Giggles and poops in wotlk

For poops and giggles, if I stack +Spell Power in my rogue, will my poison damage go up?
I actually don't think it will. If you asked that question a few months ago I would have said yes, but as of Wrath, poisons scale with Attack Power, not Spell Power. I think the top rank of Instant Poison gets 10% of your AP, but not benefit from spell power. All of the poisons have their own coefficients, I just picked the least mathy as my example. All scale with AP.
Has there been any word from Blizzard about increasing the daily quest cap? I'm a casual player and so only at 75 so far but I've already got a list of about 20 daily quests that I could run through to help push my rep and xp (leaving more quests at 80 to try and pay for all the really expensive shinies I can't justify right now) and I'm sure there will be plenty more coming in all the zones I haven't touched yet.
No, we haven't heard anything like that. That doesn't mean they won't do it, but we haven't heard anything about it. In my opinion, I think you would benefit from not worrying about most dailies until 80, and just do the ones that give you reputation for now. Regular quests give more gold when you're level capped but so do dailies, so what order you do them in isn't a huge impact in the long run. I'd think you would want to avoid having your leveling become horribly grindy though, and there are loads of quests. Even when you hit 80 you'll probably have a few whole zones left to run. Try not to focus on dailies too much so you don't burn yourself out before you get to see Icecrown, eh?
Why did Blizzard, again, the main city to be shared for both factions, even when they know we will have double population, and double lag?
Before I recommend a system upgrade, do you have Shadows turned on? If so, how high? If you have the Shadows slider all the way up, take it down a notch and boggle as you gain 20+ FPS instantly. Very few systems can actually handle the slider being all the way up, because absolutely everything is given a dynamic shadow. Characters, NPCs, buildings, doodads, all of it. It's pretty, but that's intended for very high end machines. The next step down is still very pretty, but gives you a huge boost to your FPS.
If you don't have shadows turned on, you probably should look into upgrading parts of your computer. Without knowing what you're using, I can't make any recommendations beyond making sure you have enough RAM and seeing that your video card isn't excessively outdated. My computer has a brand new CPU and 2 gigs of RAM, but the video card is four years old. Dalaran still goes at a good 30-35 FPS for me, which is lower than when I'm soloing but higher than when I'm in a raid. A new video card would make it run like a dream. I'd like more RAM as well, but it's lower on my upgrade priorities. Dalaran's not that bad on lag at all, especially when you consider a majority of the Horde and the Alliance are split off into two totally opposite ends of the city. I actually think it's better than Shattrath ever was.
I have a Shadow Priest I leveled to 34, then had her boosted to level 60 through Recruit-a-Friend level grants. She's now stuck in level 25-30-ish questing greens and SFK blues. I'm wondering what would be the best way to gear her. Would she be able to survive questing in Outland in her very low-level gear, or am I going to have to round up some gold for her?
If you're very careful while doing the first handful of quests, you'll be fine. Take it slow, play it safe, and after your first batch of quests you'll have a few pieces of new gear, which means more Stamina, which means you'll be okay. If you don't want to putter around that long, just hit the auction house. You don't need to spend a lot of money, just buy a couple of pieces of gear with extra stamina. That's pretty much the only thing that will cause an issue that early on: Your HP. If you only have 3,000 hitpoints or something like that, you'll be insanely squishy. As long as you have the hitpoints to survive getting an add or two, you're perfectly safe. Otherwise, time to hit the auction house.

