Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Features, Classes, Talents, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance, Wrath of the Lich King

Each week, Arcane Brilliance conjured up a sizable serving of delicious Mage cookies for everyone to enjoy. This week, special thanks goes out to a very generous reader who wishes to remain anonymous, but was selfless enough to donate his beta key to Arcane Brilliance, for the the benefit of all who read it. To that wonderful reader, I say thank you, thank you, and every time I kill something, I will kill it in your name. When I Cannibalize the corpse, though, that’s all for me.

Let me begin by saying the beta is awesome.

After six hours of downloading and installing, several more hours of patching, and approximately seventy-three different server crashes and shutdowns, I’ve been able to spend a solid four hours on the beta so far. In those four hours, I’ve respecced no less than 8 times. I’ve cast Living Bomb on rabbits on multiple occasions. I’ve gotten a whole two bars of the way to level 71. I’ve been impressed with or disappointed with but always amazed by almost everything I’ve seen and done. There’s such an overwhelming sense of newness that pervades the entire experience, it’s difficult to adequately describe.

Four hours may not be long enough to do a lot of things (I swear it took me like a half-hour to navigate from the top of the zeppelin platform at Vengeance Landing to the bottom), but in experimenting with the new talents I’ve had plenty of time to formulate some strong opinions. There are things I like, and thing I don’t, but in both cases I’m almost embarrassingly excited.

Join me after the break for the all the highs and lows four hours can deliver, and I promise not to spoil any plot points. If you don’t wish to find out which talents seem to work well and which don’t then stay away, but otherwise you’re safe.

Continue reading Arcane Brilliance: Mages in the beta

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Filed under: Polls, Analysis / Opinion, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

The fine folk over at DeathKnight.info have posted a video of the unique Death Knight voices we’ve all been promised. They don’t have an entirely new set of voice emotes (at least not yet), they took a slightly different route. There’s actually a sound filter over the voices, making them sound echoey and spooky. The females have been described as sounding like banshees, which is pretty accurate I think. If you’re not a fan of the voice effects, you’re allowed to turn them off in your Sound control panel so you won’t have to hear it. Other people still will, unless they do the same.

I’m definitely a fan of this for most of the race/gender combos. Some of them are lackluster (in my opinion) such as the Female Dwarves. The best? Male Blood Elf by far. That laugh? Awesome. Just awesome. I’m sure we’ll see a couple of tweaks to this before the end of the beta period, but they’re definitely on the right track, I think.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Instances, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King, Worldwide Invitational

From the 2008 Worldwide Invitational, we learned of a new way that we’ll all be grinding faction reputation come the expansion. Namely, you will be able to become a faction’s Champion.

This is not a permanent change, and you are not stuck with only one faction, Instead, you simply put on the tabard and la! You are the new Champion.

We were told that if you run a Coilfang dungeon wearing a Lower City tabard, you will gain the usual reputation for the Cenarion Expedition from the dungeon, as well as Lower City reputation. Supposedly, the tabards, usually acquired at exalted, will be moved to friendly or honored.

While this makes me and my hard-earned tabard collection a bit sore, the prospect of earning reputation for any faction that I need, without running their dungeons over and over, is quite appealing. Here are the Champions we know of so far:

1. Argent Champion
2. Ebon Champion
3. Champion of the Kirin Tor
4. Wyrmrest Champion

The descriptions are all the same. For example, “You champion the cause of the Argent Crusade. All reputation gains while in level 80 dungeons will be applied to your standing with them.”

To me, this seems to call the original quotation into question, as the current description makes it sound as though, instead of gaining reputation from the dungeon, and from the tabard, your dungeon reputation will simply count toward whichever faction’s tabard you are wearing.

Of course, that is still mightily handy. We’ll be able to run the dungeons that contain the gear we need, while acquiring the reputation we desire.

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Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Wrath of the Lich King

Three major changes were implemented for Paladins that affect all three specs in the latest Wrath Beta build. Beacon of Light was reworked, Blessing of Sanctuary was buffed, and Retribution was nerfed through changes to Blessing of Might and Judgements of the Wise. The nerfs aside, the two other changes make a significant difference in gameplay, particularly the change to Beacon of Light.

