Getting away from the pointless class whining (its the FFA, its too early to say anything since it will all be changing at least 30 or 40 times), I did notice that the model for Arthas in CoT Strath uses the same high-res design that kalec had in MrT. I'm starting to wonder if they are going to do this with all the major lore characters, perhaps even updating some old ones like Jaina and giving Sylvanas an actual high elf sprite. Maybe its a forewarning that they're actually going to be updating the graphics engine (though I'm pretty sure a CM said they weren't). It does make me a little excited though.
The interviews this month with Tigole et al said they have no plans to update the graphics engine any time soon. They're simply adding refined graphics in certain areas.
The interviews this month with Tigole et al said they have no plans to update the graphics engine any time soon. They're simply adding refined graphics in certain areas.
Thats weird, I thought I specifically remember reading a blizz employee somewhere saying that they WERE updating the graphics engine. Im gonna have to go try and find the article I read to see what it really says.
"Time is like a monkey, you think its there and then its gone eating a banana."
It was in the EuroGamer interviews I believe. He said they're happy with the graphics and that he could see a point in the future where they will want to upgrade the engine, but that WotLK is not yet that point.
Okay, since that guy is going to get banned if we egg him on about shadowpriests any further, let's go back on topic.
The site with the text-based talent tree lists was linked, but I don't think we've really talked about the stuff that was in the same directory as that page. Mainly my favorite is spell search. I don't see anybody talking about these on this thread, maybe you need me to copy and paste some for you.
Spell 49909
Name: Icy Touch
Description: Deals ${$m1+$AP*0.2} Frost damage and reduces the target's ranged, melee attack, and casting speed by -15% for $d.
Description2: Ranged, melee and casting speed reduced by $s2%.
Spell 49912
Name: Mind Freeze
Description: Strike the target's mind with cold, dealing ${$m2+$AP*0.1} Frost Damage and interrupting spellcasting while also preventing any spell in that school from being cast for $d.
Description2:
(Note these have an AP multiplier)
Spell 49916
Name: Strangulate
Description: Strangulate an enemy, consuming all available Runic Power to silence the target for a maximum of $d and dealing up to ${$m2+$AP*0.2} Shadow damage at the end of the effect.
Description2: Silenced.
Spell 49924
Name: Death Strike
Description: A deadly attack that deals weapon damage. If the target dies within $45469d and yields experience or honor, Death Strike heals the Death Knight for 1310.
Description2:
Spell 49930
Name: Blood Strike
Description: Instantly strike the enemy, causing 60% weapon damage plus ${$m1*$m2/100} for each disease effect on the target.
Description2:
Spell 49921
Name: Plague Strike
Description: A vicious strike that deals weapon damage plus 72 and plagues the target, dealing $o2 Shadow damage over $d.
Description2: Deals $o2 Shadow damage over $d.
Spell 45529
Name: Blood Tap
Description: Immediately activates a Blood Rune and temporarily converts it into a Chromatic Rune. This rune counts as a Blood, Unholy, or Frost Rune. Lasts $47802d.
Description2:
Spell 50541
Name: Snatch
Description: Grab the enemy's weapon with your talons, disarming them for $d.
Description2: Disarmed!
(for mounted combat? druid related?)
Spell 46788
Name: Hex
Description: Transforms the enemy into a random critter, forcing it to wander around for up to $d. While wandering, the hexed target cannot attack or cast spells but will regenerate very quickly. Any damage will transform the target back into its normal form. Only one target can be polymorphed at a time. Only works on Beasts, Humanoids and Critters.
Description2: Cannot attack or cast spells. Increased regeneration.
What was said in one of the interviews is that Blizzard is not planning to completely overhaul WoW's graphics engine, or update any of the existing models to higher quality ones. They are looking at adding a couple of DirectX10 graphical tricks in WotLK however for people who have suitable computers. But they want to keep to the game playable on any system that can currently play WoW for now.
Or in other words, they are updating the graphics engine by adding a few new things to it, but they are not replacing the graphics engine.
It was also mentioned Blizzard might be doing a complete graphics overhaul (Which would include a new engine) for the expansion after WotLK in the same interview, though they added that they remembered it didn't work out too well for Everquest and Ultima Online in the past (With many people continuing to use the old client/engine).
Edit:
More on the subject of abilities and the like, I have a feeling the Snatch ability mentioned above me, as well as the Temporal abilities and Shock Charge generating abilities are for various parts of the "vehicle combat" system, which involves riding and controlling dragons amongst other things. Especially the temporal abilities scream "Bronze Dragon!" far more than they do "Shaman!".
buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
1. Dispersion - mini-Iceblock and Evocation wrapped up into a neat little package.
2. Improved Spirit Tap - more personal mana regen, which will synergize with Shadow Power to increase the value of spell crit substantially
3. Nightmare and Mind Sear - two AOE spells on a DPS class that previously did not have any
4. Growing Pains - even more mana savings from not having to recast SW : P as often
5. Dark Spirit - even more spell damage
6. Shadow Power - increasing the value of spell crit is going to help a lot of scaling/itemization issues.
No one seemed to have noticed Shadow Weaving is back at 3% per stack (15% total), theres another 5% raw dps boost right there. Imo the priest talents look fantastic, then even more fantastic when I remember its an early draft. Looks like in a synergistic raid you would take one spriest for the debuffs and mana, one disc priest for the grace buff and other utility + mana, then one holy priest for raw crazy healing power once the main raid enhancing buffs have been taken care of.
