There used to be a cap of 40 on the amount of debuffs you could have on a creature at one time. Well, according to Daelo on the O-Boards, that cap has been increased with Wrath of the Lich King.

We changed how the game handles debuffs (ie negative state effects on targets) on creatures with Wrath of the Lich King. The old hard cap of 40 debuffs on a target no longer effectively exists. You can now apply way more debuffs to a target without them dropping off before their duration expires. The default WoW UI will not normally display all these debuffs, but they really are still there!

Of course, Daelo does not confirm whether there is a new hard cap for debuffs. From the use of the words “way more,” we can probably assume there is some sort of cap.

Project Lore launched a new segment of the show this afternoon called Soloing — which will be starring Zand “Dorkins” Broumand, at least initially. In this new segment of the show, Zand will be doing an introduction to soloing in Northrend. This week he starts off in Howling Fjords but not before we had a chance to sit down and talk with him about Project Lore, Soloing and a little place called Gamerville.

Tamat : Hey Zand! It’s great to talk with you again. Thank you for pulling yourself away from your Hunter long enough to answer a few questions. Did you have fun at BlizzCon?

Zand :  Not only did I have fun, but going to Blizzcon confirmed a long time suspicion I had. Hot chicks DO play World of Warcraft, I repeat, there are hotties in the World of Warcraft.

Tamat : Indeed! So let’s start with the most obvious question. How are you enjoying your new and improved Hunter?

Zand :  Loving it.  More stable space, new pet talent trees, improved hunter talents, exotic pets, and automatic leveling of really low level beasts … it’s like God himself came down from heaven, got a job with Blizzard and was put solely in charge of all hunter improvements.  It’s truly mana from heaven!

Tamat : *laughs* Do you have any alts that you play beside your hunter?

Zand :  My characters are like my woman.  I could dabble with a bunch of ladies and have a decent experience and some good one night stands.  But I’m a monogamous type of guy, I experience fulfillment when developing a complete relationship with just the “one”.  Bottom line, I’m married to Dorkins. We’re inseparable. And I don’t cheat. 

Tamat : What do you like or dislike about the changes that were made to your character in 3.0?

Zand :  As far as mechanics go, steady shot no longer clips autoshot, thank you very much.  If only one change could have been made for PvE this was it.  No more carpel tunnel syndrome in the right index finger due to excessive mouse wheel spamming during boss fights.  Back to plain old button mashing, thanks Blizzard.  Also Aspect of the Viper actually does something now, we can finally regen mana, what a novel concept.  As for PvP, I’m not a PvP guy, but if I were, the changes to disengage and mongoose bite seem like huge improvements.  And deterrence is now a learnable skill, so all you PvP’ers out there complaining, you have no more excuses.

Tamat : Out of all the guys — would you say that you’re the biggest gamer? Do you spend the most time gaming?

Zand : Are you f***ing kidding me?  You know who Brandon “Juggynaut” Sato is right?  If there were a Gamerville he’d be the f***ing president.  Alex and Jeff host Totally Rad Show, which of course does a weekly review of video games, so they would be the Vice President and Chief of Staff respectively.  Lyle is a producer of Attack of the Show on G4 so he is like the Secretary of Defense.  Then there’s Goggins and I, we’re sort of like Senators, we just talk a lot of shit.

Tamat : Whoa! Alrighty then. Maybe I can run C-SPAN in Gamerville!

Tamat : Now I understand you’ve been working on another project with DECA. Can you hook us up with the details?!

Zand : We’re doing a new segment under the Project Lore umbrella called “Soloing”, so it’s not another show per se. Project Lore has always wanted to bring high quality video to all aspects of the game, not just Dungeons and Raids. That’s where “Soloing” comes in.  This segment is going to focus on the more individual aspects of the game; specifically quests, achievements, professions, talents, add-ons and possibly even PvP.  The first episode is appropriately titled “My first quests in Northrend” where you will get to see me Dorkins, a complete Huntard, slowly working my way through the initial quest chains on the new continent with the sometime help of master WoW specialist Juggynaut.  We all love this game tremendously and it’s our aim to cover as much of its massive content as possible. “Soloing”, check it out. I think you’ll enjoy it…even if only to make fun of what a huntard I am.

Tamat : Is it safe to say you’ll always be ‘Huntarded’ or will you be alternating between different classes?

