Posts with tag ptr

Blizzard has already reduced the vendor price for cut green gems (presumably to reduce jewelcrafters' propensity for vendoring the majority of every prospected stack of ore). While they left the uncut gems at 5g, it became much more profitable to shuffle all possible colors of gems into enchanting mats and blue jewlery.

Well, the latest testing from the patch 4.2 PTR has reduced the price of uncut gems, too. On the live realms, they vendor for 100g a stack, leaving a decent vendor floor price for ore. Once this change goes live, they will be worth 50s each or 10g a stack. This should indeed have the desired effect of causing fewer of these to end up vendored for inflationary vendor money, with the potentially undesirable effect of making mining less profitable.

Assuming you're transmuting, disenchanting, or otherwise making good use of 5 of the 6 colors of uncommon gems, this will likely not change your life much. You will make 10g instead of 100g when you vendor a stack of the borderline useless Zephyrite, but most of your money will be coming from the other activities. Also, you can still occasionally sell these to other jewelcrafters for their daily.

Bottom line, though, is that the new "floor" price of Elementium Ore and Obsidium Ore is basically gone now. There are no more guaranteed sales, and if you flood a market (like enchanting mats) by processing thousands of stacks of ore, you can't count on any vendor based fallback to at least get you your money back.

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The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

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It's Moltres!

That was the first thing that came to mind when I was up close. One of the bosses we're tackling in Firelands is a giant, flaming bird. Actually, it looks more like a phoenix; the Encounter Journal says it's actually a dragon. Either way, it's a multi-phase encounter with some fast player movement, controlled DPS and a phase where we can just sit there and burn the boss.

That being said, do you prefer your former dragons original recipe or extra-crispy?

Also, spoilers after the jump. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Animated and roaring Deathwing has been replaced on the PTR with a static image of the Aspect of Death. We do not know if it is the new login screen or if it only temporarily replaces the animated Deathwing-on-Stormwind motif we've grown to love.

Why the change? We have no idea. It could be a temporary change while Blizzard works on an issue with the old login screen -- or perhaps it is the end of roaring, animated dragons when you log in to the game. The particular art used is gorgeous, obviously, and it's one of my favorite shots of Deathwing.

The reasoning behind the change will most likely come out soon. Tin foil hat speculation puts it anywhere from people's having issues with the login screen and just not loving roaring dragons (even after the toning down of said roaring) to using a new login screen that reflects the next tier of raiding. We don't know! My guess is that we will know soon, however.

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The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

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When I was younger, I absolutely loved the Donkey Kong Country franchise. So when I got wind that one of the new bosses in Firelands was a flaming spider, the first thought that leaped into mind was "Oh my god, I get to fight Squitter!" He first appeared in Donkey Kong Country 2 as an animal companion for players. He had a goofy grin and had 8 sneakers.

By the way, that game came out in 1995 on the SNES.

Now that I've managed to remind some us how old we are, I'm going to move on and describe my first impressions with the Bethi'lac encounter after the jump.

Spoiler warning -- don't say I didn't warn you!

The Avengers of Hyjal is the new raid reputation being introduced with patch 4.2 for raiders daring enough to enter the Firelands and do battle with Ragnaros' minions. Much like the Ashen Verdict, players will be able to gain rewards with the Avengers as they progress up the reputation tiers. At exalted, ilevel 391 rings will become available in a variety of styles. So far, these rings are available on the PTR:

• Viridian Signet of the Avengers
• Infernal Signet of the Avengers
• Quicksilver Signet of the Avengers
• Obsidian Signet of the Avengers
• Adamantine Signet of the Avengers

Blizzard has said that the Avengers of Hyjal faction will work differently from the Ashen Verdict, however, in that it does not want players farming the trash in the Firelands for reputation. Rather, it looks like we will get a system like the Brood of Nozdormu or Hydraxian Waterlords, where after a certain reputation level, the only way to increase your standing with the faction is to kill bosses.

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The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

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Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading on the Matticast.

Here's one of the larger healing changes coming up in patch 4.2. It'll affect all healers for sure, since it affects the critical strike of heals. We first learned Blizzard was contemplating this change several weeks ago in a Dev Watercooler post.

All healing critical strikes now heal for 2 times a normal heal (+100%), up from 1.5 times a normal heal (+50%).

source

I'll go over my thoughts about the proposed healing changes for patch 4.2. I also had the opportunity to try out some of the new raid encounters on the PTR in Firelands. Think you're ready for the upcoming healing challenge?

• All class abilities that place a buff on friendly targets no longer generate threat, with the exception of buffs that directly cause healing or damage, such as Thorns or Renew.
• When interrupted while casting a single-spell school, players will now be able to cast dual-school spells. In other words, if you're interrupted casting Frostbolt, you'll still be able to cast Frostfire Bolt despite being locked out of the Frost school.
• The daily guild experience cap and weekly guild reputation cap have been increased by 25% -- and the guild experience cap is now removed at level 20 instead of level 23.