Beacon of Light
The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all targets within a 40 yard radius. Any heals you cast on those targets will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed.
The promised rework of Beacon of Light is finally here and it’s absolutely amazing. It fits better with the Paladin’s kit, which is — still — cast heals vs. HoTs and single target healing. Paladins are the best single target healers in the game and the new Beacon of Light capitalizes on that by adding a secondary target to the primary heal. It’s not quite the group heal we’ve been asking for, but it does the job quite nicely. In fact, it’s like the now retired Blessing of Light’s great granddaddy for heals because when you heal the Beacon of Light’s target, the heal is doubled. I don’t know if that’s intended or a bug because when you cast Beacon of Light on yourself, it won’t work.

Continue reading Paladin changes in Beta build 8885

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The newest build is out for the beta (our patch notes will be updated asap) and here is a little blurb from one of the Blues about the Rogue lovin that just came down the pipe:

“Hello rogues,

We?ve got some updates coming soon for the rogue class and I wanted to duck in and give you a sneak preview of what we?ve been working on as well as our future goals. Below are lists (by no means exhaustive) of some of these changes and goals.”

General
– Quality of life improvements: Removal of various reagents (Thieves? Tools, Flash Powder) as well as a Poisons skill change. We?re removing the Poisons skill and making the finished poisons available on vendors for purchase. This should free up a fair amount of bag space.
– Envenom: Now also increases your chance to apply poisons by 25% for 2-6 seconds (based on combo points).
– Wounding Poison: No longer stacks. The first application now reduces healing by 50%.
– Anesthetic Poison: Now also removes one Enrage effect from the target.
– Evasion, Sprint, Vanish: Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. (Talents that reduce cooldown take this down to 2 minutes.)
– Cloak of Shadows: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes. (Elusiveness now reduces this cooldown to 1 minute.)
– A new level 75 ability has been designed. This is going to be one of the bigger teases as we?re not quite ready to talk about this one yet. I will say that will add some much needed group utility.
– Fan of Knives: Weapon normalization to equalize effectiveness regardless of weapons carried.

Assassination
– Mutilate: No longer requires you be behind the target.
– Relentless Strikes: Talent is too ?required? and will be made more accessible. Vigor will replace its spot in the tree and a new talent will be created to fill Vigor?s spot.
– Find Weakness: Made passive to cut down on the number of triggered effects that either don?t affect gameplay or affect it in a negative way.
– Cut to the Chase: No longer requires a critical Eviscerate or Envenom. The finisher just has to land.
– Hunger for Blood: Now removes any harmful physical effect instead of Bleed or Magic effects. Bleed effects will still be removed (as all are physical) as well as effects like Mortal Strike, Aimed Shot, Expose Armor etc?

Combat
– Riposte: Now generates a combo point.
– Mace Specialization: This will grant armor penetration when using a mace. (The warrior talent will as well.)
– Deflection: Reduced to 3 ranks for 2/4/6% parry. This should soften the prereq for Riposte.
– Fist Weapon Specialization: Merged with Dagger Specialization.
– Dagger Specialization: Renamed Close Quarters Combat, moved to tier 3.
– Dual Wield Specialization: Moved to tier 1. Lightning Reflexes swapped locations with it and still needs a little more ?oomph?.
– Unfair Advantage and Stay of Execution: Change to more offensive/utility (read mobility) talents. Too much defense on this tier.
– Killing Spree: Weapon normalization to equalize effectiveness regardless of weapons carried.

Subtlety
– More attractive Tier 1 to draw in all types of builds.
– Fewer dagger specific talents to allow additional build options.
– Wrongfully Accused: Reviewed. This talent doesn?t fit well in this location. May be moved lower and/or redesigned.
– Shadow Dance: A bit awkward at the moment. Due for some polish and some design tweaks.

Plenty to do still as you can see. As I mentioned, this isn?t everything we?ve got our eye on but gives you something to discuss and look for in an upcoming beta patch. Please add to the list anything you think needs special attention.

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