[Guide] Quick Golden Lotus Dailies - Finish two without fighting

This requires having flying in Pandaria.
They are for the daily quests:

Acts of Cruelty
Rescue 5 Golden Lotus Guards or Mistfall Villagers.
Torture victims rescued (5)
and
Free Spirits
Enter Spirit Vortexes and free 15 pandaren spirits inside.
Free Captive Pandaren Spirits (15)
Provided item:
Shao-Tien Spirit Dagger

Make sure you are mounted up, and for Acts of Cruelty, just aggro the Mogu that is strangling the Golden Lotus guard. The minute he aggro's you will gain credit for saving the golden lotus guard, and can simply fly up and away to the next one. Easy way to get the daily done.

The same can be done for Free Spirits, when you enter that spirit realm, mount up. Fly to the captive spirits, and when a hostile npc aggro's you, just fly up. The mob will actually despawn, allowing you to continue freeing the spirits. Best part is you can free the spirits while mounted to make it even faste

[Guide] How to Sellf ressurect at max mana and health as a priest

I have been playing my holy priest with a ret in 3v3 lately, and have discovered this amazing exploit.
If you are about to die vs a caster team, have your paladin BoP you.
You will die and go into spirit of redemption form.
All your buffs will still be active during spirit form.
Right click the spirit of redemption buff. You are now supposed to die, but BoP will absorb the damage.
You are now back to life and have full mana as a bonus.

I dont do PvE but it might have some uses there aswell. For example the priest is oom and the group is dying to aoe damage, the priest can stop healing himself, get a BoP and die, then return with full mana and hp.

[Guide] MoP Arcane Mage PvE Guide

Arcane Mage



PvE Guide

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
1.1 Notes for old Arcane players
1.2 5.1 Note
2. Core Abilities
3. Basic Gameplay without level 90 talents
3.1 AoE Gameplay
3.1.1 Clustered Targets
3.1.2 Spread targets
3.2 6-Charge camping using Scorch
3.3 How to start a raid encounter
4. Talents
5. Cooldown usage and special abilities
6. Glyphs
7. Stats
7.1 Introduction to Mastery and Haste playstyles
7.1.1 Mastery
7.1.2 Haste
8. Gear
8.1 Trinket rankings
9. Useful addons
10. Closing remarks
10.1 5.1 Remarks

1. Introduction

Greetings Arcane Mages and those who wish to be. This is my first guide and even though I’ve trained many Mages over the last few years of being a Class Leader/Officer in my guild, I still had reservations over writing a community guide. The guide is based on patch 5.0.4, my experiences with Arcane, research done for MoP and last but certainly not least, the endless community discussions we’ve had here for the last several months. I hope you learn something new or find the information you were looking for.

1.1 Notes for old Arcane players

New Arcane Mages, skip this short part, it will only confuse you.

The Arcane playstyle has significantly changed from our classic Burn + Evocation + Conserve gameplay. Burning mana using Arcane Blast effectively doesn’t exist anymore except in a limited version which will be explained later. The new Arcane is a far less bursty specialization, but more complex in mana management and ability usage.

1.2 5.1 Note

In Patch 5.1, Arcane go some significant number changes in terms of Arcane Charge mana cost reductions and damage modifier increases per stack. We liked it a lot as it bumped Arcane to a perfectly competitive level and it also introduced several new gameplay innovations, some as unwanted side-effects. Also note, some of the tooltips in the game might still be wrong (Arcane Charge, Blast, etc.).

