June Blog Posts

Got this piece of news from wow.com:

We killed Venoxis in Zul'Gurub and, upon being saved to the instance, noticed that we now had the option to extend our raid lockout -- that is, to make it last twice as long or until the next week's lockout would end.

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Interesting Information Week article here: China Bans Gold Farming

Trading virtual goods for real money has been banned in China, putting hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity at risk.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
June 29, 2009 02:20 PM

In addition to its ongoing crackdown on Internet porn, the Chinese government has declared that virtual currency cannot be traded for real goods or services.

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Class next?

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18031079410&sid=1

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Not only do the buffs from the midsummer food stack with your normal raid food, but they stack with each other. So, for example, all your casters can be walking around with +44 dmg, +30 haste, and +20 hit.

And the "Festival Fortitude" 30 stamina buff that you get by being in a city when someone does a city quest stacks with everything and, insult to injury....: persists through death.

5 flowers get you 5 of a food. Putting out an opposite-faction bonfire nets you 10 flowers, your faction is 5.

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Thanks to Nidaba for compiling this data.

Overall, the total P2 damage last week was 6.1 million. This week it was 3.9 million.

Doomfire tick has been reduced by 50% from pre-nerf. Previously was Flames - Spell - World of Warcraft. Now seems to be hitting for ~ 5k pre-absorb/resist/mitigation.

Rapid Burst is the same as before.

Heat Wave has been nerfed by ~ 35% (from ticks in the 2400 range to ticks in the 1500 range).

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I haven't seen a post yet, but confirmed this when we did hard mode tonight:

All fire damage (on hardmode at least) is approximately halved. And the health of all mobs seems lower by about 5%.

The fire damage nerf is significant because heatwave was arguably too much damage for the encounter. This change removes the 'priest stacking' requirement from Mimiron hard mode, making it far more accessible to new guilds. Any pair of healers now can heal a group in P2, regardless of their class (and priests can solo heal one.)

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A week later than we would've liked, but we played poorly last week so probably deserved our placement at US 5th instead of US 2nd. Alas.

I wish I could wax poetic about it being a great fight. It isn't.

I wish I could go on about how clever the 1-hour mechanic was. It wasn't.

One of the bonuses you get as a top guild is getting to spend hours on a fight like Mimiron hard mode figuring it out, before there's all the videos. It takes you longer (although you get your kill before others), but the sheer joy that is a very hard fight without extra information is the reward.

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This is from Enthorn, on Dunemaul, in the guild Shadow Brotherhood. It's a good list of actual problems/proposed solutions. My previous essay, which was myths, is what you should read if you have objections to anything here -- e.g., "We can't give mages better gems, then they'd do more dps!"

It's from the same monster thread that my previous post was in: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17899801584&sid=1&pageNo=1

Also, my additions to his list are in italics.

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I posted this on the WoW forums earlier today, but reposting it here for posterity:

Here's some more mage myths for you, GC, that I have seen you and other Blizzard posters make over the years.

All are provably false. Please feel free to ask for supporting data if you wish, but I've posted on all of them so many times that I don't want to waste my time re-writing that which may again be ignored:

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As promised, Part 2: Thorim

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