Trial of the Champion, Daily Blue, US Maintenance

3.2 PTR - Trial of the Champion

With all the PTR crazyness and the unannounced tests (i.e Northrend Beasts encounter), I didn't have much time to talk about the new 5-man dungeon introduced by Patch 3.2: Trial of the Champion. One nice thing to note about this 5-man instance is that it only gives epic items in both normal (Ilvl 200) and heroic mode (Ilvl 213), you will also receive 1x Champion's Seal per encounter defeated.
This dungeon has three 3 encounters (see video):

Faction Champions: This fight involves jousting to defeat 3 Champions.
In the second encounter, you will either face Argent Confessor Paletress (at 20-25% she summons a memory of an old boss that you will have to fight) or Eadric the Pure.
The final encounter is the Black Knight which is a 3 phase boss fight (humanoid, skeletal and ghost form).

Type	Spec	Item
2H Axe	Str. DPS	Edge of Ruin
Polearm	Agi. DPS	Marrowstrike
1H Mace	Agi. DPS	Aledar's Battlestar
1H Mace	Spell MP5	Mariel's Sorrow
1H Sword	Tank	Peacekeeper Blade
Dagger	Spell	Spectral Kris
Gun	Agi. DPS	True-aim Long Rifle
Cloth	Spell	Embrace of Madness
Cloth	Spell Hit	Kurisu's Indecision
Cloth	Spell Hit	Gaze of the Unknown
Cloth	Spell Hit	Boots of the Crackling Flame
Leather	Spell	Gloves of Dismal Fortune
Leather	Spell	Leggings of the Snowy Bramble
Leather	Phys. DPS	Mask of Distant Memory
Leather	Phys. DPS	Armbands of the Wary Lookout
Leather	Phys. DPS	Treads of Dismal Fortune
Leather	Spell Hit	Barkhide Treads
Mail	Phys. DPS	Chestguard of the Ravenous Fiend
Mail	Phys. DPS	Pauldrons of Concealed Loathing
Mail	Phys. DPS	Gloves of the Dark Exile
Mail	Spell Hit	Pauldrons of the Deafening Gale
Mail	Spell MP5	Girdle of the Dauntless Conqueror
Plate	Phys. DPS	Legplates of Relentless Onslaught
Plate	Phys. DPS	Majestic Silversmith Shoulderplates
Plate	Phys. DPS	Plated Greaves of Providence
Plate	Phys. DPS	Vambraces of Unholy Command
Plate	Spell	Trueheart Girdle
Plate	Spell MP5	Legplates of the Argent Armistice
Plate	Spell MP5	Gauntlets of Revelation
Plate	Tank	Helm of the Crestfallen Challenger
Plate	Tank	Regal Aurous Shoulderplates
Neck	Agi. DPS	Ancient Pendant of Arathor
Neck	Spell MP5	Symbol of Redemption
Neck	Tank	The Warlord's Depravity
Ring	Spell Hit	Sinner's Confession
Ring	Tank	Mark of the Relentless

Type	Spec	Item
Cloth	Spell	Mantle of Inconsolable Fear
Cloth	Spell	Handwraps of Surrendered Hope
Cloth	Spell	Leggings of the Haggard Apprentice
Cloth	Spell	The Confessor's Binding
Cloth	Spell Hit	Bindings of the Wicked
Cloth	Spell Hit	Belt of the Churning Blaze
Leather	Phys. DPS	Leggings of Brazen Trespass
Leather	Phys. DPS	Shoulderpads of the Infamous Knave
Leather	Phys. DPS	Belt of Fierce Competition
Leather	Phys. DPS	Gloves of the Argent Fanatic
Leather	Spell	Gaze of the Somber Keeper
Leather	Spell	Binding of the Tranquil Glade
Leather	Spell Hit	Mantle of Gnarled Overgrowth
Mail	Phys. DPS	Belt of Merciless Cruelty
Mail	Phys. DPS	Wristguards of Ceaseless Regret
Mail	Phys. DPS	Scale Boots of the Outlander
Mail	Spell MP5	Carapace of Grim Visions
Mail	Spell	Leggings of the Bloodless Knight
Plate	Phys. DPS	Mask of the Violent Fray
Plate	Phys. DPS	Girdle of Arrogant Downfall
Plate	Phys. DPS	Breastplate of the Imperial Joust
Plate	Phys. DPS	Gauntlets of the Stouthearted Crusader
Plate	Tank	Legguards of Abandoned Fealty
Plate	Tank	Girdle of the Pallid Knight
Plate	Tank	Boots of Heartfelt Repentance
Plate	Tank	Mercy's Hold
Plate	Spell	Helm of the Bested Gallant
Plate	Spell MP5	Greaves of the Grand Paladin
Cloak	Str. DPS	Drape of the Undefeated
Ring	Agi. DPS	Uruka's Band of Zeal
Ring	Spell	Signet of Purity
Neck	Spell Hit	Brilliant Hailstone Amulet
Trinket	Phys. DPS	Banner of Victory
Trinket	Tank	The Black Heart
Trinket	Spell	Abyssal Rune
Trinket	Spell	Tears of the Vanquished

