Posts with tag ask-a-beta-tester

Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, where for one glorious day, we don't have any passenger mount questions! But I know, deep down, there are a thousand more on the horizon.

Elmo asked...

How are Enhancement Shamans shaping up? I heard silly things like Elemental gear is great for them or 2x fast weapons with Flametongue. Are we really gonna make that much of a turn around? In other words, is my hard earned gear all worthless? Not just the epic gems and Strength enchants.

Enhancement Shaman did hit a weird point where that was true, but I don't think it was ever intended that the 'final product' would look that way. There were some Windfury bugs and wonky unfinished tuning that caused that, but as another reader mentioned, the devs are working on getting everything fixed and proper. Things will be a little different from Burning Crusade, but not so much so that Enhancement Shaman are wearing Elemental gear to melee.

Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, with even more passenger mount questions! Don't worry, though. It didn't devour our entire column today. We have plenty more for you! For example, Sorano's question...

What I'd like to know his exactly how much protection warrior dps as changed. All the talents seem too good to be true.

Protection Warriors seems like one of the class/spec combos that have changed the most in Wrath. Their tanking is incredible and a lot more versatile now (all tanks are, actually) but you're asking about DPS and not tanking! Their DPS is good. It's not as high as DPS classes/specs, but it's not abysmal like it used to be. You might actually be DPSing with your shield equipped for the huge Shield Slam crits rather than dual wielding, even when you're not the one being beat on.

I don't have any concrete numbers or DPS charts for you, but I can say that what I've seen is really, really impressive. In yesterday's Ask a Beta Tester, reader Friday Knight gave you some more in depth information about the rotations of each spec, so I recommend reading that if you missed it. His information and what I've seen myself makes me want to gear up a Prot Warrior alongside my Prot Paladin instead of having just one tanking character.

We have a few more questions about the passenger mounts today, but a lot of Mammoth-related questions are repeats of ones we've answered previously. So if you still have a question about them after today, I recommend checking the last few editions of Ask a Beta Tester to see if it's been answered already. Now, let's get started with Iceman's question...

Are the flying passenger mounts? Ground mounts are lovely and all, but once everyone takes to the skies will they become useless to everyone with cold weather flying?

I haven't seen any flying passenger mounts yet. Whether the passenger ground mounts are 'useless' or not with Cold Weather Flying is really up to the individual. You can still use it in the old world, you can still use the Mammoth's vendors. There are also places like Lake Wintergrasp where flying is turned off permanently so you don't 'cheat' and skip over all of the fighting to get from Point A to Point B. You and a bunch of your friends charging people down in a huge Mammoth is sweet.

If you don't care about any of that stuff though, yeah it could be seen as useless. It's an optional purchase, though. You don't need to spend the money if you don't want to do so.

Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, where we answer your questions about the Wrath of the Lich King beta! We had quite a few questions regarding the multi-passenger mounts coming in Wrath, so we'll mostly focus on those. That's not all we have today, but most of it. Our first question is from JPN...

What does the tooltip mean for the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth where it says it carries vendors?

It means just that! It comes with two vendors. One sells reagents (including poisons) and the other sell trade supplies, like thread and parchment. The trade supplies vendor also sells some statless fashion clothing.

If you're not using the vendors and want to let your buddies hop on, there will be an Eject button to throw the vendors off and make room for your friends. And yes, only people in your party or raid can get on your vehicles. No random strangers will be jumping on your mammoth or motorcycle.

Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, where we answer your questions about the Wrath of the Lich King beta! Most of our answers are short and sweet today, and we'll get started with Molly's question...

What's the word on passenger mounts? Will they be a whole new level of riding skill, or will you simply purchase them individually? How much do these things cost?

They use the same riding skill as regular ground mounts, but they tend to be on the more expensive side. The Engineering-made Motorcycles will be up to the market to price, but Traveler's Tundra Mammoth costs 20,000g. So the cost of the mounts themselves is what's going to be harsh, not an added level of training. That last one carries three people, by the way.

Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester! We'll jump right into things today with a question from Snuffles...

In regards to flight, what areas are restricted (besides Dalaran) and how to they prevent us from flying over the ocean? Is it a wall, or a new fatigue system?

Beyond places that are indoors and you can't mount period, Dalaran and Wintergrasp are the two no-flight zones I've seen. You can't fly in Dalaran so it's more city-like, and Lake Wintergrasp so you actually have to take part in the combat and plan your travel routes, not simply fly from point A to point B without a care in the world. Flying too far out to sea gives you a fatigue bar

We've had a lot of class-specific questions lately (especially Hunters) here on Ask a Beta Tester, but since I don't play every class, I can't answer all of those. However, I've forwarded some of them on to our motley crew of bloggers, so we'll hopefully be able to answer you soon. Until then, let's get started on some other things, shall we?

Robert M asked a pair of questions...

Is there going to a difference in the number of badges the same boss drops in the 10 man and the 25 man?

There isn't a difference in the number, no. However, there is a difference in the type of badge. The 10 and 25 man loot is tiered, and the 10 and 25 man badge loot is tiered in a similar way. The badge loot you can get from grinding 10-mans is not the same as grinding 25-mans.

Will you be saved to a raid in the 10 man and not be able to do the 25 man that week? it seems like a 25 man geared toon could help the guild in the 10 if its a slow week or some of the raid members have a RL issue.

The 10 and 25 man raids have separate raid IDs, so doing them both in one week won't be an issue.

Read on for more answers to your questions!

Quite a few people wanted some clarification on the Championing system mentioned in previous editions of Ask a Beta Tester, so I'll try to do just that: The Championing system is not retroactive, and by that I mean old factions are not included in it. You can't use this to grind Orgrimmar or Honor Hold or whatever in level 80 dungeons. It only applies to Wrath reputations, and so far, not even all of those.

It only counts towards the 'big four' of Northrend as far as I can see. Those reputations are: The Kirin Tor, The Argent Crusade, The Knights of the Ebon Blade, and the Wyrmrest Accord. You should be able to get really, really high reputation with the Valiance Expedition/Warsong Offensive just through questing, but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a Tabard for them soon, too. The little people like the Kalu'ak are, so far, not included in this system.

Read on for more answers to your questions!

Remember a little while ago on Ask a Beta Tester, someone asked if Jaina Proudmoore has any role in Wrath? And I said no, she has no new story involvement? Well, a recent beta patch made a fool out of me. She has a role, it's epic, and no she doesn't make out with Arthas you horrible, horrible people.

And with that out of the way, let's get on with the questions. Shadgalaul asked...

What about the whole dual-spec situation? Was this implemented, or did it just fade out and get scrapped?

This hasn't been implemented yet, and nobody is sure whether it's on hold or been scrapped. It seems like instead of giving dual specs, they're trying to make one spec be able to hold its own. For example, tanks are getting higher DPS so they can go off and do their quests without wanting to hang themselves. It's not a perfect solution and there are still a few balance issues, but I bet that if they shelved the dual spec thing, this is what they tried instead.

We may still see dual specs in the future, but we haven't so far.

We'll jump right into things in today's Ask a Beta Tester, because destiny waits for no man!

andyjay220 asked...

How have people liked the new threat meter? I have tried PTR but I don't really understand it as I am used to Omen. As far as I can tell the only information it gives you is "YOU NOW HAVE 100% AGGRO" which isn't very helpful. I want to see a meter showing how far away from pulling aggro I am so i can gauge my attacking accordingly. Any way someone could explain it to me?

The threat meter's UI is pretty simplistic. It displays yellow when you're close to pulling aggro, and red when you've done it. It's accurate, but hard to gauge how close you really are. It shows the percentage in your tooltip... but that's a strange place for it. It won't replace things like Omen (when it's updated for 3.0.2) but its addition will allow Omen and similar mods to be much more accurate.

