Ravenmace

i certainly agree the cooldown on CoH seems as a direct result on making it able to affect the entire raid. but still with the change of mechanic it can be a powerful tool.. Maybe the idea was to make PoH more useable as a secondary effect.. i cud be well off on this, but it's hard to second guess the dev team, Flourish spell being introduced like it was maybe was the cause of CoH going raid wide not to diminish priests with respect to druid's new spell, but ofc making CoH go raid wie, u have to slap a cooldown. Imagine the whines that would occur if FLourish was given and there was no change to CoH?

it could also be that Paladins are getting a heal version of consecrate, which would probably work from range. bah what happened to the idea of a melee healer? i bleive the orignal concept of the apaldin was a melee healer, judgmeent of light/wisdom i mean, the gear wears plate, yes he has no defence but with boss sweeping strikes no longer in the front, a bold and wide leap would be to return the holy paladin to the battlefront amongst the meleers, spamming healing consecration call it Hallowed Ground, and more melee reactive healing.. alas it would never happen.. Paladins have been made the best 1 target healers, and most efficnet healers, changing that would mean either making the shaman the best direct healer or the priest. You can't really make the priest that wtihout ruining it's stature as the best all-round healer, altho you could swap paladin and shaman i suppose make resto shaman more target focus and paladins more aoe focused...lolz..interesting but probably impractical

 

Ravenmace

exacatly my thoughts, you would benefit from Eclipse in PvE no doubt, the entire talent seems intentionally geared to give you more diverse spell rotation in PVE than SF spam, whiles increasing your dps. THe increase in dps actually requires skill now and consideration rather than just a striaght off chance to increase your starfire crit by 10% and wrath damage by 10% for x secs

 

• Chicken

As I recall the spell cost was 600 mana and the cast time 1.5 seconds, so basically equivalent to a Flash Heal/Lesser Healing Wave, with the addition of healing more on someone that has Rejuvenation up.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Ravenmace

exactly, despite the fact that most warlocks benefit from the Shadow priest damage buff anyway which doesn't require a group, your caster dps group would have 2 mages and a destro lock in with the balance druid & elemental shaman, no room for more, it would be a waste to put the demo lock in there even with the 15% increase to damage.

To me the 15% inc to health is great for the tanks, the extra 15% damage would help compensate the demo lock for not being in the group with the ele shaman & balance druid he'd lose, the 101 spll damge, 3% hit, 8% crit and the blodlust/heroism + haste from imp moonkin aura, but most of those buffs are more relevant on mages/ele sham/balance druids & destro locks..so it makes a demo lock certainly worth having in raid and as the lock in the tank group.

Put it this way: Bark's blessing makes it no longer necessary to have the Resto druid in the tank gorup. So, presumably your tank group will have PRot Warrior, Frost DK, Prot paladin, Feral druid & Demo Warlock with imp blood pact and this new talent. Destro lock would be in the crit group and afflic lock would be in another group, if you have 3.

 

Incoherence

The part that really doesn't make sense is the point that others have brought up: what we have here is that we've lost some flexibility in how we apportion CoH healing in exchange for the potential to hit more than 5 people (and, really, hitting all 25 is not reasonable in any encounter where you're not all standing in a pile or two) in one cast. It's a really strange change, more so because there are multiple new talents that improve CoH at the same time as they're apparently trying to dramatically lower how much we use it.

My tinfoil-hat theory is that this is another example of Blizzard telling priests "be careful what you wish for": see also Inner Fire post-1.10.

 

Ravenmace

I think the idea is a smoother homogenising for 10-mans, who's encounters willbecome more vaired, so you don't have to force yourself to go with a resto shaman becuase of his raid healing, or tank specific fight making apladin superior to every one for that 10-man, they give all the others a litlte bit of everything so you really don't care too much what class you take in 5-mans or even in 10-mans to heal, but certainly in 25-mans you will definitely need your healers playing to their strengths and working in synergy even more so than before.

 

Ravenmace

There really aren't negative bits, we don't know how Typhoon will work, but it looks like fun and an interesting kind of AoE, the knock back if hit twice seems great for PvP while not making it a nuiscance in PvE.

What you don't realise about Brambles is that Thorns has had a massive damage increase, it's not the pathetic 25 per hit, but 140 ish now without brambles, add brambles to it and it's great buff on tanks and in PvP nasty to hit a balance druid with Owlkin Frenzy as well. The Daze effect is purely pvp and for me is a nice touch in pvp.

