Archive for the ‘PTR’ Category

Well it’s that time again. Ruby Sanctum is up for testing soon, and as always, there are a million people sitting outside – I love the screen shots I get from this.

Also Blizzard posted today that AVR is getting removed. This, I could see coming, as it steps over what Blizzard will allow for addons. They have a really good blue post up, letting you know why they are removing it.

If I get some good video from RS I will post a video later on.

So the first testing in ice crown is happening at the moment. I must say so far it is a pretty fun place to be. The trash leading up to the first boss is straight forward enough once you work out what each of them does. Lord Marrowgar himself is also straight forward.

Below is a quick run down on the trash leading up to and Lord Marrowgar himself on 10 man.

Trash:

• Spiders do a web wrap that must be broken.
• The casters hit for about 12000 on random targets so they need to be interrupted/stunlocked
• The big skelton guys cast a spell lock thats on a 4 second cast. Make sure u are not casting when it goes off.

Lord Marrowgar:

• Casts a fire which moves towards the outside of the room, pretty easy to avoid.
• Cast bone spike, that does damage to one person in the raid overtime (about 3000). While bonespike is under them they can not move or cast. They bone spike must be killed, to free them.
• Whirlwind, targets one member in the raid to go after. Does not hit very hard (around 3000). Pretty easy to heal though.
• He also casts Saber Lash an instant attack that hits the tank for 12-15k damage. Pretty easy to heal though but the healers need to be onto it.
• You will also have a debuff called The Frozen Throne’s chill, which does damage over time. From what I can tell its only about 100, and I was absorbing all of it. This does mean you can not eat or lock summon or mage table. You have to do this at the start of the instance.

So this s a pretty easy encounter. There are only a few things you need to do. Move away from fire. Kill the bone spikes when they are up.

Healers will need to heal who ever is in bone spike, and watch for when he hits the tank for a crap load and you will down him very easily.

I will finally leave you with a few screen shots:

Thats right 10 mins to go before the raid opens up and its lag city alright. As you can see from the screen shot. I have a 10 man group who all seem like awesome people. This should be good fun. If you cant get on the ptr then check back here latter as ill have a round up of how the new raid zone is shaping up.

*UPDATE*
Well they could not get the instance servers up and testing has been canceled for tonight. Europe testing went ahead and below is a video from Affenjungs INC showing off a Valkyr Twins kill. Enjoy!

 

Well Patch 3.1 PTR went up last night, and man are there some changes. I wasn’t looking forward to the class changes so much, but I was looking forward to some of the other things.

The PTR server is crazy unstable right now, with WoW actually having a critical error and crashing when you are in a major city. The lag is huge, but one would expect that from a PTR. Many things are broken and/or just missing.

But I have managed to get a few screen shots with a few of the great changes that everyone has been looking forward to.

 

The first one has to be the biggest change of them all. That’s right dual specs. Visit your local friendly trainer, give him a small fee of 1000g and you too can have 2 specs. Your glyphs and action bars are also tied to your spec so when you hit the change spec button on your talent panel everything swaps over. This is such a cool addition, one that so many of us have been waiting for a very long time.

 

The next little feature is the new BG queuing system. You can now queue for a BG anywhere in the world. This new feature is a tab on your PVP menu. Not that ground breaking, but an added convenience. One question that remains unanswered is where you go when you finish the BG. I can’t test this right now as the BGs are not up yet. But I will once they come up.

 

Another sweet little change is the new LFG system. Well not really new but a reworking of the old system. You now have to tick a box to say if you are damage, heals, or tank. You may ask, what if I can do both because of dual specs? Well they have you covered. If you have say, tank and heals as your specs, you can chose two of the options. 

The LFG is still not perfect but is a welcome change in my books.

 

 

There is also a new gear manager which fits in perfectly with the new dual specs. It’s pretty easy to use, all to do is put on your gear and save that set. It’s an ok addition but I would love to have a lot more functionality. Like Outfitter can bank all your gear sets with one button, and even auto-swap gear with zoning.

Sure it does work and it’s simple but it’s just not all there. I will still be using Outfitter to manage my gear.

 

 

To finish this off, mounts that swim. Yes that’s right, you no longer get dismounted when running into water. You can swim around to your hearts content on you favorite mount

 

That’s it for now, the game crashing every 2 minutes sucks and untill that is fixed, I’m not going to back on the PTR. The word over on the Forums, is there is a patch on its way. I’m guessing it will hit either tonight or tomorrow. 

 

For updates on 3.1 be sure to check out MMO Champion and also WOW insider