Of course, for things like 5-man dungeons, you don't need to the nitty gritty numbers, really. There's very little reason to be at the max possible threat before pulling aggro, just take it a little easier. Raids, though? You'll want Omen.

Read on for more answers to your questions!

Swiss asked...

I'm interested in the Low Level Quest Tracker. Does this replace other trackers such as Find Herbs or Find Minerals? Or does it stack with other tracking as well?

It does not stack with other tracking, but you generally wouldn't need both at once. Turn it on in town, grab your quests, turn your other tracking back on when you leave. That'll be problematic for finding low level quests out in the wilds, but does your level 80 Death Knight need that Peacebloom while you're off looking for quests?

Read on for more of your Wrath of the Lich King Beta questions!

You want mounts? We got mounts. Just waltz on through the intimidating portal above flanked by deadly drakonids, and they're giving em out like candy! Actually, no, I'm lying. Kind of. Locke asked...

Any word on new flying mounts or anything like that?

A little, but not a lot. We're not seeing a cornucopia of mounts yet. The ones we have seen are pretty cool, though. As I mentioned yesterday in my post on the Obsidian Sanctum, they're running with the design of Zul'Aman and offering mounts as special rewards from completing 'extra challenges' in raid zones.

The Obsidian Sanctum offers up a Black Drake Mount for completing the special challenge in the 10 man version, and it seems you get a Twilight Drake from the 25 man version, but I haven't seen that personally. Either way, these drakes are pretty hard to get, at least at first. They're not quite giving them out for nothing. Other colors of drake mounts have been datamined, but we haven't seen them drop yet.

For more answers to your beta questions, read on!

I have a priest alt getting close to 70. Planning on doing healing come Wrath. With the conversion to spell power should I be picking up healing gear or damage gear right now? How is, for instance, Spell fire stacking up against Primal Mooncloth? Is spellfire actually able to heal better right now in the beta? How about damage?

I strongly recommend hopping over to Wowhead's Wrath site and doing some research on how the numbers turn out. In most cases, DPS gear has better DPS stats (hit, crit) and Healing gear has better Healing stats. The spell power numbers are just much, much closer. In your particular example, the Primal Mooncloth Robe has more spell power than the Spellfire Robe, but it has mp5 and the Spellfire has crit. A DPS spec/class would rather have the crit.

A few weeks ago I covered the effects of the spell power change in Hybrid Theory, with some raw numbers to look at. You can read that over if you'd like, but I mostly just suggest hitting up wotlk.wowhead.com for specific items.

For more answers to your questions, read on!

FoSho asked....

Maybe I'm in the dark here, but how does one get to Dalaran since its floating in mid air. Is there a portal in a town, or do you have to be 67 to get there? I keep on hearing its "dangerous" to get to Dalaran, how so?

I wouldn't call it dangerous, but you aren't going to be able to get there at level 70 without the help of a Mage or Warlock. Because Dalaran is floating high above Northrend, you need a flying mounto reach it, and when you first arrive in Northrend, your flying mount simply doesn't know how to handle the cold weather. You'll need to complete a level 77 quest chain to obtain Cold Weather Flying and reach Dalaran on your own. Alternatively, there's a quest at level 74 you can seek out in certain inns that will take you there.

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.

The public test realm has just gone live, and if you've got any characters on it (or if you'd like to go copy some), you can head on over to enjoy all of the patchtastic frivolity likely to descend sometime soon.

In case you're catching up to the rest of us, patch 3.0 is another large content patch specifically designed to transition the player base to the upcoming expansion Wrath of the Lich King. We won't be seeing Death Knights or Northrend (or at least, we're pretty sure we won't, unless they're planning on a big surprise). We will be seeing all of the 1-70 class changes, new features added to the default UI, barbershops, Inscription, a raid buff system overhaul, and more, in addition to four European servers closing due to Russian player migration. Read on for a quick guide to what you can expect: