Wickedgirl

Well, you need to decide if "all" groups are full of 3 mage/hunter/rogues combinations OR are there "shadow priests, etc".
You cant claim two mutually excluding things in one post.
Also, since when are the spammers in /trade that are looking for "tanklol" of any importance in what is being discussed on these forums? They are taken care of by Blizzard by nerfing all 5mans not more than a few months after they are out.

We could, and should, talk about 5man group balance, but only taking into consideration the mature (age has nothing to do with it) non-hysteric players that do not succumb to hype and generalized distinctions which come down to "kewl" or "shit".



Regarding Roots working indoors... I am wishing/hoping that it will only be a balance talent. Not just because it would be a nice addition to the balance tree, making it very unique among other druid speccs thus making the Boomkin more viable in 5/10 mans and raids, but also because I am wishing/hoping that I, as a feral, do not even have the chance to end up CCing&babysitting mobs (rooting and re-rooting over and over again) and watching television while I'm doing it in any raid. Ever.

I consider my bear form to be my only form of "CC".

 

Katrana

I would love to see some of the ideas blizzard has in mind for shaman, particularly resto shaman (hey, I am biased!).

I feel like right now there isn't a lot of "thinking" required for a shaman*, we keep ES on the tank(s), keep our group-appropriate totems down, and chain heal the tank/raid. I would love to see interesting new mechanics, such as chain heal with a hot component, new totems for cc or increased usefulness (ie +spell haste earth totem?), and increased viability for pvp. As long as we are dreaming maybe we could get an air elemental totem that cyclones targets, a water elemental that poisons with a mind-numbing poison, but if we do get expanded elemental totems PLEASE allow us to control them.

(*or any healer for that matter, but right now I am focused on shaman)

 

Starfire

Play a priest. I think you're right. Shamans spam brain heal. Druids roll lifeblooms. Paladins buff things (okay, I am sorry guys -_-)... I mean they play whack-a-mole with FoL or spam the tank.

Of course, who knows... the change to both Discipline and Circle of Healing might mean priests are back to spamming the tank or something. Discipline -- the wannabe Paladin tree.

 

Addled

Honestly, most classes have pretty boring DPS/healing rotations in raids. BM hunters have their Steady/Auto shot macro, fire mages will Scorch to put up debuffs, then Fireball spam with the occasional Fire Blast, locks will put up debuffs and spam Shadowbolt, etc. It isn't too difficult to find the most efficient dps/healing cycle, and people will even theorycraft it for free for you on this site.

For instance, let us say that (purely hypothetically) resto shamans get a cooldown on chain heal, but in exchange, you get "SuperHeal". SuperHeal heals the targeted allied unit for SUPER_HUGE_AMOUNT for TINY_MINISCULE_MANA_COST. What will happen then? You'll end up spamming SuperHeal, keeping up totems, bloodlusting, etc. Basically, same as before.

Blizzard can't really alleviate "boringness" with new talents and spells. Only interesting fights can do that. Even great talents will seem boring if you have to heal Molten Bore over and over.

 

Kumar

If anybody has been checking the latest stuff, one of the areas is called "Maw of Neltharion (Deathwing Lair)".

 

Mano

Please ... why totems? the totem mechanism is pretty broken overall. And I don't want even more totems than now.

The elemental totems with their really limited range and other problems (i.e. it's easier to kill the totem that the elemental most times) and as you say they are not controllable.
For CC on the air elemental (totem): this would mean giving up the two best buffs around for a CC. Which at least in PVP would probably not available in arenas (cooldown), has a too long cooldown for other pvp and also for instances actually. And I think the air totems are on the nature casting tree, so we'd be locked out of it often anyway.

Just imagine it, the cheer and tears of joy: I give you TOTEM OF BLOODLUST!! not

Think about the real changes for shaman in TBC:
- Chain heal is usable
- Bloodlust
- Water Shield / Earth Shield
- Wrath of Air / Totem of Wrath
- the two elementals
- better scaling of spelldamage with AP / healing


Pretty any shaman buff has to be either a fix for totem mechanics or not involve totems too much.

 

Phlis

Agreed. I'd like to see them take the Totemic Mastery talent out of Resto and just increase base Totem range to 30 or 45 yards. Maybe change Healing Focus to something like "Natural Focus" and just have it work for all Shaman Spells.

 

• Chicken

More on the subject of new stuff, there's a spell reference for changing the gossip NPCs for Pirate Day, as well as a couple of other new Pirate related spells. Now why is this particularly interesting outside of Blizzard introducing another new in-game holiday with collectable goodies? Because all of Blizzard's holidays are based on real holidays.

Now Pirate Day seems to be related to Talk Like a Pirate Day, which takes place on September 19th. Which could be seen as a rough idea of a date before which Blizzard expects to release WotLK, of course it could just take the form of the event being patched in.

