Because of Atrocity's DOT-based nature, it looks like it could be useful on more aggro-sensitive fights, such that your tank isn't so stressed trying to keep up with the massive front-loaded threat of Seed spam (since they blow almost instantaneously on any target that's under attack).
I don't really play a Lock, so YMMV, but that's certainly the impression I got from it.
Unless Atrocity stacks it's not really comparable to Seed as you will not be able to do nearly as much damage in a short period of time. If you have an aggro sensitive fight then, yes, using a spell that does heaps less damage might be wise. But you could always just wait a bit before using seed and cast it less.
Atrocity seems like it might be useful in some situations, perhaps on a group of enemies in AV or something, but I can't see it holding it's place as a 51 point talent unless it's changed.
Unless Atrocity stacks it's not really comparable to Seed as you will not be able to do nearly as much damage in a short period of time. If you have an aggro sensitive fight then, yes, using a spell that does heaps less damage might be wise. But you could always just wait a bit before using seed and cast it less.
Atrocity seems like it might be useful in some situations, perhaps on a group of enemies in AV or something, but I can't see it holding it's place as a 51 point talent unless it's changed.
I imagine Atrocity isn't for destroying lots of little things quickly, it's for turning yourself into a shadowbolt machine gun via nightfall. You'll be doing less damage to the little guys, but you'll be doing more damage to whatever big, beefy mobs happen to be in the pull/boss fight.
Atrocity looks like an interesting PVP ability, but I don't see how you'd want to take it over Ruin. But the ability to howl of terror than atrocity to cover the fear with a dispel resistant debuff has some potential uses as well does the obvious atrocity+haunt combo. Still don't see how it's supposed to beat out seed for "conventional" AOE though.
I'm also somewhat disappointed that the tyranny of demonic sacrifice remains, was really hoping they'd open up some more interesting options for deep destruction but it looks like that wont be the case unless they go out of their way to really tweak some of the new talents.
As the talents currently stand the PvP spec would have to be Frost/Unholy, while for tanking I think you might go something like 44/16/11:
You get Deflection, Spell Deflection, Scent of Blood, Veteran of the Third War, Blood Rune Mastrey, Will of the Necropolis, Frost Aura, Toughness, Nerves of Cold Steel, Unholy Command, and Lichborne.
You miss Bone armor and Magic Suppression, but what can you do.
I assume you'd use blood strike as your basic attack, with all the talents that apply to it to improve damage (+15% damage, +8% crit, bonus damage on crits, blood rune mastery) and thus threat, as well as the contribution from frozen runeblade, the odd plague strike, and the random free deathcoil. Probably go with something like 5/4 out of 6 blood runes on your blade.
This will all be irrelevant when this all changes soon, though!
This sounds like it would require old ret-pally style itemization in regards to threat gen (blood being melee based and frost being spell), which ain't gonna work if you want to add defensive stats to their gear as well. Stick with frost - you'll probably be spamming icy touch for the debuff, frozen runeblade will most likely be a DK seal of righteousness, and frost strike is also designed to synergize with it. Plenty of spell damage and spell crit talents in frost to boost all that, as well as a decent amount of spell damage intake reduction. If DK is supposed to be the premier magic tank, why would we give up so much for a temporary armor increase (icebound fortitude sounds like a better oh-shit button anyway)? Keeping that boss swingin' and castin' as slow as possible seems to be the gimmick Blizz is aiming for with frost.
I'm wondering if the second line of imp unholy presence only counts in that presence though - I love excuses to spec into running around faster.
The cross-element talents in destruction seem determined to break the stranglehold of Sacrifice on destro builds, which I consider a good thing because I disliked the main raid spec on a pet class being the petless spec.
Looking at the initial info I don't think the cross-element talents are designed for raiding.
The DPS gains from a proc based % modifier (molten core) seem to be offset to a large degree by the use of relatively unboosted affliction spells.
Torture seems to be more of a nightfall style gimmick than an actual dps boost, which I suspect is probably intended to be triggered by the shadow aoe spells rather than shadow bolt.