Firelands bosses Lord Rhyolith, Alysrazor, Shannox, Baleroc, Fandral and Ragnaros all have their voice emotes in with the new patch 4.2 PTR patch. Want to take a listen? They are all right here! Fair warning for spoilers and all that jazz, so hit the jump for the full clips.

This post contains patch 4.2 spoilers.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen fraternizes with cultists and buys Justin Bieber albums. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Information about patch 4.2 has been coming in nonstop this past week, and our favorite dataminers at Wowhead and MMO-Champion have dug up a first look at the class set bonuses for tier 12 gear. As usual, the community has been chatting up a storm since the release, especially the priests. Today I'll be joining that discussion to examine what holy and discipline priests have to look forward to in the next content tier -- or not look forward to, depending on your perspective. Either way, let's take a look.

Wowhead's new news site has datamined the new patch 4.2 PTR client and come up with, well, a whole heck of a lot of stuff. There are over 800 new items in this patch alone. So far we've seen:

• Some tier set names, including Immolation for paladins and Elementium Dragon for death knights; the warrior set has molten giant faces on the shoulders.
• Several mounts, like the new BoA epic horse and wolf to go along with your Warbringer/Warbound title.
• Item names that may indicate different color gear depending on your spec.
• Item level 363 crafted weapons and 378 crafted gear.
• The return of Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros.
• A 36-slot gem bag (as well as inscription and mining versions)!
• And lots more!

There's sure to be a lot more cool stuff incoming, including new models, so keep an eye out.

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The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

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Say you have this friend who's constantly running her mouth about what a good discipline priest she is. And say you want to get together a bunch of your friends and take Dawn ... er ... this friend ... down a couple notches in Warsong Gulch. But, oh darn -- you play Alliance, and so does she.

Well, it's time to box up that purely hypothetical feud and take it to the PTR -- Blizzard is going to be testing same-faction rated battlegrounds.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mat McCurley will be your host today.

Hey, it's Mat here, filling in for Mike Sacco. I love filling in for Mike Sacco! He's so dreamy...

Also, that's a moose. Quit bugging me.

Sky asked:

Question for the Queue:

If the 140 VP reward for 'tier 2' heroics went live, players would be able to reach the weekly valor point cap without having to raid. Do you think this is good or bad for the game?

After spending many hours and relying on the dungeon finder to pick up tanks on the 4.1 PTR, I managed to get a nice handle on the updated bosses in Zul'Aman. Unfortunately due to time constraints, the group was only able to challenge the first four animal bosses. We weren't able to progress past the Lynx or Dragonhawk bosses. While there were new mechanics introduced, after wiping over 10 times to the Dragonhawk boss, I can safely say that there need to be some slight numbers adjustments. WoW Insider rogue specialist Anne was able to join me as we continually wiped, figuring out new mechanics. Thank goodness for repair bots.

As an aside, perhaps someone can answer me this question: Why are raid groups looking for players for Icecrown Citadel on the test realm?

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Blizzard puts up public test realms (PTRs) for testing new content all the time. At times the PTRs are unplayable, either due to bugs or overcrowding. At times they are ridiculous because of the economy, because people transfer all the gold on their account to a single character before copying them. Some major guilds go whenever there is new raid content to practice it on the PTR, so they can get their world firsts whenever the content does go live. Some people seem to go just to stand around and complain about the changes yet not actually test anything. However, all the problems aside, the PTRs are the only way to experience the new content or class changes prior to live.

I tend to copy over to the PTR whenever there is a new raid instance or a major revamp of my class. Having been in the betas for the last couple of expansions, I tend to file lots of bug reports and hope that at least some of my issues are addressed. I have gotten frustrated with people attempting to make a ton of gold in the test realms because they do not seem to grasp the fact that the money doesn't come with them to live. Whatever is done on the test realm stays there and dies there.

The PTR is there for testing, and testing requires people to be able to have access to the new material. Because a lot of people don't actually test on the PTRs, we tend to have several mini-patches in order to fix bugs with a major patch. So actually use the PTR for testing, since it will only help cut out some bugs for when it goes live.

Do you actually use the PTRs? Do you participate in sending in bug reports? Are you one of these people who copy over all your gold and charge exorbitant AH prices on the PTR?

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered. Hey you, retribution paladins! Get off my lawn!

I've been finding that there's a cycle to the holy paladin changes we've seen in Cataclysm. The latest bug with Conviction serves as the perfect example. Conviction's 9% extra healing wasn't being applied to our heals on other players, and so our healing potency was less than advertised. Holy paladins were still relatively good, even with this bug still around. Top guilds have been using holy paladins as their go-to healers, and our toolbox is diverse enough to handle what any dungeon boss can throw at us.

The fact remained that Conviction was broken, and it's not good for business when you have serious bugs affecting a class. The developers quickly hotfixed the talent, and holy paladins were suddenly seeing a 9% increase in outbound healing. A class that was already good just got better, and not by any small amount. In order to prevent us from become too powerful, Walk in the Light was quickly nerfed.