Melee on mana well, the idea sadly is still un-developed, but if they were every to create balance/feral synergy, or balance having a use for most of the feral school ability, mana on melee would be building block as you could fine tune it such that you got decent mana back meleeing in a feral form for a short period of time, needing points in feral in such a way that more melee damage done more mana regen, it's something you will tune for only needing to do once in a while, and compensate for losing intensity as you'll be speccing balance/feral instead, and say hte need is to only melee for about 10 secs every 5 mins, you'd need to be compensated in magical damage also, so you cud tune the feral tree to provide all the tools you needed to make that concept work well... however as it is currently i agree there is little use for it, unless they made it 100% proc chance and increased the mana you regained per attack power.

Galewinds is quite good actually, but because of the heavy point investment i'd merge it with another talent. 50% more to hurricane makes it the most powerful channelled AoE nice way of compensating for the fact that the AoE spell list of mAGES/Locks means that their aoe damage will dwarf yours, with this however you pull some cred back. Typhoon doesn't appear to be on a cooldown either, and already does good damage, so it's not that bad...but i reserve judgement on Typhoon till i see it work. it maybe an ideal spell to always use when there is more than one target being tanked.


Threat reduction is now in Nature's Reach as an earlier reply to your post pointed out, and makes a lot more sense EVEN though Subtelty has moved up in the restoration tree at Tier 2 now instead of Tier 3, still it's now a must to have 2 points in Nature's Reach, balance you can actually go full points in, but Intensity is still too far down, imo it would have been better for Subtiltey now changed to stay where it is and Intensity move up to Tier 2. Master Shapeshifter is also too deep in the restoration tree. The problem with the druid is there is no synergy, there is no real benefit for melee or spell damage dealers to improve their healing, or for melee dealers to improve their range or range dealers to improve their melee.. this is a design issue, and trust me, it is not a very difficult one to fix, but till then it makess little point as a druid to go far out of your tree.

 

Ravenmace

I notice arcane mages aren't all taking into account some of the add on effects they are getting, not only do the new talents imo make arcane really good, arcane has always been more mana regen dependent, thanks to ABlast, higher mana regen more damage exponenetially. Also now you get CoS and Nature's Fury from druids giving 16% increase in all arcane damage done on the target, not to mention a couple more coming in.

Frost and Fire don't have that advantage, Fire still has it's 15% scorch fire enhancement, but with Arcane barrage, i could be wrong, but Arcane is looking so much more promising than ever before.

 

Ravenmace

Yes..indeed... if you read the comics, you will know that King Varian Wyrnn has finally been found and he is quite the hero, it loks like he is the next major warcraft heroi they'll focus on.

We've got a NElf hero in Malfurion, who by lore seems the most accomplished hero in warcraft history to date, but it looks like the Druid Broll is going to be another of the new Generation of Heroes.

Medivh is the classic human hero turned hero from villain, so King Wyrnn looks like the second major human hero, probably more major than Jaina, blizzard do like their new boys so i expect a lot more from Varian Wyrnn, Broll Bearmantle and Valeera the BLood Elf Orphan.

The shadow of doubt on Frandal Staghelm's integrity is further cast into doubt, and i see Broll Bearmantle as replacing him somehow. We still have THrall as the Premier Orc, but new Hellscream would be the second Orc hero. Trolls, Gnomes, Dwarves & Tauren will continue to play a minor role on the hero front, no sign of new ones, Trolls make excellent vilalins anyway, so you'll see more than Zul'jin.

What seems confusing to me are the High Elves, there will be an Alliance High Elf faction in WotlK The Silver Covenant that opposes the inclusion of Blood Elves into the Kirin Tor, but surely the hero blood elves have played a large part in restoring the Sunwell after the defeat of Kil'jaeden, now the Sunwell is pure, free of Fel energies thanks to Kael'thas actions before he lost his mind, and restored thanks to Krasus, Anveena, Kalecgos and your efforts in the Sunwell Plateau, surely that is enough to pardon a Blood Elf in the eyes of any High Elf. On the one hand i can understand the logic of High Elf full of contempt for all blood elves because they failed to cling to everything that being a High Elf stood for my capitulating to their hunger and feeding on Fel Energies, also allowing their hunger to blind them so readily to evil that spweing forward from Kael'thas, having no sunwell was no excuse ofc in a High Elve's eyes because all High Elves endured the loss without turning Blood or Wretched, but surely the heroics of the blood elves and their inclusion under A'dal's wing should help sort that out...unless we shall see blizzard continue to seperate the player blood elf from a Kael'thas blood elf which seem to be still in power in Silvermoon depsite the defeat of Kil'jaeden.

However if you read the lore so far, Lor'themar (however you spell it) doesn't seem Blood Elf like AT ALL, in fact he seems quite High Elf like, as does Haldurron.. so imo the lore is a bit messed up there.. we shall see more i suppose. But most fantasy genres have 3 types of elves. Nature Elves or Wood Elves, High Elves the most magical of elves, and Dark Elves the evil Elves, so in Wow you have your Night Elves in the Wood Elf category, your High Elves, and it looks like your Blood Elves are the evil ones.

however it's not so straight forward, for one the Blood Elves aren't really evil, but have the most sinister compenent to the Elves, this works wiell with the Forsaken, mabybe some Blood Elves will eventually become demon elves, so you'd have HIgh Elves with th Alliance, BLood elves with the Horde, Neight Elves eventually go neutral again and Demon Blood Elves the ones everyone fights.