The sheer number of talent points available for fire spells make it difficult to fit ISB and Bane in, so essentially you can either have the versatility of 2 relatively equal elements or put all your points towards your fire spells for maximum dps in most situations.
If for example Eternal Flames were to cause shadow bolt to refresh corruption and incinerate to refresh immolate there would be a much more significant motivation to include alternating schools into a rotation. We would therefore have corruption and shadow bolt forming a non-trivial proportion of our damage, consequently gain less from DS(Imp) overall, and only then would we be likely to look at the corruption talents.
As it stands I would anticipate a 0/21/50 to continue to be the king of pure dps, since all the fire spells are covered by the threat reduction from destructive reach, and the talent choices will favour the specialist over the hybrid.
Unless Atrocity stacks it's not really comparable to Seed as you will not be able to do nearly as much damage in a short period of time. If you have an aggro sensitive fight then, yes, using a spell that does heaps less damage might be wise. But you could always just wait a bit before using seed and cast it less.
It looks to me like what Blizzard is trying to do is to make a cool spell that opens up for some nice combinations rather than a replacement for Seed of Corruption.
Examples:
Burn, baby, burn: Cast Atrocity on a group, then use Rain of Fire or Hellfire on the group. Currently, you practically never use RoF or Hellfire as chaincasting Seeds is just plain better in almost all circumstances - with Atrocity you'll gain the damageoutput of ongoing Corruptions on all targets and another AOE on top of that. This might be better in some circumstances, but obviously there is no saying without knowing the damage of the new ranks of spells.
Instant Destruction: Cast Atrocity on a group, then Nightfall-shadowbolt your main target till it begs for mercy.
Fire and Forget: If there are several groups of targets so you cannot cast Seed on all of them at the same time, you can drop an atrocity on some of the groups while concentrating on one of them.
Last edited by Deliverance : 05/22/08 at 7:09 AM.
Reason: spelling error fixed, extra example added
Circle of Healing with an 8 second cooldown is useless. Essentially the lone function of the spell would be "people are nearly dead and some small amount of damage is anticipated imminently so we'd better heal it fast". I'm sure some artificial situation could be manufactured to justify casting it. But that's about it. Otherwise, why would you cast a small group heal spell when there's a big one you can cast several times (prayer of healing)? You wouldn't.
I find Circle of Healing to be a tremendous amount of fun in addition to being powerful. This change will destroy it and effectively remove it from the game if it goes live.
Circle of Healing with an 8 second cooldown is useless. Essentially the lone function of the spell would be "people are nearly dead and some small amount of damage is anticipated imminently so we'd better heal it fast". I'm sure some artificial situation could be manufactured to justify casting it. But that's about it. Otherwise, why would you cast a small group heal spell when there's a big one you can cast several times (prayer of healing)? You wouldn't.
I find Circle of Healing to be a tremendous amount of fun in addition to being powerful. This change will destroy it and effectively remove it from the game if it goes live.
I think it's a necessary change if to at least force Blizzard to think of something a bit more interesting for healers to do than "OMG INC HUGE AMOUNTS OF RAID DAMAGE FOR SIX MINUTES."
Seriously, the raid damage is just getting ridiculous. When you stack the raid with 2 CoH priests and 3 resto shaman, something is wrong with the design of the fight from a healing perspective.
With Everlasting Affliction keeping Corruption up constantly with Shadow Bolts and Drain Lifes it doesn't look like improving corruption to an instant cast will make any difference to the raiding warlock. Like spriests it seems, the two first tier talents are now for farming and pvping. It will be interesting to see what Blizzard does to Improved Corruption, if anything actually changes.
The new AoE hot druids are getting seems quite strong, especially combined with that energy/rage/mana restore talent (like the old T3 set bonus).
You throw out your AoE Hot (which ticks fast at first), this gives a chance to restore energy/rage/mana AND due to the Bark's blessing thing increases any other heals the targets receive (unsure if this works on the initial cast). Not to mention its an extra HoT for the MT that will likely heal all the melee too.
