What 3.2.2 means for ret

• You can finally use that 2 part tier 9 bonus you’ve been sitting on because of the Seal of Vengeance bug.  This 2 part bonus pushes Judgement to the top of your priority list.  Remember that to maximise your dps.
• You might want to pick up Seal of Command again.  For trash.  If it dies fast.
• Onyxia!!!
• A million different heads, a couple of weapons and … not much else.
• ArP has been nerfed.  Its a 12% nerf.

I’ll update the gear list with Onyxia loot shortly.  Right now I’m not convinced the lists are complete (that might be more hope than reason).  I’ll also do the ArP nerf then.  Its not a huge difference on the ret gear list and only items which are pretty much tied for postitions on the lists will really be affected by it.

Trial of the Crusader (Normal 10 and 25) Crib Sheet

This is a new kind of post here.  One thing I notice is that most guides are LONG.  Theres a lot of information in there.  If you’re doing hard modes or heroic versions, you need that information.  But sometimes, you don’t.  Sometimes you’ve just got into this PuG with a mate and you’ve never seen it before and all you need to know is what to hit and how not to die.  This guide is for you.

Links to the WoWwiki posts and the (awesome) Tankspot tactics videos are at the end.  I cannot recommend those videos enough.

Northrend Beasts

Phase 1 – Gormok

• Tanks hand the boss between them at 2-3 stacks of Impale.  10 man = 2 tanks.  25 man = 2/3 tanks.
• Ranged dps Snobolds down ASAP.
• Stay out of the fire.

Phase 2 – Dreadscale and Acidmaw

• 2 tanks for 2 worms.  Kite the mobile worm out of slime and keep both facing away from the raid.
• Burn Acidmaw first, using cooldowns.  Dreadscale will do a small enrage then.
• If you get Paralytic Poison from Acidmaw, run to someone with Burning Bile from Dreadscale (or have them run to you).

Phase 3 – Icehowl

• 1 tank.
• Spread out to minimize who takes Arctic Breath (cone attack), especially healers.
• When he uses Massive Crash, he throws you to the side and stuns you.  He targets one player.  The target and everyone near them needs to run along the walls ASAP (not touching them) so he charges into the wall and is stunned.  He takes extra damage whilst stunned.
• If he hits a player and enrages, a rogue or hunter can de-enrage him.  Do it fast before he kills your tank.

Demon Lord Jaraxxus

• 1 tank on the boss, 1 the adds.
• 1 interrupter to interrupt Fel Fireball stays on the boss at all times.
• When the Mistress comes all dps take her out.
• When the volcano comes, ranged dps take out the elementals.
• Heal the Incinerate Flesh target until the debuff comes off, otherwise they explode and damage everyone.
• If you get Legion Flame you drop fire every few seconds.  Keep moving and drop flames out of the way.
• Mages should spell steal Nether Power.

Faction Champions:

• On 10 man you will have 2 each of Healers, Melee and Casters.  On 25 man you have 3 of each.
• Kill order is Healers, Melee (especially the rogue), Casters.
• Healer Kill Order: Shaman, Priest, Druid, Paladin.  Pop cooldowns to kill the first healer and try to cc the others or interrupt their healing.
• Tanks should control the melee at all times using taunt, cc and aggro abilities. Ranged can be cc’d as much as possible.
• Use PvP trinkets to break cc on you, but no other PvP gear.

Twin Val’kyrs

• Divide the raid into 2 groups.  1 clicks on the light portal and dps Darkbane and the other click on the Dark portal and dps Lightbane.  The Twins have a shared health pool.
• Healers should stand with groups of the opposite colour to intercept orbs.  All players should intercerpt orbs of the same colour before they hit the bosses.
• 1 tank per boss in the square and near a portal of the opposite colour to the tank.
• When one Twin casts a Vortex, all players including tanks should IMMEDIATELY change colour to match that Twin.  Once the Vortex is over, change back to what you were.
• When one Twin casts Twins Pact, all dps should IMMEDIATELY change colour to the opposite of that Twin.  They should then dps down the shield as soon as possible so that this heal can be interrupted.  Once this is done, change back to what you were.