 

Dioneirra

Negative bits were meant as in 'i was disappointed to see these changes/not-changes' not as in 'this was done wrong'. After all, it's only criticism based on available information, not based on actual playing experience, that would not be allowed, as i understand.

Especially Thypoon will only be judgeable after playing with this ability, til now nothing more than the description is know, much depends on how fast and linear the movement of the spell will be, how big/wide the spell effect will be, and so on. From a playing perspective i do hope for quite some random movement, so it would offer PvP value by not being predictable ("i'll step just aside, so it will pass me by 5 inches"), and a little bit the feeling of a nature effect.

Yes, i do know about the new rank of thorns. I does not change my critic about brambles. While i do appreciate it will be extended to the little trees, i am not happy with the added daze effect. It feels wrong, from a druidic point of view. It would be ok to completly scrap this addition, i would still pick the talent. I would liked to have a sort of effect from brambles, yes, but not a daze. A very short lived poison (3s) with the same effect (movement restriction) would so much more suit the druidic lore (i attack this warrior -> he has thorns! -> i got stung by it -> the thorns were slightly poisonous! -> the poison makes me feel dizzy for a short time -> i have to slow down for some seconds). Yes, it is only a cosmetic point of view, but still, it is a role playing game.

Feral/Balance synergy would be nice, and maybe then would be room for melee mana regen, but until now, there is no such synergy. Druidic talents offer synergy in Resto/Feral and a very slight Resto/Balance, but no Feral/Balance. Sad, but i don't think, this will change. The major overhauls are done, i don't think Blizzard will go back.

Gale Winds is not bad as talent, don't understand me wrong. It just has the feeling of 'OH, we do have some Imp XYZ talent ideas left, let's pool all of them with the wind theme in a single talent and call it something with wind or storm'. They already did this with Brambles. Maybe it's just unimaginative in design or wording, i dont know.

As i wrote, splitted threat reduction solves some problems, but creates new ones. For example, moonkins are now almost forced to spend two points in Nature's Reach (right now one point is sufficient to outreach most common 30 yard boss abilites), and that means, even with these points spent i have a harder time solo healing heroics (which is one important point for me playing as a hybrid char, that i am indeed able to fully fill two roles just as needed) because my restoration spells are now longer effected by this threat reduction.

And one very important point in the actual talent tree designs, which i forgot to mention, is the point overload in balance. It seems very difficult to get all the necessary talents (old ones as well as new ones), without exceding the point limit. The spirit change in equipment design most likly means that Intensity still is a given, so either 12 (master Shapeshifter) or 15 (Intensity on top) are fixed point in resto. Improved Faerie Fire is forced now, i assume (it's just as good, 3% to hit on everythig raidwide, no way to pass on it), and the end tiers are stuffed with at least another 12 points which should be assumed as standard for PvE (that excludes Owlkin Frenzy as well as Eclipse, which would mean another 6 points). Even cutting out efficieny talents in mid tier (Dreamstate no longer makes the cut, as does Moonglow) there is just so few points for so many important talents. I do hope balance get at least a little critical look in talent point efficiency just like restoreation, Vengeance, Improved Nature's Grasp and Moonfury would be prime candidates for small reductions in points to spend.

 

Malleus

That would just be a bad CoH. I find it more likely that there will be an Improved Consecrate talent in the Holy tree, that causes Consecrate to heal friendly targets for a percentage of the tick. (To clarify: if Consecrate is ticking for 200 and the talent gives 50% healing, friendlies in the radius are healed for 100/tick.) That would satisfy the concept of a melee healer rather neatly, I feel.

 

Emily

It's a nice idea, but would be pretty crappy in movement fights (ie most of 'em these days).

 

Cryic

Eh? Arcane is based on either one of two things: AB Spam with requires the T5 2 piece bonus or AM procs such as MSD. Blizzard nerfed the shit out of the later, so I dont see them reintroducing something they clearly did not like.

The new talent to cause 5% insta cast is almost completely wasted on AB spam, which again is based on a Teir 5 Set bonus to be competetive. Which leaves you with AM, which has only worked well for one patch cycle before blizzard removed the MSD / TLC mechanics. IE, AM has never worked because of AM, but because of other mechanics.

If anything, the mage community is excited about the Frost tree and what it has to offer.

