Posts with tag patch-3.1-live

This week information about the final boss of Ulduar has slowly been revealed, thanks to the guild Wraith on EU-Ysondre. We never got to meet Algalon the Observer on the PTRs so this encounter is one of the most mysterious, both in terms of tactics and of lore.

From what I've seen it's also one of the most gorgeous, but then again, I like stars and floating planets. Algalon himself is an entity composed of stars, a spectral being who is not uncompassionate to the heroes who have come to kill him. He just has a job to do. A job which could see our world being put in serious - even cataclysmic jepoardy.

Needless to say, from here on in, there be SPOILERS about the actual boss fight so read on at your own peril!

Sure, you know about dual spec, the Argent Tournament, and Ulduar. But patch 3.1 was a patch of many changes, and some of them seem to have flown under most people's radar. Here are a few changes that have been surprising some people recently, judging by the tips we've been getting.

• Siphon Life is no longer a separate spell. The talent now adds a self-healing effect to your Corruption, as well as boosting the damage on Corruption, Seed of Corruption, and Unstable Affliction.
• Emblems are now automatically distributed to everyone upon the first person looting them, similar to gold. This means no more forgotten emblems, and no more rush to the corpse as everyone goes to get theirs. It will also make loot chests much less unpleasant.
• Many spells with ground effects, such as Rain of Fire, Blizzard, and Death and Decay, are not showing the same as they used to. This is because there is a new video effects option, "Show Projected Textures," which controls whether things like the rune circles from RoF/Blizz/DnD are rendered on your client. It also appears to control my framerate in 25-man raids.
• The 10% experience bonus from heirloom shoulders now applies to quest experience as well as experience gained from killing mobs.

Is there anything else that took you by surprise in patch 3.1?

So ends the age of the weekly loot piñata. The Wintergrasp raid instance, somewhat inappropriately called the Vault of Archavon, has a new tenant who isn't quite the pushover Archavon the Stone Watcher has been since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. The Vault of Archavon was essentially every Level 80 player's weekly lottery and near guaranteed shot at Emblems. It was the most compelling reason to capture Wintergrasp as the raid was only available to the faction in control of the zone. Enter Emalon the Storm Watcher, a new raid boss with Patch 3.1 who drops Ulduar and Season 6 loot. Emalon's difficulty is ramped up considerably from Archavon and -- if initial forays are any indication -- hard enough to give seasoned raiders like our own Matt Low an aneurysm.

Unlike his meek neighbor Archavon, Emalon actually requires a bit of strategy and situational awareness. He also comes with four bodyguards, the Tempest Minions, who are integral to the fight. As can probably be inferred from his name and his crew, Emalon the Storm Watcher's primary source of damage is lightning, or Nature damage. It won't be necessary to stack resistance, just an understanding of the fight, his abilities, and knowing what to do and avoid. You can visit Emalon by turning into a corridor on the right just before heading into Archavon.

The folks over at GuildOx, a guild progress and achievement ranking site, were kind enough to email us some interesting new statistics about Ulduar's achievements. As it stands a large portion of the raids are, of course, not getting encounter specific achievements the first time they go into the zone. However there are some that are getting them nonetheless.

People may wonder if guilds are getting the achievements this quickly because Ulduar is too easy. My opinion on the matter is that Ulduar itself sans hard modes won't be abnormally challenging, however when you put in the hard modes and various twists to the encounter in order to earn the achievements, Ulduar is going to become quite challenging.

The achievements that have made the list so far, like A Quick Shave where you have to kill Razorscale with her only flying into the air once, just requires a lot of DPS. That's not too hard for most geared out groups to muster.

Take a look after the break for GuildOx's list of the top five Ulduar 10 and 25 man achievements, and head over there to take a look at things overall.

The Warlock community was in an uproar over the extremely quick hotfix that Blizzard applied to nerf Conflagrate among other niggling issues with the recent Patch 3.1. Aside from the fact that nerfs are never a fun thing, Warlock players pointed out that Death Knights, while acknowledged by Blizzard to be overpowered, reigned for months before getting nerfed (somewhat) in the latest patch. Warlocks also pointed an accusatory finger at Holy Paladins, who dominated Arenas throughout Season 5 and promptly got a fix along with Death Knights.