Anub’arak

• You all fall down!
• One tank takes the boss.  The other tank/s pick up adds which must be tanked on the ice patches.  One dps should be assigned to shoot down ice patches.
• In 10 man leave adds until he burrows.  In 25 man ranged dps take out 2 adds and leave the other 2 until he burrows.
• When he is underground all hug. Anub’arak will chase players and try to spike them, throwing them into the air and doing damage.  A chase can be stopped by kiting him over an ice patch which then disappears.
• Make sure all the large adds are dead before you tip him over 30%.
• Once he is over 30% he starts leaching a % of current HP from all players.  Spam heal the tank as he takes large amounts of damage.  Spam heal players with Penetrating Cold.  Everyone else should be kept on around around 5-7k health.  The more health they have, the more is leached to Anub’arak.  Pop cooldowns and burn.

Da Links

Northrend Beasts
Wowiki tactics
Tankspot video
Healing guide from World of Matticus

Demon Lord Jaraxxus
Wowiki tactics
Tankspot video
Healing guide from World of Matticus

Faction Champions
Wowiki tactics
Tankspot video
Healing guide from World of Matticus

Twin Valkyr
Wowiki tactics
Tankspot video
Healing guide from World of Matticus

Anub’arak
Wowiki tactics
Tankspot video

Updated 28 September 2009.

Retribution Builds to top the PvE Meters

As I write this, Retribution is competative PvE.  Seriously topping the damage meters competative.  Whilst HoPing the tank to remove Impale Debuffs.  And saving the poisoned healer with a quick Lay on Hands.  Its a good time to be a Ret Pala.  But of course if you get the spec wrong this won’t be the case.  If you get the spec wrong you will just sit at the bottom of the meters sobbing quietly into your cocoa.   So what spec to go for in order to be and uber-ret?

Step by step: the basic retribution spec

Tier 1 > On the first tier you have little choice – a clear tanking ability in Deflection, or the mana reduction of Benediction. The winner is: Benediction (5 points).

Tier 2 > Up to the next tier now and you have two useful dps increases. Improved Judgements (2 points) and Heart of the Crusader (3 points). Improved Judgements affects how often you can use Judgements. More often = more hits = more dps. Heart of the Crusader adds a debuff that increases your melee crit chance by 3%.

Tier 3 > Conviction (5 points) is the easy winner, increasing your crit chance with everything by 5%.

Tier 4 > Sanctity of Battle (3 points) and Crusade (3 points) are both dps upgrades, increasing your crit and damage. Although Crusade only affects Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals, thats still a substantial portion of raid mobs and bosses.

Tier 5 > Take everything here. Two-Handed Weapon Specialisation (3 points) since you intend to use two-handed weapons and Sanctified Retribution (1 point) to increase the damage of Retribution Aura and, far more importantly, increase the whole raid’s damage by 3% whatever aura you use. A bargin.

Tier 6 > Since you have Conviction, the way is open for you to take Vengeance (3 points). This is a debuff you apply to the mob that increases your damage. Its applied by critical hits of all kinds. It can stack 3 times, meaning you have 9% bonus Physical and Holy damage when its up in full.

Backfill! > You don’t want anything else on Tier 6, but you have to spend two more points to get to Tier 7. Divine Purpose is a PvP only ability that has no use in raids. Instead, go on back down to Vindication (2 points). This debuff was added in 3.2 and works like a Warriors Demoralizing Shout. Only its better, because instead of spending rage on it, you do it by accident!

Tier 7+ From here on in you take EVERYTHING:

• Repentance (1 point) is paladin cc. Useful in Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader. Its very effective since its instant, but can’t be reapplied easily if it breaks due to the long cooldown. And everyone and his brother is going to break it with any dps (other palas, warrior, warlock pets, hunter pets, any caster AoE, multishot, must kill!!!)  Unless you threaten them loudly over vent ofc.  You may have been able to skip it, were it not a prerequisite for a later talent.
• The Art of War (2 points) is a buff on you that procs from melee criticals. When it is up you can cast either a Flash Heal or an Exorcism instantly, consuming the buff. This is key to paladin dps these days. The ability also increases your damage, just for a bonus.
• Judgements of the Wise (3 points) is essential. It means your Judgements give the raid Replenishment, returning their mana. Blizzard considers this to be essential to success in every raid. For paladins, it can also return 25% of your base mana (which is pretty much the mana you see since you don’t have Intellect gear) and thats also fairly important if you don’t want to end up running on empty.
• Fanaticism (3 points) is yet another crit chance buff. Its also a threat reduction buff. Definitely needed.
• Sanctified Wrath (2 points) contributes to your dps in three ways – it increases the crit chance of your Hammer of Wrath, increasing your dps output when you can use it. It reduces the cd of Avenging Wrath, increasing how often you can boost your dps. Its third bonus, allowing you to bypass damage reduction effects, is really a PvP thing and won’t work in raids (most likely).
• Swift Retribution (3 points) causes your auras to give 3% melee haste. To everyone with the aura. Nice.
• Crusader Strike (1 point) may be boring, but its also your first priority attack.
• Sheath of Light (3 points) is interesting because it gives a small damage boost and a large utility boost. Your spellpower is boosted by 30% of your attack power. This gives you utlitiy to throw off the odd heal and it be effective, and increases the dps of you Consecration, which scales with spellpower. It also means when you do throw a heal, and it crits, you get a small HoT.
• Righteous Vengeance (3 points) means that critical Judgements, Crusader Strikes and Divine Storms apply another 30% damage over 8 seconds. This DoT rolls, so it is refreshed by further strikes.
• Divine Storm (1 point). Weeeeeeeee!! My favourite graphic. You spin, stuff dies. It can hit up to 4 enemies and it also heals up to 3 people for 25% of its damage.

