US First Freya Hard Mode - Exodus of US-Ysondre

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Each week Arcane Brilliance comes to work totally motivated, ready to sit down and manufacture a fantastic, insightful, entertaining column about Mages. Then Arcane Brilliance's wife brings him breakfast, because she's awesome like that, and Arcane Brilliance takes a break to eat it. Fat and happy, Arcane Brilliance flexes its fingers and gets ready to resume the creative process. Then winamp shuffles through to a song from the new Silversun Pickups album and Arcane Brilliance gets distracted again, and has to listen to the whole album before it can concentrate. Then Arcane Brilliance's kids come in the room and Arcane Brilliance plays with them for awhile. Lunch approaches, and Arcane Brilliance needs to get the column up. And, that, loyal readers, is a preemptive apology for any inaccuracy, inconsistency, misspelling, and grammatical eror that may follow this opening paragraph. Sorry!

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So the effect of Innervate is no longer based on the target's spirit, or indeed any attribute of the target. Paladin's won't laugh at you any more when you innervate them. It's also a big buff in PvP, since spirit is rare on PvP gear. On the down side, as many people have pointed out, this doesn't scale at all - it will always return the same amount of mana, no matter what the casting druid or the target is wearing. This is also a slight reduction from what a holy priest or a resto druid receives from Innervate right now, which is more along the lines of 20,000 mana.


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Hall of Fame Updates

The Ulduar Hall of Fame should be updated with all of the recent Hard Mode kills, including the most recent -- Wraith's defeat of Freya.

Emalon the Storm Watcher Guide Video

For anyone that hasn't done Emalon the Storm Watcher yet in the Vault of Archavon, he's your ticket to free tier 8 and PvP gear, so stop ignoring him!  Below is a video of the fight, with commentary on the encounter.

Change to Daily Chores

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

The Children's Week achievement "Daily Chores" has been slightly altered from the text you will see in the achievement window. It now requires simply that you complete 5 daily quests with your orphan out. There is no longer an extra step in doing things over consecutive days.

Children's Week

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

Children's Week is celebrated once a year in Orgrimmar, Stormwind, and Shattrath City. The week-long celebration is a time to give back to the innocents of war: the orphans! This year's occurrence of the holiday is accompanied by new achievements, which can be found in the World Events tab of the Achievements menu. Learn more about this special in-game event on our Children's Week information page. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/events/childrensweek/

Global Creative Writing Update

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

The first Blizzard Entertainment global creative writing contest ended on April 12, but that's not the end of these epic tales. After over fifteen-hundred entries and millions of carefully chosen words, it’s now in the hands of the judges.

One grand prize winner will be chosen to win a trip to Blizzard Entertainment's headquarters in Southern California to meet and eat with the Blizzard Entertainment writing staff, and a Frostmourne sword. ( http://www.epicweapons.com/products/frostmourne/ )

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Apparently, in a hidden area of the game, there's not only Frostmourne encased in ice, but also a skeleton with a big gold "!" floating above him. Discovering this cave, at least on the Xbox 360 version of the game, unlocks an achievement called "WoW!", which reads "You feel cold as you examine the skeleton and read the name 'Arthas' etched into the nearby sword." Kotaku has some nice pictures of the cave. A cute reference, for sure.


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It's a European invasion on the WoW Insider Show today -- somehow we've wrangled me and three folks from the EU. Turpster will be on as usual, Lesley Smith will be joining us again, and the one and only Patrick Beja will be on the air as well live from France. Don't worry, Americans, I'll patriotically represent us as best I can. On the menu, we'll have discussion about the Martin Fury controversy, both Children's Week and Noblegarden (and if Children's Week really is ruining the battlegrounds), and the changes in patch 3.1.2, out on the PTR right now.

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Zarhym made a very interesting post in a thread complaining about the latest round of Ulduar nerfs, and made the following points:

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Patch 3.1.1a, Realm Maintenance - April 28th, 2009

The recently announced patch 3.1.1a will be coming out tomorrow during weekly maintenance.

Quote from: Crygil (Source)

Just as an update. We will be releasing the minor bug fix patch 3.1.1a during tonight’s maintenance period.