2. Core Abilities

Arcane Charge – formerly known as stacks of Arcane Blast
- built by Blast, Missiles and Explosion, spent by Barrage
- stacks up to 6
- Arcane Explosion refreshes the duration of existing Charges with a 30% chance to generate a Charge, but is not affected by it in any other way

Arcane Blast – generates 1 Charge
- damage increased by 25% and mana cost by 75% per Charge

Arcane Missiles – cannot be used without procs, every damaging spell cast has a chance to proc Missiles
- stacks up to 2
- generates 1 Charge
- channelled
- damage increased by 25% per Charge

Arcane Barrage – damage increased by 25% per Charge
- hits 1 additional target per Charge for 50% damage
- spends all Charges

Arcane Power – increases the damage of all damaging spells by 20% and their mana cost by 10%

Mastery: Mana Adept – increases damage done based on the percentage of available mana
- this is the base and core of doing good damage as an Arcane Mage

Mage Bomb – discussed later in the section on level 75 talents, but belongs in the basic priority list

Mage Armor – increases Mastery by 5, thus making it the only viable Armor option for Arcane

3. Basic Gameplay without level 90 talents

0. Pre-combat buffs – Arcane Brilliance and Mage Armor (Mastery)
1. Mage Bomb – refresh Nether Tempest or Living Bomb when there is only one tick remaining or cast Frost Bomb if it’s off cooldown
2. Arcane Power – cast when off cooldown
3. Arcane Blast – generate charges
- if you are under 4 charges and have 2 Missiles procs, cast Missiles *once and then continue to build up to 5 Charges with Blast, after which you use any remaining Missiles
- if you reach 4 Charges with less than 2 Missiles procs, cast one more Blast and then Missiles
4. Arcane Barrage – use when you reach six Charges and have no more Missiles procs
- use at 5 Charges if there are no Missiles procs and you are under 90% mana

3.1 AoE Gameplay

3.1.1 Clustered Targets

1. Apply Bomb (or several Bombs - NT by multidotting, LB by Glyph of Fire Blast)
2. Flamestrike
3. Arcane Explosion
4. Arcane Barrage when number of targets = Charges + 1

Extra – if targets are CC-able, try to freeze them before Barrage

3.1.2 Spread Targets

1. Apply Bombs
2. Single target
3. Barrage if possible to hit multiple targets

3.2 6-Charge camping using Scorch

The 5.1 mana cost adjustment allowed for us to stay indefinitely at 6 Arcane Charges using the very cheap Scorch spell to fish for Missiles procs. This places heavy emphasis on Blast and Missiles. When at 6 Charges, cast Blast after every spell except another Blast, use Missiles every time they proc, use Scorch after Blast if you don't have anything else to cast. Example: Blast - Missiles - Blast - Nether Tempest - Blast - Scorch - Blast - Missiles - Blast - Rune of Power - Nether Tempest - Blast - Scorch - Blast - Scorch - Missiles...

3.3 How to start a raid encounter

0. Pre-combat buffs
0. Countdown:
7 seconds - cast Evocation if using Invocation
3 seconds - cast Rune of Power if using Rune of Power
Mirror Image
Potion
1. Mage Bomb
2. Blast to 6 Charges
2.1 Cast Incanter's Ward at 4-5 Charges if damage is incoming
3. Refresh Mage Bomb
4. Fish for Missiles procs until you have 2
5. Use Macro - Arcane Power, professions use abilities, Trinkets with use abilities, Mana Gem (optional), Alter Time
6. Missiles, Missiles, Blast, Barrage (if under the effects of Time Warp: Missiles, Missiles, Blast, Blast, Barrage)
7. Alter Time reactivates
8. Missiles, Missiles
9. Continue with usual rotation

4. Talents

Level 15 – Mobility Tier

Presence of Mind – great for occasional periods of short movement, otherwise a useful DPS cooldown

Scorch – works best with Fire because it adds to Ignite, bad for Arcane – repositioning quickly is a greater damage boost

Ice Floes – a neat spell for periods of predictable movement

Beginner tip – Presence of Mind is your safest bet, Ice Floes can be wasted if not used properly, and we are not really used to move and cast

Pro tip – mastering Ice Floes can be quite beneficial depending on the encounter, but will require practice even for the experienced Arcane Mages. Using PoM instead is perfectly fine.

