Yes, after talking about how much the Developers hated having to use it and how they would be super careful to not let themselves get into this situation again…

For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets. So if a raid’s main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%.

Why are we doing this?

The high levels of tank avoidance players have obtained is making the incoming damage a tank DOES take more “spiky” than is healthy for raiding. Ideally, tanks would be receiving a relatively constant stream of damage over time. This allows healers to better plan their healing strategy, broaden their spell options, and simply give more time to react. Tanks could use their cooldowns more reactively. Instead, the current situation is that if we make a hard hitting melee boss and a tank doesn’t avoid two successive swings then the tank could very well be dead in that 1-2 second window. The use of reactive defensive abilities instead becomes a methodically planned affair, healers have to spam their largest heals just in case the huge damage spike happens.

We’ve been trying to do a fair amount to mitigate the effect of high tank avoidance on the encounter side of things during this expansion with faster melee swings, additional melee strikes, dual wielding, narrowing the normal variance of melee swing damage, and various other tricks. There’s a limit to what we can do, however. So to give us a bit of breathing room we’ve implemented Chill of the Throne. Going forward past Icecrown Citadel, we have plans to keep tank avoidance from growing so high again.

Which is pretty much what they said when they implemented Sunwell Radiance. True to their word, they introduced harsh Diminishing Returns in Wrath of the Lich King.

Why didn’t it work?

A tank needs a certain amount of defense to be uncrittable. Defense grants dodge, and parry in addition to lowering your chance to be critically hit. So you already have a nice head start on avoidance. Then you need some way to make Tank Plate gear attractive to Tanks but not to DPS. So you load it up with Defense, Parry, and Dodge.

Enter Hard modes. At the outset of Wrath, they were an experiment in the form of Sartharian 3 Drakes. Then they became a larger experiment in Uludar and a core mechanic in Crusaders Coliseum. These hard modes needed to give better gear than ‘normal’ modes and thus the mudflation of item levels went up much more each Tier of raiding than originally planned.

What do we know for sure?

We know the 20% is taken after Diminishing Returns. That basically doubly penalizes avoidance.

We know that the conversions aren’t changing. Your trinket with x dodge rating is still giving you the same y% dodge.

What does it mean?

You are going to hear a lot of opinions, and some will be told to you with very authoritative voices.

Some will harken back to their Sunwell days and figure what happened then (Tanks still valued Avoidance and on some fights geared specifically for Avoidance) will happen now. But the game mechanics have changed drastically. Tanks have for more short duration cooldowns than they did in Sunwell and Healer Mana goes a lot further.

For the immediate future, I’m not going to change anything. By the time 3.3 actually arrives on servers, the theorycrafters will have come up with a good plan for all tanks. I tend to be a StamStacker anyway.

Now allow me to throw my Honorshammer’s Prediction of the Patch 3.3 Live date. I’m going with November 17th. This is the first Tuesday after the mandatory Battle.net merger for all WoW accounts.

So I advise you follow the various threads and blogs. Eventually a consensus will form.

Official Forums (go there at your own risk) http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677632379&sid=1&pageNo=1#0
MainTankadin http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?f=6&t=26556&rb_v=viewtopic
Tankspots thread: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f56/57472-chill-throne.html
ThinkTank (Druid) http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/10/general-druid-icewell-radiance-bears.html
Pwnwear (DK) : http://pwnwear.com/2009/10/29/icecrown-20-percent-aura/
Avenging Wrathy (Paladin): http://avengingwrathy.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/the-death-of-avoidance-the-loss-of-a-soap-box/

So relax, and continue to enjoy 3.2. By the time 3.3 gets here, we’ll know how to handle it.

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Let me give you a sampling from the Under Developement site: Icecrown Citadel will feature a massive five-player dungeon sprawling across three wings of the citadel’s foundation. While the Lich King’s attention is focused on the Argent Crusade and the Knights of the Ebon Blade ripping through the front gates, players will be tested as they assist Jaina Proudmoore (Alliance) and Sylvanas Windrunner (Horde) in infiltrating the citadel through an alternate entrance.

An epic quest line will present adventurers with the task of weakening Icecrown Citadel’s forces, requiring that players defeat the challenges in each dungeon wing before venturing into the next one. Normal and Heroic versions of the dungeon will be accessible to players, although each wing will be considered a separate instance; therefore, on Heroic difficulty, each wing will have its own separate lockout timer. All-new rewards — including item level 219 (normal) and level 232 (Heroic) loot — will be offered to those who destroy some of the Lich King’s most formidable allies.

The final boss of the final wing is none other than the star of the Wrath of the Lich King, the big man himself, Arthas!

First of all with the level of drops being Ulduar10 (219) on Normal Mode and ToC10 (232) on Heroic, it would stand to reason that the Heroic will drop Triumph badges. This might be a great way to finish off any Badge items that haven’t been purchasd yet. I wonder if it also portents a new Emblem type in the Ice Crown raid.

The irony here (at least for me) was that I was worried they would only give 25 man raiders a shot at Arthas and as a 10 man Raider, that kind of disappointed me. You can see the initial comments from the Designers here.

How many people do you need in a fight for it to feel epic? Most classic stories and movies end with a mono e mono with the hero and the villain. Even when you have a group (or a party if you will) it’s a very small number of people fighting the ‘big bad guy’.

Now that Arthas is in a 5 man, it’s the same thing, only in reverse. I have to say I’m very excited for the decision the Developers have made. Arthas has been taunting us since we got off the boat. Everyone deserves a shot at him, even if you can’t (or chose not) to raid.

I don’t think anyone expects we’ll actually KILL Arthas in the 5 man. We’ll defeat the encounter, but it will likely end with Arthas taunting us again and retreating further into Ice Crown Citadel, into the Raid portion.

I’m very excited.

And not to go all conspiracy theorist on you, but isn’t is might interesting that this new comes out the day after The Old Republic starts Beta signups? Kind of makes you go ‘Hmmmm.’

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The Brood Mother is Back!

Since we’ll be talking more about the new Onyxia 3.2.2 fight and the strategy involved in the next episode of the WoWphiles Podcast I won’t give too much away here.

I will give you these basic tips though to help your raid take down the new Patch 3.2.2 Onyxia:

Phase 1: Tank her facing the back wall; Everyone else stand by her belly so you don’t get tailswiped

Phase 2: Don’t stand near the whelp caves; Keep dps on Onyxia, Burn down the big adds fast as they come; AoE whelps as needed (they don’t do much damage to the tanks); Run as fast as you can to a side wall during Deep Breath (Preferably away from the whelp caves)

Phase 3: Burn down any remaining adds first (The tank can handle Onyxia on his/her own just fine); Don’t get feared into the whelp caves; Burn her down

That’s the basics of it. Look for more strategy and guides on the Onyxia 3.2.2 fight as well as other good information in the upcoming episode of the Podcast.

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There is going to be a wealth of information spread out all over the internet soon enough on the many, many changes coming out in the new expansion and since I’m not at Blizzcon myself I can only get you the information that I can find myself or hear via twitter.

The official release date has not been given (yet), but it will be in 2010 from what they have told us so far. My guess is that it will be around November, but only time will tell.

New Race/Class Combinations
The first thing I want to cover is the new race/class combinations because this is something that I have wanted since I started playing. I have hated racial restrictions on classes since it first appeared way back in the days of early Dungeons and Dragons. I like all options to be open and restrictions, while good for the Lore freaks, annoy me to no end.

So, here is your chart for the new race/class combinations:

In case you aren’t able to see those changes, here’s a list for you:

Orc: Mage
Undead: Hunter
Tauren: Paladin, Priest
Troll: Druid
Blood Elf: Warrior
Goblin: Death Knight, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior

Human: Hunter
Dwarf: Mage, Shaman
Night Elf: Mage
Gnome: Priest
Draenei: (nothing new here…)
Worgen: Death Knight, Druid, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior

Starting Zones Remade
All of Azeroth has been royally screwed by the escape of a dragon known as Deathwing. The whole world map has been remade, and starting zones are changed to take you from level 1-15.

I love this because I love to level. This chance is going to open the doors wide open to leveling and I wouldn’t be surprised if I reroll a character of every race, and likely more than one of both the goblins and worgen.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth
This is something that Blizzard said they would never do. Of course, this isn’t the first time they’ve done something they said they wouldn’t. Regardless, it’s here. I said before that I did not see this ever happening because Blizzard would have to remake the whole world map to make it possible. Well, that’s exactly what they did and so we will now be able to use flying mounts in Azeroth.

New Profession: Archeology
This is a nice surprise, and one that has absolutely no details – yet.

We know that it will allow you to find ancient artifacts and special rewards, but that’s all they’ve told us so far. What does it actually do? Who knows?

