AT World of Warcraft Thread (WotLK, where do you play, General BS and all that)

Page 454 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.

nageov3t

Lifer
Feb 18, 2004
42,808
83
91
So, there's a new keylogger capable of hacking authenticator accounts.

Besides the lulz, color me shocked.
anyone actually have more info on that?

I read the article on mmo-champ, but is the thing something that's going to get picked up by your run of the mill virus scanner?
 

juyanith

Junior Member
Nov 22, 2000
14
0
0
Hi all, I have a mage that just about to hit level 80. I'm using the standard 20/0/51 frost pvp spec as I like playing frost in a supporting role (slowing the flag carrier, using nova to help get melee off the healers, etc.) Given that I am mainly interested in PVP and only have quest greens and blues, where should I start looking for gear? Is honor farming my first step since I'm certainly not geared for the arena? The idea of having to run some dungeon repeatedly hoping some gear I'm looking for will drop and I manage to win the roll is just not appealing to me. Any suggestions?
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
If you're justing started pvp and that will be a pvp char have a tailor make the resilence set for you. Other thab that, it's pretty much an honor grind for armor and you'll either need to arena or do some dungeon grinding for a weapon.
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
I think you can spam heroics to grab the badge PVP gear if you like. That and the weekly VoA should get you decently geared to start PVP seriously.
 

Glitchny

Diamond Member
Sep 4, 2002
5,679
1
0
anyone actually have more info on that?

I read the article on mmo-champ, but is the thing something that's going to get picked up by your run of the mill virus scanner?

should be able to be picked up, from what I read it is a simple .dll that you can add to your AV and it should just find it and remove it.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
from what I read, it replaces your good outgoing code with a bad one so the server holds the code waiting for you to re-enter, and sends the good one to the pirates which they can use for a short time to take your account.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
So blizzard made that huge wall of text about the stat changes available, but I'm still curious about one remark they made. They said they'd do something to make people prefer their highest armor type over good pieces of lower armor types (i.e. making boomkins not want to use caster cloth). That was the one thing that was not remarked upon their text.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
Cataclysm Stat & System Changes
Quote from: Eyonix (Source)
As many of you know from panels at last year’s BlizzCon and posts here on the forums since then, Cataclysm will bring about major changes to familiar character stats such as Intellect, Armor Penetration, Defense, and others, ultimately designed to make the effects of stats more easily understandable and make gear choices more interesting. As these changes will have a significant impact on how stats work and relate to one another, today we wanted to offer you a closer look at exactly what’s in store and explain some of the rationale before Cataclysm arrives.

The most obvious question these changes raise is "Why are stats being changed, and why now?" As the game has matured, we've run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. Attack Power, for example, currently translates to damage, but so does Armor Penetration. Defense provides five different statistical benefits of varying utility. Mana regeneration involves understanding multiple stats and rules and often ends up being irrelevant anyway. In addition, the difference between a "good stat" for a class and a "bad stat" can be extreme. Some casters want Haste but not Crit; hunters want Armor Penetration but not Haste. There are other overarching issues, as well, such as Intellect not being very exciting for casters despite it being a core stat -- and these are just a few examples.

Our ultimate goal is make gear a more interesting (and less confusing) choice by making each stat valuable to more players. While the reasoning behind some of the following changes may be clear, we understand that you may have questions about some of the less obvious alterations, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have here on the forums.What You’ll See on GearStamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.Spirit - Come Cataclysm, this stat should only be found on healing gear. Non-healing casters will have other systems in place to regenerate mana, and we are designing special solutions for Elemental shaman and Balance druids who often share gear with healers (more on this below). Raid buffs that currently boost Spirit (such as Blessing of Kings) will only boost the primary stats of Stamina, Strength, Agility, and Intellect. We are also likely changing the five-second rule and other quirks of the current regen system.

Intellect - Intellect will now grant Spell Power (more on this below). Intellect will also provide less mana than it currently does.

Haste - Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you "do stuff" more often.

Block Rating - Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.

Parry - Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). In other words, Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.

Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It's directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.

Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.

Resilience - This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating - These will all still appear on gear as well. Aside from situations mentioned elsewhere in this list, in general these will function similarly to how they do now, though the details -- such as how much Hit Rating you might need to effectively combat high-level creatures (more on this below) -- are likely to change.

Being Removed from Items
Attack Power - This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does.
Spell Power - Spell Power is another stat that you'll no longer see present on most items. Instead, as mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.
Armor Penetration - This stat will no longer be present on items. Armor Penetration will still exist in talents and abilities.
Shield Block Value - This stat will no longer be present on items, since the amount blocked is always proportional to the amount of damage done. Talents and other effects might still modify the damage-reduction percentage from 30%, however.

