This pretty much sums up my attitude. Perhaps it's a bit naive for the internet, but I actually believe Blizzard thinks a lot about their game and is aware of most of the major issues, and wants to solve them. I'm more looking forward to finding out how they're going to do it than apprehensive that they may not. I doubt they want any class or spec to fall by the wayside.

ah but ret palas already have sleep, Repentance, Just give it an extra 10 secs and you have a powerful CC..also drop it's cooldown. If you can't imagine ret paladins with bubbles, heals, high dps and all the jazz + a cc like that, then maybe if they don't get one you'd understand why. Still.. i'd be surprised if they don't.

However it doesn't look like Fury or Arms warriors are getting any..altho heroic leap is really imba.

Well Turn Evil has had it's cooldown removed according to recently mined data.. so u never know.

The problem with Turn Evil is that it is still a fear effect, which makes it worth crap in most instances. I would like to see it changed to a root or Incapacitate so it could at least be somewhat reliable. Either that or (to rip a cool idea off the pally forums) change it to "Blind Evil" and make it a debuff that reduces the target's chance to hit with melee and spell effects by something like 75%, just to add a little flavor and difference from other CC's.

But hey, as long as I can use it on Demon Form Warlocks I'll be happy.

I thought so too, once, but then I adjusted my tactics to fit the scenario and it all worked out. There are bosses you can't keep everyone up on in the way a Druid or Priest can - Kael'Junior, Ikiss, and what'shisface at the end of Mana Tombs spring to mind - and Shirrak the Dead Watcher is utterly scummy unless you completely overpower the place, but there's nothing in any five-man heroic that is actually impossible for a Paladin to solo heal. That leaves you saying "I can't heal this because I don't have the gear", which as an argument only applies to you.

It appears the zone music now has separate day and night versions for each zone, as always these function well as background music and each piece flows over into the next one very well regardless of the order you play them in. Both the day and night version have a primary feel to it that's appropriate to the zone, for example the Borean Tundra music feels somewhat icy with the tones it mostly uses.

The night version of the music adds in some extra sound in the background of the music, which makes the music feel more tense, and made the music slightly remind me of pieces of Naxxramas.

It also appears that the music for one entire zone is typically composed by one artist, making all the music pieces for a zone feel like a cohesive whole. For example the Tuskarr town in the Borean Tundra has it's own music, it uses an entirely different scope of sounds from the normal Borean Tundra music, and yet it doesn't sound wrong when switching from one to the other.

I don't at all understand the whining over the new Balance tree being "Bloated". It's not. It's the same situation as 2.0 WoW, just extended to 51 pts. You can't pick up all of the balance talents and have a "perfect" setup for both PvE and PvP. It's very very easy to make the "optimal" Raid setup and the "optimal" PvP setup. Many of the new talents are clearly designed with one or the other in mind. Owlkin frenzy, for example, sure sounds like a perfect foil to that annoying warrior/rogue/hunter who's made the mistake if trying to kill us through our fake plate because they think we're the healer. But in a Raid, it'd be useless.

It's only "Bloated" if you expect the talent tree to require no forethought and only have one, super-obvious, cookie-cutter spec.

You don't have to skip any mana talents, just skip Natural/Master Shapeshifter. 30% off shapeshifting and 4% Spelldamage is 5 points I'd rather spend elsewhere.

And personally, I'm not willing to ever deal with Wrath in raids unless NG drops it to a 1.0s global cooldown. Which is probably in the "never going to happen" category.

