4.0.3a

Tomorrow Azeroth as we know it will be replaced by a scorched, flooded and termite infested continent (or today already if you play on a US server). While this is certainly very interesting, I won't go into any details regarding world changes or overall class balances, but I will on the other hand look at the rogue changes.

So what's new here? We already looked at the recuperate nerf, which judging by level 85 balance, we can all agree was necessary. Assassination is getting a well-deserved Venomous Wounds buff and also a buff to the deadly poison dot. It will be interesting to see how useful it will be and maybe it will even surpass Subtlety - not like it's far from anyway.

But then there's something rather disturbing up there. Player guardians and temporary pets now stop attacking when a rogue uses Vanish, but city guards will not. Right. You might remember the 4.0.1 post, wherein it was discovered that city guards for the first time in one year no longer were immune to vanish, a great victory for rogues all over Azeroth - but now they have confirmed that it is a bug and it will be removed tomorrow. Words cannot express how disappointed I am.

My MS Paint skills, however, can. FFFUUUUUU

There's been a battle.net thread made on the topic of the travesty should you feel the need to vent your anger or just gloat.

Edit on November 25th:
The battle.net thread was removed, most likely because the original poster called the change 'gay', so I've made a new thread (note that I am not calling the change gay, subtlety is key) on the subject.
Show your support.

Of the Horde

I reached the magical number.

 The quality is indeed quite terrible, but you'll just have to live with that.
 Thanks once again to Sechen, Sllythe, Naïma and Stealthr.

 150 000 to go!

The Elemental Invasion thus far

This is so fucking exciting!

Yesterday night part 4 of the elemental invasion began. People were reporting that Orgrimmar was under attack by elementals, and judging by the commotion caused it was certainly more serious than the previous petty "attacks".

While it is evident that Blizzard's intention was for the invasion to start off small and then have it escalate, the first three parts were quite lackluster.

Quests to do with lore are by all means great, but this is the Cataclysm we're talking about - we don't want to go around babysitting small fire elementals in Orgrimmar, we want to kick some elemental ass.

Part 3 of the invasion started three days ago, on the 13th. This is where things started getting interesting - apart from disrupting even more twilight cultists, we were sent off to Nagrand.

Horde dogs and Alliance rats gathered just under the elemental plateau, and since this is Ravenholdt we're talking about, people naturally started slaying.

There was just one problem - the Throne of the Elements is the home of four elemental elites. Gordawg is seen in the image to the right, and to quote wowwiki, "he will one shot you" if you engage in PvP here.

Casters could attack quite freely from the Stonehenge-esque stone arches, but eventually people started heading to Halaa instead.

Enter Novemeber 15th. Seven of us were in an Arathi Basin premade when people in guild chat reported that elementals had started attacking Orgrimmar at 21:15. Mmo-champion confirmed that part 4 of the elemental invasion, the last before Deathwing attacks, had just started. When we had beaten the rat randoms in Arathi we portaled into Orgrimmar.

More and more people joined in and eventually formed the biggest crowd I have ever seen in WoW. 

While some 315k health elementals attacking a capital city isn't a fantastical phenomenon, the amount of people joining in was what made the event impressive.

 

The black Orgrimmar sky is lit up by the elemental flames

So we headed to some Alliance capitals to see how crowded it was there and how hard it would be to stealth around. Stormwind city was crawling with rats, and after dying a couple of times Artturi and I decided to check out Ironforge.

It started out quite satisfactory. We got a few kills, but then someone who we weren't expecting turned up.

That's right, the midget king came after us. I didn't get a better screenshot however - the first thing I do when I aggro a 5 million hp faction boss is not precisely to take a screenie - notice the sprint + vanish.

Needless to say, we deemed Ironforge especially dangerous (it's bad enough with its few escape routes and choke points) and headed home.

As a pre-expansion event, the Elemental Invasion will naturally be compared with the pre-WotLK Scourge Invasion (which originates from the patch 1.11 Naxxramas Scourge Invasion), which is a hard event to beat, really. It doesn't share the same PvP quality of the Scourge Invasion (indeed, it barely has any PvP quality), which even allowed you to attack your own faction. The fourth part of the Elemental Invasion was quite spectacular though, I must say - and we haven't even seen Deathwing yet.

Rogue changes etc

This is just a small post with minor updates which I haven't been able to fit elsewhere.

PTR 4.0.3: Recuperate now restores 2% of health every 3 seconds, down from 3%.
It was only a matter of time before it happened, since recuperate has been very powerful at level 85.

Here's the rogue s9 set sans shoulder pads which I probably should have showed you when it was released a week and a half ago:

Doesn't look horrible, right? Here's hoping that the shoulder pads won't look completely hopeless.

Lately even more people are having issues turning on /PvP, and some have argued that Kyalo's Auto PvP Enabler isn't doing the job since 4.0.1, so here's a link to Eleris' PvPOn. Personally I think it's simpler to, you know, type /PvP, but maybe that's just me.

People have complained that they need a gmail account to post comments, so I've added a shoutbox to the bottom of the blog by the footer.

Ravenholdt's Honor Kill Ladder

November is here, and along with it a new list. The top Honor Killers of Ravenholdt are:

Rnnak  - 400624

Ufoz - 274829

Zylopfa - 260353

Wampyra - 236100

Parashade - 227241

Thibbledorf - 199040

Tagrid - 192112

Canarion - 183162

Orçun - 182441

Kaitel - 171319

...And now the thrilling conclusion of the Hearthglen event! The Horde gathered by the Bulwark in Tirisfal Glades, eager to drive away the Alliance rats who had set up camp so close to the Undercity. 

