<font size="3" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><b>US Downtime - Extended maintenance</b></font><br /><div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span><div class="blizzquoteheader"><span>Quote from <b>Blizzard staff</b></span></div><div class="blizzquote"><span style="color: white;"><b>January 5, 2009, 4:20 PM PST</b></span><br />We will be performing maintenance for all realms on Tuesday, January 6th.&nbsp; The downtime will begin at 3:00 AM PST and end at approximately 11:00 AM PST.</div><span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div></div><br />Is patch 3.0.8 going live today? We don&#39;t know yet and Blizzard didn&#39;t say about it, obviously the site will be updated as soon as possible if it&#39;s the case. (It wouldn&#39;t be impossible to see it, but there is still a lot of activity on <a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/13/index.html" target="_blank"><b>PTR forums</b></a>, just don&#39;t get your hopes too high) <br /><ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;"><li><a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=29837.0" target="_blank"><b>Patch 3.0.8 PTR Notes and Undocumented changes</b></a></li><li><a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=30117.0" target="_blank"><b>Patch 3.0.8 Build 9355 Undocumented changes and new PvP Rewards</b></a></li><li><a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=32802.0" target="_blank"><b>Patch 3.0.8 Enchantment changes</b></a></li><li><a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=31435.0" target="_blank"><b>Patch 3.0.8 Reputation and Item changes</b></a></li><li><a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=30602.0" target="_blank"><b>Patch 3.0.8 Small notes update</b></a></li></ul><br /><br /><font size="3" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><b>Patch 3.0.8 - New Ammo Icons ?</b></font><br />A few icons have been added in patch 3.0.8, 9 of them are for new ... ammos? We didn&#39;t see anything about that on 3.0.8 PTRs. I definitely won&#39;t jump to conclusions because there are thousands of way to use the icons but maybe we will see them on items introduced in Patch 3.1, which would be interesting now that Ghostcrawler said that hunters damage will be greatly changed in this patch. Again there is <span style="text-decoration: underline;">nothing official about this</span>, and nothing unofficial either. <br /><br /><div align="center"><a href="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/january/308ammoicons.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/january/308ammoicons_small.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></div><br /><br /><font size="3" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><b>Blue posts</b></font><br /><div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span><div class="blizzquoteheader"><span>Quote from <b>Blizzard staff</b></span></div><div class="blizzquote"><span style="color: white;"><b>Patch 3.0.8 Notes and current PTR Build</b></span><br />The PTR is a build, much like an actual patch. It represents the data at a moment in time. Since the PTR went out we have fixed other bugs and changed class spells and abilities, some based on feedback coming out of the PTR. If we think we are close to releasing a live build, we won&#39;t update the PTR. Otherwise, we will keep refreshing the data.<br /><br />I am unable to tell you when we plan for the patch to go live for the same reasons we usually don&#39;t announce when we think a patch will go live. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14135706978-gc-ptr-notes.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: white;">Source</span></b></a>)<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>Tanking in Ulduar</b></span><br />Most of the heated tank debates seem to involve if one class is better than another or missing a critical skill or something. Those are all totally valid issues and the kind of thing we monitor.<br /><br />Specifically on BoSanc, we understand the concern. We&#39;re not ready to make any changes yet because we aren&#39;t convinced it&#39;s going to end up slanting things much one way or the other. But Ulduar is coming. It&#39;s going to be harder and it&#39;s going to have bosses no one has tanked before. There will be a lot more to discuss, and unfortunately I also suspect a lot more consternation about who doesn&#39;t feel like they have the abilities to tank Ulduar. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/14133096596-gc-neglect-tanks.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: white;">Source</span></b></a>)<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>Naxxramas and Ulduar raid difficulty</b></span><br />I think some of the other players have answered this the way I would. The idea is not that you can bring 25 prot warriors because they are all excellent players and expect to clear Naxx. I exaggerate, but you get the point. The idea is that you have enough coverage over "critical" areas with fewer players so that you have enough free spots to bring who you want. I put critical in quotes, because it varies depending on groups. Some players think Heroism is mandatory. It probably isn&#39;t for Naxx but it probably was for Sunwell. Some kind of poison dispel is probably mandatory for Naxx. Innervate isn&#39;t mandatory. Battle rez is useful while learning the encounters. And so on.<br /><br />Having two priests is currently mandatory for heroic Naxx to do one encounter (that gates some others). We knew we were pushing the envelope with what we could expect of of raids with that design. I think most 25-player groups have 2 priests, but I&#39;m sure not all of them do. If we had asked you to have say 2 Survival hunters, that would clearly be over the line. If we had asked you to have a death knight MT for Saph, that would have gone against the design. Perhaps we should have left up one crystal so you only needed one priest.