Regarding DK tanking talents, I see something like 40/31/0 would go alot longer than putting any in unholy. Time will tell, it seems DK "spelldamage" will scale with attack power? (see impurity, and mind the word "additional"). Would share the gear completely with warriors, don't know what they do with blockrating thought.
Regarding DK tanking talents, I see something like 40/31/0 would go alot longer than putting any in unholy. Time will tell, it seems DK "spelldamage" will scale with attack power? (see impurity, and mind the word "additional"). Would share the gear completely with warriors, don't know what they do with blockrating thought.
Since death knights are hyped to be the magic tanking class, I think the Magic Suppression chain of talents in the Unholy tree would be moved to the Frost tree, or at least further up in the Unholy tree for accessibility. Considering what we've been told about death knights and their tanking capabilities (not much other than that they are designed to be magic tankers), I'm surprised that something like Magic Suppression is right there from the get-go. You'd think that would be a shoe-in for the Frost tree.
Honestly, if Blizzard hadn't called the Frost tree the tanking tree themselves, I'd be a bit more weary about suggesting that. Since they have, though, I really expect to see a lot of those kinds of talents put into the middle tiers of the Frost tree.
Edit: I wonder when we'll see a death knight thread pop up for this kind of talk? I'm interested in hypothesiscrafting!
Circle of Healing with an 8 second cooldown is useless. Essentially the lone function of the spell would be "people are nearly dead and some small amount of damage is anticipated imminently so we'd better heal it fast". I'm sure some artificial situation could be manufactured to justify casting it. But that's about it. Otherwise, why would you cast a small group heal spell when there's a big one you can cast several times (prayer of healing)? You wouldn't.
I find Circle of Healing to be a tremendous amount of fun in addition to being powerful. This change will destroy it and effectively remove it from the game if it goes live.
There's no way a heal that hits 25 people doesn't get a cooldown.
Reducing the duration of Curse of Tongues would be a godsend. Hopefully the Devs also address weak talents like Imp Devotion Aura, Imp Ret Aura, and one handed weapon specialization. (5 points in an extremely bloated tree for 5% threat? come on!). I see they are bloating the trees of many classes, so I have fears that Prot Paladins are going to have to many essential talents and not enough points.
I'm possibly being unduly optimistic, but I'm thinking that the fact that there's very little paladin content apparently in so far is a sign that they're looking at a fairly major overhaul for our trees; if that's the case, there's a reasonable chance prot will get some nice streamlining in.
If it doesn't, the 51-point talent is going to have to be *really* nice to sway me from the temptation of just using those new ten points to fill out the gaps in the tree.
I fixed a few errors in that list I posted earlier in the thread with the changes to existing abilities. Outside of the fact that I missed that Circle of Healing was changed to heal the entire raid instead of just the target's party nothing too major though.
buff /bÊŒf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
* All Classes are available for play. Spells and talents will be available for testing past 70 for the following classes: Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior
How come I haven't seen *anything* about shaman talents/spells/whatever at all if they're allegedly in game?
Not that I want to whine, the rest of the information is quite fascinating - but I'd rather like to see something about my main's class.
There are several ranks past lvl 70 of Shocks and what looked like Bloodlust rank 2 that were data mined, which fulfills the "spells will be available" part. Just looks like talents weren't in there for shaman yet. C'est la vie, information will come out before long.
Complaining about lack of information from patch notes and data files that were were never meant to see is kind of silly.
So far, in my opinion, it's looking very exciting for all the casters, some sweet spells and abilities all around. Most noteworthy it seems is:
1. Shadow Priests new abilities have a much needed PvP revamp giving them decent viability once more.
2. Balance Druids new abilities finally give them a PvE viability on par with Shadow priests/Elemental Shaman, Mages & Locks where previously they were the least desired or exciting caster of the bunch.
Mage, Warlock never had much pvp or pve viability issues and continue to grow stronger with exciting new talents, only thing is Fire continues to lag behind Frost for Arena, but continues to have a high damage output. Arcane is shaping up as very decent alternative and balance against Frost or Fire.
