Posts with tag wow-patch-3.0.8

Enjoy soloing Onyxia for a quick 180 gold every five days? With patch 3.0.8, those good old days are no more, as boss gold drops (at least back in the old world) seem to have been significantly reduced. Onyxia's 180 gold is now 50 gold and forum posters are noticing similar reductions in other old world raids from Ahn'Qiraj to Zul'Gurub. Is this the end of old world raiding for good? Well, it may not be as profitiable, but I'm willing to go on record saying that slaughtering Onyxia is still plenty of fun. Plus it's the only way to complete that awesome tier 2 set you need to be super stylish while idling in Dalaran.

[Thanks, Rhaziel!]

Patch 3.0.8 is here! So welcome to the new patch -- much like the old patch, only with more lag, crashes every 20 minutes, and plenty of other entertaining bugs! (Don't you just love patch day?) You would think that, by now, we'd have learned that patch days tend to be a bust for playing, but most of us at WoW Insider HQ rushed to log in as soon as the realms were back online, ready to enjoy some 3.0.8 goodness. Boy, were we in for a disappointment. (Though as some of you may have noticed, it was a great time to catch up on old world achievements, since the Wintergrasp bug was only crashing Northrend.) For those of you who decided to spend your Tuesday outside of the game, you managed to miss out on plenty of patch day fun -- but you may be just in time to enjoy stable playtime as Blizzard has scrambled to get things working again. (If you haven't picked up the patch already, here are some download mirrors to help you out.) Were you in-game on Tuesday night? If so, what were your experiences? Get any playtime in?

Last night we asked our Twitter followers what they were looking forward to when the realms came back online with patch 3.0.8. (Not on sure what I'm talking about? Here's Twitter in plain English.) Here's what the Twitterati had to say to us (in 140 characters or less):

thehatfield @WoWInsider not that excited (my main is a hunter) but probably most looking forward to one shot mining nodes I guess.
synae @WoWInsider slow fall castable on others ;-)
gimly @WoWInsider I am looking forward to owning a tiger mount on my dranei shaman and I will certainly appreciate faster corpse walks
astromoose @WoWInsider Creating a DK on another realm so I can FINALLY hang out in WoW with my mate who has moved to Canada.
cuppy @WoWInsider basically just being able to trade Ink of the Sea for Snowfall Ink. That will be rad.
Artoo_UK @WoWInsider the new pet collector achievement :)
superkathoid @WoWInsider Swipe in cat form!
JusticeJuice @WoWInsider Druids with polearms and Holy plate goggles for my pally.
grinface @WoWInsider The craftable moonkin boots and the ink-trading for inscribers.
str1fe @WoWInsider 3.0.8? Yawn. Dual specs please.
Razor1138 @WoWInsider Blood DK buffs
BeckaNoel @WoWInsider Casting levitate on everybody! Woot! But...not looking forward to coh having a 6 second cd -.-
Kreeoni @WoWInsider LAGFIX!
KellyAarons @WoWInsider Druids with polearms!! Nah, I kid. I honestly have no big wants with this patch. Gotta admit lots of great stuff coming though.
mattycus @WoWInsider CoH nerf (i'm a priest!) and accelerated sons of hodir rep gain

So what are you looking forward to in 3.0.8? And, yes, in our comments you can use more than 140 characters to express your opinions.

Today the PTRs have closed their doors, officially ending the testing phase of patch 3.0.8. And while there will be some crying folks who say things like "This patch is broke, and they're testing it on live," well, there are some good tissues to be had.

It's also good to note that the PTR closed after, not before, the patch was released.

Many people, both our readers and several people on staff, use the PTR's status as a barometer for when the patch will come out. And while often its closure heralds in a new patch, it is now evident that its activeness does not mean a patch is not coming. An important point to be had

We've got the patch notes for the official version of patch 3.0.8 after the break. Patch 3.0.8 will be the first patch to the game after Blizzard's record breaking second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

In addition to the patch notes, we have a full page dedicated to the various in-depth analyses we've done of the changes. In the next few days stay tuned for more updates as the patch is processed.

