4.0.6 – patch of the Less Annoying Bosses
No release date yet, but the patch notes are steadily coming out and they’re getting better with every day. So, without dragging on – I’m sure everyone who reads it knows all of the changes anyway, so here’s my top 3 of each category. Not going to download the PTR this time, I’d rather work on my live realm characters first.
Quality of Life
These are things that will make my life in WoW much better.
- Rebuke being availaible to all specs of paladins. This is the best change ever, and I don’t even have to play a paladin to tell you that. It’s enough that I have to play a dps warrior and do heroics with one tanking.
- A socket has been added to all crafted epic armor pieces that did not already have one. Oh yes, yes, yes.
- Guild group for dungeons starts with 3 guildies (and the associated changes to rep and experience amounts when you have 3/4/5 guildies in a heroic). Good change, getting the guild rep to honored took me long enough, and there’s still a lot of things that require it to be revered.
Heroic Dungeons
There’s so many stuff I like here, it’s hard to choose only three of them. There has been a few of annoyed reactions about these in the community (oh well… actually I thought there would be more, but from my list of blogs I could only find Larisa’s post. Sorry miss Innkeeper. ;] ), but really folks, just read through them. Half of the changes are making things more visible, how can that be a nerf or a bad thing? And some things are getting fixed or buffed, like the Lockjaw fight.
- The visual for Rock Borers spawning during the submersion phase is now different from the Thrashing Charge visual. Hell yes. And all other changes that fix spell visuals – my laptop isn’t the best, and I’d really like to see things that I shouldn’t stand in. Being killed because I missed a little patch of a ground moving (because for example, there was a ton of adds running through it and their healthbars completely obscured the screen) sucks.
- Players may still use spell and abilities while afflicted by Forgemaster Throngus’s Impaling Slam. Why yes, I’d like my healer to be able to continue to heal me through unavoidable damage from the archers.
- He now knocks away players standing too close to him when he retracts his Cyclone Shield, which now inflicts Nature damage if it touches players. Good as well. Right now every group just stands there and ignores the cyclones.
Warriors
I won’t do other classes (apart from Rebuke, which just ROCKS), mostly because Vrethir is still the only one with 85 and running heroics, so I don’t really feel knowledgeable enough.
- Juggernaut no longer increases the cooldown on Charge, but instead increases the duration of the Charge stun by 2 seconds. In addition, Charge is usable in all stances, however, the talent now causes Charge and Intercept to share a cooldown. This one’s cool. I never really understood what was the point of increasing the Charge’s cooldown, it was just very annoying to wait that additional 5 seconds. Being able to switch to prot and still use Charge is nice as well.
- Inner Rage has been redesigned. It now reduces the cooldown on Heroic Strike and Cleave by 50% (to 1.5 second) for the next 15 seconds. 1-minute cooldown. It still cannot be used during Deadly Calm. Cool, as I’ve never really used Inner Rage, because using Heroic Strike was enough to make me not rage capped. Maybe now I will – at least when I will need some more aoe and have excess rage.
- War Academy no longer buffs Heroic Strike or Cleave. It now buffs Mortal Strike, Raging Blow, Devastate, Victory Rush and Slam. It’s a shame that Cleave will do less damage, I use it a lot while tanking, but maybe Devastate damage buff will be enough to counter that.
Cataclysm class previews, part 2
More awesome news from Blizzard’s development team came out this Friday with previews of next few classes. This leaves only the poor Paladins for the next week for some reason.
Druid
Mushrooms! It’s weird though, but as I only play Resto, I don’t really mind. Getting Dispel Magic will be good – finally all of the healing classes will have it, which they should in the beginning.
The biggest change here is the changing of the Tree of Life. It will be a cooldown (similar to Metamorphosis they say, which told me nothing at all and I had to check Wowhead to see that it has 30 sec duration and 3 min cooldown) instead of a passive ability. It’s kind of disturbing, but on the other hand, I’ve been looking at my tree looking exactly the same for one and a half of expansion now. I just hope that the gear will be worth it, or I’m afraid I’ll have to pay for Sheven’s operation and his transformation into a female night elf. ;)
On a more serious note though, I don’t really mind. It’s not the tree form I like in the class (though it’s cool and all that), it’s the healing style, and that doesn’t seem to be changing that much – only for the better with bits and pieces like Regrowth leaving an AoE healing patch on the ground if it crits. I just hope that with removing of the boring talents they’ve talked earlier, they will be adding some fun ones instead.
