Phase 1 of Wrath Classic is well underway, and many of us have already had a good chance to experience most of the content. After all, tier is much like it was in the past, not the greatest of challenges, and our version got buffed by 30%. The next step for Wrath is Ulduar, which expects to come sometime in mid-December or January.
Phase 2 will have us revisiting one of the World of Warcraft's most legendary raiding instances ever created. Today we will go over what to expect from Phase 2 of WotLK, some ideas for Preparation, and just some things to think about.
Here it's somewhat reminiscent of Phase 2 of TBC. The main new thing to do will be the new raid in the new Arena season. As we're playing on the last patch - tons of big additions to the game were already in the right from the beginning. Originally they didn't even get Dual Spec until Ulduar and would have had to swap glyphs out each time. They went back to the trainer to respect. Imagine that patch 3.1 major content in the original Wrath were massive tons of class changes, profession changes, and so on. R1 is going to be quite a bit shorter. We should also see the framework of the Argent tournament grounds begin.
The big thing that everyone will be looking forward to revisiting the first time will be Ulduar. The World of Warcraft's first raid ever to feature multiple difficulties between normal and hard mode encounters. Not only will we see this raid, but we will also see a pre-nerf Ulduar, so even players who are extremely experienced with Wrath will likely be getting thrown a few curveballs by the changes made to the trash and bosses. Ulduar received a ton of changes. More or less, every single boss had a wall of heart fixes that were made between Ulduar's launch in early April of 2008 and June of the same year.
Here are the changes made to XT-002 Deconstructor, for example, including several Nerfs to health and damage across the normal and heroic modes. Here are the hotfixes that Yogg-Saron has between launch and up to patch 3.22. To be honest, there are quite a few fixes to mechanics not working correctly in there, but there's also a little line saying that Yogg-Saron's health has been reduced by 20% in the final stage of his 25-player mode, which is quite the chunk of health on the final DPS Race part of the fight, alongside a pre-nerf Ulduar.
Blizzard is also planning to amp up the power of the gear that drops inside of the instance, and this is being done for two main reasons.
One is that Ulduar gear maintains some value after the trial of the Crusader comes out in the original Wrath trial came out, but replaces the gear inside of it.
Secondly, players have better tools to face up against the pre-nerf content. The current plan, as far as we know, is to buff all normal Ulduar gear by 6 item levels, putting 25 normal at 232, and all hard mode gear by 12 item levels, putting it at 251. Also important to remember hard mode bonus loot isn't a complete drop table change for a boss. It's just a bit of extra loot for each boss done on hard mode, with the exception of enough Algalon the Observer, whose entire chest will be a full stack of hard mode gear, making him super valuable to do each week if you can. Of course, I think this feels a little bit like the Sunwell, where early on, it's actually quite difficult, but the gear is so good and so well itemized that we're gonna close the gap pretty fast. All in all, I think there are good reasons to be excited about Ulduar as a new player or a veteran.
When Ulduar drops, loot that drops in 10-man raids from Phase 1 will be replaced with loot that drops from 25-man raids. Blizzard thinks this will make the first tier of loot more interesting, so raiders will only need to go back to 10-man to get the raid loot.
All 10-man loot from Phase 1 of Wrath Classic will be moved to Heroic Dungeons, in a new version of the dungeon (Heroic Plus Dungeons)with increased difficulty. This is a significant change to Wrath Classic.
Now you can safely bet two potions per pole. You know what your class will need, and stock up on some variety of potions of speed while Magic Indestructible Potions, Fish Feast, or food, depending on what's best for your class.
Global Thermal Sapper Charges and Saronite Bombs, also with pre-nerf Ulduar, if they go ahead and change all of the trash, they might have a ton of very nasty trash mobs, so I think Arcane Bombs are actually going to be extremely useful. They're cheap to make at the moment, so why not stock up, just in case your raid's gonna have a ton of Engineers? It's not going to be hard to rotate them on trash, and it is handy to prepare gear upgrades in advance too.
Trance could now be stored on Vellum. Heroic plus is a thing, and I'm guessing people will still be getting loads of green and blue items through that. Whatever the big bottleneck on good enchants will still be Abyss Crystals other than Hunters. They can keep a few Scopes in the bag that are cheap enough to make at the Auction House. People use them to level Engineering and have the materials needed for their various Engineering Tinkers, cloak Embroideries, and so on. You know what professions you use. Ulduar also drops a bunch of new powerful bind on equipped items as well as patterns for Tailoring, Leatherworking, and Blacksmithing.
All of these need Runed Orb, which is obtained either from bosses in Ulduar or by trading in 18 Emblems of Heroism. I'm not sure which Emblem they're going to use.
We had some news come out the other day where blizzards say beginning in Phase 2, Heroic Dungeons and Phase 1 raids will begin to drop Emblems of Valor, and Ulduar has been confirmed to be dropping Emblems of Conquest.
Many of these new patterns need materials, such as Ebbenweave, Spellweave, Icy Dragonscale, Arctic Fur, and Titanium Bars.
A few items also need Eternal Shadow, which is very cheap at the moment and can be transmuted to Eternal Life. Now Eternal Life is still maintaining a fairly good price because you need three of them to craft per Darkmoon Card of the North, and these crafts can give Nobles cards, which can then be turned in for Darkmoon Card: Greatness that prices were very high during the first hand in period at the Darkmoon Faire. The seconds just passed, and they spiked once again during that. I think there's one or two more Darkmoon Faire of good value out of Greatness cards. As a result, Eternal Life as well at the end of the day.
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DID YOU KNOW? If you have difficulty in WotLK gold farming, buying extra gold is an efficient way. |
There was a blue post aiming to make climbing the ladder and getting your hands on PvP gear a little bit easier.
We've been monitoring players' rating distribution, and the percentage of players who have reached the rating requirements is much lower than we want it to be. We're implementing a rating calculation adjustment that will cause a continuous, modest increase of MMR for the rest of the season.
Hopefully, the gear with rating requirements on it, which they intend to keep, becomes a little bit more in reach. Also, as we are seeing in season 5, PvE gear is very important in RAF PvP, as it always has been. In season 6, all the War gear is being buffed, including many of the weapons, by up to 12 item levels. The PvP weapons would have been essentially completely useless.
The above content is from WillE's video. Hopefully, it can be helpful for you.