On the other hand. it took all of 24 hours for Warlocks to enjoy insane Conflagrate numbers, which was promptly fixed. Ghostcrawler explain why through a lengthy response over at the forums, noting that Death Knights were imbalanced for more reasons than a simply overpowered spell coefficient. He also said that Death Knights and Paladins were nerfed over the course of several patches leading to Patch 3.1, but none proved to be enough to balance them.

It needs to be said that Death Knights were changed the most in this patch, with talent trees completely revised, some notable abilities removed (oh, Shadow of Death, how we'll miss you...), and class mechanics changed. It's quite possible that even these changes won't curb Death Knight dominance, but it's a massive change that simply isn't hotfixable. It's a fair response and a pretty good read. Ghostcrawler makes several important points, one of which is that players shouldn't feel that developers don't love them. So don't be emo.

With stealthiness worthy of an Arashikage, Blizzard removed the Flawless Victor title granted by the Achievement Hot Hot Hot Streak, along with the Achievement itself in Patch 3.1. This tiny little 'inconvenience' was conveniently left out of the patch notes, surprising many players who logged in to the puzzling message 'Title removed: Flawless Victor'. Conversations with GMs didn't manage to shed light into the situation, either, with the standard answer bring "apologies for the inconvenience".

Blizzard gives no reason for the removal of the Achievement and title, and forum posts asking about the matter have so far received no blue responses. On the other hand, Bornakk was quick to address the bug about the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title, which was hotfixed. It's fairly certain that Blizzard removed the Achievement intentionally. Some suspect that there were exploits that allowed players to obtain the Achievement with ease, while others dismissed it as a meaningless title in what is arguably the most imbalanced Arena season to date. With the Arena system being completely overhauled yet again for Season 6, it is possible that we may see the title return in some form or the other.

It's been a long old twenty four hours but the US servers have had Patch 3.1 running life for a little while now. I can just imagine the thousands of people swamping Ulduar, the Argent Tournament and every class trainer from Azuremyst to Thunderbluff will be stood on by thousands of toons trying to dual spec.

Now over the last few weeks Breakfast Topic has been, quite understandably, a little Patch 3.1-heavy. We've asked about your most anticipated feature, whether your guild is ready and where your toon will be when the realms restart (just in case you were wondering, Serisa is waiting outside Ulduar to see if the above happens on live as well).

So if you're lucky, you've had a few hours to poke around and take a look, I want to know what your impressions are of The Secrets of Ulduar now that it's gone live?

When I first had a chat with the Big Giant Heads who run WoW Insider and Massively, they were under the impression that I dwell in the future. Sadly not, even if I am on GMT. I had to explain that, no, we don't get patches before North America but rather we have to wait an extra day to enjoy all the new patch goodness.

So it's Wednesday morning in the UK and guess what? Yes we have extended maintenance on all European realms. Hmm, what could this mean? Ah yes, could it be, 3.1.

So all realms, the Armoury, Account Management and the Blizzard Store will be down from 3am until 11am (CET).

Fortunately, there's plenty to be doing while you wait. Personally, I will have the official trailer on repeat. For your convenience you can see it below, and while I agree with Alex that Jaina looks different, I actually prefer her in the trailer! The new character animations look amazing and she in particular finally looks human.

While I make no secrets that I play Alliance, I have to side with the Horde on this one (sorry Daniel)! Varian Wrynn is just becoming xenophobic and paranoid which is not doing any good for Alliance-Horde relations. Indeed I can smell a buildup of testosterone that is bound to come to a head in 3.2 or 3.3 and I can't wait! It is, after all, the World of Warcraft, it's about time the factions remembered they hate each other even if I live in hope that Thrall might eventually hook up with Jaina.

Our own Elizabeth Harper has been hard at work gathering together all of the most frequently asked questions that we've received over the last few weeks regarding patch 3.1. Now that the realms are finally coming up, it's a good time to get these out to you all because many of you will probably be asking them soon, too!

