Christmas came a little early to me this year as I picked up our guilds first Deathbringer’s Will. Not only is it completely sick dps wise it’s also amazingly fun as a feral druid!
First off, it’s amazing in that it has 155 passive armor penetration which is almost double Banner of Victory. As kitties push towards a hard cap on arp (1399) this trinket is definitely a must. Secondly it has a ridiculous proc that is randomized and is different for each and every class. For feral druids, we’ve lucked out and gotten three procs that are all useful and good whereas some classes have gotten some not so optimal procs. The three that we’ve received are:
With 3.3 released this week, this will be the last kitty update. As always, the most recent changes will be summarized here but for a full extensive summary check out 3.3 Kitty Summary which compiles all the information into one post.
Ashen Verdict Faction
This is the faction that grants rep within Icecrown Citadel. From the first week of doing 10 man and 25 man I got about 4k rep (1k/6k friendly now). Naturally as more wings open up, rep should become even faster to obtain. There are rewards rings associated that are upgradable with reputation improvements (friendly -> honored -> revered -> exalted) similar to the previous AQ40 and Mount Hyjal rings. MMO-Champion has a pretty good page summary of what you can obtain through the faction here. Below I’ve included the kitty ring which I’m personally not to fond of in it’s current form but the exalted version that has a 480ap proc does look pretty nice. It also has quite a bit of hit which if you’ve been checking out the new gear seems to be lacking.
With the new tier system that requires you to purchase your base tier first before you can advance up to the next ilv, obtaining Emblems of Frost as fast as possible is extremely important. As of right now while only the Icecrown entrance is available there are only a few ways to obtain badges:
So, your first week maximum would be 41 and going forward your maximum for the next 4 weeks would be 35. Thus until the next wing of ICC opens your maximum total would be 181 emblems. Just enough to buy two T10 pieces, so save and spend wisely! (thx to Kal for fixing my poor math)
Tier 10 Cost
With the above information known on obtaining Emblem of Frost, its important to understand the costs and how the system works. As mentioned above, to upgrade each tier ilv you need to own the previous tier level. So in other words start stocking up on emblems to buy your base T10 so that you can start upgrading as soon as possible. For a full summary check out MMO-champ’s page.
Glory of the Icecrown Raider (10 Player) & Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 Player)
I’ll update this in the 3.3 Achievement Summary but I figured I would combine it here since there’s not enough to warrant a completely new post for achievements alone. The meta requirements are out now (naturally since 3.3 is out) and it looks like there will be a combination of normal and heroic achievements so it’s going to be a while before anyone is getting their protos. But in the interim, here are some sexy photos of the new frostwyrms! Looks like pve kids will be getting pvp mounts afterall.
Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher (25 Players)
Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher (10 Players)
Core Hound Pup for Authenticator Users
Lastly, we got a surprise in people who use authenticators were given a Core Hound Pup! For those of you who don’t have one and are thinking of sneaky ways to get the pup with someone else’s authenticator guess again!
Q: How do I get the special Core Hound Pup pet for Authenticator users?
If you have a Blizzard Authenticator or Battle.net Mobile Authenticator attached to your Battle.net account, you’ll find the Core Hound Pup item waiting for you in your in-game mailbox the next time you log in. Simply use the item to add the pet to your collection.
Q: Can the Core Hound Pup help me in combat?
No, his bark is infinitely worse than his bite. The Core Hound Pup is a non-combat guard dog, trained to intimidate rather than eviscerate.
Q: What if I remove my Authenticator?
If you remove the Authenticator from your Battle.net account, the Core Hound Pup will disappear from the pets collection of all of your characters after you log out of the game. You’ll need to reattach an Authenticator to receive the pet again, at which point you’ll find him in your mailbox once more. If you switch Authenticators while in-game, your pet will remain intact.
Q: Which characters will receive the Core Hound Pup pet?
Each existing character on every World of Warcraft account associated with the Authenticator-protected Battle.net account will receive the Core Hound Pup pet, as will each character you create in the future while the Authenticator is attached.
Q: In what regions is the Core Hound Pup available?