Pro tip 5.1 - check 3.2 for the new Scorch gameplay

Level 30 – Defense Tier

Temporal Shield– usable while disabled and doesn’t trigger a global cooldown. Heals after 4 seconds instead of preventively absorbing damage.

Blazing Speed – not really that useful in PvE

Ice Barrier – a powerful absorb, but triggers a global cooldown

Beginner tip – Ice Barrier is a sure thing when your raid leader calls for defensive cooldowns or when you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Pro tip – Temporal Shield is the best for maximizing your damage, but be careful because it’s not an absorb in the classic sense.

Level 45 – Crowd Control Tier

Ring of Frost – only useful for a larger pack of adds and also has a cast time

Ice Ward – a great spell to put on an off-tank kiting adds or any dedicated kiter

Frostjaw – great for silencing adds which need to be interrupted

Tip – if the raid encounter demands it, you take it and use it, doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Level 60 – Survival Tier

Greater Invisibility – a powerful utility spell, can be used as a defensive cooldown or to cheat death mechanics

Cauterize – its greatest advantage is that it works on its own, its only weakness the easily healable damage which can be compensated by a shield spell or Evocation heal and of course, your group’s healers

Cold Snap – not that useful for raiding, but enables extra Ice Blocks and has a heal. The other two abilities are just far more versatile in PvE

Beginner Tip – Cauterize is a no worries talent because it doesn’t require you to actively plan and use it

Pro Tip – not taking unnecessary damage is (or should be) one of the goals of every DPS in the raid and Greater Invisibility allows just that. If timed properly with boss mechanics, you lose damage only for 1 global cooldown.

Level 75 – Bomb Tier

Nether Tempest – works best against 1-3 targets, currently the best damage choice on single target except for Frost Bomb critical hits

Living Bomb – works best against 3-4 targets because of the target limitation, but functions best when playing Fire as its basic gameplay implements spreading it to other targets

Frost Bomb– works best against 4+ targets, but also works best in Frost’s gameplay as it has a 100% chance to proc Brain Freeze

Tip – you won’t fail if you choose a bomb based on the number of targets, but Frost Bomb just doesn’t feel good on Arcane because of the cast time. Casting Nether Tempest on 2-3 targets still feels better in a dynamic raid setting, but I may be off the mark on this one. Still remember - Nether Tempest is better for several spread targets while Living Bomb is better for several clustered targets.

Level 90 – Superpowers Tier

Invocation – allows something resembling a burn phase
- changes the gameplay to:
1. Evocation
2. Standard rotation with being extra careful not to cast any more Blasts when reaching 6 Charges
3. When the buff is about to expire, burn mana to 30-35% with Blast, then back to step 1

- works best on fights with limited movement

Rune of Power – allows the 6-Charge camping gameplay (3.2)
- works best on fights with no to limited movement

Incanter's Ward – changes the gameplay to allow mini burn phases on fights with regular predictable damage – burn mana to 75-80% in preparation, pop shield to absorb damage and regain mana to full in time to use Missiles and Barrage
- best damage is gained by having 5-6 Charges and Missiles ready when you gain the damage buff
- works best on fights with lots of movement and predictable damage

Beginner tip – Incanter’s Ward is your best bet while you’re still learning the ropes of both the spec and raid encounters, because the passive on the shield is decent and you use the active when you remember or when you get the chance.

Pro tip – use the abilities based on the propositions above, focus on maximizing their usage. It will require knowing the fights by heart. A list of suggested talents per encounter will be formed when we start raiding on live realms.