Daily Blue

Ghostcrawler on avoidance changes
The main goal of the change was to make parry not so much less attractive than dodge as an avoidance stat. Since tank avoidance is so high already, we wanted to do that by nerfing dodge a little, not by buffing parry.

This hurts druids slightly more than other tanks, but the emphasis is on "slightly." This is not the big druid nerf that some forum posters have predicted. We will continue to evaluate tank survivability and threat generation based on www tests with "Patchwerk" to decide if druids need to be nerfed or DKs buffed or look at Prot warrior dps or anything else.

This is also not the big avoidance "come to Naaru" that some posters predicted. Overall, we think avoidance is too high and the game would work better with lower tank avoidance, but suddenly dropping everyone's avoidance by 20 or 30% would be a very big change with many ramifications for healing and gear among other things. It would also feel like a big nerf to the many players who didn't understand why it would be better for the game in the long term. But I still expect it is coming at some point. (Source)

The future of block
I feel like we've been pretty candid about its future. You can probably find my previous comments relatively easily. We think block needs to mitigate much more incoming damage per hit, but to make that change we would also need to lower tank avoidance across the board and prevent every hit from being blocked (especially in situations with more than one target beating on you). To make Prot tanking more interesting, we have allowed block to become too much of a dps stat. In retrospect, we'd rather it remained a mitigation stat and that Strength was pushed up as the big warrior and paladin dps stat.

You shouldn't overly worry about outscaling content. We said from the beginning that there would be three major patches to Wrath of the Lich King. We aren't setting up a system that is going to remain on autopilot for 10 more tiers of content without our intervention. It's totally valid for players to worry about scaling, and all things considered, we'd rather have mechanics that scale well. But if those scaling problems aren't going to manifest themselves until you have item level 500 items, then you're worried prematurely.

We would like to get Prot warriors into PvP in a legitimate way, but our first priority is making sure every class has at least one viable PvP spec first. By "legitimate" I do NOT mean that you sometimes can do a 19K Shield Slam when all the stars align. That's not acceptable even if it is rare. Also consider that tanks do have a legit role acting like actual tanks when running flags or tanking AV-style NPCs. That may not be enough of a role, but I did want to point out that emphasizing BGs more and Arenas less also helps to carve out a niche for PvP tanks.

I know there are plenty of Prot warriors out there who couldn't care less about PvP. Sorry. We have to. :(

We want Prot warriors to do decent damage in PvE. We don't want them to do as good damage as actual dps specs -- there needs to be a trade-off for such high survivability. This means we need threat multipliers or you won't be able to actually hold aggro. It's okay if Shield Slam can make big (yet not absurd) numbers, since you don't Shield Slam all that much. That's fun. As I said above though, it would probably work better if Shield Slam hit hard because your Strength was high, not because you built a gimmicky set.

The problem, GC, is that this doesn't scale between 10s and 25s. Damage in 25s is considerably higher than 10s, but amount of damage blocked is not. If block becomes powerful, it could easily dominate 10s and still be weak in 25s.
If only there was a mathematical operation we could perform that would scale the amount blocked to the size of the hit. :) (Source)

Threat generation
There has been a lot of discussion about +threat moves being a crutch and tanks should just be able to hold aggro based on their dps. But that implies that your dps is as high or higher than a class or spec who can only dps. There will probably be +threat added to stances and abilities for the foreseeable future. That does not mean your dps needs to be 10% of a dps raid member. (Source)

US - Realm Maintenance

Langzorke on Realm Maintenance – 7/14/09 (Source)

Greetings!

We are performing our weekly scheduled maintenance this morning, beginning at 3 AM PST on 7/14/09. No realms will be available for play approximately between the hours of 3 AM and 11 AM PST.

Thank you for your patience.