The future of change with Hunter

 Either you're in a Hunter's barrage or you've closed to melee and they're not a threat. If they can put the sting back in melee, GC says (within a few patches -this is long term), then they'll give them more viability "to flee or stand and fight." We'll have to see what Hunter's think about that one when we get more specifics.When the Hunter changes dropped earlier this week, I understood the Volley change, and I even got the Kill Shot cooldown drop, but the one I really didn't understand was the Deterrence change. Like BRK said, it seemed pretty useless: sure, becoming immune to damage for five seconds helps survivability in the Arenas, but what's to stop people from just continuing the kill after that. And the directional effect was just perplexing as well.
Now, Ghostcrawler has provided some background on the change, and while it still doesn't make much sense, at least we have an idea of where Blizzard is coming from. First things last, the directional ability is still being tested and may not make it to the live game. But the ability itself is designed specifically for Arena, as we'd guessed. And even more strangely, he says the reason they wanted to change the spell was to make it different visually -letting the Hunter see themselves parrying every single attack while their backup helps them out. That argument may not find much ground in the numbers-driven Arena crowd, but GC says lots of times, a strong visual can give what seems like a useless spell a lot of use. Interesting look into Blizzard's design philosophy -they don't program the numbers, they program how it plays.

College drop-outs in the U.S

And there's more: Tate's Wikipedia page says that not only has she spoken out strongly in favor of DRM, and not only has she taken talking points directly from Clear Channel in trying to work on the Sirus/XM merger (a government official speaking the words of a corporation, that's just what we need), but she has also blamed television for childhood obesity. Nice one. One more reason why we are thrilled to see that we may finally get some folks in the FCC who actually know what they're talking about when it comes to online gaming.Deborah Tate is an FCC Commissioner (and will be for another three years at least -she was appointed for another five year term in 2007), and claimed in a speech about telecom policy and regulation last week that "one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction -such as World of Warcraft -which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide."
Never mind that World of Warcraft, is a game, not an addiction, and never mind that most of those 11 million people play it and are completely healthy socially and financially, and never mind even that any evidence you'd find that World of Warcraft causes dropouts is anecdotal at best. Can you really blame a game for someone making the choice to leave college? We, as you might have guessed, think not.

Copy the characters over to the 3.0.8 PTR

There's a good bit of changes to check out over at the PTR 3.0.8 patch notes. Be sure you do so and stay tuned to WoW Insider for more analysis of specific class changes.
The PTR client is not available to be downloaded yet, but we'll let you know when we hear that it is. Expect that to be anytime, probably before the end of the business day on the west coast.If you want to copy your characters over to the 3.0.8 PTR I would do it soon, as in the next few minutes. The copy is currently up and working via the account management page at worldofwarcraft.com (go there yourself and navigate to account management as to ensure there's no trickery involved in links, etc...)

Tags: 3.0.8 PTR

The changes of Warrior in Patch 3.0.8

Now that I've got that out of my system...let's take a look at the three changes they've made to the Warrior class for PTR Patch 3.0.8.First and foremost, the one you'll hear around the campfire the most – Titan's Grip has had the hit penalty removed. Completely gone. It is no more. The Titan's Grip hit penalty ceases to be. It is an ex-hit penalty!Warriors are now the most powerful class in the game. Please delete all other characters and switch to your level 13 Warrior alt you haven't played in three years. Also, please be sure to level bandaging up quickly as 24 other warriors bandaging the main tank is all you'll need to defeat most Wrath raiding content.
‘Ello hit penalty? Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!
/thumps-the-hit-penalty-on-the-counter
Now that's what I call a dead hit penalty.
If you're a Warrior this is where you're afraid Blizzard will chime in and say "Well, I'd better replace it, then." Just without the bravado and finesse of Michael Palin.
With the hit penalty removed Titan's Grip now has no additional negative consequences for equipping two two-handed weapons. Ghostcrawler has said before that the hit penalty becomes almost meaningless in its current state, and he's right. The 5% penalty that it is now doesn't do much and is very easy to get around.
So it's gone, and fury warriors lost the last bit of negativity they had with the spec. Now if only they had removed it while I was leveling in Fury for those few days...
But wait, there's more.
I'm pleased with the changes. The continued saga of Titan's Grip is fun to watch, and despite my enthusiasm over its buffs I am confident that we'll see a nerf or two come along sometime soon. Many thought that while the hit penalty was meaningless, the ability itself was just a little too over powered.
Of course it is also important to keep in mind that these are just PTR changes. Blizzard could decide to change everything and make Titan's Grip send out pink fluffy bunnies to the attacker ever 3.14159 seconds if they wanted to. Not that I expect them to do that...but still, it's on the table of options.Bloodsurge has been changed so that instead of only being triggered by a Bloodthirst critical hit, it will now trigger on a hit with a Heroic Strike, Bloodthirst, or Whirlwind attack. The fully trained talent now will only give you a 20% chance of the effect triggering, instead of 100%.
Now on to the subject of Bloodthirst. They changed it a tad so that each hit regenerates 1% of the maximum health (up from 0.6%). But instead of the effect lasting for five attacks, it only lasts for three. This means that 3% of the Warrior's health is now regenerated over three seconds instead of five seconds; and that makes the change beneficial in that the health is regened faster.

