Patch 5.3 - Dungeon Journal UI
Patch 5.3 finally makes it faster to move through the Dungeon Journal by putting boss selections for an instance on the left always, and loot, abilities, and model on the right, making it much faster to switch between bosses to find the right loot list.
Otis - Dungeon Journal Addon
If you don't want to wait a few weeks for Patch 5.3, you can install the Otis addon to make life a little bit easier. It adds arrows to the side of the Dungeon Journal that allows you to quickly move up and down through the boss list.
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Character
I'd say Glyphs and Talents look too similar atm.
Yeah, I think that's fair criticism. (Source)
We added talents in vanilla so rogue 1 and rogue 2 could be different. With tri spec, what if every rogue feels the same again? (Source)
I think you picked the worst class to make an example for you here.
In my experience, hunters are even more likely to swap specs than rogues. Even rogue specs have more kit than hunter specs. (Source)
Pandora's box was open at the moment you allowed us to change spec unlimited number of times.
Then maybe we need to close the box. Another idiom is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. (Source)
Can you reconcile your tweet yesterday about yr friend being "just a druid" w/ the "Bring the player not the class" mentality?
I don't think it's a contradiction. You should be able to bring a Balance or Feral most of the time. (Source)
Now there are some cases where we discourage extreme ranged or melee stacking, which is more necessary evil than cool design. (Source)
And how about "bring player - not spec" argument?
Unless you are on heroic Lei Shen, you can probably play any spec you want and be fine. This was not the case in Sunwell. (Source)
In Sunwell, you had to stack certain classes to get the right buff / debuff matrix. That is what "bring the player" was all about. (Source)
How much would you like Crit, Haste and Mastery to be just as good as one another for all specs, allowing freedom for style?
It's tricky. If they are all interchangeable, then you don't look at the stats at all. Better would be if you can feel the delta. (Source)
For some casters, you can really feel diff between a high crit and high haste build. I wish it felt more so for everyone. (Source)
Then the stats could be equal value while the decision was still meaningful. (Source)
I was looking at simulation numbers on noxxic. Can't believe I'm alone in thinking it's demotivating to see my class so low.
We don't put much faith in class comparisons from sims. Different people with different skills work on the various components. (Source)
So even if e.g. the hunter simming is strong, it may not mesh with the shaman simming. (Source)
Sims are better for helping you determine gems, rotations, reforge etc. for your character. (Source)
PvE
Can we get a heads up as to VP incoming patch, will it be reset or can I have it stored ready?
We will give you notification before 5.3 ships. (Source)
Sunwell raids stacked the top DPS with 1 each of the buff classes. Heroic ToT is the same except it's Raid CDs now.
Disagree. Heroic ToT class stacking is nothing like Sunwell class stacking. (Source)
This is opposite of truth. Having the highest ilvl possible when stepping into ANY raid IS MANDATORY
I disagree. Skill has a much greater impact than ilevel. That is why Blood Legion can beat content with very little new gear. (Source)
Worldclass is irrelevant. There'd be no point to gear if it didn't facilitate success. Stop with the straw man.
But skill matters more than gear especially for non-worldclass, because the worldclass can't improve their skill much more. (Source)
Gear helps for sure. If you want to farm LFR for tiny DPS upgrades, go for it. My contention is that behavior is optional. (Source)
mechanics or not the guild rollling in a sub 496 ilvl is gonna have a bad time in tot where the 515 guys are gonna breeze
Yes, that is different. If you don't have a lot of N gear from previous tier, then LFR will serve as a useful catchup. (Source)
why is it we can burn extra mogu coins in LFR but not on nalak for example?
We didn't want to encourage rampant realm hopping, which can lead to instability when there are too many folks in one spot. (Source)
Now that 5.2 has been out for awhile, it would probably be okay for the older bosses. (Source)
have you consider make DBM as default UI, like many other popular 3rd party UIs they are becoming essentials
We try to communicate essential info in raids. The raid mods often provide too much info, which has 2 problems. (Source)
Difficulty is probably obvious, but they also make fights seem complicated by bringing your attention to stuff you could ignore. (Source)
I have even seen in blue posts where you or someone else says normal raiders run LFR! Pls get stories straight!!!
Some heroic raiders run LFR. The question is how forced they feel to do so. (Source)
In 5.0 when everyone was in blues, LFR gave epics and felt really important. (Source)
In 5.2, LFR offers much less to N raiders unless you've been unlucky or are impatient to complete a set or something. (Source)
As I've said, if it's fun for you, go for it. I wouldn't consider it mandatory though. (Source)
In heroic, there are tight enrage timers. In 5.2, there really aren't in normal. (Source)
It comes down to your error rate on mechanics. Improving ilevel can gives you more room to have more errors and still win. (Source)
But causing fewer errors in the first place is likely an even surer track to victory. (gives -> give) (Source)
don't you fear pve gear will become too strong and scare away pure pvpers who dont want to pve?
We don't think PvE gear will be more attractive than PvP gear for PvP with these changes. (Source)
the blog about how to gear was a little inelegant and convoluted let's say. Is End game gearing gonna be like that forever?
What we don't like is that the current system is fairly opaque. Nothing tells you "Go here for a good belt upgrade." (Source)
Also, the system gets more convoluted when tiers advance. Should I do MV LFR or ToT LFR? Is the DMF trinket still good? (Source)
We like to encourage lots of different paths towards a goal rather than e.g. raid or die. (Source)
what if i just want to raid or die? All I want to do is dungeon and rad? Why can't that be an optimal choice? Not the only one
Optimal tends to become the only. We try to make the most optimal path the most diverse one (but again not the only one). (Source)
Weekly News Recap
Lots of news this week, so here is your chance to catch up if you missed a day of news!