5. Cooldown usage and special abilities

Fire Blast (with Glyph of Fire Blast) – not useful for Arcane, other than in longer periods of AoE damage

Blink – learn to maximize your damage with well timed and placed Blinks, running is not an option if this spell is ready

Counterspell – if your raid leader requires you to interrupt something important, you should do it. However, melee dps and tanks are still a better option for this so argue if needed

Ice Block – your ultimate survival cooldown, best used in emergencies or to cheat death mechanics

Remove Curse – help your healers, dispel curses if needed, as rare as it may be

Evocation – used as a powerful heal and a core ability of the Invocation gameplay. Essentially not required anymore otherwise unless you forget yourself and cast too many Blasts

Mirror Image – use on cooldown, it’s a decent DPS ability

Invisibility – a nice spell to remove threat or at the end of a wipe to stay alive and use Mass Resurrection

Spellsteal – there have been mechanics which required a Purge, Dispel or Spellsteal (Maloriak, Arcanotron). Sometimes it’s better for us to have the effect

Mana Gem – allows you to cast an extra Blast ot two and then instantly gets you to full mana to maximize the Mastery bonus on Missiles and Barrage

Time Warp – While I’ve always preferred Restoration Shamans to use it, if it’s needed, you cast it

Alter Time – Our amazing new level 87 spell allows us some fun things every 3 minutes. When you activate the spell, it memorizes your HP, mana, buffs, debuffs, procs and position (but not cooldown availability). It practically extends the duration of everything on you by 6 seconds.
- ultimate usage – check 3.3
- note – this spell can be used defensively in PvE, but it really shouldn’t

Tip – maximizing your damage will require you to master the usage of Alter Time, Mana Gem, Blink and Level 90 talents.

6. Glyphs

I will review only the relevant or potentially relevant glyphs for Arcane:

Glyph of Arcane Explosion – marginally useful for AoE situations

Glyph of Blink – confuses you at first if you were used to Blinking to a mailbox from a certain point, but can be very useful in raids

Glyph of Evocation – mandatory for all Mages I’ve been training since it appeared – helps your healers by being one of the most powerful heals in the game, but is also very useful with the level 90 talents

Glyph of Ice Block – can be useful, but is very situational

Glyph of Invisibility – great for solo farming and dungeons, not that great in raids (situational for very long movements)

Glyph of Mana Gem – very useful for Arcane on longer fights

Glyph of Spellsteal – situational for fights which require spellstealing

Glyph of Remove Curse – situational for fights which require decursing

Glyph of Arcane Power – very useful on fights which have periods of limited freecasting without movement and useful when you can predict the duration of a fight

Glyph of Slow – doesn’t have a chance to proc Missiles anymore and the Torment the Weak talent has been removed so this is basically useless for PvE

Glyph of Fire Blast – useful only for AoE situations

Glyph of Counterspell – can be useful on fights which require counterspelling so you never have to stop dps.

Glyph of Armors – would be good if you ever had to switch armors, but as Arcane you really don’t

Minor Glyphs:

Glyph of Loose Mana – in my personal game style, this isn’t a DPS increase (see Mana Gem in the previous section), but if you use it at 95% mana and then continue with Blast, the effect might be the same in terms of DPS. Additionally, Nathyiel has pointed out that the Loose Mana Gem buff is subject to Alter Time so it can be used for double the effect.

Glyph of Momentum – can be combined with Ice Floes to Blink while casting and strafing (I think, my testing was a bit inconclusive)

Glyph of Illusion – best used to confuse your Moonkin Guild Master during a fight

Glyph of Mirror Image – this is actually a dps increase for Arcane mages based on my testing. The Images don’t run out of mana like they used to by casting Blast. Without the glyph they did 80-100k on my tests and with the glyph 100-130k at level 85. I could test more to get some more accurate numbers but I don’t have an eternity waiting for them to come off cooldown.

7. Stats

Essentially: Intellect -> Spell Power -> Hit+Expertise to 15% -> Haste to 3056 (suggested 3300-3400) -> Mastery -> Haste -> Crit

Stat weight analysis using Simulationcraft is just a bit under these descriptions:

Intellect – a no brainer, provides Spell Power which makes the numbers higher.