Tags: Patch 3.0.8, PTR Patch 3.0.8

Download the 3.0.8 PTR

download the 3.0.8 PTR  links for the client at https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/charcopy/downloads.html point to a 3.0.1 version of WoW. This version is several months old.
To put it another way: the version you get from the official download page will be updated upon installation. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's wrong.
This took Alex Ziebart and I a bit to realize, and we wanted to be sure that we shared this with you right away. Enjoy your PTRing!
We should note that the server names are a bit odd right now, but Alex is on the 3.0.8 PTR with his character he copied over earlier.
However once you download the version above, run the installer, and then run the game you'll be presented with the requirement to download another patch. This patch will bring you up to the latest 3.0.8 version of PTR client.

Tags: 3.0.8 PTR

The Northrend in patch 3.0.8

Shoveltusk Soup and Succulent Orca Stew were the two that didn't make it back into the game, which makes one of 3.0.8's patch notes make a lot more sense. You know, the one about Shoveltusk Meat being converted to quest items? And orcas are just Chilled Meat fodder now, it seems.The Northrend Gourmet has been a hot topic achievement since Northrend hit live realms, because it simply wasn't possible. Four of the required recipes were completely missing. As of the current PTR build, that's no longer true. Two of the recipes have been re-added to the game, and two recipes have been wiped out of existence. Not added to the game, but no longer an achievement requirement either.
Are there any major ramifications from removing the soup and stew? No, not really, unless you were sitting on a mountain of shoveltusk flesh. The buffs they supplied were redundant, offered by other meat as well as other fish. Sort of pointless recipes, really. This streamlines how many recipes you need more than anything else.
Kungaloosh is now taught by a drunkard in the sewers of Dalaran, who apparently has the recipes etched into his arm. And Fish Feast? I hope you like doing the Cooking daily, because it now requires 5 Dalaran Cooking Awards.

Tags: in patch 3.0.8

The mad baby pic in wotlk

Raiding blind

Is raiding more fun when you figure out the strategy yourself? "It actually kind of baffles me that strategies are so easy to come by for current top-end content these days," mused Mnemnosyne."In the old days of raiding, especially in EverQuest long before WoW, boss strategies tended to be somewhat secret. We wouldn't go so far as to call them closely guarded secrets, but no guild would ever post their strategy or a video showing exactly how they defeated the mobs. Guild members caught sharing the latest strategies were usually disciplined or kicked out.
"This meant we all usually had to learn at least some of each fight on our own, which was not only interesting but made for a wide variety of tactics that one doesn't see much in WoW. Some fights have only a few potential options; others were handled in massively different ways from one guild to the next, since the trailblazers kept their strategies secret except for limited hints.
"This contrasts sharply with the fact that almost every WoW guild I've seen has very, very minor differences in how they handle things to every other one. Who knows how many untested and possibly even superior strategies may exist but never be discovered, because everyone follows the posted strategies of some of the first people to figure things out and rarely deviates from them?"