Okay, since that guy is going to get banned if we egg him on about shadowpriests any further, let's go back on topic.
The site with the text-based talent tree lists was linked, but I don't think we've really talked about the stuff that was in the same directory as that page. Mainly my favorite is spell search. I don't see anybody talking about these on this thread, maybe you need me to copy and paste some for you.
Talking about the spells lists is even more complicated than talking about the talent trees. It includes monster abilities, questing scripts, vehicle abilities, and a ton of different Death Knight talents/spells that are being worked on. Just from looking through them, I get the idea that they have about 20 or so DK talent ideas that they haven't implemented yet.
I would like to talk about the spell lists, and I see things that would be interesting to discuss as a I browse through it. But at the same time, it's at a level of guesswork that goes way beyond anything reasonable. Especially because monster abilities are included in the files.
Spell 21882
Name: Judgement Smite
Description: $h% chance to deal $21889s1 additional Holy damage whenever you cause a critical hit in melee.
Spell 48835
Name: Justice
Description: Causes your Judgement of Command, Judgement of Righteousness, Judgement of Blood, and Judgement of Vengeance to increase the Critical Strike rating of your party by $34260s1 for $34260d.
I was about to jump on you because Hex is already a mob spell, but it seems there's a rank 1 spell that's new to 3.01.
Here's some more possible Shaman spells:
Spell 48837
Name: Elemental Strength
Description: Your Shock spells have a chance to grant $43749s1 attack power to your party for $43749d.
Description2
Spell 49172
Name: Wolf Spirit
Description:
Description2: Transformed into an unstoppable Wolf Spirit. Unable to cast spells. Increased melee damage and attack speed.
Spell 45584
Name: Bloodlust
Description: Increases melee, ranged, and spell casting speed by 35% for all party members. Lasts $d.
Description2: Melee, ranged, and spell casting speed increased by $s1%.
In the vein of Doctah's post, I certainly agree with his suspicion that Priest raiding will switch to one of each build instead of two shadowpriests and one holy/disc priest. Although it is obviously quite preliminary, my hunch is that raids will ideally have 3 each of priests, paladins, druids, shaman, and warlocks, and 2 each of warriors, deathknights, hunters, rogues, and mages. Shadow and Balance appear to be no-brainers, and if Ret, Enhancement, and Elemental continue the trend the above raid would end up in the 6-7 healer range with 3 tanks (Warrior, Deathknight, Feral/Prot Pali).
Obviously raids are made of people as much as classes and a full complement of synergies is unnecessary, but the implication of new synergies certainly makes me a little wary. With that in mind I tend to agree with the previous poster who suggested replacing the Affliction 51 point talent with the ability to have two curses on each target at a time if they elect not to combine CoS and CoE in some way. Allowing two curses would mean that raids could go with just two locks for CoE, CoS, and CoR and the Affliction lock's net damage contribution would be more competitive with Destruction, *or* the raid could pick up a third lock and have access to an extra damage curse.
Wolf Spirit, not having a primary description, seems like an item effect or quest spell. Player spells generally have ranks, and Primary Descriptions.
Edit:
Though, the new ranks of shaman spells are in, or at least place holders for them, which is strange:
Lightning Bolt(Rank 13)
Spell 49237
Name: Lightning Bolt
Description: Casts a bolt of lightning at the target for 595 Nature damage.
Lightning Bolt(Rank 14)
Spell 49238
Name: Lightning Bolt
Description: Casts a bolt of lightning at the target for 715 Nature damage.
Chain Lightning(Rank 7)
Spell 49270
Name: Chain Lightning
Description: Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing 806 Nature damage and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Each jump reduces the damage by 30%. Affects $x1 total targets.
Chain Lightning(Rank 8)
Spell 49271
Name: Chain Lightning
Description: Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing 973 Nature damage and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Each jump reduces the damage by 30%. Affects $x1 total targets.
Earth Shock(Rank 9)
Spell 49230
Name: Earth Shock
Description: Instantly shocks the target with concussive force, causing 723 Nature damage. It also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for $d.
Earth Shock(Rank 10)
Spell 49231
Name: Earth Shock
Description: Instantly shocks the target with concussive force, causing 849 Nature damage. It also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for $d.
Flame Shock(Rank 8)
Spell 49232
Name: Flame Shock
Description: Instantly sears the target with fire, causing 425 Fire damage immediately and $o2 Fire damage over $d.
Description2: $s2 Fire damage every $t2 seconds.