Hunter
Some time ago I’ve tried to level up my hunter when I was bored, but the ongoing mana problems weren’t really making it any less boring, so he’s still sitting somewhere around Borean Tundra, waiting for the Cataclysm to happen. Changing mana to focus needed, but I’m a bit disappointed here about losing ammo. It will just feel weird, and I would prefer to have an infinite item in the ammo slot instead, maybe with different damage types or something.
Second thing that I like is Camouflage, which just sounds fun. The rest – stables changes, finally getting a pet from level 1, losing some melee abilities, launching all traps at range and others – are for me just icings on a cake that is focus. Awesome icings nonetheless, especially the level 1 change.
Mage
I haven’t really played a mage before, so I might not be the best person to talk about this, but as I’m planning to make one in the future, here goes.
The big one – Time Warp. Basically it’s a Bloodlust/Heroism finally given to another class. So long, Deathwing-EU Alliance shamans, finally I won’t have to put up with your crap when I can have a mage with a brain instead. It’s about time some other class got this kind of ability and from a raid leader perspective I don’t really care about all the poor shamans that are afraid of losing their raid spots. If you won’t suck, you won’t lose the spot, rather than the rest of the raid having to endure you for your unique buff we need. They should have done it much earlier, when they gave shamans to the Alliance.
Wall of Fog sounds nice as well – with the addition of rated battlegrounds this will be a nice defensive tool in some of the places, if used right of course. Would be more fun if it was a wall of ice making a new wall and breaking line of sight, though.
Cataclysm class previews, part 1
Lately Blizzard is publishing a lot of information about the classes in the next expansion. It’s a good thing, but if they happen to drop some of these new and awesome features, I’d be really disappointed. So, here’s a quick preview of some I’m most interested in. I won’t write about all of them, as you can read them by yourself and I have no doubt you’ve already done so. ;)
Warrior
The warrior changes are so awesome I’m starting to think it’s a late April Fools joke. They looked at everything that is annoying in playing a warrior right now, and changed it for the better. The few highlights below doesn’t really show that, but I’ve read the preview and I’m really excited about tanking on my warrior in Cataclysm.
- Heroic Strike will no longer be an “on next swing” attack, as we are removing this mechanic in Cataclysm. And all the Protection warriors around the world rejoiced at a thought that their wrists will be (somewhat) saved from the RSI, and their mousewheels saved from dying an early death from overuse. Seriously.
- Talents and abilities – Heroic Leap sounds awesome, and I really hope it will stay in the final version – even if the healers already hate me for charging into the mobs, now I will be able to do it with style. The Furious Sundering will be a nice thing to have for dps warriors when there’s no warrior tank around, and I really hope it won’t be buried deep in the tree so Arms will be able to get it as well.
Rogue
The rogue class was pretty much fine in Wrath, except for the Subtlety tree (which I don’t really care about anyway). The changes we’ve seen so far make it from being just fine to cool.
- Changes to the combo points system. This includes such things as an ability to transfer unused points to a new target when you change targets – something that was quite annoying in any fight with more than one mob. Making passive abilities like Slice and Dice use points on a recently killed target (rather than wasting the ones on the current one, which could be used for dealing damage) is the big thing here. We’ll see how it plays, but it looks like it will be not as annoying to play a rogue.
- The rogue drops a Smoke Bomb, creating a cloud that interferes with enemy targeting. Enemies who are outside the cloud will find themselves unable to target units inside the cloud with single-target abilities. Enemies can move inside the cloud to attack, or they can use area-of-effect (AoE) abilities at any time to attack opponents in a cloud. This new ability is something absolutely new and awesome, even more than the warrior’s Heroic Leap, which is just a more awesome Charge.
Others
While I still haven’t leveled my little Priest above level 28 or so, these new things in the preview make me want to do it before the expansion. The highlight here is the Leap of Faith, which is basically a Death Grip used on a friendly target. Sounds very fun. ;) Changes to healing and a group Power Word: Barrier are also cool.
The Shaman changes were a bit disappointing, as there isn’t much awesome things there. A new AoE heal is nice I guess, some fixes with Elemental as well, but it seemed like they were focused on Enhancement the most, which I don’t play at all, so meh.
Warlocks and Death Knights – no real comments here. It will be nice for DK’s to finally get a single tanking tree, at least from my raid leading point of view. Warlocks are all about the soul shards, just like in the Blizzcon preview – I’m not really interested in them right now, but after the expansion hits I might as well roll one if it’s not as annoying as I hear it is now.