The Core Hound Pup is available to players on realms located in North America, Europe, and Korea. A Battle.net account is required in all of these regions in order to claim the pet.
Q: Do I need to buy the Core Hound-themed Blizzard Authenticator to get the pet?
Nope. Any Blizzard Authenticator or Battle.net Mobile Authenticator product will do!
That’s it for now, back to cross server pugging for a Perky Pug!
I’d like to apologize to the readers out there for my lack of posts. Its’ been a busy couple of weeks in game prior to and post 3.3. I hope everyone’s been enjoying 3.3 so far (I certainly have!). Part of the reason behind my lack of updates is just being pure tired. We’ve been raiding about the same amount but I’ve been (are you ready for it?) healing a lot lately to assist the guild. I find healing a lot more tiring than playing as a kitty kat so I tend to just head to bed right after instead of blogging. With the hoilday season approaching that means more time off and more time for wow and blogging!
First update, we finally finished off our Ironbound Proto-Drake! I will admit it does feel a little cheesed in that we’re going back and doing 3.1 content in 3.2 gear but at least we finished this off before the release of 3.3 which is one less thing to worry about. I do think that Blizzard should have cut this one off a while ago especially with 3.3 out now.Even if it would mean that we would get screwed out of a proto drake I think it’s important that the gear doesn’t completely trivialize the hard mode achievements. That being said I think that if a cutoff had been announced we would have worked on this earlier but without a definitive date there was really no incentive. Either way, check out the pretty new proto!
Second update, Icecrown Citadel! The long awaited final raid instance of WOTLK has finally arrived and so far it’s been pretty fun. We went in on patch day on Tuesday and cleared the 10 man version with 2 healers and 0 wipes. Wednesday we went in and cleared the 25 man version in 2 hrs with 3 wipes total. Needless to say, the difficulty level wasn’t particularly challenging but again that’s the design that Blizzard is aiming for. While this won’t be as easy to pug like TOC, I would think that most people will at least be able to see the 10 man flavor. Unfortunately (and fortunately) the lockout until the next wing is 28 days away which is pissing off a lot of people. Blizzard has come back with a response:
As noted in game, the release of the Plagueworks in Icecrown Citadel occurs 28 days after patch 3.3.0 was released. After the Plagueworks is available, you will then wait less than 28 days for the next wing to become active. The extended length of the initial 28 day delay is simply due to the timing of the Holidays.
Again, good on Blizzard for taking dissuading people from ignoring family and friends during the holiday season! Here are some screenshots from my first week in 3.3
Where's the kitty?
Rocket kitty, nice job Blizzard!
Bear Calvary
Finally, I finished off The Loremaster this week after working on it on and off for the past few months. For those of you who have yet to start or are a little afraid to start, don’t be! 3.3 has been this extremely easy with the quest system which tracks objective points and with a nifty little addon that I found called EveryQuest. It has a new feature (new for 3.3) which actually queries the Blizzard servers and identifies what quests you have completed and which ones you haven’t yet done. So no more running around like a maniac trying to find quest hubs, all you need to do is run this addon and it’ll tell you whats left to do in each zone!
With ICC on “farm” for now, and our protos complete we’ve turned our focus over towards Anub’Arak heroic and Algalon. Hopefully I’ll be sharing some stories for both in the near future.
Real life’s been sucking up a lot of time this past week, doing a bit of renovation around the house. I need to find some time to make some updates to 3.3 Kitty Summary and 3.3 Achievement Summary which will hopefully happen before the end of this week.
In the interim, here’s a short post to hold you folks over. Coldbear from US-Ravencrest has made a video that tries to explain and overview the complexities of playing a kitty kat. First I need to apologize to Coldbear for never responding to his request to review his script. I read through half of it made comments and then forgot to go back to it. So sorry for that and glad to see it came out the way it did. I will admit that I have yet to finish watching the whole video but when I do I’ll add some feedback/comments to this post.
