Posts with tag wow-patch-5.1

Of all the 5.1 news that's been released so far, some of our favorite changes and additions involve battle pets. The first is the introduction of new rarity stones that will make your poorly statted yet hard-to-find pets better. Even cooler than that, Blizzard is introducing an entire new set of battle pets into the game as rewards for killing old world bosses.

Today we'll focus our attention on the three ghoulish gifts that drop off bosses in Naxxramas. These creepy undead come with a variety of suitably spooky abilities, and all promise to fit well into many competitive battle pet teams. Undead are one of the best types in pet battling, due to their powerful passive self-resurrection ability and that they're super-effected by critters, one of the worst types in the game. I'm hoping that this trio of terrible terrors might cause us to start seeing something other than Lil' K.T. and Landro's Lichling in PVP pet battles.

How to consume friends and alienate people

Stitched Pupling drops off Gluth, the third boss of Naxxramas' abomination quarter. Despite his terrifying visage, this pup is more of guard dog. While we don't know his approximate stats yet, we do have an idea of his moveset (though no knowledge of which column the abilities fall into). He has two self-heals in Plagued Blood and Consume Corpse. Plagued Blood also gives him some nice utility for your next pet to switch in on, and Consume Corpse's large heal combined with this pup's undead nature guarantee a prolonged war of attrition will be needed to take him down.

In patch 5.1 you'll have the chance to get a reward from defeating any pet out in the Unova wild, this reward is a stone that will grant your pet a quality increase to rare. This is important for many reasons, but particularly because in my experience (and as it would stand to reason) the rare pets do much better against gym master trainers throughout the world. It becomes doubly so when you start to go after the Northrend, Cataclysm, and Pandaria trainers.

For now these stones, called Flawless-Battlestones, will only upgrade your pet to a rare quality. Later on after patch 5.1 Blizzard will enable stones to upgrade your pet to an epic quality. Stones will also work on wild (caught) and non-wild (TCG, vendor, quest, achievement, etc.) pets.

The one thing to watch out for is that these stones come in two flavors: a general purpose stone, and a family specific stone. Family specific means that the stone will only upgrade a pet of the family that's specified on it, for instance aquatic or undead. General stones will work on every pet family type.

This stone system should really make it quite a bit more advantageous to use non-rare pets initially. Quite the nice little upgrade!

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Pet-obsessed hunters are in for a real treat in patch 5.1. The Petopia forums have discovered over 100 new named beasts on the patch 5.1 PTR that have been added to the various Azerothian continents. Outland has yet to receive any new beast love.

Most of these new beasts share skins and models with other previously available pets, but among them are a few new (or previously unavailable) skins. Perhaps most exciting is the addition of a few arcane wyrms to the hunter pet lineup, a pet type hunters have been completely unable to tame previously due to their status as dragonkin, but are now beasts that fall under the Serpent designation.

Having what amounts to a minigame exclusive to your class is a rather nice perk of being a hunter. Would it even be possible to implement similar for other classes? What could you give a warrior to do that is unique to their class?

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Well that didn't take long... the patch notes for the patch 5.1 PTR have been released today. There is no information as to when the patch will release.

Some highlights from the patch notes:

• The conflict between the Horde and the Alliance has ignited a new series of daily quests along the shore of the Krasarang Wilds.
• Players can visit their faction strongholds in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms to begin the quest to summon their war fleets to the continent of Pandaria. (Please note: The Alliance version of this quest is not yet complete, but will still unlock the new missions and features).
• Two new Reputations have been added: Alliance players can earn reputation with Operation: Shieldwall, while Horde players will curry favor with the Dominance Offensive.
• Players can slay rival NPCs and opposing faction players along the shore to earn commissions that can be spent to upgrade their faction's base.
• Look for strategic objectives to capture, including graveyards and towers. Commissions can be spent to recruit guards that will help protect this captured territory!
• A new item has been introduced that can be used to upgrade the quality of Battle Pets: Battle-stones.
• Underground fighting rings have sprung up in Stormwind and Orgrimmar that will give brawlers a chance to earn bragging rights by testing their solo PvE mettle against some of the toughest creatures found in World of Warcraft.

The full patch notes after the break.

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

On Thursday, Blizzard uploaded a curious new picture to its Facebook page. It's called "Glimpses," and it shows three ethereals in a building that looks identical to Cordell's Enchanting in Stormwind. But a glimpse of what? Patch 4.3? The next expansion?

The picture set off a flurry of speculation. One intrepid soul decided to treat the names as anagrams, converting Vaultkeeper Razhid to "hide a true leak," with "remaining letters ZPRV." I tried playing around with the letters myself, and all I can seem to make out of it is "Bill is The Mole." What do you think that means?

Of course, a lot of people out there are wondering whether or not ethereals will play a major part in the next expansion. So, in addition to the "What aRe yoU Playing" question, this week, we asked our columnists a very simple followup question: