Rage

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

We are going to take the opportunity in Cataclysm to try and fix some of the problems with the Rage mechanic for both warriors and druids. Some of these problems include:

• Warriors/druids in the lowest levels of gear can be Rage-starved.
• Warriors/druids in the highest levels of gear no longer have to manage their Rage when it becomes infinite.
• Warrior/druid tanks lose Rage income as they improve their gear and take less damage.
• The gameplay of warrior and druid tanks loses a lot of depth when massive boss hits means never having to manage Rage.
• Heroic Strike and Maul are effective, but tedious abilities for using up extra Rage.
• In general, warriors and druids don’t have enough control over their Rage.

To resolve these issues, Rage will be normalized in Cataclysm. This will make the Rage gained by characters more consistent and avoid drastic differences between low-end and high-end gear.

The concept of normalized Rage may leave a negative impression on some veteran players, as we tried it once before in The Burning Crusade and it wasn't successful, resulting in them feeling weakened. However, we think that the concept is still sound -- it was just that the previous implementation didn't balance the values correctly, leading to players being Rage-starved. That is not the goal. As part of the change, we want to give warriors and druids a lot of ways to control their rage, so even in the worst-case scenarios they won’t feel like they lack the resource to do their job.

Here are some of the ways the Rage mechanic will change in Cataclysm:

1) Rage is no longer generated based on damage done by auto-attacks. Instead, each auto-attack provides a set amount of Rage, and off-hand weapons will generate 50% of the Rage main hands do. This amount is based on a constant formula which factors in the base swing speed of the weapon. This means the Rage gained should be averaged out between fast and slow weapons. The constant formula also gives us the ability to easily increase the rage gained if it feels too low (or reduce it if is too high). We are also implementing the following mechanics, which will still allow rage to improve to some extent as you improve gear:

If the attack is a critical strike, it will generate 200% Rage.

Haste will accelerate swing times to generate Rage faster.

2) Rage from damage taken will no longer be based on a standard creature of the character’s level, but instead will based on the health of the warrior or druid. Again, there is a constant that is multiplied by the rage generated in order to allow for fine-tuning. This calculation ignores all damage reduction from armor, absorption, avoidance, block, or similar mechanics, so improving your gear will not reduce Rage gained.

3) We will provide warriors and druids with more instant sources of rage. For example, the warrior shouts are changing to work more like the death knight ability Horn of Winter. Instead of Battle Shout consuming Rage, it will generate Rage but have a short cooldown. Both classes will have additional methods to generate Rage in an emergency or bleed off Rage when they have too much.

4) All “on next swing” attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it’s generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage.

We understand this change may be scary for many players, but keep in mind that the constants in the formulas for gaining Rage will give us the ability to make quick adjustments if we feel Rage generation is too low. Our goal is for each character's Rage to not be always high or always low, but rather a resource that needs to be managed properly by the player.

So my first thought was gee, could you fix the problems where I can go from 0 rage to 70 rage in a split second first? There are times I'm tanking a boss the rage generation right now should be giving me rage more smoothly. But I can go from having absolutely none to full in a split second. That is a pain. Also, if you are running heroics in higher end gear, I can't seem to get any rage, things die too quickly for me to get enough rage. Not all the time mind you, but often enough I find it irritating

So I'm hoping this new system will help those issues. I don't mind the change as long as I don't end up rage starved all the time

Also, the comment about Haste accelerating swing times. I thought it did that now? So how is that a change?

This is definitely going to be something to watch.

Quick Auctions 3

On another note, in January, I only had 1000g because I bought a Traveler's Mammoth. I am up to 38,000g and some change this morning. I have found some really nice advice from the guys at Call to Auction podcast . I have been making a great deal of money selling glyphs and arctic fur and gems. Anyway, I just thought I would share that bit of info in case anyone needs a bit more gold. The guys at the Call to Auction never explained how to set up the addons they use, they just mentioned them so I thought I would give a quick rundown.

I have the following professions:

Herbalism

Mining

Skinning

Alchemy

Engineering

Inscription

Jewelcrafting

Leatherworking

Tailoring

And I'm thinking of leveling a blacksmith, I'm just not sure yet! And I don't have enchanting because my wife does.

But all in all, I can make quite a bit of spare change since my alchemist can make gems, my JC can cut them and then I can sell them for about 240 gold. On my glyphs, I typically have 350 of them up on the AH at the same time and the lowest I will price them is 10g and the highest is 60g.

I do this buy using Quick Auctions 3. You can also get it from Curse but I can't link that from work. It is a nice addon that allows you to post bulk items.

Open QA3 by typing /qa config . To use it, you create a group, I am going to use glyphs as an example so I called mine Glyphs. Then under the management tab for Glyphs, you can set up what your threshold is (the least you want to sell it for, I used 10g) and you can set it to fallback to a certain price if there are none up (I used 60g). You can also set the price to undercut by(10s). Now you can go to the Add Items tab and add all the glyphs in your bags to this group. If you accidentally add something you don't want, use the Delete Items tab to remove it.

Now, this by itself is nice, but when you open the auction window, go to the Auctions tab and you can press Post and it will post all your items for you while scanning the AH for each item before it posts.

Once that is done, click Summary at the top. It opens up a separate window. This window allows you to click on a category, I'm going to use glyphs again here. So click Glyphs and then click Get Data! What this now does is scan the AH for every possible glyph and it finds out what it is posted for and lists it by class. And now if you see a glyph you want to make, you can click on it multiple times to set how many you want to make (right click if you add too many to remove). And you can do this for as many glyphs as you want. It lists them in descending order per class, but note, if there are none of that specific glyph listed on the AH, it will be at the bottom of the list for that class with ...... instead of a price. You should make those since there aren't any and you can set your price. If you have any glyphs listed, it will show how many you have listed and if it is green, you are the lowest price, if it is red, you have been undercut.

Now that you have your list of what you want to make, go to your character that makes glyphs. Open up your Inscription window. In the top right corner there is a button that says QA, click it. This now brings up a window with your list of glyphs that you said you wanted to make and at the bottom of this list is the supplies you will need to make all the glyphs. Go get the supplies you need from your bank or mail or wherever and then just click the top glyph and it will make however many you specified. Click the next glyph listed to make the next one when the first is finished and so on. This way you don't have to dig thru your crafting window to make the glyphs you need, you can just click on them in the QA window that opens and when the window is empty, you are done!

Another nice feature that QA has is the ability to open all your mail. Now understand, if I have 350 glyphs posted every 12 hours, I get a lot returned too. But if you open the QA config menu, there is a checkbox that says Auto Refresh Mail, check this. Now when you go to the mail box, there is a "Open All" button at the bottom. If you click it, it will open all 50 mail in your mail box and wait for the countdown timer to count down to 0, refresh your inbox and then continue opening your mail. This way, I can walk up to the mail box, click open all and get up and walk away from the computer for a couple of minutes and come back and all my mail will be in my bags! Very handy feature!

Well, I hope this helps somebody make some extra gold! I know it has helped me. You can use this same method for gems, leather or anything else you want to sell!

And I'm back

About a month ago, my work instituted a new web filter and therefore I could no longer read any blogs at work or access any WoW related websites. This is my first test at posting to my blog using the email address I recently set up.  Hopefully all goes as planned.

On the WoW front.

I am back to raiding 25 mans with Band of the Hawk, which is nice, this is where I want to be.  I have gotten a couple of nice drops along the way.  The other interesting thing is that I'm in the process of training a couple of new tanks for raiding.  They are coming along nicely, one is a DK and one is a warrior.  This is good since recently a different warrior tank has stepped down from raiding.  

Also last night, my 10 man finally downed Putricide and that was exciting!  Of the three 10 mans our guild currently has, ours was the first to bring him down.  And he dropped the really nice armor pen head piece that I think I'm going to use for cat!