Whenever we receive more information I’m sure I will post it here for you to see.

But Wait! That’s Not All!
There is a lot more that has been revealed, but I have even fewer details on that than everything else I have already posted here. As more information becomes available I will post it.

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From the BlizzCon 2009 World of Warcraft Cataclysm panel, here are some new details:

Deathwing – He has been driven mad by the whispers of the Old Gods from within the Earth. The power of the Old Gods has magnified his power and he has awoken from his slumber and has exploded into the physical plane of existence in Azeroth and has erupted the Cataclysm.

The 4 planes of elementals will be brought into the world. Now that the elementals are all loose they are at war with everyone .

Worgen – Blizzard felt that the Alliance needed a monstrous race. The worgens were summoned to right the scourge. Their curse made its way into Gilneas. We will see how the curse spread when we play their starting zone.

Goblins – The Goblins that we play are a specific group of Goblins and not the neutral ones we are used to. Their starting area is where they are shipwrecked near Azshara and Durotar. They start out neutral and then join the Horde. Goblins provide comic relief for the Horde.

Surprises in store for levels 1-5 for Goblins and Worgen. The new starting zones are promised to be amazing.

When we return from fighting the Lich King in Northrend, the world will be changed.

New Features
Level Cap raised only to 85 so they can put a lot of work into the new content in the old world and the new dungeons.

7 new zones – Mount Hyjal, Uldum, The Lost Isles, Gilneas, Deepholm (Where Deathwing came from), The Sunken City of Vashj’ir (under water), The Twighlight Highlands

All old world zones are getting a revamp with updated quests and, art and items.

Guild advancement system. Everything players do will help level their guild. Daily quest, raids, BG’s etc. Gives access to new perks: Guild Talent Tree for things like less durability loss, cheaper repairs, mass resurrection, and more.

Phased Terrain – The world will change as you play your questlines.

Secondary Profession Archeology: Artifacts that you obtain will lead to the Path of the Titans.

Path of the Titans is a new way to customize your characters. The Talent trees will not expand in the new expansion but The Path of the Titans will give you more customization.

Mastery System – As you spend points in a talent tree you will become more powerful in different ways.

Many new dungeons, creatures, quests and items.

The World
Five adventure zones for leveling from 78-85

Two new starting zones for new races from 1-15

Fly Everywhere – no restrictions

Some zones will change a lot. Barrens will be split in half. The level flow will change. Some zones that may have been level 40 zones might be a level 20 zone now.

Descolace has had regrowth from water rushing into the zone off the coast.

Darkshore has new quest hubs with a better flow of quests.

Azshara is the new goblin 10-20 zone. There is a giant quarry where the big mountain was.

Undercity is revamped so it can be flyable.

Sunken City of Vashj’ir and Mount Hyjal will be level 78 starting areas.

New underwater gameplay that will feel like land combat. There will be underwater flying speed mounts.

Deepholm is the hub of all the new zones and will be the largest. This is Deathwing’s domain and the Temple of Earth. There will be portals to other places in Cataclysm.

Uldum will have 2 dungeons inside. It will have an Egypt desert feel to it. There are temples created by the titans. It has been hidden until now with the Cataclysm revealing it. There are rumors of a secret weapon in this zone. There is a race of people called Tol’vir in this zone.

Mount Hyjal is under siege from Ragnaros. He has sent his army there to burn the World Tree. Ragnaros has returned from the plane of fire from where be banished him after killing him in Molten Core. Malfurion Stormrage has returned and has come to this zone. There will be a battle taking place.

Twilight Highlands will be where Grim Batol is now. This is the headquarters of the Twilight’s Hammer.
There will be two port towns for Horde and Alliance. Red dragons will have a base here. Twilight Dragonflight is a new flight that will be here.

New dungeons and raids
The Firelands (raid) Sulfurion Keep
Uldum – 2 level up dungeons.
Blackrock Caverns – New level up dungeon in Blackrock Spire
Grim Batal
Skywall
Heroic Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep (Level 85)

PvP
Tol Barad PvP zone – Island off the coast of Eastern Kingdoms. Horde and Alliance want control of this zone. Melding of Wintergrasp and Isle of Quel’danas. Daily quests available when you have control. Then a battle takes place at certain times like in Wintergrasp

Battle for Gilneas Battleground – Fight through the city and take control of different districts

New Arena Maps

Rated Battlegrounds – do rated BG’s to get better geer like in the Arena system.

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It’s official! Not just rumor anymore.