All in all, it’s a lot of cool and exciting things in one. I will be really disappointed if they decide to not do some of these, and I really hope to see all of this in the game.
Patch 3.3 Impressions
With the latest patch finally showing up in the background downloader, it usually means it’s release is coming quite soon. I won’t be playing the guessing game this time, but the downloader being active usually means from a week to a few. I was putting off writing this post for a while now, mostly because due to the live game (and other not game related activities) I was not online on the PTR this time. But, the time has finally come.
Good:
- The new raid instance and the heroics. I love new dungeon content, especially if it’s something like I hope Icecrown will be – fun, challenging but not impossible, and if I get a few extra good quality stories with it, I will be extra happy.
- The revamped LFG system. Cross-server pugs? Random dungeons, along with a tool that don’t require me to spend most of my time in Dalaran when I’d rather be wasting my time farming stuff or doing quests? Pretty much awesome. Plus, you can’t go wrong with tanking for pugs – it’s always entertaining.
- The Quel’Delar questline – it might not be a legendary (and being a tank on my warrior I’ll probably won’t get the orange axe anyway), but it looks very cool and promising. Besides, I already have two Quel’Serrars, so it’s only appropriate that I’d get their sister blade, even if it will have to be of the two-handed variety.
- Quality of life improvements – things like removing the level restriction on meeting stones, various changes for early leveling, changes to the map and quest tracking… it all adds up and it’s removing various annoyances from the game.
Bad:
- The gating system. I really hope it will somehow work out, but seeing the news that we’re gonna only have the first four bosses availaible for several weeks… I can only hope that they will provide enough of the required fun and challenge in that case. Not to mention the limited tries on the last bosses on each wing, though that might be something not that bad really, since it will make us really focus and figure out what we did wrong.
- Changing the Master Angler of Stranglethorn. While I like the Kalu’ak Derby itself, I feel like adding it to this achievement is kinda making the Stranglethorn fishing tournament pointless. I know why it’s been done, but still, they could do it in a different way, like adding a new meta achievement for at least one of both tournaments and then adding this new meta to the Salty one.
- Restricting raids to players above level 10. While I understand it’s meant to be a quality of life change for new players that might not be aware of what a raid group is and what it does (and trust me, everyone did try to quest while in a raid at some point), it’s a bit disappointing because it will restrict fun playermade events.
Ugly:
- The tier sets. The rogue one is once again just weird, and while I know that geists are really an appropriate look for Icecrown Citadel, it’s still not something I’ll want to see. The warrior stuff is pretty mediocre, as I really liked the look of T9 shoulders, and the druid headpiece… let’s not mention the druid headpiece.
The Cataclysm
Though Blizzcon ended just a few days ago, I’m still not completely sure what I feel about all these announcements. It’s really awesome, but makes me a bit worried in some places. Well, let’s see what we got.
The DirectTV internet stream
It sucked. Well, in the end I’m glad I bought it, because what’s better than looking at the panels? Only going to the real place – and there’s no way I can do that right now, but the stream really sucked. They only had cameras on the main stage (so people watching the stream missed on half of the panels), they cut off the contests the first day right in about 2/3rd, without even showing the winners of Sound-a-like or dance contests (or the machinima contest either – btw the winning machinima is this piece of art by my favourite Cranius and Legs – Don’t Make Me Get My Main. Watch it, its first place is completely deserved). To top it off, the “On-demand” stream is cut into 15-minute streams, but the streams aren’t really continuous – there’s like a 20-30 (or sometimes what feels more) seconds of missing video and sound between them.
Oh, and if I hear their male host once again after this week I will seriously strangle someone. He was just horrible.
The Cataclysm
Well, what can I say here. HOLY SHIT THEY ARE CHANGING AZEROTH.
The new zones look promising, but changing the flow and terrain of the old zones is both awesome and mind-blowing at the same time. When they showed how Desolace, the single worst zone in all of Kalimdor, is being changed into a forest… what the hell are they doing, are they making people want to go there, really? This, combined with the new races, will most likely make me roll more alts, just to see and experience the new zones, quests and all that stuff.
The new content looks pretty good as well. While I’m a bit not sure yet what’s up with all these elemental planes, all the stuff involving Deathwing is very awesome. As is Deathwing himself – they haven’t really shown him before, and when they finally did… holy shit. That is one freaking, terrifying dragon, are we really supposed to step up and fight HIM? Can I like, maybe find myself a nice little corner and hide there, no?