Blue Posts

Why Blood Elves can't be Warriors (Source)

Basically Blood Elves have a very magical theme to them. I was surprised even to see there were Blood Elf rogues, actually. But glad at the same time, for those that want to play Blood Elf rogues at least.

We like the races to be distinct and unique, and there are already quite a lot of races with warriors. Who knows, maybe one day there will be Blood Elf warriors, but for now at least, there is not and I know of no plans for this to change.

Val'anyr's Proc (Source)

We feel the proc is good. But we also want you to check it out for yourselves. You might be surprised.

Reflective / damage shields against fast attackers (Source)

Reflective shields being so much stronger versus fast-attacking targets is something we would like to address. It's fine that it's a good defense against them generally speaking, but it has become a little too extreme where you can blow yourself up against something that was designed to be more of a small bonus, not a hard counter.

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I'm sorry Blizzard, but I'm with the whiners on this one. The School of Hard Knocks is so badly designed that it's ruining, instead of enhancing, the Battleground experience. Take, for example, the requirement to return a flag in Warsong Gulch. First of all, the requirement is that the player return the flag personally as opposed to being in the vicinity of a flag return. This means that all ten players on one side are angling to return the flag... which is great in theory but in practice encourages entire teams to wait inside the base hoping to get the Achievement. This results in extended stalemates that don't actually encourage what needs to be done, which is to capture the flag.

In Alterac Valley, we have forty players and four capturable towers or bunkers. Sure, the opposing faction can defend the towers/bunkers allowing it to be recaptured, but the whole business of racing to capture one -- again, personally -- turns every Alterac Valley into a race. This means lesser chances of defended towers. Realistically, if players tagged and defended until the objective burned down, only 10% of the team would be able to accomplish the Achievement requirement in every match. I'm sorry to tell all those who are allergic to PvP that you'll actually have to play quite a number of Alterac Valley matches just to get this one. Unfortunately for me, on my Battlegroup, playing Horde-side AV is like pulling teeth.

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Today's screenshot comes to us from a very different Azeroth; it's from the Chinese version of World of Warcraft, also known as CWOW. Eliza of <cn7> on Bloodscalp wrote in from Sichaun, "My boyfriend chose to be a warrior, so I chose to be a priest to heal and protect him. Four years passed, we became the best partners in this game, from dungeon to Arena. Now we are going to be married this September, so I sent you these pictures, for memories, and for love." She also notes that Chinese players still aren't able to get Wrath of the Lich King, and adds that she and her soon-to-be-husband plan on leaving CWOW behind. With all the recent troubles, who can blame them?

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World of Warcraft does have a decent variety of things to do. Arenas, Battlegrounds, Soloing, Professions, 5-mans, raids, the list goes on. Some may focus singlemindedly on one or two aspects of the game, while others dabble a bit in most or even all of them. All this variety also ends up meaning that some people just won't like certain aspects of the game, and will generally shy away from doing them. This can also be true of classes, of talent trees, of playstyles, and all the rest. Of course, sometimes we swear we'll never do something in game, then do it anyway.
For example, I once swore I would never play enhancement on my Shaman. I felt like a Shaman was supposed to be an elementalist first, a summoner of the elements, and a caster, and that if I really wanted to just swing around dual wielded weapons all day, I had a Warrior I could go to. But recently I started a Shaman on a server other than my normal to check out the RP scene there, and I decided to try enhancement out for a bit.

I was suddenly hooked by the idea and the play style itself, enough that I went and respecced my higher level Shaman on my main server. I still play mostly as Elemental and Restoration when I play my Shaman, but I have gained a healthy respect for a pair of whirling weapons and the rather badass summoning of Spirit Wolves and all there.

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Algalon Loot Table Update
I'm sure mages will be happy with this update, a new ulduar drop was discovered .... this time from Algalon! This dagger is also one of the nicest weapons available in Ulduar (at least, in my opinion). Once again, the socket bonus is missing and this is a known bug.


I also added

Algalon the Observer

Hard Mode Gear List

Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staffSpeeding up leveling
We have made changes to the leveling process in the past that made it go faster. If we feel the need to speed this up again, we will go back and review it. Just don't expect this to happen overnight as a lot of things have to be taken into consideration, we don't want to effectively just delete a zone and put an NPC there that gives you 5 levels as a quest reward so you can go to the next zone - there still needs to be a play experience. (Source)

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