At Blizzcon Chris Metzen announces that Cataclysm is coming next and they debut the trailer at Blizzcon.

The old world is rocked by the cataclysm and is reformed. The maelstrom is churning between the continents.

The Goblins have found new allies with the horde.
The Worgen have found new allies with the alliance.

New Race/Class combinations are official!

Level Cap raised to 85.

New secondary skill Archeology!

Classic instances get Heroic mode – Deadmines and SFK

New Character Progression – Path of the Titans

New Battlegrounds with rated team play

Flying mounts in Old World

Deathwing has returned

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We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm.

When I first heard about the announced faction transfers I immediately had mixed feelings about it. The positives, as Blizzard pointed out, are that if you have a character of the opposite faction (let’s say Alliance) that you aren’t playing because your new friends are playing Horde, you can now revive that character and transfer it to the Horde. For me personally, I know someone who is die hard Alliance that I’ve wanted to play with but all my toons are Horde. If I wanted to, I can now transfer one of them to that server so that he is ready to switch factions when the service becomes available and I will be able play with my friend over there.

Sounds pretty good, right?

The only real negative that came to mind was that you’d have Horde Night Elves and Gnomes running around with Alliance Orcs and Undead. That’s just not right. But as I read the Blizzard announcement again, I see that it says “transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character”. While this is a bit vague, it makes me think that we may have to change races as well. I can only hope.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Leave a comment and let me know where you stand on this topic.

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Now keep in mind, this is the first iteration of the PTR, it is almost certain what we get as the Live version will be different in some way.

Here’s what was learned by Maintankadin moderator, Modus aka moduspwnens.

It reduces damage by 30%.

We saw this from the actual patch notes. The Damage reduction is staying at 30%.

It reduces the entire hit that takes you below 35% by 30%.

This was one of the big questions I had, and now that I think about it, it makes sense. Having only work on the part of the hit that took you under 35% could still make it leapfroggable.

It also reduces hits taken afterward (from below 35% to also below 35%).

This is logical. If it reduces hits above 35%, it would seem to follow that it also reduces hit under 35%. That’s basically exactly what AD does today on live.

It doesn’t work on fall damage.

Yes, Modus jumped off a cliff. He still died.

The “GS” effect works like Guardian Spirit except places a debuff on you (2 min duration) called Ardent Defender.

Basically instead of saying “You die”, the combat log will say,”Ardent Defender heals you for X, where X is 30% of your max hit points”

It is now shown in the combat log as absorbed damage, as is the would-be “killing blow.”

We now have some way to know it’s working. I’m sure some enterprising Addon developer will come up with a mod to broadcast this to the raid. I’d love it if they could have a little “1UP” appear over my head like from Mario World.
AD’s save unfortunately takes precedence over GS

Now we start getting into some of the downsides. Guardian Spirit should trigger before Ardent Defender does. Ardent Defender should really be a last line of defense kind of thing. We’re making our last stand against the boss, holding out against all hope. Once I’m copied over to the PTR I plan on putting in a request to get the order of precedence changed. Whether the Developers decide to do that or not, is up to them.

While you have the Ardent Defender debuff, the damage reduction portion no longer takes effect.

Now we come to major drawback of Ardent Defender. If it saves my life, it won’t reduce any damage, at all, for 2 minutes. I would offer that this helps to balance the ability somewhat, and will perhaps stem the tide of people calling it overpowered.

The obvious comparison of AD is too Will of the Necropolis because it’s essentially the same skill.

Will of the Necropolis was determined to be overpowered and later nerfed. So wouldn’t it logically follow that since AD is twice as strong (30% damage reduction versus 15% damage reduction for WotN), it must therefore be even more overpowered than WotN was and therefore must need a nerf. The flaw in that logic is looking at WotN and AD in a vacuum and not in the context of the Death Knight and Paladin class.

Remember that in addition to WotN, the Death Knight had more armor, more health, and more advoidance than any other tank. Then the Death Knight had 2 to 3 major cooldowns depending on spec on top of that. So their cooldowns needed to get reduced, changed, nerfed, pick your word.

Paladins have low Effective Health. Their avoidance is about on par. Paladins are behind EVERY tank class in the cooldown department. We have one, Divine Protection on a 2 minute cooldown. Every other tank has multiple. We’re the only Tank without a gap closer. Our AoE threat was significantly nerfed. Consecrate simply can’t compete with something like Death and Decay. We run into the same resource starvation issues that Warriors do, only it is many orders of magnitude more difficult to refill our resource once we do run dry.