Well, let's overlook the weak 'whine' accusation (really, why do people think it strenghtens their position if they include some sort of "whine", "qq" or similar phrases? often they achieve exactly the opposite, which is them not get taken seriously) and only look at numbers. The balance tree of druids get additional talents for a whole 18 points, in varying tiers. Til now no existing talents in this tree has been reduced from their former numbers. In the restoration tree balance druid will find a small reduction of needed talent points (depending if they want to achive the same as before WotLK with their choices). Let's take a look at the other specs. Restoration gets 17 points worth of talents, but they alway had a lot of surplus points to spend in BC; additionally, the lower tiers in the restoration tree got cleaned up, freeing some more points there. Feral get 15 points of talents, with no reduction in their restoration part choices. So, now taking a look at the BC situation for balance druids. They do not have room to make choices, if they want to play PvE or PvP. Most talents are forced upon us in order to be competetive, usually most druids decide about a whole 4 points, thats were the specs differ. And of course PvP/PvE specs are (although only slightly) different, and not compatible as such. I am sorry, but it is nor 'very very easy' to make the optimal raid setup, you will even have to forfeit abilities and choices that are right now, in BC, possible for us to choose.

I'd hope all the talent trees were "bloated" at this point in the Alpha. I want testers to be figuring out if random talents are fun or not, especially in combination with other talents. Making cookie-cutter specs is lousy from a testing standpoint, because I want Blizzard to be figuring out Talent X vs Talent Y, not Moonkin vs Feral.

You're still missing the point. Druids of all specs are getting the instance CC. That is horribly imbalanced if other hybrid classes (and yes, I do count priests and warriors as hybrid) do not also get a CC. Sure, priests and pallies have CC, but that is limited to undead/demon type mobs. Roots works against virtually everything.

Why would any 5man group ever bring a healer other than druid, now that even resto druids have CC, HoTs, direct heals, and aoe heals? Why would a 5man group bring a ret paladin/dps shaman/dps warrior when they could bring a balance druid that does roughly the same amount of damage, brings relatively the same amount of buffs, and ALSO has a CC?

Balance druids need a CC, I'll grant you that. Shove Improved Entangling Roots (works indoors, decreases chance to break) as a 31+ point talent in the Balance tree so resto/ferals can't get it.

So your position is that a paladin is supposed to be overgeared to run the same 5 man instance that a priest/druid/shaman could heal with a lesser quality of gear? I'm not entirely sure that's a defensible opinion, given that Blizzard seems to be attempting to homogenize classes (caster dps druids getting huge aoe buffs, warriors getting strong aoe capability, etc).


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I also want to note, as an aside, that I'm betting on huge shaman buffs. In vanilla WoW, druids were pretty much at the bottom in terms of population. In BC, Blizzard gave druids a massive discount on normal flying form, plus a custom epic flying form, and gave them awesome buffs in both feral and resto departments. Now you see druids running everywhere in full S3/tier gear. Right now, shamans are pretty much "meh" in Arenas, and have an overall poor showing in population. I wouldn't be surprised to see shamans getting some kind of "free" riding ability and cool new abilities.

Roots only works on melee mobs and if roots breaks you have to reposition everything. Your argument about why to take ret paladins, dps shamans, and dps warriors already applies to existing CC classes. Priests have mind control which is lame but if we're going to be acting like lame CCs are awesome it should be included since it can still instantly kill a mob. Why bring other healers? Resto shaman have winfury and totems and bloodlust, paladins have blessings. Priests dispel, have superior heal variety for 5-mans and most heroics have pulls designed around fear bombs. All three have rezzes, which is huge. Giving bears another perk is a great thing. Bears have about 6 abilities. If they root something it still builds aggro on the healer that they will have to pick up when root breaks. You know what, now that I made the list, I turn your question around and say, why bother bringing a druid to an instance without indoor roots? The other classes have the same tanking/damage/healing but add other benefits also.

It's fine. You're overreacting.

Considering the amount of AoE that all the DPS classes have gotten so far, including classes that previously did not have credible AoE, I think blizzard is trying to homogenize the roles that classes can fill, and keeping separate only the way that they do it (the way it 'feels' for the player). Prot warriors are getting more threat scaling and multi-target tools, and both them and bears are getting some spell-tank talents despite that being DK's main advantage. Because of this, I fully expect shamans to get a full-on mainline Crowd Control ability, and perhaps a secondary one like hex on a 30s cooldown. I would also bet on paladins getting a heal that is more than a casted single-target direct heal, be that AoE or HoT or both or something entirely different.