Zand :  When I’m doing the show, yes it will be huntarded, Dorkins and I are fused at the hip. But “Soloing” may not always be me.  It’s possible other PL guys will make an appearance and if so you will see the game from their class’ perspective.

Tamat : Do you play anything besides WoW currently?

Zand : I’ve been playing a little Fable II, but other than that I am trying to keep any extracurricular gaming to a minimum.

Tamat : Let’s rewind a little bit. Can you tell us about early Zand the Gamer? What was growing up in Santa Barbara like as a gamer? Is there a gaming scene there?

Zand : Texas Instruments BABY!!!  Burger Time and Hunt the Wompus, straight up.  That’s how I rolled. 

Tamat : What do your friends and family think about what you’re doing now with Project Lore? Do you have any fans from within your “Inner Circle”?

Zand : I think they’re not really sure what to think. I still drive a ’98 Camry so it’s not like I have much to show for it. 

Tamat : Now that Wrath of the Lich King is here — what are you most excited about?

Zand : Kicking his frozen ass.

Tamat : Alright. Well, I can tell you want to get back to Azeroth. Thanks for sitting down with me Zand!

Zand : No problem, it was great talking WoW with you.

Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street has posted a preview of some Death Knight changes the dev team is currently discussing. Most of these changes apply to tanking Death Knights.

This is a new class, and while we’re thrilled overall with how it’s been received, we always expected to have to make more changes to death knights than the classes that have had their talents under the microscope for many years. We’re not prepared to announce specific changes to DKs yet, but here are some general areas we are tinkering with.

Possible changes include a boost in Frost Presence’s mitigation; scaling the mitigation of Icebound Fortitude based on defense skill; buffs to tanking talents in the Blood tree; a reduction on Rune Strike’s weapon damage, but a boost in threat; a reduction in runic power costs of Unholy Blight and Horn of Winter; some fixes to Shadow of Death; some changes to ghouls; and a new spell to raise fallen allies.

Ghostcrawler’s full post can be found here or below.

We’ve had a lot of questions about death knights recently. This is a new class, and while we’re thrilled overall with how it’s been received, we always expected to have to make more changes to death knights than the classes that have had their talents under the microscope for many years.

We’re not prepared to announce specific changes to DKs yet, but here are some general areas we are tinkering with. Most of these changes apply predominantly to tanking death knights, so I avoided cross-posting this thread, but there are probably items of interest to dps specs as well.

1) Death knights seem to tank well when they have cooldowns available and take too much damage otherwise. The change here seems obvious – boost Frost presence’s mitigation while reducing the mitigation of some other abilities, especially Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield.

2) One idea we have for Icebound Fortitude is to scale the mitigation based on defense skill. This lets the ability be less of a paladin bubble in PvP for dps knights, while still letting it act more like Shield Wall for tanks. It also has the side effect of making defense slightly more attractive to death knights. (Let me add before it’s asked that yes we understand Ferals have this problem too and we are working on it.)

3) Unholy is a very popular tanking spec, largely on the strength of Bone Shield. Expect to see some buffs to tanking talents in the Blood tree especially.

4) Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. We will probably chill its weapon damage and increase its threat.

5) We don’t like the behavior where DKs feel like they are supposed to drop Death and Decay to generate runic power before a pull. It just looks goofy. We will probably lower the runic power costs of Unholy Blight and Horn of Winter, which seem to be the primary reasons to generate RP. Horn of Winter will probably be something like no cost, 30 sec cooldown, generates 10 rp.

EDIT : I am refering to using DnD outside of combat just for the runic power (kind of like Bloodrage for warriors). It’s totally legit and intended to use it to start a fight to gain threat and hurt the bad guys.

6) There are some odd situations caused by Shadow of Death that we would like to fix. The talent isn’t designed to let you escape durability damage or rez by zoning into an instance.

7) There are some annoying parts of the non-pet ghoul. We want to lower the aggro range (for less accidental pulls) and spawn the ghoul in quicker when dismounting. The ghoul, at least Unholy’s version, could also use some AE avoidance like other pets.

We are probably going to add a new spell to let you raise fallen allies so that you don’t have to make the decision between bringing back another player (which was just supposed to be a fun bonus) and bringing back your ghoul, which can be pretty crticial for some specs.

This isn’t everything we’re talking about of course, just a little preview.