damage is increased by 50%, and Damage Shield, a new ability, causes warriors to deal damage whenever hit by a damaging attack or when they block an incoming attack equal to 10/20% of block value. With the new way strength adds to block, this is an indirectly scaling with AP ability. Improved Shield Block now is folded into Shield Mastery, Vitality now adds expertise in addition to strength and stamina, and several abilities have had their threat reduced but their direct damage increased to compensate. A change that surprised me greatly was seeing Sword and Board now adding yup to 15% critical strike chance to Devastate in addition to resetting Shield Slam's cooldown and reducing it's rage cost by 100%. This could make devastate a very attractive DPS option in the right gear.

And Shield Wall is back up to 60% damage reduction for 12 seconds. The Improved Shield Wall talent is gone, replaced by Improved Disciplines, which lowers the cooldown on Retaliation, Recklessness and Shield Wall by 60 seconds max.