#BlizzChat Developer Chat on Twitter
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)Q. If damage and healing is too much per health ratio, then why don't you have battlegrounds/arenas give a -30% damage/healing debuff?
A. We have been talking about solutions like that. It might feel a bit awkward, but it might also solve the problem and maybe it's okay in the last season before an expansion to experiment a little bit.

Q. Is there talk of a fire shield spell for elemental shaman to use like water shield for restoration shaman?
A. Not at this time.

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After the break is the complete transcript of the developer Twitter chat with Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and J. Allen Brack. They talked a lot about Cataclysm and upcoming class changes, and reflect on some of the inner workings of patch 3.3. Unlike the last twitter developer chat, this chat was much more substantial and actually provided useful information for us all.

We've broken up all the answers into the following hyperlinked categories for your browsing pleasure.

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This week on Phat Loot Phriday we take a look at the single most important piece of loot in the entirety of Icecrown Citadel. Step aside, Shadowmourne. You're old news. Precious's Ribbon is best in show today.

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Balance druid performance has been noticeably lagging in raids. While moonkin have long had a problem being too easily +haste-capped with Wrath, there's another issue on the not-too-distant horizon in the form of the "lunar +crit cap." Essentially, when a lunar eclipse procs and the player turns to the Starfire portion of the rotation, the combination of raid buffs, gear, and procs make Starfire crits all but inevitable. While this may sound like a welcome DPS increase, it does have the unhappy result of the spec seeing increasingly less benefit from the +haste and +crit that exists in abundance on Icecrown raid gear.

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We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• Blessing of Kings make a great point, PUGs often defer to the tank, even more so in lowbie groups.
• WoW Europe has come out with this week's community news and community events.
• Digit4L.net has a great guide to playing WoW over a 3G/HSDPA connection.
• Matticus looks at the holy priest Renew spec.
• WoW in an Hour continues their look at the recommended tool to play WoW in an hour.


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The Care and Feeding of Warriors is WoW.com's weekly column for all things angry and clanky. Matthew Rossi writes it, when he's not busy being angry and clanky.

Lately I get plenty of tanking action in raids, to the point where I honestly don't want to do it in PuG's. When musing about it the other day I realized that I'm too used to hard modes and progression when tanking: I demand perfection of myself to such a degree that I get tense and stressed over the smallest error in execution. This is possibly admirable (when not taken too far) in a raid setting on a new boss where strategies are being tested and modified constantly and everything's on the razor's edge between being able to pass the checks inherent to the content.

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Deathbringer Saurfang is the final boss of The Lower Spire of Icecrown Citadel. This is the orc you once knew as Dranosh Saurfang. It turns out that the orc affectionately known as "Little Cleave" didn't simply die at Wrathgate. Instead, while we weren't looking, some ill-mannered Scourge grabbed the body of Dranosh Saurfang and spirited away. We probably assumed that his body had been burned to ash when the red dragons torched the place. Still, however it happened, you've now ascended to the opening of the Plagueworks, and now have to show down with Deathbringer Saurfang.

The Saurfang fight is pretty interesting, actually. There's a lot of moving parts and abilities to try and monitor, but the actual flow of the fight isn't too bad. From a tank's perspective, you stand there and taunt every so often. From a healer's perspective, you're healing . . . and then healing some more. It's the DPS players who really need to be on their game. There's adds that show up which they have to kite and kill in short order, or really horrible things start happening to the raid.

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About a month ago, we had a discussion about the specific character bonuses that come with each profession. Then we jumped into a great deal more detail around Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing, whose profession bonuses are incredibly customizable when compared to the other professions. These bonuses usually rate the itemization equivalent of 60 attack power. While that's not a humongous number, it's certainly a meaningful bump in your character's potency.

However, the very basic reason to be a particular profession usually has to do with what you can sell in the Auction House. The character bonuses are certainly a huge perk of training a profession, and shouldn't be ignored by any player looking to cruise endgame content. But the driving reason for many people to pursue these skills had to do with other items which produce cash. Cold, hard, beautiful cash.