Because any healer can do just fine in a 5-man? Because you don't need 3 CC classes in a 5-man?

I've farmed over 600 badges, mostly from heroics, so I've seen a fair share of group compositions. I've run with every spec of every class, and they all bring something to the run. I love ret pallys because of Sancity Aura and an extra blessing. I love enhance or elemental shaman because of WoA or Windfury. I love dps warriors because they can put up demo shout and thunderclap on hard-hitting melee mobs.

If 5-man instances were actually 3-man instances designed for one dps, your comments would have merit. But since every 5-man has room for 3 dps, it doesn't matter if one class has CC and another doesn't - you're not going to need 3 CC to clear a heroic.

Druids don't have an OOC res, paladins/shamans/priests have infinitely better buffs and general utility, paladins can fear undead/demons, paladins/shamans offer wipe recovery, priests can fear/MC/shackle undead, and DPS warriors can equip a shield and offtank. The only real losers so far are shamans. Their talents and new spells weren't leaked, and blizzard has promised some sort of CC in WOTLK.

And while heroics in TBC are overwhelmingly in favor of tank/healer/3CC, who says that WOTLK will follow the same mold? Hopefully they learned a lesson from MgT in particular.

Now all that said it's obviously just too early to draw any final conclusions, but either CC should be deemphasized in heroics or every non-tank/healer spec needs one.

Personally I wouldn't care if a druid had a CC; I'd rather have a healer with better direct single-target heals when it matters. That's only for heroics as they exist right now, mind you; if heroics in the future give more overall raid damage, less MT damage, and require more mobility a druid would be great for them.

Currently you only remotely have a use for 3 ccers if you have a warrior tanking. Paladin and druid tanks spend more time telling people not to cc so much so they have mana/rage than they do needing CC. 1 CCer is plenty enough to get that 1 ranged mob that is hard for most tanks to tank as they can't move it, and the dps just kills the other. Come wotlk and vastly better multi target tanking ability for warriors, I'd expect 1 CC to be more than enough.

Also, I don't think the nondruids are understanding just how amazingly poor of a cc roots is. Its a CC that is specifically only useful against the things that are easiest to tank. Any light hitting melee why bother to cc, any really hard hitting mob you can't use it on safely because it breaks so much and even if you get it reapplied before it kills someone, they have to actually move away from it it before they die. Sure, its useful, but its situational and requires some setup just like MC, paly fear, earth elementals. There's also 0 interuption protection on roots unless you spec a bit into balance for it. I would imagine most druids doing a lot of 5 mans would give up some healing talents to get it, but that's still a sacrifice worth noting.

I can cast the CoH on whatever group I want now. In the future, I'm relying on the other priests to pick up. Entirely different. And really, is the spell going to hit all 25 people? I guess it might, but that seems awfully unlikely.

Certainly, the ability to use CoH the way it's used in ZA is gone. Can that be handled? Of course it can. But it's quite enjoyable the way it is, and I'm not a huge fan of them changing the mechanic of the way I play my character just because they want to change the mechanic of the way I play my character.

Why can't there be a spammable, cooldown free 5-man spell >>and<< a cooldown-inclusive 25-man spell?

You should probably tell this to every puggie who spams Trade looking for a pally tank for MgT, or absolutely demands 3 mages/1 mage 2 hunters/1 mage 1 hunter 1 rogue/etc for their normal MgT run. Heck, I see Arcatraz groups demanding CC even when you can only use CC on two pulls in the entire instance. PuG Kara groups stack priests and hunters all the time to guarantee undead CC.

If people can run with 5 CC (druid tank, 3 DPS/CC, druid healer), I think you'd be surprised how many would go that route.


1. OOC rez doesn't matter when you're likely to have a pally tank, shadow priest, etc in a run.

2. Paladins/Shamans/Priests have infinitely better buffs? In a 5man scenario? Please.

Paladins have a single buff per person, and a Judgement.

Priests have Fort, Shadow Prot, maybe Imp DS and Power Infusion.