Hit – if you don’t hit, you don’t do any damage and reaching the hit cap is your primary gearing goal

Expertise – since 5.0.4 provides Spell Hit chance, useful for early expansion reforging

Hit chance formula:
Hit Rating + Expertise Rating = 5100 (-340 if Human wielding a sword) (-340 if Gnome wielding a sword or dagger) (-340 if Draenei)

Mastery – our gameplay revolves around our Mastery (Mana Adept), which requires us to stay as close to 100% mana as possible. Mastery provides a flat damage increase

Haste – since patch 5.0.4, Arcane Blast’s cast time is no longer reduced by Charges and we got a new ability called Nether Attunement which makes Haste increase the mana regained from all sources (base regen, Evocation, Mana Gem, level 90 talents). You should have enough haste to reach specific DoT breakpoints while maintaining Mastery on every item.

Crit – our gameplay doesn’t depend on Crit (like Fire and Frost do) and since the all-mighty damage of Blast has been redistributed to other spells, Crit became even less powerful than before

7.1 Introduction to Mastery and Haste playstyles

With the 5.1 changes, many Arcane players have tested a Haste oriented playstyle instead of Mastery. The difference is essentially more spells vs. more powerful spells. It is, however, important to focus exclusively on one stat (with the exception of Haste breakpoints) and not design something in between. Below is a presentation of both gearing options.

*Important* - Focusing on Mastery allows you to play either the Barrage rotation (standard) or the 6-Charge camping rotation. Focusing on Haste allows only the 6-Charge camping rotation because your spells are weaker and you must compensate by never dropping stacks.

*Also important* - Mastery oriented builds allow 6-Charge camping only with Rune of Power. Haste oriented builds allow it with both Rune of Power and Invocation.

*Also important* - Mastery oriented builds use Mage Armor (Mastery) while Haste oriented builds use Frost Armor (Haste).

7.1.1 Mastery

Reforging:

Hit/Mastery – nothing
Hit/Crit – Crit to Mastery
Hit/Haste – Haste to Mastery
Mastery/Crit – Crit to Haste or Hit
Mastery/Haste – nothing or Haste to Hit
Haste/Crit – Crit to Mastery

Note - reforge Crit or Haste to Hit/Expertise if missing Hit chance while focusing that every item has Mastery on it.

Gems:

Intellect/Mastery gems in red sockets.
Mastery/Hit gems in blue sockets.
Mastery gems in yellow sockets.

7.1.2 Haste

Reforging:

Hit/Haste - nothing
Hit/Crit - Crit to Haste
Hit/Mastery - Mastery to Haste
Haste/Crit - Crit to Mastery or Hit
Haste/Mastery - nothing or Mastery to Hit
Crit/Mastery - Crit to Haste

Gems:

Intellect/Haste gems in red sockets.
Haste/Hit gems in blue sockets.
Haste gems in yellow sockets.

Note - reforge Crit or Mastery to Hit/Expertise if missing Hit chance while focusing that every item has Haste on it.

8. Gear

Credit, along with my eternal gratitude, goes to Igloo for compiling a comprehensive list of all non-raid Intellect gear that used to be posted here.

The gear listings have been cut, it is now far enough into the expansion for new players to not have to worry about dungeon BiS items and I have no desire to update the guide as we get various LFR, normal and heroic modes unlocked. Next week I’ll consider adding a Normal Raid BiS list and a Heroic Raid BiS list, probably in the same style as the dungeon gear list, meaning no “this needs to be in this slot” but rather “this looks like the best item for Arcane”. However, don't expect it with 100% certainty.

8.1 Trinket ranking




Credit to Blueobelisk for making these simulations.

NOTE - The above trinket ranking is based on the Mastery playstyle. For the Haste playstyle, Light of the Cosmos Heroic is better than Relic of Yu'lon and obviously you do not reforge it at all. (credit to Dreamspyre for this clarification).

