In today's edition of the Blue Bar, we talk about the unofficial patch 3.3.2 notes. We focus on the 5man heroic dungeon nerfs, the buff to druids, shamans, and warlocks, increased protection warrior damage, the late implementation of the Ashen Verdict strength ring, and the release of Toravon the Icewatcher.

Thank you MMO-Champion.

The unofficial patch 3.3.2 notes were released on the Korean WoW forums earlier, with the MMO-Champion forums containing the rough english translation. The intel over at MMO-Champion is as good as it gets, barring that provided by Blizzard itself, so thank you Boubouille for your hard work.

Blizzard has been good on their promise to increase the quality of life in regards to 5man heroic dungeons.

As I've said before in an earlier blog, this is a great change for everyone. I'll be the first to admit that there are more pressing matters for Blizzard to fix, with class balance being at the forefront; but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't fix issues like this one. Dungeon adjustments are easy for them to do, because unlike class balance, PvE and PvP implications don't need to be considered. It's also a change that almost all of the WoW playerbase can appreciate, because improving dungeon pacing drastically improves the dungeon crawler's quality of life.

Long live daily random heroics!

It should be no surprise to anyone why almost the entire 80 player-base participates in the daily random heroic system. For completing the daily random heroic, you receive 2 emblems of frost. The rewards that the emblems offer are enormous, regardless of what area of WoW interests you. They're required for the latest pieces of tier gear, amazing non-tier pieces, and they can also be turned in for Primordial Saronite. Primordial Saronite can be used to craft some of the best gear in the game, including the legendary 2-hander Shadowmourne. If you're short on gold, or you just want to have more in-game currency, you can sell each Primordial Saronite for 2-2.5k gold depending on your server. Daily random heroics (and weekly random raids) are here to stay, as long as they continue to offer great rewards.

Druids, Shamans, and Warlocks, oh my!

Moonkins, Elemental Shamans, and Demonology/Destruction Warlocks are all getting much needed personal DPS buffs, and it's about time. Some of the best players I know play those classes, and it can't be a great feeling when night after night you're performing as well as the number 1 DPS but end up 5th or below on the overall damage meter because of your class.

Protection Warrior damage is on the rise, but it still has a ways to go.

Devastate will be doing 120% damage (up from 100%) which is definitely a change in the right direction. Warrior tanks need to do more single target damage because, regardless of how much it's downplayed by Blizzard, overall raid damage does matter. It's obvious to anyone that, when all else is equal, it's much better to have a Rogue who does 11k DPS vs a Rogue who does 9k. Why should one tank doing 1-2k DPS less than another be disregarded? Besides, all the Warriors out there who have played their class for more than a few years deserve some returns for destroying their fingers all thanks to heroic strike.

The Ashen Verdict reputation ring now offers a strength version, and it couldn't have come any sooner.

Although Blizzard gave us the reason why they couldn't implement a strength ring due to coding problems, it felt like a cop-out. Playing a Death Knight who thrives on strength, having to equip a ring itemized for agility just didn't feel right. I'm glad that this change will go in before the release of hard modes in Icecrown.

Thanks to the new arena season finally being underway, Toravon the Icewatcher has been added.

I was never a big fan of the Vault of Archavon bosses dropping the latest tier pieces, and was hoping that Blizzard would stray away from it in the future. When RNG could give a fresh 80 or an alt 80 pieces your main still didn't have, even though you've been raiding for weeks, it didn't feel too great. I'm curious to see what version of the tier 10 Toravon drops. I'd assume it's not the ilvl 277 version, and if that is indeed the case, it will be a good implementation.

A general tip for everyone is that if you can avoid it, try not to invest your badges or upgrades into pieces that a Toravon drop could potentially replace, like the tier 10 legs and gloves. When you just spent your 60 hard earned emblems of frost on a new pair of gloves, and the same gloves drop from an easy boss (if he holds to the difficulty standard of the other VoA bosses on release), it's not the best feeling in the world. This is especially true if he ends up dropping the second version of the tier 10, which is not only 60 frost badges, but a raid token as well.