So now you have 52 points in retribution. As of 3.2.2 you want to spend just one more.

• Seal of Command (1 point) gives additional Holy damage to every hit.  And as of 3.2.2 it also has a cleave that strikes up to 2 additional targets.  On trash that lives around 12 seconds, its better than a talented Seal of Righteousness.  So you now want to pick it up.

Time to glance at the other trees and see what damage benefits they can offer you.

Protection
Here you want to take Divine Strength (5 points). This is what makes strength so valuable to a ret pala, increasing your total strength by 15%.

Holy
Seals of the Pure (5 points) is the dps increase here. This increases the damage done by Seal of Vengeance by 15%. And you’re actually using that now.

So that leaves you with 5/5/53. This is the core of any retribution spec. I would also strongly suggest taking two points in Pursuit of Justice (2 points). This means your run faster, which makes it easier to get to mobs (increasing dps) and get away from bad things (increasing survivability).  So that leaves you at 5/5/55.

The optional points: choosing your utility
This leaves you with 7 points. I chose to spend them in a 5/9/57, adding Improved Blessing of Might (2 points) for buffing utility, Guardian’s Favor (2 points) reducing the cd of your Hand of Protection and Divintiy (2 points only) increasing the healing done to you by 3%.

Alternatively, you could go for Divine Sacrifice (1 point). I would do it as 5/11/55, removing your Improved Blessing of Might and replacing it with another point in Divinity and a point in Divine Sacrifice itself.  Elitist Jerks recommends 5/11/55, removing Vindication so you can keep Improved Blessing of Might.

Which one you choose depends on your raid makeup. Raid with several holy palas? Well they should have Improved Blessing of Might too so drop that. Raid with a lot of warriors? Then they can do the AP debuff and you can drop those points. Also, do you need Divine Sacrifice? If you have other palas that include it in their builds, you don’t need to spend points on it – you certainly can’t get the talents to improve it and still have a top notch retribution build any more.   All of those three builds are sensible PvE retribution options.

That was the second in a series of in depth paladin guides.  The first was  Meta Gems for Ret Palas, A True Story which covers all aspects of gemming just as soon as I get past the rant.

To follow should be:

• Glyphs
• Enchants and Item Enhancements (including notes on professions)
• A simple guide to PvP ret
• A guide to holy and prot as an offspec
• Rotations (or why its not that faceroll)
• And anything else I can think of!  Or that someone asks me to write!

Updated24 October 2009 when I realised some of the links were not working.

WoW news roundup – 17 Sept 09

News roundup from the last week in Blue land.  Once again, in bold are the key points of the week (as far as I’m concerned).

I’m not going to update the gear list from the ArP change until after 3.2.2 hits.  Why?  I don’t trust it not to change at short notice.  A VERY rough calculation tells me that ArP valued at 0.78 might drop to 0.68 (125% to 110% simple scaling) which would mean a drop of 5 points from every 50 ArP rating on an item.  This means that the changes will be minor and you should only consider the gear list to be likely to change on items with high ArP that are very closely scored (say less then 10 points) in comparison to another non-ArP item.  Disclaimer: This is all just a guess based on information that is subject to change and might not have considered all the possibilities!

