Posts with tag relics

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

If you're trying to decide which professions to put on your character and you are considering their gold making potential, you'll want to avoid engineering and inscription. While they're not terrible if you consider their stat bonuses, they're not ideal for gold making on many realms.

Of course, every realm has its own ecosystem, and as with all advice you'll read from this column, you should check that the assumptions hold for your realm and faction. That said, by far the most common problems I have trouble helping people with are related to these two professions.

Inscription

I'll start with the one that's going to get me the angry comments first. Inscription has long been touted as a cornerstone of the money making meta game -- heck, it earned my esteemed colleague, Fox, his first million gold on Darkmoon Cards. Before that, we had "glyphsmas" when 4.0 hit and a steady level of demand for glyphs before that. We still have the stupidly profitable fortune card market that lets anyone open a tiny, Blizzard-sanctioned casino. So what's not to like?

If you didn't see this coming, you haven't been paying attention: as of Mists of Pandaria and patch 5.0, the ranged slot is being dismantled. Relics are going extinct, hunter ranged weapons will become their only weapons, and wands? Those are main-hand weapons now, too. To be extra clear:

• Relics are going away
• Wands become main hand weapons (and will function as wands do now)
• Hunters can only equip ranged weapons (and hunter minimum range is going away)

This is something we've expected for a long time here at WoW Insider, as it's a topic Ghostcrawler discussed at BlizzCon '10. It's a removal of superfluous stat sticks and that's a good thing. None of us will miss our librams with +10 to Character Sheet Clutter and absolutely no visual, no real effect, and no purpose.

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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The folks at Wowhead News have found a very interesting new vendor outside of patch 4.2's Firelands raid. Lurah Wrathvine, who is also riding on a Flameward Hippogryph for maximum pizzazz, will upgrade various normal tier 12 raid and valor point gear for the low, low price of a Crystallized Firestone. This is an item that drops off of the bosses therein when they are killed on heroic difficulty.

What's interesting about this system is that it affects items that don't even drop in the Firelands, especially the difficult-to-upgrade relics like the Hardheart Relic that makes my shaman scream "Me want!" like a caveman. Since relics are usually a valor point purchase, this makes them difficult (if not impossible) to upgrade, in comparison to other items. In general, this whole system is currently only in place to upgrade 21 items, but with some of those items being weapons or armor pieces, we may see more soon. It makes me remember Sunmotes and the Sunwell Plateau's exchange system. Crystallized Firestone definitely seems like the next iteration.

Also new on the test realms: The Avengers of Hyjal have a new strength DPS trinket. Looks like new itemization is being implemented as we speak.

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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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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Allison Robert is your hostess today.

I have absolutely no idea what the hell the above video is about, but have been required to place it there on threat of firing by Alex Ziebart. Questions, comments, complaints? Send them to him!

Pyril asks...

(On the faction champions fight in Trial of the Crusader): Why would Blizzard force PvE players to basically learn PvP skill sets now, when they've been so good about keeping them seperate to this point? Any chance the encounter will be reworked? GC has said he doesn't want to force raids to bring certain classes, but if you don't to this encounter it's a 3 hour wipe fest.

Is the encounter likely to be changed? No, at least not its basic mechanics. Blizzard fielded similar complaints concerning the Priestess Delrissa fight in Magisters' Terrace, which could be an incredibly ugly experience on heroic if you didn't have CC or weren't well-geared. But are aspects of the encounter likely to be nerfed, or at least tweaked? Maybe, maybe not. It'll depend on how much trouble Blizzard sees people having with the fight.

What's certain is that the Faction Champs encounter is a very common target for complaints right now. Some of this is the result of players still gearing up, but others are voiced by people who intensely dislike the arenaesque feel of it all, or who run a raid setup that's less-than-ideal for whatever champion comp they get that week. I think you're entirely correct in saying that the fight becomes significantly more difficult (or at least more gear-dependent) if you're running a raid with limited options for purging/dispelling the mobs' buffs or keeping their healers locked down, and it's probably that aspect of it that Blizzard's keeping an eye on.

Continuing on the data-mining train, we have now learned the set bonuses from the tier 9 gear that is coming in patch 3.2 (confirming, by the way, that there will be a real tier of gear in the Crusader's Coliseum raid). There is also information available on some new relics for the relic-bearing classes (Paladin, Druid, Shaman, and Death Knight).

Information after the break. Keep in mind some of these are certainly placeholders. The priest healing 4-piece, for instance, is strictly worse than the priest healing 2-piece Tier 8 bonus; there's no way it would go live like this. Some of the bonuses don't even make any sense, like the Warlock 4-piece. Datamined info is always suspect.

Exactly what weapons Death Knights will be able to wield has been the subject of some controversy. Originally, it was speculated by Blizzard that one- and two-handed swords and axes would be the extent of it. Currently in the beta, polearms and one- and two-handed swords, axes, and maces are usable. Daggers, fist weapons, staves, wands, and ranged weapons are not (updated with verified information).

But not many people have talked about what's going to go in that ranged slot. A moment's thought reminds us that every other class that can't use ranged weapons or wands (Druids, Shamans, and Paladins) have Relics in those slots. If you're not familiar, Relics are class-specific items that typically provide a boost to particular spells; they come in different flavors for the different classes. Druids get Idols, Shamans get Totems (confusing, yes), and Paladins get Librams.

Wrath will add one more to the list: Sigils, for Death Knights. So far only one has been implemented in the beta – Sigil of the Dark Rider, one of the first quest rewards in the DK's starting chain. Blood Strike, as far as I can tell, is meant to be a staple skill for many DKs, like Heroic Strike for Warriors, so this should come in handy. And unlike Paladins, DKs have plenty of ranged spells, so pulling shouldn't be problematic – they even have a spell that brings the enemy straight to them, Scorpion-style. Get over here!

Retribution Paladins and "Classic" hybrids rejoice. Even in the midst of all these recent nerfs, Blizzard is working on a few buffs. The latest news from the PTR via MMO Champion is that we can expect to see a few tweaks to Relics and Retribution Gear alike, mostly on the good side. Various pieces of Retribution Paladin focused gear, mostly from the heroic dungeon level, has had its spell damage removed and replaced with strength. Not great news for Shockadins, perhaps, but good for Retribution Paladins, whose talents and skills have been moved more to the side of shedding all spell damage for quite some time.

Druids, Shamans, and Paladins can rejoice at seeing a lot of their Idols gets a boost, with various stats and effects on them being boosted, sometimes by as much as twice their old values.

There's also a somewhat interesting, but probably ultimately minor tweak coming to arena and honor weapons, as all three levels of Feral Druid and spellcaster PvP weapons have seen their attack speed reduced by 1 to 1.60 seconds. You'll rarely see any of those classes using those weapons to melee anyone to death, so it seems a bit superfluous, but perhaps it was done for consistency with the recent Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe change.

There will probably be a few more changes when the server comes back up, of course, and we'll be here to deliver you the news on them, so stay tuned.

Community managers on the Blizzard forums have recently announced a new relic slot  for druid, shaman, and paladin players.  As anyone who has played these classes knows, they have a ranged weapon slot in which they are unable to equip anything - thus leaving them without the stat bonuses enjoyed by other classes who can equip such items.  Community manager Eyonix provided examples of the relics for each class, and I have to say they look interesting!

[Image credit: fan art by Kendrick Lim]