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

 

sadistic

19th Sept seems very very soon for a mmo (though its an expansion) to go from alpha -> Live

I honestly believe we wont see wotlk until late Nov/early Dec

 

Cranberry

But what if it healed a friendly unit for SUPER_HUGE_AMOUNT for TINY_MINISCULE_MANA_COST, but had a cooldown itself? Short cooldowns force rotations.

 

novasphere

Most retailers have WotLK listed as an early November release (Gamestop has it as 11/03 for example), for what it's worth.

 

Eledorian

Those are estimates, TBC was listed as release earlier then it eventually released aswell. Seeing as they are still in the F&F alpha phase there's no telling if they might have to delay the release to fix/change stuff around because they are not happy with the balance they have created.

 

novasphere

Yes, that's obvious. However, Vivendi (not Blizzard) did also state that they expect WotLK in late '08, and I'm sure there's going to be pressure to release it as close to Warhammer as possible. At this point I'm honestly expecting a November release, though I'd like to be proven wrong with a delay or two.

 

Nathariel

As we saw with the release of 2.0, the release of the patch and the release of the expansion don't need to coincide.

I do agree that it is unlikely that even a patch to 3.0 would be available before 19 Sept.

A 2.4.x patch is however possible.

 

• Chicken

Cluckgoesthechicken - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Just a whole bunch of screenshots, including descriptions for most of them. I've only included areas that seemed finished.

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

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

The F&F Alpha for Wrath of the Lich King has started several months earlier in the year than the BC equivalent did. Why do people think WotLK will not, therefore, itself launch several months earlier? That is, the early November dates seem extremely likely based on the timeframe from Burning Crusade from F&FA through release.

 

Emeraude

Because when you're dealing with Blizzard assumptions don't hold much weight. Later is always the better guess then sooner.

 

Aod_Macabre

What do you mean? Diablo patch 1.10 was only 14 months late....

 

Pheus

I think the short cooldown on circle of healing and talents giving spells a chance to proc short term buffs to other spells are blizzards exact response to this problem, and at least will be a little more interesting then pressing 'e' or '1' for 4 hours. I have spriest, mage and warlock all at 70 and I know that for me spriest dps is alot more involved then fireball or shadowbolt spamming. Its exactly because shadowpriests don't have a single spammable best dps best dpm spell, mind blast and shadow word death are better dps than mind flay but have short cooldowns.

It will be interesting to see if blizzard can make healing abilities more interesting in such a fashion though... you can't exactly have people dying because all the healer's good heals hadn't procced or were still on cooldown

 

PsyBomb

hmmm, I'd like to know if I'm reading this wrong, but according to the description of the Prot talent Sword and Board, it's possible (even likely, over the course of a major boss fight) that a warrior will chain-proc the Shield Slam. It finished the cooldown and makes it free, so they would literally just gain (X*crapload) aggro over the course of X seconds for absolutely no investment other than the ability that starts the chain (X being the number of times procced, possibility of occurance represented by 0.1^X). This while gaining rage from white attacks and incoming damage. They could even take the time to Devastate again or Shield Bash during the sequence, since the 5-second buff easily allows 1-3 actions between Shield Slams.

I may just be rambling, and my own warrior is VERY Fury, but can i get the word from someone about how many Devastates and Shield Slams they use over the course of a normal fight? Again, i know the chances are not very good individually, but Blizzard has always had a bad relationship with self-proccing abilities (see: original Windfury)

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Zzbzq

Blizzard is in love with hidden self-cooldowns now, so... there. Windfury is a perfect example. One imagines sword & board definitely has one.

 

Abbi

Well, do the math. 10 minute fight means 100 Shield Slams; on average 10 of them will proc an extra Shield Slam, and on average 1 of those will do the same. Three Shield Slams in three seconds is sweet but I'm not sure it's a huge problem.

 

Charsi

Devastate also potentially procs Sword and Board, so I believe it's a lot more opportunities than that.

 

Anedris

I don't really see the imbalance... obviously it's good, but the chances of chain-procs are going to be low enough that it'll be about the same as having your first three threat moves crit. It's neat and gives you a huge aggro lead, but it's not like it happens much or changes anything.

It is also possible, depending on how quickly the buff is resolved, that a warrior in full rotation mode will not actually be able to react to the proc before having begun the next GCD, so even chain procs will only allow twice as many shield slams as normal (one every two GCDs instead of one every four) and of course that only lasts until a proc fails to occur.

I wonder if this will make revenge less desirable in a rotation, instead favouring devastates for more procs? I suspect they'll tune the numbers to avoid that, but it is a possibility.

 

Lithose

Don't forget, revenge will have 25% more talented damage, which should give it a bit more kick.