PvE - Contribution to Raids/Groups in WotLK
There are several factors to consider when sussing for viability in PvE. Main Role of DPS is the first, it must be high enough. Group Buffs: buffs to the raid or party that help. Utility Spells: Additional spells that contribute to your role. AoE - continuous AoE is the most valuable type for group situations, Control: CC abilities of any form.
Frost Mage:
Main Role: High Dps
AoE: Blizzard, Cone of Cold, Arcane Explosion, Flamestrike, Explosive Fireball
WotlK: Frost mage damage is already quite high, pvE fully viable, pvp the most effective mage build, Blizzard added more control to Frost Mages, Deep Freeze gives mages a stun, coupled with recent improvements to blink, the new Shatter Shield that freezes all targets after it's damage is absrobed, adding a mage stun is a great pvp addition. The PvE imbact to date is small, however Frostfire bolt is an incredible dps boost being instant cast even with a 9 sec cooldown, and off course a 5% boost to frostbolt/ice lance
Fire Mage:
Main Role High Dps
Group Buffs: 15% more fire damage to raid
AoE: Flamestrike, Blast Wave, Dragon Breath, Living Bomb, Blizzard, Cone of Cold, Arcane Explosion, Explosive Firebolt
Damage 25% fire spell crit damage bonus, 15% increase damage, to Fire AoE spells, 100% crit hit after 3 successive hits (use with combustion), Frostfire spell
WotLK Not much survivability or control is added to fire mages who should accept by now they pure damage machines, afterall only the Frost and Arcane mages in the game have more control than a fire mage. The trend of Highest Dps class in the game looks set to continue in the Firebuild. Burnout is looking like the mana dump Fire Mages have wanted. Arena as fire build is for pure damage not control sorry to disappoint, however as Scattershield is a new build i expect it's impact in the arena is still relatively a big unkown, should still be pretty nasty in battlegrounds though, and off course continues to be fully raid viable in PvE. Yet another AoE in the living bomb, not like the build needed more, but burst damage off course goes off the roof, a welcome addition however seeing that fire and not arcane damage is your Forte here.
Arcane Mage
Main Role: High Dps
AoE: Flamestrike, Blizzard, Cone of Cold, Arcane Explosion, Explosive Fireball
Damage: 15% of Spirit as spell crit, 15% of damage absorbed as spell damage, instant cast spell after crit, Frostfire and Arcane barrage instant cast spells.
WotLK sees an amazing improvement to Arcane, Mages specialising in Arcane here know the value of spirit and are awarded wtih 10% more spirit which in turn boost spell cirt thanks to Potent Spirit talent. Arcane Mages have the strongest shields in Mana Shield and Scattershield addition will give damage boosts in PvP when struck, whiles Netherwind prescence gives you a high chance for instant cast spell, but clever blizz omitted the possibility of that applying to Pyroblast. PvP wise, the boosted spell damage from damage absorption is nice, Arcane Barrage being an instant cast spell is very sweet and a welcome addition to the spell cycle even with it's cooldown. No special boosts to control or AoE here, but then again, this mage build doesn't need it, instead a nice new arcane build only spell to boost that rather meagre arcane spell arsenal, and some much appreciated boosted Spell crit and spell damage. the More mana regen you have the more damage you do, seriously if geared correctly, you should single target out damage a fire mage, however if there is lots of AoE to do, you won't be able to match a fire mage.
Arcane is a more subtle mage tree, not quite the control of frost, or visible power of fire, but in my opinion it is the best build for mages in PvE as it has great control, can achieve the highest single target dps, with phenomenal mana regen and utility to groups.
Affliction Warlock
Main Role: High Sustained DPS.