Then there’s the new dungeons – after all this time, we’re finally going to see Uldum, Grim Batol and some new stuff in Blackrock Mountains on top of that. They will have to do something really good in the 4.X content patches to do something even better than these. On the other hand, getting heroic versions of Deadmines and SFK is a bit of a letdown. It’s nice, but yeah, oh well.
Item and stats changes
Awesome. Not seeing armor penetration on an item ever again? Where do I sign for that? And haste making energy regen faster is a very cool use for this stat, much better than “you can now swing your weapons 0.45% faster” that it is now. Seeing attack power and defense rating go down as well is a bit sad, but I’m not really bothered about it. Juggling around the defense cap is only fun for a while, and only really doable if you have enough luck with your drops in high-end instances – otherwise it’s just a pain in the ass you have to endure each time you get a new item.
It’s a bit more crazy for the casters, with removal of both MP5 and spell power, so they are panicking a bit more than we rogues are, but remember folks. It’s getting easier, not too easy. You will still have your stats, it will not be HP/MP/POWAH after all.
DON’T PANIC.
Class changes
I don’t play a warlock (at least not yet ;] ), so I can’t comment on that really, but the new shard interface looks fun. About the hunters – well, getting them focus will change a lot, both in playstyle and the talents. And it’s about time, because while leveling my little tauren hunter I’ve been oom a lot, even with constant switching of aspects from Hawk to Viper, and that’s just annoying, so I’m hoping the unlimited, energy-like focus will make it much better. The ammo change looks very cool on the other hand, and I hope they will have lots of different types of it, making it a fun and a significant choice, not only a burden and a money sink like it is now.
Guild changes
It seems that Blizzard wants to make guilds more than just another word for IRC. Leveling a guild and choosing talents, such as mass resurrection or summoning of your raid? Give me that anytime. Guild achievements are another cool idea that should have been here sooner. What I like most is the changes that they are making to the guild interface ingame – right now that thing is absolutely crappy and hard to use.
Ozzy Osbourne
Well. The guy’s a walking legend, and I have a soft spot for that kind of music, even if it’s a walking, 60 years old legend singing, with a bit weird voice sometimes. ;) The first song, Bark at the Moon sounded a bit weird, but the rest was okay. Still the crappy on-demand DirectTV stream ruined it a bit by cutting the songs in half, too bad.
So to cut this long story short, I’m sold right now and I’m so looking forward to the new expansion. Excellent way to make an already great game even better.
I’m pretty sure…
… that the blogosphere is already full of it, but hell, whatever.
She has lurked in her lair and done battle with the many brave adventurers who travelled to that familiar location over the years. Now, in honor of the World of Warcraft 5-year anniversary, the dreaded brood mother Onyxia is being revamped to make a return to the forefront of Azeroth, as part of our big plans for the upcoming 3.2.2 content patch.
(source)
How awesome is that? We get to fight Onyxia again, not soloing/duoing her for easy gold, but with groups of 10/25. On top of that, she drops a flying mount and T2-lookalikes with current stats. On top of that, we also get a mini Onyxia Whelpling, just like we all received a white bear last year.
It’s rehashing of the content again, yes, but you know what? I don’t care. I’ve been fighting dragons all the time, I can fight one again, why not. I will be missing soloing her, as they plan to remove the old level 60 version, and it sucks a bit for all the guilds that locked their level at 60 and refuse to level up and buy TBC and whatever, but other than them nobody will really care. Oh and it makes me wonder if they make her so she still can be skinned for Onyxia Scales and her breath used for Quel’Serrar questline. Fortunately I’ve done it already, but it might be good if the functionality is not broken.
Anyway, I’m an excited dwarf. Can’t wait till November.
Poking Around the PTR
Blizzard’s tech staff finally resolved the problems with some European Battle.net accounts being unable to login on the PTR realms, so I’ve been able to poke around some stuff. Found a few changes that weren’t mentioned at all in the notes as well, and some of them are pretty cool.
Interface Improvements
Quite a few of these. The most important is that quest turn-in locations and objectives are now marked on the World Map. This is a pretty good change – saves some alt-tabbing to Wowhead or installing Lightheaded or whatever addon you like to use. I didn’t make a screenshot of that, because it’s most likely all over the WoW.com and other blogs.