<br /><br />I think expecting one of each class isn&#39;t too much to ask for a 25-player group, provided we aren&#39;t asking for a particular spec or a particular role (like a druid tank or a paladin healer). But this is the kind of thing we&#39;re going to have to explore a little more to see how it feels.<br /><br />Ulduar is going to be more difficult than Naxx, and we expect to see a lot more concerns or complaints about specific classes, specs or buffs being mandatory. We&#39;re not designing the encounters that way, but with tougher tuning, I wouldn&#39;t be surprised to see more given how much we&#39;ve seen about relatively easy raiding content. We will deal with those problems if and when they arise. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14135706718-bring-player-not-class--only-doesnt-work.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: white;">Source</span></b></a>)<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>25 Players raids composition and effects of the upcoming Wild Growth / Circle of Healing changes</b></span><br />Seriously though, I recently addressed this in a healer thread. We knew heroic Razuvious was pushing the envelope asking for 2 priests, but we also wanted to explore a little of how much we could push the envelope. One of the nice things about Naxx is you can make progress on other wings while you wait for priests to log on or whatever.<br /><br />I&#39;d say in general we might make the assumption in a 25-player raid that you have every class available, but not every spec available. We might assume you have a paladin, but not a Prot paladin. We might require you to spellsteal but not deep freeze. In a 10-player raid you should be able to roll with 1-2 tanks and 2-3 healers of any kind. At most you might have unconventional solutions to some fights that benefit more from not having too many melee (KT) or instant hots (Malygos).<br /><br />We haven&#39;t nerfed Malygos&#39; Vortex yet because frankly people have beaten him with every combination of healers possible (including 3 Holy paladins). We are prepared to nerf Vortex however if a lot of groups suddenly can&#39;t handle the encounter any longer. Once you get a certain amount of health, which many guilds are starting to acquire, Vortex becomes a lot less deadly. I won&#39;t offer too many more tips because I think it rubbed some players the wrong way when I gave suggestions for Loken, but rest assured, it can totally be done. <br /><br />[...] I don&#39;t think heroic Raz is anything close to that scale, and in any event, I would not anticipate many encounters like that. We hate to rule them out completely, just because we design a lot of boss fights and frankly the diversity is nice. One of the things that is cool about the encounter is that priests get to tank for one fight -- something they never get to do (the MT can just do the control on the 10-player version) and Mind Control, which often doesn&#39;t work in instances, gets to shine. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/14135706748-bring-player-not-class---how-can-we.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: white;">Source</span></b></a>)<br /><br /><span style="color: white;"><b>Changing classes / specs between encounters</b></span><br />The best guilds in the world already send people to respec between fights or swap out classes between fights. We don&#39;t want this to be the standard way everyone raids, but we don&#39;t think it&#39;s worth implementing a lot of punitive measure to prevent either. So dual-spec won&#39;t affect those guilds much.<br /><br />So then it comes down to what is most likely *your* guild (unless you are in one of those cutting-edge guilds, in which case I salute you). In your guild are all the players such amazing players that they can always hit the theortetical max dps predicted by spreadsheets and combat dummy tests? If so, then the pure classes should still be on top. If not, then you still don&#39;t have much to worry about. If you are an amazing mage and can out dps the shamans and druids, then you&#39;ll probably get a spot. If you aren&#39;t an amazing mage, but you have good friends in the guild and they like having you along then you&#39;ll probably get a spot.<br /><br />The groups that might get caught are those that struggle with content and feel like stacking classes is the solution to get them through. But in nearly every case I see this, the group would do far better to just get better gear, talent builds, or learn how to handle the encounters or which buttons to push. The exception are the cutting-edge guilds that ARE struggling with cutting-edge content, but they are going to stack classes per encounter anyway (and 99% of us aren&#39;t in those guilds). (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14133096872-to-gc-the-downfall-of-the-dps-class.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: white;">Source</span></b></a>)<br /><br /><img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/24x24/deathknight.jpg" alt="" border="0" /> <font size="4" style="line-height: 1.3em;"><b><span style="color: #C41E3A;">Death Knight</span></b></font> (<b><a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=650" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Skills List</span></a> / <a href="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Talent + Glyph Calc.</span></a></b>)<br /><span style="color: white;"><b>Dual Wield</b></span><br />There are talents that benefit DW more than 2H. We think that is more interesting than every talent always giving you the same benefit no matter what your gear choices. BCB, Killing Machine and Necrosis, among others, should benefit DW.<br /><br />If DW is too stron...</div><span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div></div>


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