AoE/: Rain of Fire, Hell Fire, Seed of Corruption, Atrocity, Shadowflame
Control: Fear/Curse of Recklessness, AoE Fear, Seduce, Banish (Demon & Elemental), Enslave (demon), Curse of Exhaustion slow
Utility Buffs: Soulstone, Health Stone, Bloodpact, Summoning Ritual, Curse of Weakness/Tongues/Elements. Detect invisibility, Unending Breath, Soul Shatter, Shadow Ward, Demon Armor, Drain life, Drain Mana, Life Tap, Drain Soul, Pet counterspell/Devour magic, Eye of Killrogg, Nightfall, Shadow Embrace
Damage: New AoE Shadowflame, new spell Haunt, Increase: 20% bonus spell damage to Corrup/SL/SoC [these are ur most often used spells)Death's Embrace gives 15% damage icncrease to Shadowbolt & Haunt wen target is below 20% health, Eradication's 15% chance of Corruption/SL/CoA spells to increase your spell haste rating for 8sec
WotLK: Warlocks continue to have the highest spell array of tools and abilities. AoE on par with the mage, more control spells than any other class, devastating curses and weaknesses. Affliction benefits the most from Haunt, Haunt + Atrocity makes affliction warlocks terrifying in PvP and PvE, and off course AoE reach continues to improve. PvP sees nice buffs, and nice damage increases all round here. Depletion will drain mana/energy/rage which is WOW pvp wise, it looks like blizzard are compensating for the resilience nerf that happened to Dots in arena
Demonology Warlock
Main Role: High Sustained DPS.
Group Buffs: Demonic Pact 3% increased health & damage to group, Curse of Elements 6% Arcane & Shadow damage boost
AoE/: Rain of Fire, Hell Fire, Seed of Corruption, Shadowflame
Control: Fear/Curse of Recklessness, AoE Fear, Seduce, Banish (Demon & Elemental), Enslave (demon), Curse of Exhaustion slow
Utility Buffs: Soulstone, Health Stone, Bloodpact, Summoning Ritual, Curse of Weakness/Tongues/Elements. Detect invisibility, Unending Breath, Soul Shatter, Shadow Ward, Demon/Fel Armor, Drain life, Drain Mana, Life Tap, Drain Soul, Pet counterspell/Devour magic, Eye of Killrogg,
Damage: New AoE Shadowflame, new spell Haunt, Empowered Imp = 15% more imp damage and 60% chnace you get 100% spell crit for up to 8secs. After you or pet taking a critical hit, your pet or you get 30% casting/attack speed. inc Metamorphosis makes you a demon for 45secs, in line with most Warlocks in TBC you saw able to change to demons altho for them this happened when they were below a certain amount of health, players can change at will, but have a 5 min cooldown and can only stay in the form for 45secs, the details of the form are yet to be revealed so this build's PvE viability is still not determinable.
WotLK: Demonology Warlocks have always been PvE viable, certainly when compared to the likes of balance druids for e.g., the only problem with this build was that Destruction and Affliction provided better options, so, many new spells added to help fix that including the demon form. A lot of boosted damage, pet damaging increases your crit, damage and spell haste now, and your pet has greater survivability for PvP from talents like Fel Synergy Succubus gains a new useful ability in an attempt to boost this pets usefulness, love struck can now heal you or the succubus, in my opinion making the succubus less vulnerable when seducing would have been better, but skill warlocks and tanks have no problem with using seduce in groups or in pvp.
Destruction Warlocks
Main Role: High Burst DPS.
Group Buffs:Curse of Elements 6% Arcane & Shadow damage boost
AoE: Rain of Fire, Hell Fire, Seed of Corruption, Shadowflame, Shadowfury.
Control: Fear/Curse of Recklessness, AoE Fear, Seduce, Banish (Demon & Elemental), Enslave (demon), Curse of Exhaustion slow
Utility Buffs: Soulstone, Health Stone, Bloodpact, Summoning Ritual, Curse of Weakness/Tongues/Elements. Detect invisibility, Unending Breath, Soul Shatter, Shadow Ward, Demon/Fel Armor, Drain life, Drain Mana, Life Tap, Drain Soul, Pet counterspell/Devour magic, Eye of Killrogg, Nether Protection
Damage: Decimate ignores all resistnaces/resiliences etc and is new school of magic Chaos, Eternal flames gives 10% critical strike bonus damage to all destruction spells and allows Searing pain/Incinerate to refressh your Immolate on target. Conflagarate/Immolate & Shadowflame get 10% crit chance increase & finally crit sriking with Shadow spells allows ur next Searing pain or Immolate spell to be instant cast but only once every 20secs.