For 3.2.2 and beyond:

• Ardent Defender will be nerfed.
• Hammer of the Righteous was going to be turned into Physical damage …. and then back to Holy.
• Race changes are still in the works.  Class changes will never happen – they are neither practical nor desirable.
• Looks like the ArP nerf will take it from 125% down to 110%.
• Seal of Vengeance will get fixed in 3.2.2.  Right now it works  with the smallest number of buffs on there from any paladin. *Rolls eyes*  After the patch it will work off of your stacks and no one elses.
• Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare will need 25 kills, down from 50 on 25 man.
• New scrolls added to Inscription to give raid wide Intellect or Fortitude buffs.
• New Drums added to Leatherworking to give raid wide Kings or Gift of the Wild.
• That stupid animation from the Black Heart proc is going, because of course the Black Heart of an evil villain would look like Hand of Protection *doh*.
• The maximum number of BG queues will be reduced in 3.2.2 to try and ensure more full BGs.

Hotfixes

• WSG changed so that in the event of a tie the last flag capture defines the winner, not the first.
• Icehowl is now tauntable.
• Anub’arak’s frost patches last a little longer and aren’t going to vanish underneath you!
• Holy Wrath got hotfixed so that it gives diminishing returns on stuns to stop Anub’arak Paladin zerging.
• Gormok no longer gets parry haste (tanks doing heroic modes cheer).
• Icehowl enters slower, has a slightly longer enrage timer and you have an extra 0.5 seconds to get out of his way (the first two of these are on heroic only, unsure about the third).
• On the Lord Jaraxxus fight you get an extra infernal as soon as the Volcano erupts and Mistress of Pain slightly more often.

In other news:

• Brewfest has been boosted to a Level 80 event.  Woohoo!  That means new level 80 items and the return of old quests.  You’re old items will not update.
• Big hitting bosses are the result of the way avoidance has scaled in this expansion.  They have to hit hard to give a real risk of tank death and make the fights challenging.  The Blue poster notes ‘Bosses don’t scale with gear’.  Worth thinking about.

Yes this is late.  I actually wrote it Monday and, well, forgot to post it!

Edge of Ruin strikes back!

Thanks to a useful comment from retholey, I found an error in the lists today.  Edge of Ruin apparently initially showed with a max weapon dps of 856.  This was updated to 892 (which it always did dps wise).  Unfortunately I caught the former score when I did the list.

Edge of Ruin now scores more and is the Best in slot weapon pre-raid.  Its quite close to the Marrowstrike, so don’t go throwing all those polearms out of the window just yet.  And if you do, check you don’t hit anyone standing there!

Retribution Paladin Librams – an Alternative

I just wanted to highlight this post over at The Suicidal Zebra: Want a DPS Relic? Don’t Have the Tokens to Spare? Use Honour!

Its a good article from a great blogger.  I’ve not included the pre-Triumph relics in the list because, in all honesty, they were mostly bad.  I’ve also not included any PvP items in the lists for two reasons.  1. I hate PvP.  2. For the most part, they aren’t very good for PvE.  This isn’t TBC and we don’t farm PvP gear for PvE any more.  However, the relic is the exception and this is a good idea and a good post.

Retribution Paladin Gear List 3.2 ed. – Additional Items

With all of Trial of the Crusader now being accessible, theres some more items to add to the list, and one correction.  I probably won’t look to update again until Onyxia raises her firey head.  If you spot anything missing please just say.  If you want to know about another item not on the lists go ahead and ask.  I went down as far as a good pre-raid item that was easy to get in each case.

Tiers
There are three versions of tier 9:

• Tier 9.1 – From Emblems of Triumph only
• Tier 9.2 – Tokens drop from Trial of the Grand Crusader Tribute Chest in 10 man/Trial of the Crusader/Trial of the Grand Crusader 25 all bosses and you add Emblems of Triumph
• Tier 9.3 – Tokens drop from Trial of the Grand Crusader Tribute Chest in 25 man

Head

1. Turalyon’s Helm of Triumph (Heroic) > Tier 9.3 token > 633.48 Best in slot

Shoulder

1. Turalyon’s Shoulderplates of Triumph (Heroic) > Tier 9.3 token > 348.14 (473.94) Best in slot
2. Turalyon’s Shoulderplates of Triumph > Tier 9.2 token + 45 Emblems of Triumph > 310.49 (419.64) CORRECTION

Chest

1. Turalyon’s Battleplate of Triumph (Heroic) > Tier 9.2 token > 547.98 Best in slot
2. Titanium Razorplate > Blacksmithing > 507.79

