Cataclysm - Path of the Titans
ThePath of the Titans is a new form of character leveling introduced inthe next expansion. The system is an expansion of the existing Glyphsand will ultimately add 10 Ancient Glyphs slots to your character.

AncientGlyphs are new items discovered through the new Archaeology profession,at this point we don't really have many details on it and I willprobably write a mini-post later.

Unlike conventional Glyphs,the Ancient Glyphs won't be tied to a class. Players will join cultsdedicated to various titans and will follow its path, unlocking newglyph slots as they progress. You can earn progress down any of thesepaths by doing things such as questing, raiding, PvP, trade skills,etc.  with a possible weekly cap for maximum progress. Over time,you’ll be able to unlock new ancient glyphs that will greatly benefityour character.

During the Blizzcon developers made it clearthat the goal will be gated and not grindy and that everyone wouldeventually get all their ancient glyphs. More slots might be addedafter the release of the expansion (in content patches, etc ...)

The known paths are:

• Path of Aman’Thul, the High Father
• Path of Eonar, the Lifebinder
• Path of Norgannon, the Dreamweaver
• Path of Khaz’Goroth, the Shaper
• Path of Aggramar, the Avenger
• Path of Golganneth, the Thunderer

We also saw a few glyphs from the Path of Golganneth, you can only pick one glyph for each rank.

• Rank 1 - Path of Golganneth - Physical damage taken reduced by 4%. or Reduces the duration of Bleed and Stun effects by 20%.
• Rank 2 - Path of Golganneth - Bandages heal targets by an additional 30%. or Nearby allies take 10% less damage for 6 sec. Instant. 5 min cooldown.
• Rank 3 - Path of Golganneth - Increases damage dealt by 10% for 10 sec. Only usable after you deal a critical strike. Instant. 5 min cooldown. or 2nd Glyph unknown

Makingall paths available to all classes will most likely create an insaneamount of possibilities and it probably won't be a problem to find atree that suits your playstyle.

Addon Review - Rankwatch
Cross-realms dungeons are awesome, players sometimes aren't. Rankwatchis one of the most useful mod I used, it will monitor the spells castby you and your party/raid members and warn them if they are using adownranked spell. A lot of people are running around and use lowerranks of spells because they never changed their bars or trained themafter dual speccing, or even just because they use an outdated/buggedbar management addon.

It's also very useful when leveling analt, when the amount of lower ranks becomes too high you know it's timeto train! Of course it's nothing compared to the joy of knowing youmade the world of cross-realms dungeons better because the addon yelledat your paladin tank when he used his Rank 1 Consecration in the Hallsof Reflection. Download it, now.

Blue posts

Quote from Blizzard staff "Interesting" stats Ithink you're approaching it as a player, in which your goal is toimprove your character as much as you can as fast as you can. From thatviewpoint, any piece of loot that isn't an unambiguous upgrade justgets in your way. But think for a moment about the over-arcing designof loot in the game and the role it fills. Deciding what is an upgradeis part of the challenge in the same way figuring out to beat the bossis part of the challenge. The hit stat represents a gearing challengebecause you can't just assume any loot from Icecrown is an automaticupgrade. It may be a huge upgrade. It may be a sidegrade. It may be aslight upgrade, but only if you swap around a couple of other pieces,consider regemming, etc. In short, you have to game it. Putanother way, even if there is a "best in slot" list for every spec, theorder in which you get those pieces is significant, and makes you haveto think and solve problems. That's why I call hit "interesting."Spellpower, while quite desirable, is not interesting in that more isalways better to the extent that we can't even offer variation on itfrom one piece to the next any longer. The rating-based stats,especially those with caps as low as hit, cause you have to solve thepuzzle in order to wear them. There aren't a lot of huge decisions youmake in WoW, beyond perhaps your class and maybe your guild. But thereare a lot of little decisions that when taken together make the gamefairly compelling. Too often players approach gear design as "Iwould never wear that piece, therefore it's a badly designed piece."But consider for a moment that badge vendor +hit trinket again. Itmight not be attractive to you personally assuming you're hit capped inyour current gear. Your conclusion might be that the trinket wasitemized wrong. But that might not be the conclusion of say a Restodruid who decides to try Balance and now has a huge hit deficit toovercome. Regemming or farming old content is one way to do it, butrelatively slow and / or painful. Getting a shiny new trinket off avendor (i.e. isn't even subject to the whims of boss loot RNG) with awhole bucket of +hit on it starts to look pretty attractive. Justbecause the piece isn't for you doesn't mean it isn't filling a gap inthe fabric of the game. (Source) +Hit bonus Iwill agree that the complication from hit that comes from bosses beinghigher level than characters, along with the difference among melee andspell hit and dual wield hit make the system more confusing than itneeds to be, and the various raid buffs (and particularly HeroicPresence) can put you in a mode of constantly swapping around rings andbracers or whatever. This is something we'd like to improve. (Source) Spellpower, AP, and Armor Pen changes in Cataclysm We'rechanging spellpower, attack power and armor pen for other reasons, notreally because they're confusing. For example, armor pen is almostimpossible to balance because of the way armor works. Spellpower we'reactually pulling because it's too boring -- it can virtually be derivedfrom item level and we figure if we have to put both it and Intellectin equal proportions on every piece then something's wrong. AP makes ussplit leather stats in weird ways that make it attractive to warriorsand hunters. It's just a cleaner design where everyone has a primarystat: Str, Agi or Int. Those are simple explanations to the point ofalmost being inaccurate, but you get the idea. (Source) Not enough Emblems of Frost? Iam fairly confident we will all be drowning in Frost in several monthswishing we had something else to spend it on. They feel precious nowbecause the income is low because there are so few Icecrown bossesavailable (coupled with the fact that you aren't getting much non-badgeloot because so few Icecrown bosses are available). (Source) Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator) Death Knights Offtanks Idon't think "offtank" is a role these days the way "healer" is a role.Most guilds have a main tank that they use on single target encounters,then they have a second tank that they use if the fight needs anothertank. Maybe the MT is a better player or shows up more reliably ormaybe she's the guild leader or maybe that's just the way the guild hasalways done it. For these guilds, presumably the warrior tanks Onyxiaand the DK picks up the adds. On Twin Valks, each of them tanks oneboss. On Mimiron, the DK probably doesn't do much tanking until theend. I wasn't trying to imply that DKs have a set of abilities or statsthat make them suitable for OTing but not MTing. I was just pointingout that there are a lot of guilds with warrior MT and DK OT. I can'tsay for certain that this is the most common setup among cutting-edgeguilds because I haven't looked lately, but my hunch is that is thecase. There are actually quite a few different combinations of MT andOT that get used, which is a good thing. (Source)