Posts with tag world-of-warcraft-patch-3.3.5

Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly source for news, guides, tips and opinions on the death knight class.

With the state of pretty much every class on beta in limbo thanks to the forthcoming talent revamp, we're taking a break from beta stuff to ransack the Ruby Sanctum. Hopefully, we'll see the new trees on beta in the next week or so, so we have more to work with than speculating on exactly what "signature abilities" everyone will get. In the meantime, we have shiny new loot and a new boss to tackle in the here and now.

The Ruby Sanctum is ostensibly the last major raid of the Wrath expansion, and as such, ostensibly your last chance to get a few extra pieces of gear and uber yourself out before Cataclysm comes along and replaces everything with level 81 quest rewards. There are definitely some pretty prime upgrades to be had here, including a few straight-up best in slot drops, so let's get going and check out what you can grab.

As with previous gear guides, try to keep your stat weights in mind, and when it comes to the heroic versions of these drops, unless otherwise noted, it's usually safe to say the same stuff about the heroic version, except even more so. Also, comparisons here are normal to normal, or heroic to heroic. Heroic versions of ICC loot are, for the most part, probably still going edge out normal Ruby Sanctum loot.

The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid, we're just crazy.

Never fear, we'll be doing more leveling posts and more report cards in the future. (I've been messing around with arms again lately on my night elf warrior -- having some fun with it, too.) But this week, we'll be talking about the Ruby Sanctum instance. The storyline of the Ruby Sanctum links Wrath of the Lich King's storylines with those of the upcoming Cataclysm, but the encounter mechanics and loot are still pretty solidly Wrath.

First we'll talk about the minibosses and Halion himself from both a DPS and a tanking perspective. Since much of that work has already been done by Michael Gray, we'll then go on to talk about loot. Then I'm gonna go eat something. I'd invite you, but by the time you read this I will have already eaten. The bane of the internet: I can't share my jalapeno-flavored chips with you. (Nor, to be honest, would I. They're mine. MINE!)

The first thing to talk about in Ruby Sanctum are the trash pulls. As a DPSer, you really just need to know what the kill order is and to stick to it, but I also suggest to be aware. Remember Ulduar on the way to General Vezax? Yeah, it's like that. There most likely will be CC, and it's a bad idea to Whirlwind/Bladestorm in the middle of it. So pay attention and use your abilities responsibly. As a tank, you should likewise watch your AoE threat moves and make sure only to break CC when you need to. Make sure to use Charge to get right back on the Charscale Invoker when it punts you, and in general, use your stuns and silences to keep the casters locked down as much as possible when tanking them. If you're tanking the Charscale Commanders, pull them out; don't let them use Rallying Shout. There's no reason to let a five-or-so-mob trash pull get a 25% DPS increase.

Once you get done with the trash, it's on to the mini-bosses.

Although several realms are still under extended maintenance in preparation for Cataclysm, Patch 3.3.5's Ruby Sanctum is currently open for business. Players can enter the instance at this time and kill the trash and minibosses, and Halion is able to be engaged. We've not yet received word on whether or not he's killable, or whether anyone has killed him. It's likely that this was unintentional.

We'll keep you posted, though. Now would probably be a good time to brush up on the dungeon's final boss with WoW.com's Guide to Halion!

Update 6:29 p.m. EDT: The opening of Ruby Sanctum might be a bug, but nonetheless, it's up and running. We have staff who are running it both on normal and heroic mode on the live servers. Blizzard is being coy about it, so who knows ... either way, the boss is up and can be engaged right now.

Update 6:39 p.m. EDT: Nethaera confirms that this isn't a bug: Ruby Sanctum is open, despite several battlegroups being down for another day.

Datth

Extremely low view distance settings (177 vs 1277) is more than enough to compensate for the extra memory being used in this patch by a few factors. A lot of people are able to get by with setting View Distance from max to about halfway using that alone. Using d3d9ex mode (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843232&sid=1) can shave off another ~100-200MB from what it's currently doing right now too.

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Blizzard hopes to have the game fully functional for all players at any level of graphics quality soon; however, there is no ETA currently on when this fix will occur. Keep an eye on the thread in the Technical Support forums, as they are sure to post more information as they learn more about the errors.

#WoWInfo - We are continuing the process of marking realms live. We will provide an update on our progress at approximately 7:00PM PDT.

Also, all servers that are currently live appear to be locked.

Update #2, 7:21PDT: The official Warcraft Twitter just noted the following:

#WoWInfo - We anticipate all remaining realms will be brought online within the next hour and appreciate your ongoing patience.

Just released is the initial official list of patch 3.3.5 known issues... and it's a big one. Some of the major highlights:

• Performing the /eat emote while dancing as a male Blood elf can cause some very unnatural character movement.
• Pit of Saron - Scourgelord Tyrannus can remount Rimefang during the encounter.
• The last remaining player in a random instance group can miss out on Random Dungeon loot.
• Players from different servers can't trade dungeon items necessary to progress through the dungeon.
• The Twilight Orbs periodically disappear during Phase 2 of the Halion encounter.
• It is possible for a level 70 to receive the Wrathful Gladiator's Tabard.
• You cannot get the "Call To Arms" Achievement through the Looking for Battleground feature.
• Mage Summon Water Elemental does not fully function as a permanent pet when glyphed with Glyph of Eternal Water.