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First things first: the correct address for the WoW Armory is wowarmory.com. Bookmark it. Memorize it. But don't ever, ever search for it again. We've talked before about how misspelling searches can get you into trouble. But even if you spell WoW Armory correctly when Googling, the first sponsored site that shows up is a phishing site -- and it's a really good one.

Update 1:10pm: Google seems to have removed the site from their sponsored listing in the short time since I wrote this post. Kudos! Nonetheless, there are and will be more sites using the same technique, so the warning remains valid.

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As of yesterday afternoon and lasting through January 28th at 2:00 PM PST, a number of free realm transfers have opened up in the US in an attempt to repair some harsh population imbalance. Bornakk does warn, however, that if they fulfill the transfer quota before January 28th, they will end transfers early so they don't end up in the exact same situation on opposite ends. If any of the below transfer offers suit your fancy, get it done before it's too late.

What's interesting is that in a few of these instances, they're only extended the offer to Horde players. These servers include Illidan, Mal'Ganis, and Warsong. Considering Mal'Ganis is home to the infamous Goon Squad, this isn't the most surprising thing in the world. Interesting, yes. Surprising? Not in the slightest.

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Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com.

What happens when the Dungeon Finder matches up a group of players with the right mix of roles but the wrong mix of goals? Who "wins" when veteran players want to speed-run a lower-level instance, while the new players want to savor every surprise and puzzle over every trick? Lisa and Robin are on different sides of the fence this week. No matter which philosophy rings true for you, it's something worth agreeing on with the rest of the group at the beginning of the run.

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Like the Craft of War: BLIND back in its own day, Ninja Raiders has been recommended to Moviewatch every few days. Since it's one of the rare music videos that genuinely make me laugh, I figured I'd give it a second spotlight. The video's innate charm and clever lyrics continue to please audiences, and I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to see it.

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Maybe you're aware that WoW.com is looking for a few new columnists and maybe you aren't -- but it matters not, because this post is for all of you. For those of you in the know, consider this a reminder: we're only accepting columnist applications until the end of the day today (specifically: Friday, January 15th, 11:59PM). For those of you not in the know, we're looking to bring in new weekly columnists for: druids (balance/restoration), paladins (holy), shamans (enhancement/restoration), lore, and addons. Does this sound like the chance of a lifetime? Read onward for all the details.

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Bored in Nagrand (the zone), Bigtallyho of <Cataclysm> on Nagrand (the server) decided to engage in a little recreational Lost One-tossing. However, his arm grew weak over time, and he could no long hurl them all the way over the fire. They stuck there, impaled on the firewood. And that's how draeneikabobs were discovered. Mmm ... corrupted.

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Robin's post about fun with kiting yesterday immediately reminded me about the old days of 40 man raiding. Don't worry, this isn't a nostalgia trip per se... in many ways raiding is better now than it's ever been... but one of the things I enjoyed back in classic WoW were the world bosses. Bosses like Azuregos, the Emerald Dragons and Kazzak (as well as summoned bosses like Maws and Eranikus) added a feeling of competition that simply couldn't be had by being the first to clear a raid. If Blizzard wants to bring the antagonism between Alliance and Horde back to the forefront, well, even on a PvE server back in the day one could watch Horde and Alliance guilds jostle over Azuregos. Heck, we were griefed pretty hard doing the green dragons, especially Emeriss, as Horde players would come running up to die under our tank and become mushrooms.

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Blue posters are fairly silent these days, at this point I can say that the upcoming minor content patch will not be deployed next week, but will be deployed on January 26th.

I also want to point out that there isn't a lot of Season 8 information to datamine, a lot of people sent me messages to ask for a preview of the season 8 gear but ... it's just not in the game files for the moment. This is also why the patch can't be deployed later than January 26th, the files needed to start the arena season are here, hopefully Blizzard will be nice enough to post a preview of the Season 8 armor sets.

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