Flame Shock(Rank 9)
Spell 49233
Name: Flame Shock
Description: Instantly sears the target with fire, causing 500 Fire damage immediately and $o2 Fire damage over $d.
Description2: $s2 Fire damage every $t2 seconds.
Frost Shock(Rank 6)
Spell 49235
Name: Frost Shock
Description: Instantly shocks the target with frost, causing 681 Frost damage and slowing movement speed to -50% of normal. Lasts $d. Causes a high amount of threat.
Description2: Movement slowed to $s1% of normal speed.
Frost Shock(Rank 7)
Spell 49236
Name: Frost Shock
Description: Instantly shocks the target with frost, causing 802 Frost damage and slowing movement speed to -50% of normal. Lasts $d. Causes a high amount of threat.
Description2: Movement slowed to $s1% of normal speed.
Hm, the spell search has 4 ranks of Seal of Blood and 3 ranks of Seal of Vengeance listed as well, lending support to the widespread belief that Blizzard has no intention of fixing the factional imbalance of paladins. Of course, as most of the Paladin stuff isn't implemented yet we could be getting a new seal that is better than both or each faction could be getting both seals, so we shall have to see.
Wolf Spirit, not having a primary description, seems like an item effect or quest spell. Player spells generally have ranks, and Primary Descriptions.
I considered that, but the new spell affects the party, not just you. You're probably right about the Wolf Spirit being a quest spell, but I thought it was worth including anyway!
I considered that, but the new spell affects the party
Could just as easily be a quested Relic item. I'd say that if the mine data doesn't have ranks listed or can be explicitly tied to a class its a hard case to make that its a class ability.
Could just as easily be a quested Relic item. I'd say that if the mine data doesn't have ranks listed or can be explicitly tied to a class its a hard case to make that its a class ability.
Yes, I've forgotton all the other classes with Shock spells.
Dominance for most of BC? Have we been playing different expansions? It wasn't until they finally removed the coefficient reduction on the first tier cast time reduction talents that mages were at all close to the current dps of hunters, warlocks, and rogues. There is still the fact that many guilds take only 1 mage due to the babying any good mage has to have in order to push their dps to the levels that are competitive.
Sure the talents maybe increase single target dps beyond arcane, but how do you expect to not pull aggro with the obvious emphasis on stacking crit rating over anything else? Not just threat, but 5% total mana every crit? Unless there is a massive change to caster dps mana regen on the order of what priests/druids saw, or it is 5% base mana (which does not seem to be the case), there is no way that a fire mage could sustain that. So I'll take 5 points in burnout so that I use 5% of my mana on top of the cost of the spell to do 25% extra crit damage bonus. I'll also take Hot Streak so that when I get 3 crits in a row, which is 15% of my mana plus the cost of the 3 spells, my next spell will cost a guaranteed 5% of my mana plus the cost of that spell. So in 4 spells I go through probably 25-30% of my mana. Coupled with the rumored nerf to VT and the fact mages have to be babied to even make that viable, it sounds great to me.
First, its 1% mana drain for all crits even if you have 5/5. Second, the mage change are really much better than my own expectation. We have amongst the strongest dps boosts of all classes in wotlk (a good hint that mage dps is low currently). Why do you complain - at all - about solid buffs?
Also, it seems they want all 10% hit talents out from all classes, which I think is a good thing.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Yes, I've forgotton all the other classes with Shock spells.
I was speaking in a general sense there bud, no need to get pissy about it. The spell you listed resembles the Stonebreaker totem spell data enough that my guess is that its a replacement relic item.
I was speaking in a general sense there bud, no need to get pissy about it. The spell you listed resembles the Stonebreaker totem spell data enough that my guess is that its a replacement relic item.
Yes, but even so it's something new for Shamans!?!?!?!
Also, it seems they want all 10% hit talents out from all classes, which I think is a good thing.
Destro locks seem to finally get a +hit talent with the Cataclysm change... that's so very nice. And to keep the lock tangent, the change to DS seems to make little sense (having to waste 6 points in Unholy Power and Soul Link to get DS).
Well, a couple of more interesting tidbits I discovered after some browsing:
- It seems all Crowd Control spells are being changed to a base mana % cost. Effectively making lower ranks useless.
- Paladin's Turn Evil no longer has a cooldown.
- Feral Druid's Tiger's Fury no longer costs energy but has a 30 second cooldown.
- Druid's Hurricane no longer has a cooldown.
- Mace Specialization is getting a 6 second cooldown on it's procs.
- A few Warlock talents have been combined to make their trees less bloated.
- Warrior threat abilities that didn't scale before now scale with attack power, and various Warrior cooldown abilities had their cooldown reduced. Also Concussion Blow is now more than just a thing you pick up because you need it for Shield Slam.
buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
- Warrior threat abilities that didn't scale before now scale with attack power, and various Warrior cooldown abilities had their cooldown reduced. Also Concussion Blow is now more than just a thing you pick up because you need it for Shield Slam.
Which abilities got their cooldowns reduced? I hadn't noticed that.
05/21/08, 10:52 AM
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