9. Useful addons
Deadly Boss Mods – raid encounter notifications and timers.
Decursive – quickly and efficiently remove curses from your friends.
Any addon of your preference which will allow you to track Bomb debuffs or cooldowns (Needtoknow, Tellmewhen, ...)
Arcanometer – very simplistic in design, tracks mana, bombs and Charges and that’s basically everything it needs to track.
Tip: organize your user interface in a way that you are most comfortable with, not in a way someone suggests is best.

10. Closing Remarks

Thank you for reading and/or using this guide, any feedback and dicussion is greatly appreciated. The main idea of this guide is to sum up what we’ve been talking about since the Beta started and to provide reference material for all of the people who want to play an Arcane Mage in Mists of Pandaria. The guide will of course be expanded, starting first with the best in slot gear and later with whatever changes come during the expansion.

10.1 5.1 Remarks

I apologize for being a month late with all the necessary guide updates, it's been a busy month with Uni obligations and then suddenly holidays. Happy holidays to those who celebrate and thank you again for using this guide and especially to the people who continuously help me improve it.

Last edited by Shangalar; 2012-12-31 at 02:35 AM.

[Guide] Incredibly fast leveling with mob tagging!

Also known as 'Sha Leveling - Furious Sprites - Mob Tagging'

What You Need:

- Char Level 85 - 90
- Sha Spawn Location
- Group of friends, Pref level 90!

When sha spawns, he spawns adds called Furious Sprite's that have 814k HP. So what you wanna do is tag them and get your friends to kill them. Upon their death, providing you tagged them you will get 88k Exp per kill rested. They respawn stupidly fast, they drop Jewelcrafting patterns, Motes of harmony and Windwool cloth.

Now, from 85 - 90 is 97.5 million exp.. so..

97500000/88000 = 1108 Kills.. (If rested. 2216 if not) The time it takes is down to you.

Notes:
Furious Sprites (FS) spawn only when the Sha of Anger is near the gate to Valley of Eternal Blossom (coord 51.2 - 87.6). Every Sha's spawn point has a different type of creatures that spawn with Sha. Don't try it on another location, other creatures kill you in a blink of an eye, even if you are 90's.
You can recognize 4 minor FS spawn points around the Sha area, try to stay between two of these, better the two behind SoA (more distance from SoA = avoid unintentional pull).
FS melee hit is really hard even for those who wear plates (if you're tank you can take a bunch of them without problem past lvl85 with 410+ gear) but they continuously cast Rage Bolt. The damage is ridiculous so don't interrupt them.
Use Battle Standard of Coordination every 10 minutes and don't go too far away from it. Exp output is insane.
They drop a good amount of green, JC recipe and Mote of Harmony. Make space in your bags before you start grinding, they spawn quickly after dying and the risk is an endless combat.

EXP Gain per kill: I don't remember how much experience give @85 but i'm sure that...

88k+ @86 (Rested/Standard)
100k+ @87 (Rested/Standard)
120k+ @88 (Rested/Standard)
150k+ @89 (Rested/Standard)

The Top 5 Exploits in WoW

 

 A nifty video guide to exploit the game in order to gain privileges in a not so fair way. Also you will learn how to score guild / world first achievements, gain faster items and so on.
Take it as a historical review of all of the boss and instance exploits (or at least the top five ones) all though out the vanilla days (WoW 1.x.x) to the mist of pandaria (WoW: MoP 5.x.x) .

Definition of a game exploit - using broken/bugged game mechanics in order to gain advantages in an unfair way

Published on Dec 4, 2012

Let's take a look at the big 5 exploits used in WoW resulting in nasty punishments from Blizzard.

Blizzard's Game Balancing - Instances, Content and more

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Scarlet Halls (Challenge Mode)
In this beta build, we will be unlocking the Challenge mode for the Scarlet Halls instance.