It appears that this includes some unfixed bugs that were present in previous patches, such as Tyrannus remounting Rimefang. There is no indication as to when these bugs will get fixed.

The complete list after the break.

"Next to nothing is known about who might be responsible for the assault on the Ruby Sanctum: the black dragonflight is not known for forgiveness or patience, but its numbers in Northrend are surely limited. What force would be powerful or daring enough to assail the stronghold of these ancient wyrms? How could such an enemy sneak by the temple's guardians undetected? Surely an approaching air or ground force would have been caught by Wyrmrest Temple's defenders.

For the moment, the members of the accord and their allies must assume the worst scenario that they can conceive of: that all life within the Ruby Sanctum rests on the precipice of extinction, and only immediate intervention will prevent the red dragonflight from being decimated. They'll find that the truth is far worse."

• North American/U.S. PC Patch 3.3.5
• North American/U.S. Mac Patch 3.3.5

We'll update this post once we get the international versions in next week.

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Straight from the patch files we bring you the release patch notes for patch 3.3.5. As with all patch notes, please remember that Blizzard may changes these at any time, in which case we'll bring you the updates as soon as we get them. For the most part however, these patch notes are not much different from the ones that were on the PTR.

Some of the highlights of patch 3.3.5:

• The Ruby Sanctum will be released (although not today, sometime in the future).
• Real ID is now in place, you can communicate with real life friends across any Blizzard game, server, and faction.
• Vote to Kick has been changed.

The patch is dropping today for North American players, and next week for European players.

After the break are the release patch notes for patch 3.3.5.

You'll have to forgive Arcane Brilliance (the weekly mage column) this week. Arcane Brilliance is a little down in the dumps. You see, Arcane Brilliance just isn't sure it can live in a world where Duke is the NCAA basketball champion and the Lakers are the NBA champion. One was bad enough, but now both of those evil basketball programs are champs? Ugh. What's that, you say? I could always just give in and root for Duke and LA? I suppose I could, but that would be like giving in and rooting for warlocks to do anything but die painfully in a fire of my creation. In other words: not going to happen.

All signs point to patch 3.3.5 dropping very soon. When it drops, it will bring with it a few fun UI changes and quests, but most importantly, it will herald the final raid instance of this expansion, the last raid boss we're going to get before Cataclysm erupts in a massive explosion of Goblins and Worgen and Tauren paladins and Wars of the Ancients and such. Soon after the patch hits, the portal to the Ruby Sanctum below Wyrmrest Temple will open, and the same heroes who ended to reign of the Lich King will enter and challenge the fearsome Black Dragonflight, led by The Twilight Destroyer, Halion.

And I want my fellow mages to be ready.

So fill your pockets with strudel, put on your best dress, and meet me at Wyrmrest, mages. We've got dragons to slay.

It seems pretty likely that fairly soon we'll be looking at a updated Midsummer Fire Festival. Why am I so sure, you ask? Well, as many tipsters have stopped to inform us, there's a plethora of new gear in the armory that looks likely to be iLevel 232 updates of Lord Ahune's loot table. We have the Frostscythe, of course, which people have noted before. But now we also have updated versions of his infamous cloak drops, in tanking, physical DPS, and two forms of spell cloak. The first cloak has spirit, meaning that classes like mages as well as healers that use spirit might like it, while the second has crit, haste and spell power but no spirit, meaning it's better for shamans and paladins than the spirit one.

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to farming my favorite frost lord all over again.

Embedded on the coast of Durotar, the tiny troll Village of Sen'jin is bursting with recent activity. In what some claim is a retort to the overblown assertions of the vertically-challenged High Tinker Mekkatorque, Troll Chieftain Vol'jin has announced his intention to "honor de ancestors 'n' take back da 'omeland, mon." The call has been given, and the scattered Darkspear tribe has begun to gather at the once-sleepy location. Now the primal rhythm of beating drums and strange clouds of acrid smoke drift aloft deep into the night, arguably a sign of celebration and preparation for an impending offensive.

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Head on over to the official site for the full preview and the full, high-res version of the propaganda promotional poster above. It really is enormous. Fit to print, perhaps? In the inspiring words of glorious Vol'jin: "Zalazane will fall!"

In a somewhat startling announcement, Zarhym stated that the release of Ruby Sanctum, the dungeon supposedly available with Patch 3.3.5 is being delayed. While players were expecting the dungeon to be immediately available upon Patch 3.3.5's release to live servers, it seems this is no longer the case. Here's the full post:

Zarhym

Due to the fact that we will be delaying the release of patch 3.3.5 in Europe, Korea and Taiwan in order to ensure the patch process in all regions is as smooth as possible, the Ruby Sanctum will not immediately be available on North American realms upon the release of the patch. Once patch 3.3.5 has been released in North America and we are confident about a time when we can open up Ruby Sanctum, we will provide an update here on the forums.

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If any updates to this change in schedule are posted, we'll let you know.