Wrists

2. Titanium Spikeguards > Blacksmithing > 269.86

Hands

3. Turalyon’s Gauntlets of Triumph (Heroic) > Tier 9.3 token > 348.14 (476.94)

Legs

1. Turalyon’s Legplates of Triumph (Heroic) > Tier 9.3 token > 578.06 Best in slot
2. Legguards of Ascension (Heroic) > Twin Valkyr 25 (Heroic) > 565.38

Weapons

7. Reckoning (Heroic) > Sword > Twin Valkyr 10 (Heroic) > 6703.34
8. Fordragon Blades (Heroic) > Polearm > Anub’arak 25 (Heroic) > 6638.46

Disc Priest Education – Get guilds and pugs to take you seriously(addons)

“Your not a good healer, look you’re at the bottom of the healing meters with 1.1k HPS and all the other healers have 3k. You fail”

Every heard that one before? I have. Mostly from a pug’s or a guild’s who has not trained their members to understand Discipline priest healing.

Well do not panic, you are not doing anything wrong. Actually you’re doing your job right. If a disc priest is high in healing and above other healers for HPS, then either the other healers are VERY bad or the disc priest is not shielding. (which is bad times)

Your first way of dealing with the problem of people not knowing or not reading up about Disc priests are to download an addon from www.curse.com called RecountGussedAbsorbed and /w it if someone comments on your healing/lack of healing. You will need to already have Recount addon for this to work. It will make a new page of information on shield/bubble absorbed healing. Alternatively make an account on worldoflogs.com and upload your raid information into that and it will also show your total healing and absorbed healing together.

This is your first line of defense to actually get a guild or group to take you seriously if need be.  Also it will help you to see how well you are doing compared to other healers within the group/raid.

In My next Blog i will be making a post which you can pass onto your guild members to show what we bring to a raid. This will start to educate people who have not come into contact with a pve disc priest before.

I hope this will start to help people who i see post a lot on discpriest.com, saying that guilds wont take them serious and are trying to push them into holy spec.  I guess i am just very lucky that i came into a guild who actually was using disc priests as an offspec so they knew what they where all about and what they contributed to a raid.

Noela Out

Trial of the Crusader

This week, for the first time, we had access to all the bosses in the Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader.

Wednesday 10 man
So, come raid time, the officers were faced with a choice of what to do.  We had around 30 people available to raid.  Cutting any of them out for a Trial of the Crusader 25 seemed cruel, so instead we decided to take three 10 man groups.  We jiggled them about, pulled in one friend and set off in three fairly even groups.  My group featured a pala (Phaese) and druid (Wahalen) tank, a disc priest (Noela), a resto shammy (Alaka), and a druid healer (Warheart, who is normally a boomkin).  We then had a mage (Uverjet), a lock (Sephriana) , an elemental shaman (Tammi), a frost death knight (Mokelok) and me!  The other groups were similarly balanced and the race was on!

We spent about 10 mins adding some new gems and enchants to the druid tank, who had gotten some recent upgrades and not had a chance to fix them up.  He doesn’t tank often, and hasn’t tanked in a formal raid before for us.  Then we got going and everyone did a great job, one-shotting everything including Anub’arak.  Despite that 10 minutes we were the first to get the clear!  Gratz all.

We decided not to go on to do three Trial of the Grand Crusader groups.  We knew there was only an hour left and felt if we locked in 30 people in three groups, the likelihood was we wouldn’t be able to get all three up again later in the week.  Instead we went to Ulduar and had a laugh.

What it looks like when it all goes wrong (or the risks of pugging Trial of the Crusader 10)
I know Trial of the Crusader is not hard, but it feels good to be able to put three or four groups through 10 man each week, upgrading gear, giving raid experience and generally having fun.  Those 10 mans have also made our 25 mans better, with everyone knowing what they face when they come in.

That being said, I’ve seen Trial of the Crusader fails.  Last week I got invited to go to a 10 man group on my druid alt.  It was with a decent guild, but I knew this group were struggling.  Now, firstly, that was insane just to start with.  The druid has improved her gear no end, but was still lacking the ability to hit over 3k dps at the time (now managed 3.8k the other day to get Consumption Junction in Drak’Tharon Keep by just burning down the boss).  So, off I went with my crappy druid and we started on Northrend Beasts.

And we wiped.   And wiped.  It took quite a few attempts.  The problem seemed to be healing.  Both tanks seemed solid and skilled.  The dps was probably a bit lacking, but that wasn’t what wiped us.  Dead tanks was.  Eventually we made it though, and Enalla got her second raid kill (behind Sartharion).