A few relevant testing notes:

• You must have completed the Heroic version of the dungeon once in order to attempt the challenge mode.
• Item level will be normalized to 463.
• There is no queue system for challenge modes; groups must be formed manually and you must zone in from the outside world.
• The current Gold/Silver/Bronze times are not final.
• While the challenge is active, the group leader may Reset the dungeon at any time via a drop-down accessible by right-clicking your unit frame.
• You may want to dig up those dusty keybindings for things like crowd control and interrupts.

Please use this thread to share feedback regarding the dungeon, including information on group composition and completion times. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria and...it's point?
Well I do love exploration and adventure.
There will be lore. Oh yes, there will be.

After questing through every zone I could count on 1 hand, maybe I'd need a couple fingers from the other, the quests that had direct ally vs horde story to it. The rest is what wow has always been, new factions, that send you out collecting and killing monsters.

If there is a war going on between ally and horde in Pandaria, there must be some island still shrouded in mist and they're all fighting over there.I should add, or it hasn't been implemented yet.
Actually, let me address this a bit for you: First off, we didn't want to force anyone to PvP that doesn't want to PvP. So, our focus is on creating opportunities for those on PvP realms just by the guard changes we hope to implement as well as having solid hubs of activity.

Second off, I don't want to give away too much, but the release of Mists of Pandaria and what you see in beta is just the beginning. Like any expansion we've done before, you can expect a patch (or two etc.) that continue to move things forward. The launch is about learning about Pandaria, what the intrusion of the Horde and Alliance (and their conflict) means for the land and the denizens within it. That would be the "explore" and "adventure" portion I mentioned. It would also seem a bit odd if that was all we focused on in Pandaria given that we don't need to go to a new land for there to be conflict between the two factions, right? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PvP Power Not Active Outside of Battlegrounds and Arenas?
Is this testing or speculation? Because PvP Power and PvP Resilience should work anywhere with regard to DPS, but of course only when you are attacking or being attacked by other players.

The only thing that doesn't work is PvP Power-fueled healing. At the moment, you only gain the healing benefit when in BGs and Arenas. The reason is because that we don't want PvP gear to be super effective for PvE content (useful is fine, but super effective is not).

That design goal is easily met for damage dealers, because they won't benefit from PvP Power when damaging creatures. Unfortunately, there isn't a simple check for us to determine if a healer is healing damage done by PvP or PvE. In an Arena or BG you can make that assumption, but in the outdoor world you may be engaging in world PvP, or you may just be questing.

We are considering just letting PvP Power affect healing everywhere but dungeons and raids. That would solve world PvP and only risk unbalancing group questing and world bosses. Even the world bosses probably don't represent a huge game balance risk, given that the option always exists to get tons of players together to zerg them. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria PvP
A nice video Braindeadly, you make some nice points and do understand that we are listening to the community and we actively pass feedback on to the developers in the US. As you can see in the recent blog on "The Future of PvP in Mists of Pandaria" we are focused on and want to have more PvP content than ever before. Hopefully there will be even more information coming that we can communicate about future of PvP.

The thing is, while we all totally agree with you, right now it feels like close to nothing is done with our feedback (just look at Rasen's thread, only reply we get is 'hey, looks good, keep discussing').
Generally any post from us can easily derail a thread, we did not want to cause this as there was some great feedback and wanted it to continue. As stated above we are actively passing on feedback to the developers.

Please do continue to add your feedback and thoughts as well as the discussion of them to this thread

A lot of these questions I sadly do not have the answers to at this time and let's also not turn this into a Q&A thread. I meant by my last post that we try to give answers to more specific questions as they occur through normal discussion. I will answer what I can from the questions raised:

Is there a spectator mod in progress? That's something alot of people want to both kill time and to improve their game in general.
There is a custom UI that was created by fans specifically for spectating to commentate arena tournaments, however that requires the people to queue for 5v5 matches and the two spectators per team to die There are currently no plans for an official spectator mode to be released at this time.

