Hopefully items from Naxx-10 will not be required to progress in Naxx-25, but with only that level of raiding then the majority of guilds will have the time and players available to run both.
I expect Nax10 / Heroics to yield stuff equivalent to Sunwell equipment (litterally equivalent, as there doesn't seem to be a stat weight change this time... yet). So, when preparing for Nax25:
- You're a real hardcore guild, you were probably in Sunwell prior to the expansion, and thus you have part of the equipment;
- or while your raid crew is finishing levelling, your early hardcore players are gearing up in heroics and possibly nax10, waiting for the first 25 roster to flesh up.
Meanwhile, the 10-man crowd who probably didn't do Sunwell lands at 70 with T6-badge loot, completes it with dungeon blues, and can start its progression.
We don't know if they're going to be basing things off the actual speed or the modified speed, although the math doesn't really change; the impact of instant slams does, though, as they're not normalized, so the artifical slow means that your Slams would be meaner.
Hmmm, I doubt this is the case, because this would mean that flurry would actually negatively impact Slam damage, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is not the case right now.
EDIT: Moogul, the formula for AP conversions is ( ( Attack Power / 14 ) * Weapon Speed ), not the other way around. The slower your weapon the more damage you get out of each point.
So I don't know the exact formula, but it seems to me has has a good point, and Titan's Grip will scale poorly.
Your auto-attacks will gain benefit from a) your weapon and b) all other things you have.
TG buffs how much you get from your weapon A, while reducing how powerful both, A+B are. As B increases, TG becomes worse. And B probably increases faster than A.
This combined with spikiness seems like it would be bad for PvE. Though I could see it being good for PvP.
Of course this is all about the specific numbers. TG (as is, or as eventually implemented) could just be good enough than scaling never eclipses it (or it could end up always being a DPS reduction).
EDIT: Moogul, the formula for AP conversions is ( ( Attack Power / 14 ) * Weapon Speed ), not the other way around. The slower your weapon the more damage you get out of each point.
Of course, it doesn't matter whether you divide by 14 on attack power alone, on (AP*Speed) or on Weapon Speed alone, so it can be stated any which way you guys want. We could call it (1/14)*(AP)*(Weapon Speed) if we wanted.
Is weapon speed normalized for warriors? I forget. Knowing the (potentially normalized) weapon speeds that would apply if dual wielding 1h weapons vs. 2h weapons would let someone toss out some concrete examples, since the (1/14) factor and the (AP) factor are the same no matter what you choose to dual wield.
Your auto attacks don't just do weapon damage - they do weapon damage plus (attackpower * weapon speed /14). This means that using titan grip means you get 20% less damage from AP, which makes titan grip end up doing *less* damage than otherwise.
We don't know the exact implementation yet, however there are two possibilities:
1) It works as Moogul states, and 1 handing a 2h will result in a gain in weapon dps, loss of AP dps.
2) The AP dps is added in after the weapon is set to a slower speed, making wielding a 2h superior to a 1h in every way (except "spiky" rage generation)
Even in the case of 1), we still have to factor:
A) Special attack normalization. Will whirlwind end up hitting hard as it's normalized to hit as if a 2h weapon in 1 hand (hence 3.4 multiplier rather than 2.4?)
B) Additional stats. A 2 handed weapon carries more than double the stat points of a 1 handed weapon.
I hope that 2 handed weapons are clearly superior in every way so that the only 1-handed weapon a warrior needs to pick up is one for tanking.
Is weapon speed normalized for warriors? I forget. Knowing the (potentially normalized) weapon speeds that would apply if dual wielding 1h weapons vs. 2h weapons would let someone toss out some concrete examples, since the (1/14) factor and the (AP) factor are the same no matter what you choose to dual wield.
Do you mean what attacks are normalized? White swings and Slam are never normalized, everything else is normalized to a 3.3 speed if you're using a 2-hander. Presumably it will be the same with dual wielding via TG.
We don't know if they're going to be basing things off the actual speed or the modified speed, although the math doesn't really change; the impact of instant slams does, though, as they're not normalized, so the artifical slow means that your Slams would be meaner.
What makes you think the artificial slow will increase the damage per swing?
Paladin Divine Shield reduces attack speed by 100%. My damage per swing stays the same while under DS. Since the -AS of Titan's Grip is supposed to be a penalty, it seems that it would behave the same way.