The raid difficulty and dungeon difficulty are finally separated. Dungeon menu is the same as it is now, and the raid one is set up for the new 4 different lockouts.
Another nice things is you can now enable stat comparison and item levels on Blizzard’s tooltips. Quite useful and while it lacks RatingBuster’s math abilities and configuration, it makes choosing an upgrade easier. And showing item levels is a welcome change these days when vehicles and stuff scale with our gear.
You can see here that it doesn’t care about the gems in the sockets or enchants, it only shows the stats that are on the gear. You need to enable it in the Options, so if someone’s really used to RatingBuster, you can still use it without the tooltips being absurdly large.
The last piece in this category is made for Druids. I guess it won’t be that useful if you changed your unit frames, but it might help if not.
Equipment Manager fixes
The Equipment Manager has gone through some fixes as well. First of all, if you click on a partial set, you will now see what slots are ignored. This is awesome change, as it makes it a lot easier to edit the set – right now on live realms you have to ignore everything again by yourself.
This is my partial fishing set. The yellow arrows are clickable and they’re showing things you can put in this slot, just as if you’d mouse over the item with Alt pressed now (it still works as well). As you can see on the right, the set tooltips are now a bit more useful (with red text if an item is missing).
New World Events
Of course, the Pilgrim’s Bounty is the biggest one. It’s set a week after Hallow’s End, from November 8th till 14th. Also Hallow’s End ends two days earlier and there’s a new Day of the Dead instead, with one achievement for it.
The biggest thing would be of course the long-awaited Northrend Children’s Week. There’s an Orphan Matron in Dalaran, and you can choose to take care of either a little Wolvar pup or an Oracle hatchling. Just as with the old orphans, they give some travelling quests, and after that you get a pet in the mail.
Unfortunately you have to choose which one you want, so I did the quests again on my other character to see the Wolvar pet. He’s quite cute I must say, and the Wolvar orphan’s quests are more fun than the Gorloc’s.
Both new orphans also count for the achievements such as Home Alone. I hope Blizzard will not make us wait till next year to get them, that would be a real shame. Also I wonder if we’re going to be able to choose one of the two orphans like it’s now on the PTR, or if we have to have a specific faction reputation with either the Oracles or the Frenzyheart.
Argent Tournament
The main place of the patch, so it obviously got a lot of changes. Apart from the most obvious ones, such as the completed Colliseum with the instances (not working yet), there’s a bunch of other changes. There’s now a lot more rewards for Crusader Seals, and some new dailies if you’re exalted with the Silver Covenant (and are a champion of at least one city) or have the Crusader title.
The new dailies aren’t very hard, and award 5 extra seals if you do all of them. You don’t get any Champion Purses though. They have also changed the champion dailies a bit – the one with 15 Scourge is now about 15 Cultists (easy enough, they’re all over the place and very near the Tournament grounds), and the Battle Before the Citadel one now requires to kill 3 Commanders.
There’s also a bunch of new rewards for the Seals. I’m pretty sure everyone heard about the upgraded Argent Squire (with bank, vendor and a mailbox) and the new mounts, but there’s also a new pet availaible from the Silver Covenant quartermaster – the Shimmering Wyrmling. Oh, and I’m now officially really jealous of the Horde’s new Sunreaver Dragonhawk. It looks nothing like the dragonhawks you get for 100 mounts achievement – it’s a lot bigger and very awesome.
3.2 Patch Notes and the Forum Uproar
So, there comes the time again when the PTR is very close and the next content patch notes are being released. This time I’ve spent some quality time reading all the whining on the EU WoW forums. Pretty amusing I must say. I won’t copy the whole notes here, as you can find them pretty much anywhere now, but I’ll keep to some more interesting points.
Rogues
- After much quiet contemplation, rogues now possess the ability to learn how to use one-handed axes.
- Sword Specialization: This talent is now called Hack and Slash and applies to axes as well as swords.
There are axes in my Sword Spec! Sounds like Blizzard’s plan to make me use more weapons, which sounds pretty nice. About the ridiculousness of a stealthy thief using axes, well, Combat specced rogues aren’t very stealthy anyway. We carry maces and swords already, so who cares. More options are never bad. Not many changes otherwise though (one Shadow Dance that I skipped ’cause I’m totally not interested in that tree anyway) – guess the class is more or less fine now.
Achievements
- A Brew-FAST Mount: A new Feat of Strength achievement for acquiring any epic Brewfest mount.