 

 FCC commissioner: World of Warcraft causes dropouts

The denizens of [1.Local] spent pages and pages this week dissecting reaction to the claims of the FCC commissioner who dared to breathe the name "World of Warcraft" in a speech pointing the finger at video games as a major contributor to college drop-outs. "I think both Mrs. Tate and some people in these comments oversimplify the issue," observed Gravehound. "I'm a pretty hardcore procrastinator (only a sophomore so it hasn't hurt my grades too much yet), and I use WoW, or my 360, or a book, or a friend, or whatever's at hand to not do work right now.
"This does make me irresponsible, but it doesn't make me a fool, or a reject, or a failure. It's my responsibility to work on fixing this problem, but it's not as if I get up each morning and check box A for procrastinator or box B for perfect student. It's far more complex and difficult than that, as anyone who's struggled with any behavior they want to change knows.
"So let's not blame WoW for people's behavioral problems, but let's not act like because we can manage our time, others are incompetent or inferior if they have more trouble doing so."

 

 Mount, race restrictions lifted, Tauren rejoice

Yesterday marked the first post for new WI blogger Michael Sacco, known to many as former Blizzard blue poster Belfaire. Welcoming him aboard in his inaugural post was [1.Local] troll Saiforune: "As an official Troll Representative of the WoW Insider Troll Union, I welcome you with open claws into our cave any time. The presence of the blues is most welcome here. Seeing that you were a previous blue with very little problems, I hope I have to never go Troll form in any of your posts."
The great Hunter nerf of 2008

We knew this week was off to a rousing start when our mailbox began filling up with "ZOMG!!11! Hunter nerf!!1!" e-mails. Just how big a nerf it was began to sink in when Adam Holisky capped his post on the topic with the image of a face that has launched a thousand QQs. "Oh boy, you guys broke out the mad baby pic!" exclaimed InsaneAssault. "This is serious business. Haven't seen that guy since the honor carryover article."
Even those who weren't familiar with Mad Baby realized the gravity of his presence. "Where is the mad baby picture from originally? Does anyone know what happened to that kid?" wondered Frijona. Who nerfed that poor Mad Baby? Readers suggested a few theories – but we'll leave it to you to dig those theories out of the comments for yourself.

 Ghostcrawler: If you're 80, you're hardcore

Things have been fast and easy around here this week – in fact, some say Wrath is simply too fast and easy. But not everyone agrees. Galkuros spoke for many when he noted, "With TBC, endgame content was but a dream to me as I worked my way toward 70. No one on my server ever even downed a boss in Sunwell, and very few downed bosses in the raids leading up to that.
"With the changes Blizzard has brought with the expansion, I'm excited to get to 80 so I can experience the endgame content without devoting days on end to playing WoW (something my soon-to-be wife would not be happy with at all)."

 

 Five-man thoughts

In still more analysis of the relative ease of Wrath's five-man content, several readers astutely observed that EZ-mode playstyles don't always mean an easier time for the whole party. "It seems they have made tanking and DPSing a lot more laid-back than it used to be," wrote Camaris. "You can AoE tank, and even melee can now do AoE attacks.
"But healing, if anything, has become more hectic than TBC. I need to keep up Beacons, Shields and Judgments and have to heal massive AoE damage in quite a few instances. I've run instances as Retri and as Holy, and I have to say that there's a massive gap in the focus required. Loken is hands down my least favorite boss as a Paladin healer, because it is a prime example of two things Paladins cannot really do well: moving around a lot and keeping a whole group alive under AoE attacks."

 

 7 reasons to make a Death Knight

Robin Torres may have given us seven reasons to make a Death Knight, but Depo gave us a good reason not to make that Death Knight a Gnome: "My name is Deposition, and I am on a crusade. I will single-handedly, without mind of the current situation or without control of my own actions, murder every Gnome Death Knight I see.
"Your days are numbered."

 

 Are private servers really that bad?

WI readers had a lot strong opinions about private WoW servers. Are they technically legal? Is playing on private servers justifiable? Is it even fun? "You're forgetting one major issue here: the free trial sucks," scoffed Raaj. "You're making it sound like it gives you even a taste of how the game actually plays out. You can't mail things, you can't trade things, you can't even talk in global chat channels. You're cut off from everything else. If you weren't recruited by a friend, it's likely that you'll barely find another person to even interact with.
"The best analogy I can think of right here is to visit a car dealership, but not be allowed to drive the car, turn on the radio, or use any of the features. You're allowed to sit inside and you have to make your purchase based on that experience."