The PTR Ardent Defender is a powerful ability, even with the debuff. I don’t think any sensible person would argue otherwise.

The important thing to realize is that adding this powerful ability to Paladin toolkit, it still would not make Paladins far and away better than any other tank; it simply brings them to parity. At least that is how I see it. I’m sure the PTR will help to bear out if I’m accurate in my assesment.

I’ve never felt better about Paladin tanking. We’re not the little AoE tanks that absolutely stink everywhere else that we were in Burning Crusade. We’ll not be the functional tanks who seem to have been falling behind to every other tank class in Wrath. We certainly won’t be lacking for Cooldowns. With the 3.2 changes, we’ll have just about everything we need. It would still be nice to have things like Hammer of Justice off the Global Cooldown, but that’s just gravy.

I really hope the new AD makes it to Live, even with a tweak or two. Whether it does or not, is, of course, up to the Developers.

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If you would like to see the full notes, I refer you to the following pages:

Latest Patch Notes: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/
Latest Test Realm Patch Notes: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The information found in the above links will remain updated as any further changes are made.

Psynister’s Thoughts
With so many patch notes, I’m not about to comment on every single one of them. However, I will talk about some of them below that have particularly caught my eye. Some of these changes I have already discussed and you can find by reading other articles I have posted over the last week or two.

New BoA Chests
New Portals and Zeppelins
Mount Changes
New Druid Cat and Dire Bear Forms

I welcome you all to share your thoughts on the patch here as well. Feel free to comment on the specifics I point out here, or any other portion of the patch notes that I do not specifically cover.

The following points will be broken down into the same category they fall under within the patch notes.

For the individual class notes, there are many classes that I do not have enough experience playing to give an honest opinion on the changes, so I may skip over some of the specific classes. Nearly every class received at least some form of update though, so if you would like to get more details on those changes then I suggest you look at the patch notes yourself for the details.

General

This is the only thing I want to point out in the General section that I have not already covered. The lack of mailboxes in many of the towns drives me crazy. Including “a large number of new mailboxes” in cities is an excellent change that I welcome with open arms. Tons of mailboxes and double bank and auction house locations are the one thing that I love about Silvermoon, and the lack thereof is the one thing I hate about everywhere else.

PvP

This change holds a lot of potential. Finally we see something from Blizzard aimed directly at twinks. While I’m not a hardcore twink, I do enjoy doing it. Giving players the ability to shut off their experience gain is excellent. You can now power level your twinks to the desired level, turn off their experience gains, and then go farm all the items and achievements you want without having to worry.

It’s also worth noting the 4th bullet there. If you turn off your experience gain, you will only participate in battlegrounds with other players who also have it turned off. So basically we have an opportunity have have twink vs twink and non-twink vs non-twink battlegrounds, so those of use who do like PvP but don’t like going up against players who live solely for that reason might actually stand a chance.

Now, there’s nothing stopping those twinks from turning their experience gain back on before a BG so they can face non-twinks instead, but they have to fork over 10g every time they want to make the change back and forth.

Races: General

Orcs are now able to apply their racial specialization to fist weapons. Shamans and Rogues are the only classes I ever see using fist weapons, and shamans far more than rogues. Not a big deal in my opinion, but it might bring a little more attention to the orcs.

Items: General

Increased bonuses to block value is a pretty big deal. It doesn’t double from the shield itself, nor from your Strength score, but all other equipment that grants you bonus Block will be increased. My Prot Paladin readers should love this one.
After posting this the thought occurred to me to actually look at some gear out there, and after having done that I’m really not entirely sure that this is going to be that big of a deal. There aren’t all that many options for increasing your Block, and the ones that do aren’t necessarily worth taking over other pieces that don’t. For now I’m going to jump over to being neutral on this one until I’ve had a chance to do some more looking. Extra block value is always good, but the change itself might not have all that much impact.

A lot of people threw fits about Mana Regeneration nerfs in the previous patch. I don’t know that this is going to solve any of those opened wounds, but at least we’re seeing a little bit of an increase in mana regen.

Classes: General

This change might be nothing, and it might be a life saver. Being able to use them as spell interrupts even against targets that are immune to silence can be a very welcome addition to your arsenal if you happen to play a race/class that has these abilities.

Death Knights

Death Knights are the only class mentioned as receiving all of their talent points refunded. If you have a build that you like and don’t want to forget it then I suggest you copy it down somewhere before the slates are wiped clean.