Is blacklisting going to apply to Arenas to? As you might read these forums you can't really ignore all the RoV & Dalaran map threads.
At this time blacklisting is not a part of the arena queuing system, but maybe this will change in the future.

2) What are your plans to encourage world PvP in Pandaria for especially high-end PvP'ers. Is it possible there could be PvP objectives that gave higher Conquest caps or other epic, important rewards?
No flying mounts until level 90 and an item that can dismount players, world bosses which factions will be competing against each other to kill, areas that players will want to gain control of such as the black market auction house and also us just wanting to have people back out in the world. Generally the most enjoyable world PvP is something that occurs spontaneously because you encounter others randomly, not because of stuff that the designers put in to create conflict. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Pet Battle Availability
I really want to level up my pet...
Soon! We are very close to getting it on beta. Give us a little bit more time to crush the big bugs and then you guys can have at it. =) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Why does Blizzard Nerf Dungeons?
Let's please agree to avoid making this into a "hardcore vs. casual" debate.

The long and short of it is simply we want to make sure that we provide opportunities for as many people as possible to see the content. As I mentioned previously, most people who are "cutting edge" are through the content before it ever gets any adjustments. From there, it's about getting more people through the content (as appropriate). It really doesn't do us a lot of good to create content that only a very small portion of the community will ever get to see.

Yes, Raid Finder is there to help people who want to see that content, but many like to also move on from there into Normal and Heroic as a part of their gear progression as well. Giving them the opportunity isn't necessarily a bad thing.

We have a variety of discussions going on here and what I'm seeing boils down to this:

• People feel their own accomplishments are diminished if others are given the opportunity at a "lesser" difficulty to do the same thing.
• People feel that players who are given a "leg up" will be less capable of doing the more difficult content because they were given the leg up to begin with.
• People are concerned about not getting the challenge they seek.

Accomplishments often can be seen by the type of gear you've managed to get, or the Achievements you've earned. Those can't be taken away from you and if someone else happens to earn those, then great. While the game has a competitive nature at points, not everyone is going to be "first", but hopefully most everyone will get a shot at being able to take part in the experience anyway. Challenge modes will be available for those that want to show off their ability as solid players. The bonuses though, will be purely cosmetic. It's all about the bragging rights and transmog gear. (We'll be able to put out more information on all of this before long to remind everyone of it.)

On the second issue, if we don't get people the chance to try to begin with, then they will never have the opportunity to improve. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of a sort for many players who automatically believe that someone isn't trying just because they may have rusty skills (from taking time away) or may not know their class well enough because they haven't had the time to truly learn it or a variety of other issues. What it comes down to though, is that if you don't give them the shot, they will never learn at all. They may not even want to learn if their experience in attempting to do so has been a poor one. You've got to let someone up now and then instead of keeping them knocked down if you want them to rise to the occasion. What you may think is a "bad" player may just be inexperienced. You won't know until they are given the chance. Are there people who may not catch on as quickly or who may not necessarily try? Sure. But that is not the majority. It's just select "bad" experiences or your own mindset setting you up for bad that makes this so.

Last, the challenge will be there if you take it for yourself. If you can't be first, you can at least be one of the first. And beyond that, there will be challenge modes or Achievements worth getting.

So yes, we will make adjustments to the difficulty to give more people the opportunity to progress whether they are casual, hardcore, experienced, new, veteran, returning players, what have you. We want people to be able to play the game that so many have invested so much time and effort into developing. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Battle.net Balance and WoW Subscription

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Hey Blizzard, if I can earn 80 dollars, with that money in Battle.net can I buy your games? like SC2?
Purchasing through your Battle.net account should allow you to use your Battle.net balance. It's not an option on the Blizzard Store, though, which is separate from digital purchases directly on your account.

What can I purchase with my Battle.net Balance?

I'm just curious as to why I cannot pay for my WoW subscription with it. Seems really silly.
We're working on it!