 

Athemeus

I really can't see myself droping Empowered Fireball for Spell Power, while you can take both Burnout,all the old top-tier fire talents and IV. The "Problem" with the Arcane Talents is, that you would have to sink 20 points into arcane to get to the useful ones.

 

Valerian

Have the numbers for the new rank of AB been mined? Without those its kinda silly to say AB spam wont be viable unless you have a T5 set bonus.

 

Finkum

Well yes and no - regardless of the base value without some equivalent to 2t5 as a talent AB just won't scale competitively. The best you could do in that situation is have it be competitive at starting levels of gear.

 

lairpie

They changed tons of coefficients and base damage numbers on all sorts of spells last expansion to rebalance things. I imagine they'll do it again.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Cryic

If anything it appears that deep arcane will be exciting for PVP. Having 2 solid pvp trees for mages would be awesome. With the bumps to Frost we are seeing, having two solid PVE trees is awesome. I just wanted to clear up the notion that the mage community is not "getting it" as far as how good Arcane is looking for raiding. It's simply not. Which is fine as long as Fire and Frost are

Now can Blizzard rework AB (Make it's base cast time 3.0 seconds and only taking 2 cast for the full buff / debuff which fixes the coeefficent problem) before Wotlk and fix it, you bet. So here's to hoping.

 

Douglas

Just for the record, you can't know that.

I was in the TBC F&FA, and I wasn't allowed to even make people aware of that fact until after beta started and the F&FA NDAs were lifted. It's conceivable that some staff from MMO Champion or World of Raids were invited into F&FA, and if they were, they'd be subject to NDAs, and would not yet be permitted to tell us they were subject to NDAs. They'd instead be forced to do things like say "we're not going to post any leaked information, out of respect for Blizzard".

 

orcsgotbooty

Sorry, I guess I made my point unclear. I agree 100% that theres nothing wrong with one paladin of each spec, the problem I have is that if it wasn't for a blessing we wouldn't bring holy paladins at all most likely.

 

• Chicken

Judging by it's description and one of the talents that interact with it the 51 point Discipline Priest talent Penance works in a manner similar to Arcane Missiles. Or to put it differently, it's the oft suggested channeled healing spell.
However, due to the fact that it works like Arcane Missiles each individual "missile" it does will have a chance to crit, which interacts very favorably with Inspiration. Nothing better for keeping up that armor buff than having a chance to crit your heal once per second (Or faster with haste gear!).

It remains to be seen whether it can proc effects on each individual "missile" like Arcane Missiles (Used to?), and of course whether it suffers from the same issues.

Here's the relevant spell descriptions...
Penance Description: Launches a volley of holy light at the target, causing $47666s1 Holy damage to an enemy, or $47750s1 healing to an ally every $47758t2 sec for $47758d.
Arcane Missiles Description: Launches Arcane Missiles at the enemy, causing $7268s1 Arcane damage every $5143t2 sec for $5143d.
Renew description (For comparison): Heals the target for $o1 over $d.

Talents...
Inspiration Description: Increases your target's armor by $15359s1% for $15359d after getting a critical effect from your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Penance, Prayer of Healing, or Circle of Healing spell. (This one clearly indicates Penance will be able to crit)
Grace Description: Your Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance spells bless the target with Grace, reducing damage done to the target by $47932s1%, and increasing healing done to the target by $47932s2%. This effect will stack up to 3 times. (Assuming it stacks once per "missile" the Penance spell would be perfect for getting this up fast)

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

lairpie

If people only brought raids based on the classes raw output not on other utility like blessings and party buffs and such raids would be like 1 tank, 17 rogues, 3 resto druids and 4 resto shaman.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

orcsgotbooty

3 resto druids and 4 resto shaman

My point exactly!

 

RpgWizard

Spellpower is better than burnout, lower in the tree, bigger bonus crit damage, and no extra mana cost. You can pick up Clearcasting on the way down for more mana conservation. You can pick up Prismatic Cloak so that Invis only takes 2 seconds to dump all your threat, instead of 4 seconds, which is going to be huge with all the crit emphasis. There is also the 3% crit 3% dmg increase talent in arcane.

The problem with the fire talents is that the 2 PvE oriented talents (other than Living Bomb) are shit (Hot Streak, just check the Mage WOTLK TC thread) or have an equivalent/better talent in a different tree.

So I can get the same/better talents going 33/38 while picking up a ton of extra support talents. That is the problem with deep fire. Sure you give up IV, but you pick up Arcane Power. It's things like this which bolster the value of a 33/38 spec over the traditional deep fire spec.

 

flyingtoastr

You're still missing the point.

Holy paladins are so weak they're pretty close to useless, especially now that 70-99% of all boss damage is AoE (which we can't do anything about). The only reason they are in is because of Blessings. That means the class exists for one sole reason, to buff other people. They are not there to heal.

That is bad design.

Divine Favor still costs mana.