Our FAQ is listed below, and if you ever want to find it again just bookmark this page. It will always be there, and should there be a need to update it at any point, we'll be sure to do so! Thanks for sticking with us today, ladies and gentlemen.

Today's epic maintenance to apply patch 3.1, which has stretched from 1 AM for some realms and 3 AM for others, has been additionally extended. Originally, the realms were supposed to go live at 11 AM PDT; that time has come and gone, and been pushed back a few times.

The latest update, posted to the Breaking News box a few minutes ago, is that they do not currently have an ETA on when the realms will be up, and they'll give us some more information at about 2 PM PDT, which is in 45 minutes or so.

Update 5:15 p.m. EDT: The realms continue to be down, with the in-game message now telling us that there will be an announcement at 6:00 p.m. EDT letting us all know more information.

Update 6:15 p.m. EDT: Maintenance is continuing on all realms. There is no time frame given as to when the realms will be back up, however there will be an additional announcement at 7:00 p.m. EDT. Stay tuned to WoW Insider for more information. Additionally, the official forums and account management appear to be intermittently down now as well.

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Patch 3.1 is live and it takes us into Ulduar, delivers us dual specs, and brings significant changes to all the classes! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1 and the official patch notes!

Servers are still down for maintenance due to Patch 3.1, so now would be a great time think of the list of things you'll have to do once you log in. Let's see ... you've bought all the gems enchants you need; you've got your talent calculator all ready to go; you've parked yourself in an old-world capital city to buy dual-spec as soon as you log in. You're ready to go!

But the question may remain -- what exactly are you going to pick for your offspec?

Don't worry, we've got you covered! We've compiled dual-spec guides for each of your classes.

Death Knight • Druid • Hunter • Mage • Paladin • Priest • Rogue • Shaman • Warlock • Warrior

Get crackin' and be ready to raid (or whatever it is you'll be doing) when servers come up. Remember: being prepared takes class!

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Patch 3.1 is live and it takes us into Ulduar, delivers us dual specs, and brings significant changes to all the classes! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1 and the official patch notes!

Our sister site Big Download has mirrored the files necessary to update your game client to patch 3.1. Only the PC version is up at this time, however they're working on getting the Mac version.

Many users are reporting inability to finish the download via the Blizzard downloader or are generally having problems get their own copy of the patch.

All you need to do is go and download this file, install, and you'll be set to enjoy all the patch 3.1 goodness.

Update: You can now download the Mac patch files as well. Enjoy!

Update: You can now download all the international patch files.

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Lots of the new stuff in today's patch 3.1 update will be in your face -- the class changes won't be missable, and the LFG channel will be full of people trying to head into Ulduar (though who knows how far they'll get). But some of the changes, especially to the user interface, will be a little more hidden -- you'll have to dive into the options to go and find them. Here's a few things we've reported on that you might want to make a note of, if you're interested.

• Arenas now have an option to show Enemy Unit Frames. These will only appear in the Arenas, but you can enable them in the Interface options.
• You will now be able to see when the next Wintergrasp battle is from anywhere in the world -- but only by going out to the world map and then zooming back in to the Wintergrasp map.
• Make sure you hit the map button (usually "M") next time you go into an instance. There are maps in there now.
• There are new "advanced features" for quest tracking now -- but you've got to go into the Interface Options to enable them. If you're already using Questhelper or a similar addon, these will be familiar to you.
• The Equipment Manager isn't in the game yet, but the Color Blind mode and new Battleground and LFG options can all be accessed now.
• Finally, there are a number of new video options available in the Video Options panel, including better shadow and texture details, and even a "Video Mode Ultra" setting. Even Blizzard recommends you run things on the highest setting at your own peril -- lower end computers will have major issues trying to run graphics at the highest setting.

It's definitely worth putting "take a tour around the options screens again" on your to-do list for when the patch arrives on the live realms. There are lots of little changes and updates hiding in there that you'll never know about unless you go look for them.

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Patch 3.1 is live and it takes us into Ulduar, delivers us dual specs, and brings significant changes to all the classes! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1 and the official patch notes!