Posts with tag Glyph

When I came back to World of Warcraft during Mists of Pandaria after a lengthy WoW break, a lot of things had changed. But the biggest mental shift, on my part, was taking in the way the former talent trees had turned into a system of specializations, talents, and glyphs. While the first two were simple enough -- you only have three (or four) specializations and a choice of three talents at each tier -- glyphs presented a dizzying array of options to modify my gameplay. And while the in-game UI nagged me about initially picking a specialization or selecting a talent when I had the option, the fact that it didn't nag me about glyphs meant I could very easily ignore them while happily leveling -- and I suspect plenty of players, new and returning, have been in the same boat.

So today we're going to talk glyphs: just what they are, what they can do for you, and whether you even need to bother them while you're leveling. Oh, let's just skip to the end, shall we? The answer to whether you need them is only if you want to bother with them. For all the details, read on!

It's human to get upset about things. And sometimes, it's human to get upset about the most trivial things, because they're the safest things to get upset about. I often view World of Warcraft through this lens. Indeed, I view it through a great many lenses, because it's impossible to not apply my life and my experiences to everything I encounter in this world from events of great personal significance or global importance down to the video games I play. And it would be fair to say that World of Warcraft has more than a passing importance in my life, considering where you're reading this.

The recent change on the patch 5.4 PTR changing the Glyph of the Weaponmaster was, in real terms, completely insignificant. A cosmetic glyph in the first place, the idea that it worked with legendaries was nice, but hardly significant. I mean, I play the game now and I can't use my legendaries, so what changes? Realistically, nothing changes. And yet, I wasn't merely disappointed by the change. I was outright enraged by it, far more so than I have been by direct nerfs to my class of choice.

Part of it is due to attachment -- we invest time and effort into these avatars of ourselves, after all. But in the end, much of my anger was rooted in the fact that this was something small (in relative terms, since all of WoW can be considered small compared to many of the shocks and calamities of our actual lives) and harmless, that gave our characters nothing in terms of power or ability, that imbalanced absolutely nothing in terms of gameplay, and yet it was still taken from us. Sometimes, the smallest cuts hurt more entirely because they are small.

Perculia of Wowhead has been extremely busy digging up cosmetic glyphs and transmogrification sets. You can see several of the cosmetic glyphs in action in the video above, as well as on the original Wowhead post, and we are very impressed with several of them, particularly the Shaman Rain of Frogs and Glyph of Compy! We can imagine people Hexing a mob three or four times in an attempt to get the pink compy instead of the red one, or vice versa.

The new item level 496 sets look great, too, and would be just as great for alts as they would for a main's shiny new set. They are obtained both via rare drops and from collecting up the Timeless Coins and purchasing them from vendors, and it's also possible to get direct drops from both rares and chests. What's your preferred set? Personally, I honestly think the cloth set is one of the first ones I've actually liked from this expansion. Only the highlighted sets are specific to the Timeless Isle, the others are all looks we're used to from sources like Mogushan Vaults or Valor Points.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill attempts many experiments both on live and PTR realms.

Last week, I had this whole thing planned to talk about the Thunderstruck scenario of damage with the olde Glyphe of Lyfe Tapp style Archimonde's Vengeance. But literally before the deadline, the PTR builds finally caught up with the PTR patch notes and Archimonde's Vengeance was completely replaced by the new Archimonde's Darkness. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like I could spend at least 1000 words on a double cooldown; today, I can't even break 150.

But before we get seriously into settled number-tweaking things like the datamined loot, let's talk about some other changes on the PTR.

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Variations on the glyph system are a subject I think about all the time. I have ever since Path of the Titans was announced and then scrapped. I understand why it was scrapped, but it did disappoint me. It sounded cool, and I wanted to play around with the options it would provide. Recently, forum poster Madcapmcgee has asked all of us what kind of glyphs we might want to see introduced to the current system. Do we want cosmetic glyphs? If so, what would we want? Vanity glyphs? Quality of life glyphs with no direct effect on combat? And what do we want for our prime and major glyphs?

For myself, I want a glyph that lets me dual wield polearms with Titan's Grip. I have a Hellreaver, and dang it, I want to swing two of those beasts around. (Well, technically, I have a Kiril, but transmogrification means I get to have a Hellreaver.) I'd also like to see a glyph that reduces the cooldown on Heroic Leap out of combat so that I could use it like Blink, a glyph that caused me to grow every time I hit an enraged state (which is why I grabbed that Kiril that was on the DE chopping block, frankly), and finally, I'm dying for a glyph that makes Mortal Strike automatically add the Rend effect so that I never have to Rend manually again.

What do you, the viewers at home, think? What glyphs do you want to see in... the future!?!? (Imagine this in my best Criswell impression.)

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World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is the next expansion, raising the level cap to 90, introducing a brand new talent system, and bringing forth the long-lost pandaren race to both Horde and Alliance. Check out the trailer and follow us for all the latest MoP news!

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to my email at gregg@wow.com.

We've recently looked at builds for protection and retribution, so let's continue that trend and take a look at glyphs. I'm going to review all of them, as we're getting pretty close to Cataclysm, and I'm going to also review them in a more global context instead of talking about what is going to help you on hard-mode Lich King.