Take a look after the break for everything that is and isn't there. And remember that while there are a few bugs in the patch we already know about, there are likely to be more. We'll get all the latest news about the patch up as it happens.

Updated at 5:12 a.m. EST: For those of you asking for confirmation, the following is the opening announcement from the EU version of WoW: "Weekly Maintenance, 21/01. This Wednesday there will be an extended maintenance to apply patch 3.0.8. Please note that all European realms will be offline from 3:00 until 11:00, Paris time (CET)."

Enjoy the patch!

It looks like there's a good chance patch 3.0.8 will be released today. As such, we've prepared all our 3.0.8 resources into one gigantic page that you can reference: WoW Insider's Guide to Patch 3.0.8. This includes everything from the class changes and analysis, to patch notes, to all the fun with achievements.

Assuming 3.0.8 is released today, we should be getting the official live patch notes within the next eight hours or so. In the mean time, the PTR notes will provide a great insight into what is to come.

Keep an eye out here for the latest. There'll be at least a few of us writers up late tonight!

Read the Patch 3.0.8 Guide...

Eyonix posted a note about a few minor bugs that will appear when patch 3.0.8 goes live:

1. Ritual of Summoning can only be used once every two minutes.
2. Human females have animation errors when shooting a ranged weapon or using two-handed weapons.
   

Remember that with 3.0.8 Ritual of Summoning will be changed to create a summoning stone. The Warlock will cast Ritual of Summoning, which will drop the stone, which can then be used to summon other party/raid members. We are assuming that it's the actual casting of the spell to summon the stone that can only be used once every two minutes, and not the actual summoning of people.

We'll get some video of the animation errors up on WoW Insider as soon as we can, I'm sure there's some potentially funny stuff there.

And don't bother asking if 3.0.8 is coming tomorrow. While we think it's definitely possible, god only knows what Blizzard will actually do. I give it a 80/20 chance that it drops tomorrow morning.

The developers have mentioned here and there that they weren't totally happy with Enchanting, as far as materials go. You need too much of it, and it's too rare to support the demand without becoming crazy inflated in price. Patch 3.0.8 was supposed to contain a few changes, and holy cow are there changes.

I assumed the changes would be minor, like more dust coming from every disenchantment, but the MMO-Champion forums has compiled a list that surprises me quite a bit. It actually is a pretty sweeping change, reducing the material costs of a whole load of enchantments. Dust isn't the only thing targeted, they use less materials across the board.

In some cases, the material costs are halved, or more than halved. It's definitely not a small little change to Enchanting, waiting until the patch to enchant your gear will save you hundreds of gold. If you want to play it safe or are just curious, MMO-Champion has the full list for your perusal.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

Good afternoon, WoW Insider! I have nothing useful to say in my preface today, because I need to go put my new power supply and video card in my PC so I can actually play WoW again. Man, have you seen some of the newer video cards these days? If I had enough of these things I could build a fort capable of surviving a nuke out of them. This thing is a beast.

Trech asked...

A couple questions regarding DK tanking... How much Defense rating am I going to need at level 80 to hit 540 defense skill. How much base defense skill will I have at 80? I'm levelling Unholy with a DPS build. If I throw on a few pieces of +def gear can I safely go tank Nexus or Utgarde Keep at level 72?

Welcome to Lichborne, WoW Insider's weekly Death Knight column.

Yeah, I definitely have to put out a mea culpa here. Alas, Lichborne is a little bit late again. I have a valid excuse, I swear. It involved a flaming plum pudding, a flailing geist, and a sudden snowstorm at the Shadow Vault over in Icecrown. But after an emergency eye transplant by a Forsaken Death Knight who used to be a member of the RAS, I'm back in the saddle and this week's column is only a few days late.

Anyhow, this week I thought I'd take a look at the deeper implications and meanings behind some of the Death Knight changes coming our way in 3.0.8. Our newest Mike has summarized and analysed quite a few of them, but I have just a few more things I want to say, especially about a new change that was added in a recent PTR update.

Last week brought us a lot of news on patch 3.0.8, and with no sign of it hitting live realms particularly soon, we're bound to see a lot more. It's not a full blown content patch, so no new dungeons or raids, nothing of that sort. That doesn't mean it's not packed full of cool stuff, though.