Ylo and Astartel sent word that the rats had a larger force than we had anticipated - it was estimated that they had a full platoon, in other words 60 rats.

It soon became evident that our spies' sightings didn't do the size of the rats' raid any justice. We had a wall of 75 rats to break through, and our 60 man army wasn't strong enough.

I am somewhat satisfied that the Alliance was able to muster so many rats seeing as they have generally been outnumbered lately. Had it been the Horde who had come with such numbers, it might have deterred the rats from joining future events altogether.

Congratulations on the victory, rats. We are even - for now.

Trambu's Sunday events

Ravenholdt has what some would refer to as a tradition of sorts when it comes to PvP events. Many among you remember Dacarn's zealous RP posts announcing the next battlefield for the forces of the Horde dogs and Alliance rats to clash on. More still remember the fights that took place and the stalemates that occurred whenever one side would defend a keep somewhere.

It was thanks to those battles, the Sunday PvP events, that we saw areas we'd only pass through at level 37 on our way to that dungeon otherwise. We approach an expansion that will change the face of Azeroth forever, and we have ahead of us less than a month to enjoy the Old World before Deathwing surfaces.

In light of this, Trambu of Tides of Misery has been organizing Sunday events throughout Azeroth.

These are the events that have transpired so far:

Thousand Needles 17/10

The event was described by many as a disaster, with low attendance from the Alliance side, or as most put it, the Dark Saints.


It sparked quite a debate and is arguably the first evidence of the decrease in the Alliance's activity as the Wrath of the Lich King expansion draws to its end.



Hillsbrad Foothills 24/10

This time the rules were different. The Alliance and the Horde assigned a King who they would place in Azurlode Mine and Durnholde Keep respectively. Whichever faction's King survived the longest would win.

Itafeer was appointed Horde King, and Rasu represented the Alliance. It was a close call, but the Horde managed to down the opponent's King first.


Fanatix filmed the battle:



Arathi Higlands 31/10

The objective of the Arathi Highlands battle was to plant five faction banners in the enemy's base - the Horde was stationed by the Boulderfist Outpost while the Alliance resided in Stromgarde Keep's crypt.

As seen in the screenshot to the left (courtesy of Haldan), the Alliance was victorious; third's a charm, as they say.




Hearthglen, Western Plaguelands 7/11

The fourth event in the series, scheduled for tomorrow at 21:00 server time. This time there aren't any special objectives as in the two previous events, but rather one side, starting with the Alliance, will defend the hill leading up to Hearthglen.

Once they are defeated, the Horde will get to defend it against the Alliance. Bring warm clothing, rats - it will be a long night.

Western Plaguelands - RATS GO HOME

Zerg drama

Lately there have been a lot of discussions (read: flame wars) about zergs. I wasn't going to beat a dead horse, but I decided to anyway. Consider this post the official guide to the most recent Ravenholdt drama.

First of all, you'll want read the most relevant thread: Zylopfa's thread on ganking.

Zylos Hand is a WPvP guild, we dont wait for people to get full health or
full mana before we attack them, neither do we wait for them to be of equal
numbers before we attack them. In the art of ratslaying all that counts is getting
the enemy down, them being outnumbered or not.
- Zylopfa

Basically he is saying that zerging happens, and he is fine with that. This does not reflect the opinion of all of Zylos Hand's members, however; Reavan has publicly condemned zerging - although he did this after leaving the guild. He says that the reason for his departure is that Zylos Hand has too many immature members, and it just isn't the same as in The Burning Crusade.

I am not particularly fond of zergs either, whether I am on the receiving end or otherwise - I much prefer smaller fights. I have and will continue to join big raids since I enjoy that as well, but I usually leave groups when they reach too great advantages, unless it's in friendly territory. This is not because I seek some sort of moral high ground, but rather I find it insipid.

How many rats does it take to kill some Horde dogs?

The origin of zerg: Starcraft. I have never touched the game.

Now, to address the issue at hand. Why has there been an increase in zergs? One possible explanation is that WPvP is scarcely found outside of the Elwynn Forest area, and as such people tend to cluster thereabouts and form large raids, or zergs if you will - but then surely this would have happened earlier on. I believe that as we approach a new expansion, some guilds suffer more than others in terms of inactivity. Some people have quoted warcraftrealms.com which shows that there is an activity ratio between the Horde and the Alliance of 1 to 1.7 on Ravenholdt, which in turn would explain why the rats have been suffocated.

Say what you will about zergs, it will always be a common phenomenon whether you like it or not.

How not to be seen: a rogue's greatest ability.

And now for something completely different...











Harrianlar found a bug which enabled him to tame an infinite amount of pets. In the spirit of science, he headed into Stormwind to investigate further. He reportedly managed to heal himself for amounts in the millions, as well as firing off 150k Arcane Shots on targets with high resilience. Consequently it would appear he has received a temporary ban - what a great shame indeed.

Edit 6/11: I would like to specify that Harrianlar received a forum ban for making a post about the pet bug - his WoW account was unaffected. Apologies to any confusion this may have caused.

Before you ask, I remained mounted to offer a certain squishy mage some additional protection.

I regret that I didn't manage to take any better screenshots. Apparently someone filmed the spectacle, and if you know where to find a clip of it, then please let me know.