WotLK: Destro warlocks are fully raid viable, no help to aggro here, but truck loads more damage, instant searing pain & immoltae spells cooupled with increase crit rates to you cycle spells sees more of a damage increase to locks than mages seem to bet, albeit haunt is more use to affliction than either demonology or destruction, nonetheless more and more damage. no extra control abilities, but it's not like they're needed.
Shadow Priests
Main Role: High Damage
Group Buffs: Gp Mana Regen; Gp Health Regen; 15% Shadow damage to raid, 5% spell damage to raid
AoE: Mind Sear & Holy Nova (if specced)
Control: Mind Control, Psychic Scream, Shackle (undead only)
Alternate Function: Occasional healing assistance (best of the hybrids), AoE and situational Control
Damage increase: 30% of your spirit increase to Shadow Damage. New spell Mind Sear AoE, 20% of your +healing converts to +spell damage
WotLK - brought an AoE effect, but largely PvP improvements through Dispersion, Imp Shadow Form, Psychic Horror: Shadow form also gets a 30% threat reduction, which is the biggest dps boost you could give this PvE build, no longer needing to hold back
Comment: Shadow Priest damage is still quite high though threat is addressed, the need to mana battery groups normally yields spell cycles in raids that seldom reflect the potential damage output the class is capable off. The trick in PvE is to be able to output as much damage as possible while keeping your group batteried up and not over-aggroing. Dispersion is a nice additional panic button spell in case you do just that, also if you need mana regen.
Conclusion: Shadow Priests did not really need any PvE viability boosts, however had taken a bit of a dip in PvP, which is now addressed.
Balance Druid
Main Role: High Dps
Group Buffs: 5% spell crit Grp, douple spell haste inc after crit Grp, 6% arcane/nature damage inc to raid, 3% melee/spell hit to raid, enemy has 2% less chance to hit
Alternate Function: off-heal (next best after shadow priest), control & AoE
Damage: 20% +healing converts to +damage, Typhoon & Starfall AoEs, occasional 10% wrath damage or 10% starfire crit, Spell haste buff on crit strike
WotLK brought balance druids much needed PvE viability, previously, though useable in raids, 1 for 1 were the least desirable of dps casters bringing only 5% crit, combat rez and innervate of any note to a raid. WotLK sees Thorns get a significant damage boost scaling where it didn't in TBC and making it a decent buff to have on a tank, Hurricane sees a removal of that silly cooldown making it like Blizzard and Rain of Fire and finally with Starfall & Typhoon balance druids would be good alternative AoE tanks if a paladin or Death Knight isn't present. Finally it appears Roots may be useable indoors, there are now 7 ranks of Entangling roots in the datamined WotLK that do not have the indoor restriction, altho roots is a limited CC, effective really only against melee mobs it will help balance druid viability in groups somewhat, however it is still no polymorph or freezing trap. Added is 3% spell hit to Imp FF and a raid inc to arcane & nature damage caused
Balance was fairly decent for PvP, however like enh/ele shaman not a particular hot item tbh, for PvP, Brambles talent having a daze effect after taking treant damage or thorns damage is a nice touch, and Typhoons knockback after a second hit should help as well as Owlkin frenzy. The availability of new heal spell Nourish would be welcome, but my conclusion is that Balance druids are now on par with mages/locks/shadow priests and elemental shaman (as they are now without newly revealed abilities) in terms of PvE where they weren't previously, however pvp wise is still no shadow priest or frost mage.
Elemental Shaman
Main Role: High DPS
Group Buffs: 101 (lvl 70) Spell damage, 3% hit/crit, mana regen, health regen (to group), Blood Lust 20sec spell haste.