What are all of you looking forward to the most? There aren't a whole load of major class changes for my personal favorite class, Priests, but the one change there is for Shadow excites me a whole lot more than it really should. Glyph of Mind Flay will just cause the spell to slow the target a little less, rather than removing it entirely. Small change, but it will make life as a Shadow Priest so much easier. When dual specs roll around, I can just have a Healing set and a Shadow set of glyphs rather than a raid set, a soloing set, and a healing set.

It's not in the 3.0.8 patch notes, but apparently Paladins should expect removal of all threat from Judgement of Light in the next patch. This is being done to address the wonky nature of JoL threat -- since for fights in which large portions of the raid are taking damage it gives a huge threat boost via healing threat, while for fights in which only a few raid members are taking damage it only gives a small threat boost via healing threat. Or to put it concisely, as forum poster Tippocabra did, "threat from Judgement of Light is not consistent." The new "no threat" JoL should be nothing if not consistent, though it has some tanking Paladins concerned about reduced threat. (For Retribution or Holy Paladins who have ever found themselves using JoL in a group situation, however, the threat decrease can only be a good thing.) Ghostcrawler assures us, however, that this is not meant to nerf Protection Paladin threat -- and though he doesn't go into specifics, we have to assume that means the threat Protadins would previously receive from JoL will be coming from elsewhere.

Okay, so I'm not saying right out that patch 3.0.8 is today, but with the 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific extended downtime this morning, well, it seems likely, and I was right about the PTR going up in the first place. Still, one week is sort of short, isn't it? Anyway, as long as we're on the subject of 3.0.8, let's go ahead and look at some of the things we've discussed about it in the last week or so, that way you'll be ready if it does drop this morning.

• Here's the original PTR patch notes for 3.0.8.
• In one of the most noticeable changes in this patch, expect to see Night Elf Mechanostrider gangs popping up any day now with the removal of race restrictions on PC race mounts.
• Among some of the biggest class changes are those for Death Knights, with some skill and talent changes meant to bolster them in PVE tanking and scale them back slightly in PvP.
• Mages, specifically Arcane Mages, are getting some nice buffs in 3.0.8.
• Yes, this is also the patch of the great Hunter nerf, alas.
• If you've been stuck trying to complete Northrend Gourmet, new recipes coming with this patch will now make that achievement -- and thus the Chef title -- possible.
• WoW, Casually discusses 3.0.8's advantages for the casual player.
• Check out some of the new items, including sigils and rings, that are coming in 3.0.8.
• The promised Feral Druid attack power changes are coming in 3.0.8, and with them comes a major change to Feral Staves
• Relics of Ulduar will be non-soulbound next patch, and will garner Sons of Hodir reputation when turned in to them in groups of 10 as well. Unfortunately, there is a small tradeoff. Hope you got your boot flask in time.
• More good news for tanks: You got some nice new stamina enchantments coming in 3.0.8.

It seems the devs took notice of the fact that many important Tanking enchants were just plain missing from Wrath, because we're getting a couple of new ones in patch 3.0.8. At the price of 5 Abyss Crystals each, you can buy the following formulae from the Shard Trader in Dalaran:

• Enchant Weapon - Titanguard: Teaches you how to permanently enchant a melee weapon to increase Stamina by 75. Requires a level 60 or higher item. Editor's Update: Please be aware this enchantment has been removed.
  
• Enchant Bracer - Major Stamina: Teaches you how to permanently enchant bracers to increase Stamina by 40. Requires a level 60 or higher item.

Before Titanguard, Mongoose remained the best tanking enchant (unless stacking threat stats), which was just downright silly. It's still a good avoidance enchantment, but for your pure tanking set you can't really pass up +750 HP on your weapon, before any talents or buffs are thrown into the equation. That's pretty incredible!

The Bracer enchant is a 28 stamina over Burning Crusade's equivalent: Enchant Bracer - Fortitude. That's quite the jump. While neither of these enchantments are especially interesting due to the lack of procs and things like that, they're definitely very good and I fully expect tanks to be scrambling for them as soon as patch 3.0.8 goes live.