- April 28
- We looked at the new Deepwind Gorge battleground.
- April 29
- We looked at the Battle on the High Seas Scenario.
- Ghostcrawler mentioned that Patch 5.3 will increase the drop rate of Sigil of Power and
Sigil of Wisdom.
- April 30
- Weathered Observer's Shield and
Flamescarred Draconian Deflector are being added in Patch 5.3 at the cost of 2175 Justice Points.
- Ghostcrawler made his initial comment on tri spec.
- Raid Finder difficulty Lei Shen had a 10% health and Static Shock damage reduction.
- Exodus decided to stop doing 25 player raiding.
- May 1
- We looked at the Old Seer quest being added in Patch 5.3 that rewards item level 502 boots.
- Ghostcrawler replied to some more tri spec tweets.
- May 2
- Patch 5.3 PTR - Build 16911 was released, and halved the amount of PvP Power and PvP Resilience on gems.
- There was a blog post about how to catch up on gearing in Patch 5.2 and 5.3.
- May 3
- We looked at the new Brawler's Guild mount, the Brawler's Burly Mushan Beast.
- Some new Hearthstone cards were revealed.
- We looked at the new Brawler's Guild mount, the
Computers - Setup of the Month (by chaud)
Each month or every 2 months, depending on the hardware evolutions, the lovely chaud will work on a couple of hardware setups for those of you who are thinking of upgrading their computer!
This month
The current SSD prices seem to be moving back up slowly, with almost all SSDs under $1 per gigabyte when on sale. No new GPUs or SSDs worth waiting for are expected before the third quarter this year. RAM prices have been increasing for the past few months, so if you were thinking about adding RAM anytime soon, now is the time.
The new Haswell CPUs from Intel are almost here and should bring a mild performance improvement, power usage reduction, and significantly better integrated graphics.
Unless you are doing a lot of video rendering or something that is similarly multithreaded, you do not need the 3770K and should spend that money elsewhere.
Make sure to keep your AMD and Nvidia drivers up to date.
Don't hesitate to post any feedback in the comments of that news post, and don't forget to visit the Computer Forum for any extra questions! If you are interested in Folding@home, take a look in our team's thread.
Peripherals/Monitors
| Component | Puppy | Dolphin |
|---|---|---|
| Monitor | Asus VS229H-P 21.5" LED IPS Monitor - $140 | ASUS VS248H-P 24-Inch Monitor - $170 |
| Keyboard | Kensington Pro Fit Media Keyboard - $20 | Cyborg V.5 - $48 |
| Mouse | Logitech G400 - $37 | Razer Deathadder - $46 |
| Speakers | Creative A220 2.1 Speaker System - $30 | Logitech Z313 Speaker System - $40 |
| Component | Narwhal | Unicorn |
| Monitor | ASUS VE278Q 27-Inch - $266 | HP ZR2440W 24-inch (IPS Panel) - $369 |
| Keyboard | Logitech G510 - $90 | Razer BlackWidow (Backlit)- $76 ($129) |
| Mouse | Logitech G500 - $45 | Razer Naga (Buttons on the Side) - $70 |
| Speakers | Logitech Z323 2.1 Speaker System - $60 | Logitech Speaker System Z523 - $65 |
Puppy and Dolphin
Mix and match anything but the CPU/Motherboard combo between Puppy and Dolphin. Pick one of the two CPU/Motherboard combos.
Mix and match anything but the CPU/Motherboard combo between Puppy and Dolphin. Pick one of the two CPU/Motherboard combos.
| Component | Puppy | Dolphin |
|---|---|---|
| Case | NZXT Source 210 - $35 | NZXT Source 210 - $35 |
| Power Supply | Corsair CX500 - $58 | XFX Core Edition PRO 550W - $69 |
| CPU | AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition- $85 | AMD FX-6300 - $117 |
| Heatsink | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus - $28 | Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - $30 |
| Motherboard | ASUS M5A97 R2 AM3+ 970 - $99 | ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0 AM3+ 990FX - $135 |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB 1333 - $31 | 8GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $71 |
| Graphics Card | ASUS 7770 - $109 | Gigabyte 7850 2 GB or Gigabyte GTX 660 OC 2GB - $195 / $210 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB - $57 | Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - $91 |
| DVD | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23 | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23 |
| Total | $525 | $766 - 781 |
Narwhal and Unicorn
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn. SSDs are always optional.
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn. SSDs are always optional.
| Component | Narwhal | Unicorn |
|---|---|---|
| Case | Cooler Master HAF 912 - $58 | Cooler Master HAF 932 - $160 |
| Power Supply | Corsair 650TX V2 - $90 | Corsair 750HX - $130 |
| CPU | Intel i5-3570K - $210 | Intel i7-3770K - $317 |
| Heatsink | Thermaltake Frio - $53 | Noctua 6 NH-D14 - $80 |
| Motherboard | ASUS P8Z77-V LK - $115 | ASUS P8Z77-V - $176 |
| Memory | 8GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $71 | 16GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $120 |
| Graphics Card | Gigabyte 7950 OR MSI GTX 660 Ti - $310 / $299 | Gigabyte 7970 OR GIGABYTE GTX 670 - $400 / $393 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $91 | Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $91 |
| SSD | SAMSUNG 840 128GB (Review) - $100 OR Plextor 128 GB M5 Pro (Review) - $132 | Intel 330 180GB (Review) - $150 OR SAMSUNG 840 Pro 128GB (Review) - $139 |
| DVD | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23 | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23 |
| Total | $1010 - $1153 | $1590 - $1647 |
More...