On to Jaraxxus.  And the wiping began again.  This time, because the Incinerate Flesh debuff was not healed off.  In the end we got it because me and the other druid kept stopping dps to heal the damn thing.  But we managed it.  2 bosses down.

Faction Champions proved the end of I though.  This requires lightning reflexes and superb healing, not to mention strong dps that can take down the healers fast.  We lacked these so we ended it.  I know a lot of people complain that Trial of the Crusader is too easy.  But the reality is, its not that easy for everyone.

Sunday – 25 man
So Sunday came and 25 man was in our sights.  We romped through the first four bosses with only minor hiccups and plunged into the depths to face Anub’arak (side note – remember to start taking repair bots to raids again).

Our 25 man tactic worked a little differently.  Keeping two adds per tank was a bit risky, but killing them all meant we lacked dps on the boss and he enraged on our first attempt.  So we compromised.  When the first two adds arrived, the tanks took one each.  Melee stayed on the boss whilst ranged nuked them.  If they could be tanked close to the boss to get the additional damage of Divine Storm, etc. they were.  Then the tanks held the next two adds while we nuked the boss.

I think he went under three times, which is ok as long as your healers start using their mana abilities early and rotating them (priests casting Divine Hymn, Shammys with Mana Tide).  Two submerges are better and we were very close.

When he tripped into 30% we made a mistake.  It looked like the adds took a few seconds to spawn, so we thought we could take him from 31% to 30% when he came back up before they arrived.  Thats not the case so we tripped him over 30% with 2 adds up.  That was ok.  Just bring some ice down next to the boss if possible and stand them next to the melee.  I think next time we’ll not risk the 3rd submerge if possible.  We popped hero and boom he was dead.

I got a new ring from Northrend Beasts – Band of the Violent Temperament to go with my Carnivorous Band.  That leaves me with non-hit rings, but I might buy the Emblem of Triumph one when I drop some hit elsewhere.  With 30 badges available from Trial of the Crusader, they soon build up.

Weekend WoW News Roundup – 5 Sept 09

A lot of stuff gets posted by Blizzard every week. Probably the best place to track that is MMO-Champion. MMO-Champion has a Blue Tracker feature that tracks posts by Blizzard for you. It also puts up all the most important information on its front page. But thats a LOT of information. So I had an idea. Maybe I could condense that information. So instead of reading through three or four pages of posts each week, you just had a few bullet points. Lets give that a try shall we?

I’ll plan this to be a weekly feature, and go back one week for starters. I’m not going to post everything, just the most important/interesting things. I’ve put my personal favourites in bold. This is in the order I came across things on MMO Champion. Remember, this is Blizzard and a lot of what is said is subject to change at short notice. Most comes with all kinds of caveats.

• Armor pen will likely be nerfed, mainly as its OP in PvP. This is your warning before you spend 1k gold on gems.
• Instance capacity is as fixed as its going to be on the US realms. Blizzard are pretty concerned about stats inflation, especially on things like crit, haste, armor pen and avoidanace. Likely we’ll see conversions (how many crit rating = crit %) increased to deal with this in Cataclysm.
• Trial of the Crusader was meant to be a simple raiding tier so Blizzard could concentrate on the battleground. The t9 set bonuses are simple because these are complex to implement and they didn’t want to spend excess coding time there.
• Blizzard intends to mix up large, small and all different types of raids in the future – just to keep you on your toes.
• Dual spec will stay at 1k gold.
• Tank damage will stay high in Trial fo the Grand Crusader. Your solution is better gear, not a nerf.
• Health will go up for all players in Cataclysm quite substatially to make healing slower. This should keep healers in work and make everything a bit slower so choice trumps reaction speed.
• Faction Change is live in the USA. No Faction Change ETA for Europe.
• 3.2.2 will be with us long before the Arena season ends.
• A Sons of Hodir Commendation Badge will soon be a possible reward for the daily dungeon quest (actually it says currently, but it didn’t look like it was live today?).
• Koralon the Flame Watcher has arrived with the new Arena Season, Anub’arak and Trial of the Grand Crusader.
• Heirloom items are not meant to work past 80 and probably won’t increase in stats for the next five levels. They are also looking at how to not give you the 20% xp bonus for those five levels. They are meant for alts, not mains.
• You probably won’t be able to use Race Change to change to Goblin or Worgen as soon as they arrive.
• Path of the Titans will be linked to spec and so you will have one for each. Once you have learned something, if you change path you won’t have to learn it again if you go back.

As of 17.07 EU realm time 5 September 2009.