AoE: Magma Totem, Fire Nova Totem, Chain Lightning, Fire Elemental,
Alternative Role: HEaling (no need to change form)
No new info for Wrath of Lich king available for Elemental Shaman, but you can tell that Elemental Shaman, need 1 non-totem based AoE, and 1 crowd control ability. No new pvE group buffs are needed at all, as they remain in my eyes the best class to have along to buff your spell casters pre-WotLK, new balance druid additions for WotlK put them on par with TBC shaman and Shadow Priests, so i expect blizzard will buff PvP viability for Elemental shaman, crowd control and an AoE, but unlikely any new group/raid buffs, however that remains to be seen. Expect Earthquake AoE, but a rather limited form of CC.
CONCLUSION
Well, looking at the plethora abilities of Mages and Warlocks, players using Shadow Priests, Balance Druids and Elemental Shaman may grow envious of the Mage/Lock abilities but they should not. Mages and Locks aren't made better because they are supposedly pure casters whiles shadow priests/balance druids and elemental shaman are supposedly second afterthoughts. No, blizzard cintinues to improve the classes and after finally bringing the balance druid on par, they maintain the difference of the two groups in the Wrath of the Lich King.
Mages and Warlocks have a lot more spell utility than the hybrid casters, however the hybrid casteres do bring vital buffs without which your raid will struggle. In fact, from the WotLK i would say every 25man raid needs at least 1 shadow priest, 1 balance druid and 1 elemental shaman, they won't really need more, and will choose to go fro 2-3 mage and 2-3 locks, however shaman/druids and preists should realise that those classes will have other representation in different roles, there will also be only 1 feral druid likely and or 1 resto druid, and possibly 2 holy priests, and off course 1 resto shaman, and 1 enhancement shaman, bring the druid population in raid to 2-3 druids, 2-3 priests and 2-3 shaman same as mages or locks.
The pure casters wen in groups with shadow priests/balance druids and elemental shaman will out dps the hybrid caster, that is the design, but they do so because of the buffs to damage and mana regen etc to raid that hybrid casters brings, if they were coming one v one in pvp for e.g., you would probably find the damage equal, because 1 v1 the hybrid has all his buffs to himself, whiles the pure caster would lack this, allowing the hybrid to match the pure casters dps or maybe even surpass it, however you may complain that pure casters still have many more spell casting utilities, but also remember that hybrid casters have off-healing to make up for that.
So all in all, everyone is on par, though in raids a pure dps of equal gear and skill would out dps a hybrid dps, remember that is only done because of the group buffs the hybrid dps brings without which it won't be possible. To make the most effective raids you must use all the available hybrids and pures, and fine tune your group, their talents and their gear to fully maximise the output of the raid. A long cry from classic wow, where maximimising dps excluded every hybrid dps build. An improvement appreciated by all.
So because people now have the alpha client, does that mean that we'll be able to datamine all future patches? Or are we effectively stuck arguing over this incomplete look until beta?
Frost mage damage is already quite high, pvE fully viable
Although it's apparent you took a lot of time in forming your opinion on lots of classes, unfortunately a good chunk of what you posted is wrong. Compare any frost mage WWS in SP to Warlocks, rogues, hunters, whatever and if you can find a meter, you'll notice a huge gap. Frost might be fully viable when max dps is not an issue (SSC etc), but get into Sunwell and its a whole different ballgame.
The changes to Arcane are nice, but the fact is unless blizzard somehow includes the 2pcT5 into AB, arcane will never compete due to its poor coefficents and low number of % modifiers compared to the other trees.
You also state "whiles Netherwind prescence gives you a high chance for instant cast spell". This *might* be true if it can proc on AM spam, but even that is not known. Else it's a 5% chance that is almost useless on AB spam, which is the bulk of Arcane.
To get more details on how the mage community is feeling these changes, check out [Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion. PintofBrew, Manly, Lhivera all have really good posts. Basically the vibe goes from very happy when you first read over it, to kinda bleh when you have time to digest it. Most notably the Arcane tree.
So because people now have the alpha client, does that mean that we'll be able to datamine all future patches? Or are we effectively stuck arguing over this incomplete look until beta?
Wow - I bet Blizzard's really smacking themselves in the forehead for allowing people to grab the alpha. Imagine every change you make in the next 3 months analyzed to death by everyone and their mother . . .
05/22/08, 3:05 AM
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