Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Raiding, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King

Threat is at the heart of tanking. However, it’s totally hidden from the player, and many players don’t understand it well or at all. A thumbnail sketch: every point of damage you do causes 1 threat. Every point of healing you do causes 0.5 threat (unless you’re a paladin, in which case it’s 0.25 for reasons I’ve never fully understood). This is base threat; many classes have threat modifiers. Rogues, for instance, have an innate 30% reduction to threat. Warriors and Druids get 30% improved threat in their tanking modes (Defensive Stance/Dire Bear Form); this will be raised to 45% in LK, I believe. Paladins get 90% extra threat for their Holy damage from Righteous Fury.

Then there are various tanking skills which have special threat modifiers. Sunder Armor is one that has been around forever; it wouldn’t cause much threat inherently, but it’s got extra threat built in. Lacerate and Revenge are other examples.

In short, the way Blizzard has traditionally made tanking work – made sure the tanks are causing more threat than everyone else, so the mobs will attack them – is by keeping their damage low, but raising their threat with threat-increasing auras and threat-boosted abilities. This is not the tack they’re taking in LK, based on some trends that have been emerging in blue posts over the last month or two. For instance, Ghostcrawler: “We’d like to get away more from +threat abilities for all classes if we can.”

Continue reading Stepping away from +threat

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Filed under: News items, PvP, Wrath of the Lich King

We all had an inkling this was coming, right? I mean, it is Blizzard and they do things that are occasionally “evil.” So it should be no surprise to anyone that Eyonix announced today that they will be resetting all the honor points when Wrath of the Lich King is released.

In his post he does mention that they will be putting in a few new items that are purchasable with honor points only. At least those that have piles of points saved up can get something. Let’s just hope that it’s something you can use. They will be appearing on the PTR shortly.

The reasoning behind this is that Blizzard wants there to be an even playing field when everyone hits 80. If people saved up tons of honor points and marks, they could be used to immediately purchase the newest PvP gear. That would create an imbalance.

Continue reading Honor points and marks reset in WotLK

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So we ran across a neat little tidbit of information over at the Blizzard forums today. Per one of the “Blues”, Eyonix, there are going to be some changes coming to the PvP system as a result of the new zones and items being released.

Taken from the following link :

As many of you know we will be featuring a new Battleground, a dedicated world PvP zone and all new PvP items in Wrath of the Lich King. In order to make the transition from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King flow as smoothly as possible, all accrued honor points will be reset at the launch of the expansion. We do this to ensure select players do not have an unfair advantage at level 80 from stockpiling honor to instantly purchase the newest Wrath of the Lich King PvP rewards. For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system.

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Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth, Galleries

Everyone knows that you have to be careful when taking pictures on a vacation. If you don’t watch out, the background of your shot will be filled with shirtless hairy men, teenagers giving the finger to the camera, or, in the case of Deepees of Stormreaver’s first trip to Karazhan, a dead master mage attacking a giant transparent dragon. Deepees seems oblivious of the battle raging behind him. I suspect the next picture in this series is of his gailly dressed corpse beneath the feet of a giant, burning dragon skeleton.

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards.

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Filed under: Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Contests, Lore, NPCs

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about Pixelated Executioner’s little fanfic contest, in which he was giving away a BlizzCon ticket (sans goodie bag) to someone who sent in the best piece of WotLK fan fiction, and here’s the payoff: he’s now posted the winning piece on his website. I have to say that I’m not usually a huge fan of fan fiction (mostly because it’s not usually any good — PE does mention that there were plenty of Mary and Gary Sues in the mix, and technically the winning piece features another one), but any story that adds a little personality to the spider-people of Azjol-Nerub, not to mention throws in an appearance by the Explorers’ League, is a winner in my book.

Plus, it worked out well for everyone — PE decided that he would give away the goodie bag to the winner, and apparently she submitted the story for her brother, so they could go to BlizzCon together. Very nice. Of course they (and everyone else at BlizzCon) are formally invited to come say hi to us at the to-be-announced WoW Insider reader meetup. Very nice story, Anujaresh, glad to see the BlizzCon ticket found its way into some worthy hands.

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