I make no claims towards being knowledgeable about Death Knights. Since I don’t know how significant the impact of these changes are going to be, I will leave it to others who know more about the subject to give details concerning them.

Mages

This is the main update that interests me in the mage. There’s nothing worse than knowing that you have to flee in order to survive, popping invisibility, and then immediately finding it disrupted right in the middle from some random hit.

Paladins

Paladins have the longest list of changes in this patch, and they really covered a lot of different points. All specs are going to feel the effects of this patch in one way or another.

Since I have recently devoted much of the blog to Protection Paladins I am going to discuss more of their points than others.

Blessing of Sanctuary not giving +10% Stamina is HUGE. This effect is in addition to the effect that it already has. Not only are you gaining more hit points, which is always good for a tank, but you are also increasing your spell power (assuming you’ve spent the talents points for it) which in turn will increase the amount of threat that you are able to generate.

I really don’t like the change to Exorcism. I do like that you will be able to use it on players again for when I do happen to need to PvP, but adding a cast time completely removes it as a viable option for being included in my tanking rotation or as a form of taunt to get stray mobs to turn their focus back to me. If there was anything I would be willing to do a little QQ over, it would be this. But, it’s not essential in any way, so overall I dislike it but really don’t care at the same time.

Lay on Hands provided a damage reduction buff rather than bonus armor makes this an even more effective tool for use in grinding and farming, as well as tanking in general.

Rogues

Giving rogues more options for better weapons is sure to thrill the rogues out there. I’m not a huge fan of the class myself, but it seems like a good change to me and I’m sure most rogue players will be pleased with it.

Shamans

The shaman is also receiving quite a few changes in this patch, so I would suggest you go take a look at the full notes if you happen to play one.

The new totem bar options are going to be a huge benefit to shamans everywhere. Being able to drop all four totems at once, on a single cooldown is huge. You have three customizable options for each spec, thus dual spec players can have up to 6, so you can get different groups of totems set up for different occasions.

The increase in base hit points for shamans is something that is definitely overdue. In articles read prior to full patch notes being released an interview revealed that nobody on the current team remembers why shamans had the lowest health pools in the game and that they would fix it in 3.2.

User Interface

I think the most profound impact form this patch is going to be right here in the user interface. Many of these changes are going to do away with the need for existing addons.

The first four items on the list probably hold the least impact, but there are existing mods that provide this same functionality.

Being able to see whether or not it is possible to interrupt a spell will save some players the hassle of wasting their interrupts, or perhaps it might prompt them to use them more frequently depending on the situation.

The Item Comparisons may very well take the place of the RatingsBuster addon as it performs nearly the exact functionality. The one benefit that RB still holds over this is that it does it for you automatically where the new option requires you to hold the Shift key in order to see the information.

Macros/Scripts not being able to target totems is going to make pvp against shamans a bit more of a struggle, which is actually a very good thing for those of us who like playing shamans. Macros that do this completely defeat one of the prime resources that shamans have to offer.

Quest Creatures/Objects showing up on maps, along with the changes to quests in the previous patch almost completely defeats the need for addons such as QuestHelper and Carbonite. Whether the new changes will work as well as these addons still remains to be seen, but there is potential now to see these addons sent to their graves.

Vendor prices listed on items will help you select your quest rewards if you wish only to sell the item instead of using or disenchanting it. I use an addon for this very purpose right now. I don’t remember the name of the one I use right off the top of my head, but it’s another addon being replaced by new in-game options.

Quests

Since this is mentioned as a “return” I will assume that this is something that was available before I started playing the game as I do not remember ever hearing his name even mentioned. But the addition of another mount, and a horde-only one at that (For the Horde!) is good news in my book.

Professions
There is quite a list of profession changes. I only have a firm grasp on the workings of a few professions, and those happen to be the ones receiving the fewest number of updates.

I will leave the details of these changes for someone else to go over since I know that my own knowledge is lacking. From what I can tell, Jewelcrafting is going to receive the biggest change from this update.

Items

For those pet lovers out there, and you all know who you are, there are now eight more for you to rush out and collect. While I do get a few pets on all of my characters, I’m not really into collecting things that have no real impact on the game itself, so I’m certainly not a pet collector myself.

Similar to professions, there are quite a few updates in the item category, so I suggest you take a look at the information at the actual patch notes if you are interested.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: 3.2, Patch, World of Warcraft