Shamans have Bloodlust, totems (which don't effect everyone equally; Mana Spring/WoA is worthless to rogues/warriors, Windfury isn't useful to casters, etc. At most a single totem is useful to 2 other people in a 5man group.)

Druids have Innervate, Rebirth, Mark and Thorns (and the 2 latter buffs are getting massive buffs according to the datamined info), plus (depending on spec) also give melee crit, spell crit, or increased healing.

Sounds mostly balanced in a 5man context. Sure, paladins and shamans have a huge advantage in raid buffing scenarios, but it's hardly the same in 5mans.

3. DPS warriors offtanking? Oh come on. I never understood why people keep trying to bring this up. Real CC classes will take a mob ENTIRELY out of the picture, and still contribute almost max dps. Offtanking means that the warrior is producing little to no DPS, and the healer is stressed by healing another tank.


The 5mans that rolled out with BC favored 3 CC, there were a load of whining threads on WoW forums about how dps shamans/dps pallies/balance druids/fury warriors couldn't get group slots, and what does Blizzard do for the last 5man to be released in BC? They repeat the whole fiasco!

Then when the same, identical QQ storm inevitably comes up again, Blizzard's response is essentially "Our test group did it with no problems!", when their test group is undoubtedly something like 3 CC/tank/healer.

No, I think WotLK is aiming for the MgT mold, and the designers are beginning to hand out CC ability like candy.

Druids need only 8 talent points into Balance to get 100% immunity to Roots casting pushback. Plus, the first 5 points can be used to get Nature's Grasp and Improved Nature's Grasp for 100% chance for a enemy mob to be rooted if they touch you.

I have a Level 66 Paladin. And I almost exclusively play support (Except I have a decently decked out tank alt, but thats besides the point). In FFXI I played Redmage/Blackmage. I ran around buffing party-mates and debuffing mobs. I rarely did damage and only healed when absolutely needed (eg no Whitemage).

I do however agree with both things you (and two posters below you) mentioned. What I am saying is, the idea of a support-class-that-can-heal-but-is-not-forced-to is what Blizzard was going for, then they DO need more support abilities. Not long term buffs. They need things that can mitigate damage on people. Amplify damage on people. Restore mana on specific people. Give energy. Give extra health.

Occassionally using HL/FL and Cleansing isn't something special. It's okay to be support and not a healer as I pointed out there's Red-mage in FFXI and someone else pointed out Paragon. But this only works if they are given the tools to do it.

I think however, there's another flaw to this. If this is what Blizzard intended, they really should of stated their goals in 2004 when we picked our classes. I know its been stated in an interview that Blizzard envisoned Paladin was the most popular class and thus made them super easy to play (whole reason for the seal system / simple heals). And I think thats where a second flaw lurks. Blizzard should of at the very least admitted to such in 2004, not in 2005 Blizzcon. I guess long-lasting buff and 2 heals is just the simplicity and ease. The more hardcore paladins suffer as such.

[GW] BlizzCon 2005 - Class Panel Notes - World of Warcraft

The logical conclusion of every spec having CC is that every <7 mob group would end up a single pull. That's why I suggested restricting CC by spec as 41+ point talents. Core tank and heal specs don't get CC, DPS and utility specs do. This works for every class and spec in the game except for feral druids, and it's not like they can pop out of bear while tanking to re-root so it shouldn't have a great impact past the initial pull.

If it were me I would deemphasize CC, though. Limited CC is fine, but I enjoy more dynamic fights.

As CCs go, roots is really limited. It would not, for example, be much use in MgT without some LoS trickery (I think every mob in there has something dangerous they can do at range, so you would have to room them out of LoS of the pull... needless to say that's beyond the ability of your average PuG).

But in more general terms, I'm fine with Blizz not catering to PuGs. PuGs are frankly dumb and will jump on the flavour of month bandwagon, believe that X/Y/Z class is useless, and so forth - Blizz can't possibly keep up with all that crap. Just make every class bring something and go with it. As a priest I *really* don't feel my place in 5-persons is threatened by giving druids a CC.

Yeah. For all we know half the dungeons will be full of undead anyway so it'll be moot