A lot of new information has been posted in the past week which warrants a new post to collect and summarize. This specific post will only contain the new kitty information since my last post but I am compiling all new and old information in my original post 3.3 Kitty Summary. So depending on how you prefer to read information, you can either look out for new posts for a quick update or you can simply check the summary post from time to time for a complete up to date view on what’s coming down the pipe.
In addition, I’ve decided to compile an achievement summary as well. I’m a huge fan of achievements and there are a lot of new things coming up in 3.3 which I think can warrant a completely separate post so stay tuned for that shortly.
Tier 10 Token System
Quote From: Blizzard (Source)
With t10 we’re going to see a hybrid. The tier 10 items (the ones with item levels you’d find in the 10-player raid) will be purchased with Emblems of Frost.
The tier 10.5 items (the ones with item levels you’d find in the 25-player raid) will be obtained by getting a token (one that is specific to 3 or 4 classes, much like the ulduar tokens) and using it to upgrade the tier 10 item that was purchased with emblems of frost.
This is the perfect solution to the current issues with T9 from TOC. Currently there is not upgrade system from ilv 232 -> ilv 245 -> ilv258. To obtain each level of T9 gear you need to start from scratch which quite frankly is a pain in the ass. It also discourages people from obtaining the ilv 232 set if you know that the ilv 245 set is available in time. Factor in that most people did not drop their T8 until they had 2pc or 4pc then you have a lot of badges sitting around waiting for the optimal time to switch. Now in 3.3 by having an upgade system this will encourage people to get 232 quickly and upgrade along the way.
Normal vs Hard Mode Triggers
Quote From: Blizzard (Source) ICC’s hard modes will be triggered, but via in-game UI (much like how you toggle between normal and heroic modes today) rather than triggered by game mechanics (like not killing the three drakes before you attack Sartharion).
We seem to be moving back towards an pre 3.2 style of hard mode which I think is for the best. Having to do 4 raids a week just to get through easy and hard mode while fast (no trash yay) is still time consuming and who wants to see the same 5 bosses 4 times a week? Considering that Icecrown is going to be significantly larger than TOC, this is clearly a necessity to ensure people don’t get bogged down by trying to run Icecrown 4 times a week. Perhaps a sign of difficult content to come?
It’s definitely still too early to say “wow” or “bah” as we don’t know what the tier gear looks like. Once that starts appearing we’ll be able to tell whether it’s worthwhile to obtain these items. I’m assuming the cost to make will be very expensive as usual. Whats interesting though is that 3.2 dps gear in the leggings/feet slots generally had +hit (See Leggings of the Broken Beast, Icewalker Treads), so if we are moving away from having +hit in these slots, where is that stat going to be coming from in 3.3?
Icecrown Weapon Procs
Item – Icecrown 25 Normal Slow Melee Weapon Proc – Your weapon swings have a chance to grant you Necrotic Touch for 10 sec, causing all your melee weapon attacks to deal an additional 9% damage as shadow damage.
Item – Icecrown 25 Heroic Slow Melee Weapon Proc – Your weapon swings have a chance to grant you Necrotic Touch for 10 sec, causing all your melee weapon attacks to deal an additional 10% damage as shadow damage.
Not really sure what this is all about, my assumption is that it will be something related to a specific mechanic in a fight.
Item – Icecrown 25 Normal Melee Trinket – Your attacks have a chance to awaken the powers of the races of Northrend, temporarily transforming you and increasing your combat capabilities for 30 sec.
Item – Icecrown 25 Heroic Melee Trinket – Your attacks have a chance to awaken the powers of the races of Northrend, temporarily transforming you and increasing your combat capabilities for 30 sec.
I am going to make the assumption that the transformation mentioned in the IC 25 normal/heroic mode trinkets is one of the 6 transformations mentioned above. I will also assume that depending on what class/spec/role you are, you will proc a different type of transformation. Looks like kitty kats will either be transforming into a Wolvar (Agility) or Taunka (Attack Power)?
A blog for the ramblings and thoughts of Vallen, a full time cat druid from Auchindoun-US (formerly Warsong-US) with a passion for raiding & achievements. An avid wow player since 2004.