Going Away Completely
MP5 - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Holy paladins and Restoration shaman will be redesigned to benefit from Spirit.
Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.
Spell Ranks - Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.
Weapon Skill - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.

What Else You Should Know
Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.
Reforging - While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don’t want more Hit Rating on your gear or you’d rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won’t be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.

Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow. We'll have more details on this in the future.

Changes to Existing Gear
As with previous expansions, we plan to roll out these changes and modify all existing gear shortly before Cataclysm launches, though it’s still too early to say exactly when. For the most part, the gear you have will still be good for you, though there will be exceptions, such as warriors using leather and mail armor.

If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:
• No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.
• No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating.
• You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
• Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.

If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:
• A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.
• Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather.
• Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina.Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.
• No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won’t need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways.

If you are a DPS caster, expect to see:
• A lot more Stamina.
• All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
• No Spirit. You won’t miss Spirit, though, because you won’t need it for DPS or mana regen.

If you are a healer, expect to see:
• A lot more Stamina.
• All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
• Spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.

If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman:
• You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman.
• Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won’t have Hit on it.
• You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit.
• Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you.
• Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.

Many lower-level items with nonsensical combinations of stats, such as Agility and Spirit, will be changed. We're also updating quest rewards, trade skills, and loot drops to support better itemization for class builds that weren't widely available or used prior to The Burning Crusade (such as Balance druids).

We're aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven't yet discussed in detail. In the weeks and months ahead, we'll continue to tell you more about these changes, along with all of the new and exciting features we have planned for Cataclysm.
 

nageov3t

Lifer
Feb 18, 2004
42,808
83
91
So blizzard made that huge wall of text about the stat changes available, but I'm still curious about one remark they made. They said they'd do something to make people prefer their highest armor type over good pieces of lower armor types (i.e. making boomkins not want to use caster cloth). That was the one thing that was not remarked upon their text.
DK's I think have a talent that increases their AP by a percentage of their armor... I'd imagine it'd somehow work like that.
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
I like the stat changes. I can't wait to trade my hit rating in for something. It seems like every piece of gear I have has hit on it... I am almost double my hit cap without gems / enchants.
 

Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,851
6
81
So blizzard made that huge wall of text about the stat changes available, but I'm still curious about one remark they made. They said they'd do something to make people prefer their highest armor type over good pieces of lower armor types (i.e. making boomkins not want to use caster cloth). That was the one thing that was not remarked upon their text.

Supposedly the Mastery stat will be involved; e.g. if you're a plate wearer and you put on chain, you will get zero mastery benefit. If you have a plate piece that otherwise might not be as appealing, it will have mastery because you're a plate wearing class that put on plate.

So if they make Mastery out to be a very good stat, that you just can't have enough of, then it will be severely crippling to be wearing your non-class armor.

Personally I'm rather happy about it.
 

Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,851
6
81
Regarding the authenticator hack, I was reading up on it; apparently there was an interface add on site with a similar name to other add on sites. When people clicked into that site, it had seemingly legitimate add ons, however, if you used their installer it installed the keylogger program.

This primarily was to catch people that just search google.com for add ons and click to any site that popped up. Personally I only go to curse and wowinterface.com and don't use any add on installers / updaters, I prefer to do the updates myself.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
The list of changes sounded pretty impressive when they announced it at blizzcon and seems even more so now that we have more details.


As the hack and such, I got an in game mail the other day about logging on some site to claim my blizzard achievement. I'll have to check what the actual address was, but it was worldofwarcraft(someother syllable).com. Don't know how many would fall for that, but probably full of hacks waiting to be downloaded.
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
The list of changes sounded pretty impressive when they announced it at blizzcon and seems even more so now that we have more details.


As the hack and such, I got an in game mail the other day about logging on some site to claim my blizzard achievement. I'll have to check what the actual address was, but it was worldofwarcraft(someother syllable).com. Don't know how many would fall for that, but probably full of hacks waiting to be downloaded.

I get emails all the time about recent password changes to emails not linked to any WoW account. The site is a fraud though. Worl(capitol i)dofwarcraft.com or some crap.
 

JujuFish

Lifer
Feb 3, 2005
11,431
1,052
136
I know this has been talked about before but I'm having trouble finding it in this giant thread. I have a level 20 warlock that I'm looking to level, anyone have suggestions on the best way to go about it?
 

Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,851
6
81
gogo activate-able icecrown nerf.

Yeah the Blizzcast they brought up the soon to be buff issue again, saying it could be clicked off by people that didn't want it. Supposedly it will start small then continue to rise in power as the months move on, so that everybody that raids will get a chance to see the content.
 

Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,851
6
81
I know this has been talked about before but I'm having trouble finding it in this giant thread. I have a level 20 warlock that I'm looking to level, anyone have suggestions on the best way to go about it?

