Posts with tag reference

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Love is in the Air and on WoW Insider. Check out our continuing coverage of the event and our guide to earning the achievement. And you better hurry; the holiday only lasts five days!

Leveling is getting a boost. Along with some new content in Dustwallow Marsh, patch 2.3 (going live tomorrow!) will bring across-the-board changes for characters between levels 20 and 60. The XP required for each level is being reduced by 20%, quest XP is getting buffed, and the so-called "leveling" dungeons are getting some major changes. Here is what the patch notes have to say at the moment:

• Elite mobs outside of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been changed to non-elite.
• The level ranges of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been adjusted to a narrower range.
• Meeting stone level requirements, the Looking for Group system, and quests have been adjusted to match the new dungeon level ranges.
• All old world dungeon bosses have had their loot revisited. Players will now find that the loot dropped inside instances will be of Superior (blue) quality.

Well, that's vague enough, isn't it? Level ranges adjusted to "a narrower range"? We can't have that. So I went through to all the old-world dungeons on my trusty 70 rogue and checked the level ranges of the mobs there. I'll also show you a sample of a new or improved item for each dungeon; new items are on the left, and old items on the right for comparison. That means a lot of pictures, so dial-up users beware, I guess. TL;DR version: minimum level stays the same, maximum level nerfed down to somewhere between 3 and 5 more than the minimum level. If you want all the fun details, let's get to it!

New to WoW Insider and want to know what's in our back catalogue? Looking for our more reference-oriented posts? We know stories and features drop off the front page all too quickly and search isn't always the best way to find something, so we're always looking for ways to give you access to some of our older content that's still informative. We've started a new WoW Insider directory page to help you find some of our best guides, resources and original features. Is there a guide we haven't done yet that you'd like to see? Let us know what you want to know in the comments!

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With that great explanation of stats this morning, how fitting that this afternoon, we have Drysc's update on what the various combat ratings mean for each of your character's combat values.

The combat ratings system was implemented when the expansion came around-- it used to be that instead of a "dodge rating" on a piece of armor, you just got a "+2% chance to dodge." But Blizzard noticed that in order to scale that gear up ten levels, they'd have to push up percentages, and eventually everyone would just be walking around with crazy high percentages-- adding enough armor up to a 100% chance to dodge would obviously break the game.

So they developed the rating system, with each armor piece giving a plus to "rating" that then translated into different percentages at different levels-- an item with 18.9 dodge rating on it actually gives +1% dodge at level 70, but more than that at level 60 (about %1.5, actually). That way, Blizzard can scale the rating with level, and gear can get better without breaking the game. Much more on this, I'm sure, when Elizabeth continues her WoW Rookie feature on stats. And don't forget that RatingBuster can give you all this automatically ingame-- from what I understand, it has been updated with these numbers.

But in the meantime, after the jump, I've posted what Drysc says all the ratings will give you at level 70. Feel free to bookmark this post for quick reference when comparing gear.

Ishnu-dal-dieb, dear readers. But I am here to offer you the chance of a lifetime to learn the language of the Night Elves in the form of this phrase guide. Being the geek that I am, I can only wish it were more comprehensive -- nothing's more entertaining than insulting your foes in a language they can't quite comprehend. However, this guide is just a small part of a larger effort by Blizzard to create a comprehensive Warcraft Encyclopedia chronicling the lore of Azeroth. It is only a work in progress thus far, and hardly comprehensive -- focusing mainly on the various Elven races of Azeroth. It's a good compilation of resources so far, and I imagine it will only grow -- so take a look and learn more on the lore of Azeroth.