The way I've set it up is that everything that you're likely going to want without question has an asterisk next to it; those are pretty much things you'll want to take. If you look through the major and minor glyphs, you'll notice that there aren't very many marked as such. There's a reason for that. We just don't have that many spectacular glyphs that are useful in all situations for those types. That's not to say the other glyphs are bad (well, some are, but we'll get to that), but they're more situational and require some choice on your part.

Back in the day, before Wrath was even released, I had incorrectly speculated that there would be three tiers of glyphs in the expansion. It was my very first post on WoW.com, and my mistake was clearly pointed out to me by some of the helpful commenters. It turns out that I was actually right -- it just took Blizzard a few years to get around to adding the extra tier of glyphs.

There are now three types of glyph: prime, major and minor. Prime glyphs aren't necessarily fun; they just buff us. Major glyphs are sort of the utility glyphs that give us a measurable benefit, but they're not necessarily mandatory. Minor glyphs are just for fun things that make our lives easier. Luckily for us, many of the new Cataclysm glyphs are available on the beta, complete with the shiny new glyph interface. While scribes may be complaining about their business models going out the window, I'm busy drooling over some of the new glyph options we have available.

Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 13 now live!)as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.

It's been a few weeks since my last beta post. I feel like I'm back in grammar school at good ol' St. Louise de Marillac, "forgive me readers, it's been four weeks since my last beta post. Since then I've been mean to my guild, and I tried to kill my own priest." In game priest, in game! I can't wait to read the letters to the editor about that slip up. Oh well, at least I didn't use the word "casual."

Moving right along to important topics that everyone cares about: beta changes for enhancement shamans! Well, I suppose "everyone" excludes people that are not interested in beta spoilers. Great, two paragraphs in and I've already offended Catholics, priests, and people not interested in beta spoilers. Look on the bright side: at least I didn't use an offensive font this week!

If you are interested in the latest beta changes as they relate to enhancement shamans then please read on. Please note that beyond this point, this post will not further offend your good, wholesome middle Azerothian sensibilities.

The latest patch to the Cataclysm beta has finally added in the revamped glyph UI, sporting the newly implemented Prime Glyphs, a selection window and awesome new convenience features. The new interface has a search box for quickly finding glyphs, expanding categories of prime, major and minor glyphs, and it even shows you what glyphs you have not yet learned.

Personally, I think that the new glyph interface is one of the coolest Cataclysm revamps. The old system of glyphs was an awesome first step, but it has been refined and polished in ways we never could have expected. Check out the gallery of shots below to see what the glyph UI looks like while empty, sporting some glyphs and using the search feature.

Every week, Gold Capped brings you tips on how to make money on the auction house. This article from inscription specialist Steve Zamboni has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

Almost all auction house tactics revolve around the undercut. It may be a single copper, a few silver or a few gold, or a freefall drop down to the price of materials. Regardless of the amount or the frequency, most undercuts share a common misconception: that you're controlling the market with your undercuts. You're not. Your competitor has the control. By undercutting, you've just let your competitor decide your price. You've let your competitor set a cap on your profits -- and more, you've agreed to accept even less with your undercut.

The inscription market sees more than its fair share of this, sometimes on a large scale. The low deposits encourage large number of postings, followed by even larger numbers of cancellations and repostings. Prices fall as each new poster accepts and trumps the previous poster's prices, until the market falls to the cost of materials and the walls go up. The final wall signals a complete loss of market control.

Once it's up, it no longer matters who built the wall. If it's your wall, you can't raise prices until the competition perched above you goes away. If it's not your wall, you can't raise prices on your auctions until someone breaks the wall. Stalemate, and out come the piña coladas.

Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) to write up a guide that will help you make gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail!

Selling glyphs can be very profitable. It requires a lot of addons to work, and the market reacts to competition differently than other markets. However, a lot of auctioneers got their start with it. I know I did!


Glyph toolbox

To successfully sell glyphs, you need to be able to manage 345 different products, each with their own mix of supply and demand. They also don't share the same mats for creation, and there's no really efficient way to pare down that list without costing yourself money. A lot of people will stick to the "core" glyphs (the proper ones for PvE and PvP for each class), hoping that the increased demand will yield higher profitability, however because there are people who do this, the supply for this subset of all the glyphs in the game is also higher.

Long story short, the default UI is not made for managing auctions in this volume. You absolutely need addons. Let's break this down by task, and look at what the addons do for us.

At BlizzCon 2009, we learned of the Path of the Titans, a new alternate advancement system that would see PCs allying with various titan cults in order to gain various character bonuses apart from simply leveling up. At the recent Cataclysm press event, Blizzard announced that they'll be completely scrapping the system.

To offset this, they've chosen instead to work on an overhaul of the glyph system, as they noted they didn't quite get it to where they wanted with Wrath. Here are the basics:

• There will be a new tier of glyphs, currently called "Medium" glyphs, that will provide "fun alterations" to abilities. Major and minor glyphs will act much as they currently do. You'll have 3 of each glyph type at level 85.
• You will no longer have to re-buy glyphs when you respec or rearrange them. Rather, you will will learn each glyph like a skill and be able to swap them at will from a list.
• This list will show all glyphs available to your class, but will only allow you to use the ones you've purchased.