Are you completely new to the game or just leveling up an alt?

For leveling I am a big fan of carbonite; it holds your hand through every quest, how to best do a bunch of quests in a row in the same area to level up as fast as possible. It has some nifty features in other ways as well.

http://www.carboniteaddon.com/index.shtml
 

nageov3t

Lifer
Feb 18, 2004
42,808
83
91
I know this has been talked about before but I'm having trouble finding it in this giant thread. I have a level 20 warlock that I'm looking to level, anyone have suggestions on the best way to go about it?
really depends on your playstyle preference.

affliction = dot everything in sight, kite it all till everything dies
demo = pet tanks while you nuke
destro = nukenukedead

I'd say that affliction has the least downtime, demo has the easiest time solo'ing group quests, and destro is probably the best in 5-mans.
 

JujuFish

Lifer
Feb 3, 2005
11,431
1,052
136
Are you completely new to the game or just leveling up an alt?

For leveling I am a big fan of carbonitehttp://www.carboniteaddon.com/index.shtml
This is an alt. I started using Carbonite when I was working on the Loremaster stuff after WoW started supporting a quest completion database. It was really helpful. I was more looking for some good information on the playstyles of warlocks specifically, though.

really depends on your playstyle preference.

affliction = dot everything in sight, kite it all till everything dies
demo = pet tanks while you nuke
destro = nukenukedead

I'd say that affliction has the least downtime, demo has the easiest time solo'ing group quests, and destro is probably the best in 5-mans.
Ah, thanks. I've been doing affliction up to this point, but I haven't decided how well I like dotting everything, especially in a random dungeon (which in 3 tries the game has only given me SFK. I wanna do Deadmines!)
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
When I level alts I use Jame's Leveling Guide. It holds your hand the entire time. It has been so long since I've leveled a lock I don't recall the proper way to do it.
 

Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,851
6
81
One thing I noticed when leveling up is that the new random group feature helps tremendously. The equipment you get now from running dungeons constantly makes leveling a complete breeze and all non-dungeon content becomes pretty much trivial.
 

nageov3t

Lifer
Feb 18, 2004
42,808
83
91
One thing I noticed when leveling up is that the new random group feature helps tremendously. The equipment you get now from running dungeons constantly makes leveling a complete breeze and all non-dungeon content becomes pretty much trivial.
the only thing that sucks is that the outlands random bags are fucked.

the rewards are seriously bad and pretty much worse than non-instanced quest rewards.

I wish they'd go back and put rep tokens on the badge of justice vendor and have 60-70 randoms reward BoJs instead.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
Hmm, if I spend some time on the alts this weekend I may have to finally try the low level lfg.


On the good side I finally got mÝ ahune done yesterday for my two guys doing the yearly. I had one parked there that I would check to see if recently killed or a group was doing, and on the other would try to get a groÙp while doing randoms. Yesterday finally got a group (only 7 of us, fairly easy so must be only tuned for L70 still but does seem to get forever with that massive HP total). Once he died walked through the beam with him then logged onto the other and finished with both. That completes it for one and the other just has to walk around a bit on saturday for some more of the continent ones and then he'll be done.

Been getting a bunch of old city randoms lately which kinda sucks if someone wants to do the entire place. But I did get the speed kill achievement on the lock yesterday for the final boss. Wasn't really planning on it, just had a decent dps warrior (just over 2k) and me and a rogue pulling twice that so the group average must have been high enough. Remember all the ways people tried to massage group composition before to get that done so it was kinda lol when the message popped. Haven't really tried to finish that meta for the drake but checked after that one and excluding all those occulus ones I'm down to about 4. Woot I guess.


WHile doing randoms and such on the pally while looking for an event group, one of the things I got into was the uld weekly then voa. For uld the guy ask me my GS and I give the standard no idea answer and still managed an invite. While doing voa after the pally that invited me started asking me about rotation and such as my damage must have been higher than his, and since he was a GS boy, I'd guess his was larger too. Ret's about as faceroll as you get so after telling the basics for my attacks he compares glyphs and such. Either he really wasn't timing his use to maximize c/ds or GS doesn't take into account gems/enchants that much as the char is a JC/chanter so while bulk ilevel not super high I do have it tweak out a bit as far as improvements go. Was just a rather humorous experience to have him start asking about doing more damage while I was starting voa after he wanted to GS me for uld.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
the only thing that sucks is that the outlands random bags are fucked.

the rewards are seriously bad and pretty much worse than non-instanced quest rewards.

I wish they'd go back and put rep tokens on the badge of justice vendor and have 60-70 randoms reward BoJs instead.

I'm interested in how they are planning on changing the whole badge/emblem system. They've indicated they realize it's kinda gotten out of hand during a recent interview, but nothing I've seen yet on what they will be developing it into.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.