- Have Keg, Will Travel: Now requires either a Brewfest mount or using Brewfest Hops to transform yours into one.
Yay for Brewfest change! This means I’ll be getting my Violet Proto-drake after all, without the need for two weeks of BRD grinding. I’ve never seen the mount drop last year despite doing the encounter a lot of times, and I’d be very angry (but not very surprised) if I won’t see it this year as well. That change of course doesn’t make the Violet drake much easier to get – it still requires a lot of commitment.
Emblem System Changes
- Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders’ Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
- Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
- The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
- The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
- New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.
And this is the single most controversial change in the patch notes, and it makes the most interesting posts on the forums to read. I fully support this change – it will make my alts happy with means to get better gear, it will make new players happy with means to get better gear faster (without the need to endlessly farm Naxx-10/Naxx-25 and always being few steps behind), and most importantly it will make guilds happy to recruit geared raiders more easily without the need to either poach them from other progressed guilds or to drag them through old content for too long.
Rogue changes in 3.1
The patch is coming, we are all doomed!
Check out the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSbEr5ar0Zo – we’re going to be heroes again. It’s about time, ain’t it? And there’s an older video as well, not that good, but still nice - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlIonr1mU1o
This is a post I compiled for our guild forums, but I think it may be of some use here as well. Since it’s a bit long, check the changes after the read more link!
Read more
Professions in 3.1 – Fishing
The 3.1 patch will bring a lot of good news for WoW fishermen, and I’m really happy with most of the changes. This profession was in need of some help lately, and Blizzard apparently heard the call.
This is the second post the 3.1 changes series – you can check the whole category on the right sidebar, but don’t expect any serious math from me. And now, on to the changes!
The time needed to catch fish has been reduced.
From 20 seconds channeling to 10 seconds channeling. Quick and easy way to speed up fishing.
You can now fish anywhere, regardless of skill. Every catch has the potential for fishing skill gains, but you are likely to catch worthless junk in areas that are too difficult for your skill.
Catching worthless junk (that sells for a bit of copper/silver to the vendor) instead of just failing. Failing to catch anything was just a huge annoyance, good that they’re getting rid of that. A lot of people tends to disagree here – but I’ll be honest, after the first character on the realm, I’ve never leveled fishing again on the other ones – it’s just too much of a pain in the butt to do it. This change (as well as the next two below) will change it and make it not so annoying.
Players are no longer required to do the Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme quest to gain Artisan fishing. The quest now offers a special superior-quality fishing pole instead. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh to receive this new fishing pole.
Not bad. Usually I’m not so cool with removing the class or profession quests, but if the quest is just changing its reward, then it’s fine. Running around the whole world just to learn Artisan level was surely annoying, and the new fishing pole is welcome. It will give 25 bonus fishing, which is just awesome for this level. For comparison – the Kalu’ak pole gives 30, and the Outland one from Terokkar – 20 fishing skill.
You no longer need to learn fishing from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.
Continuing on the change above – you won’t have to chase books and uncommon fish around Azeroth to get you fishing to the next level. I already did that the hard way once, nice to see I won’t have to do it ever again if I decide to pick up fishing on another character.
New fishing dailies are now offered from Marcia Chase in Dalaran City!
We’ve already seen the new dailies in the earlier PTR patch update. There are 5 of them, they require you to fish stuff all around Northrend, and the quest giver works just like the Outland one – giving one random daily a day. It’s about time they added something like this – and I have to say the mechanics of the dailies are fun.
Also, the dailies have quite nice rewards – some epic gems, new fishing poles, a little crab pet, random highly-priced vendor junk…
You can now fish in Wintergrasp, and the fishin’ is good! A new clam, the Giant Darkwater Clam, can be obtained by fishing in Wintergrasp. This mighty clam has a greatly increased chance to drop pearls, and yields up to five times the regular amount of clam meat.
And here we have another thing to get me ganked to hell and back. How cool is that! ;] The Wintergrasp area will give fish that are needed for Fish Feasts (that’s Nettlefish, Musselback Sculpins and Glacial Salmons) in addition to the new type of Clams. Right now, getting materials for a stack of Fish Feasts takes about an hour, and after the patch it could take a bit less.
A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools.
The mount was previewed lately on MMO-Champion, and I have to say one thing – I will have that even if it takes me a month of fishing to get. :]
A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man ‘O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.
And the last change – for a while the Borean Man ‘O Wars were useless, and now you will be able to learn a recipe for them from your local helpful cooking trainer. Not too bad.