There's currently one ability that's an exception when it comes to how weapon speed modifies your weapon's DPS, that one ability is Seal of the Crusader. There's also the fact that spending more points in Titan's Grip reduces the attack speed slowing penalty. And while there are certainly design flaws, I can't imagine designing a talent that's best when you've spend only one point in it unless it's bugged. Put simply, it's extremely likely that the weapon speed used for calculating how much your damage increases from attack power is the base speed of your weapon(s). Which would indeed mean that Titan's Grip reduces your damage from white attacks.
On the other hand, there's still a number of questions which we don't know the answer to with the ability yet. Will a two-hander used as a one-hander still get it's two-hander normalization for instant attacks? Will the extra stats when dual-wielding two-handers make up for the auto-attack penalty? Will Slams made instant with the new talent reset the swing timer?
buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
There's currently one ability that's an exception when it comes to how weapon speed modifies your weapon's DPS, that one ability is Seal of the Crusader. There's also the fact that spending more points in Titan's Grip reduces the attack speed slowing penalty. And while there are certainly design flaws, I can't imagine designing a talent that's best when you've spend only one point in it unless it's bugged. Put simply, it's extremely likely that the weapon speed used for calculating how much your damage increases from attack power is the base speed of your weapon(s). Which would indeed mean that Titan's Grip reduces your damage from white attacks.
On the other hand, there's still a number of questions which we don't know the answer to with the ability yet. Will a two-hander used as a one-hander still get it's two-hander normalization for instant attacks? Will the extra stats when dual-wielding two-handers make up for the auto-attack penalty? Will Slams made instant with the new talent reset the swing timer?
But SotC specifically says "The Paladin also attacks 40% faster, but deals less damage with each attack" indicating that it is a separate effect to speed increase.
Will Slams made instant with the new talent reset the swing timer?
Definitely a core question here. With Paladin and Shaman instants not resetting the timer, but cast-time spells doing so, there is definitely a possibility of it not resetting; however if it is like other clearcasting-type effects then it should be just like any other Warrior instant.
When blizzard was originally designing the combat system, they meant for two-handers to do 20% more damage than a one-hander with shield, to even out the extra mitigation. Dual-Wield was set up to do equivalent damage to a two-hander, so it does 20% more base damage than a one hander. It also happens to scale 20% better with AP since one-handers and two-handers scale the same. Note this is all before relevant talents.
A 20% dehaste on the base damage would bring the base damage with a pair of 2Hers into line with that of a pair of 1Hers, and it will be a damage decrease unless the attack power still scales like normal DW. The first point in Titan Grip will always be a DPS decrease (30% dehaste!), the last one might bring you up to break-even on autoattack or it might not. We still don't know if whirlwind will be using one-hand or two-hand normalization for the two weapons, since they are being wielded one-handedly. In any case, even if Titan Grip is worth it maxed out, it might be best to sit around for four levels with unspent talent points and then drop them all in at once (or spend them somewhere else and respec). Complicated, yes?
Getting back to the 10/25-man discussion for a little bit... someone made the statement earlier that (paraphrasing) many people that raid at the ten-man level won't ever see the later dungeons because they're harder and the players aren't as good. I would just like to point out that player skill is not something innately given at birth, it's something that comes about as a result of experience and devotion. A smoother and more accessible progression curve will, I am absolutely certain, make more players rise to the challenge.
Plus, many former 25-man raiders will go down to 10-man raiding out of preference, possibly myself included.
This makes the titan grip's 30% dehaste make some sense, though it would probably be a net increase in DPS due to the instant attacks. I wonder if this means we'd start seeing 2H weapons that have more hit rating at the expense of other, more traditional 2H weapon stats?
EDIT: Moogul, the formula for AP conversions is ( ( Attack Power / 14 ) * Weapon Speed ), not the other way around. The slower your weapon the more damage you get out of each point.
Yeah, as others pointed out, you kinda failed to realise that what you said is (mathematically) exactly the same as what I posted - The reason I wrote it the way I did was to save on the brackets. Maybe that was a bad idea of me, but I assumed that most people wouldn't have trouble reading it.
Titan's Grip also suffers from being in direct competition with Sword Spec, which is very good.
I would be curious to see whether the attack speed reduction applies to both hands, or just the hand(s) wielding two-handers. It could potentially be viable to spec 5/5 Sword Spec and 1/5 TG, main-handing the biggest, slowest 2h you can find and off-handing the fastest 1h, giving the benefit of both heavy specials and the sword-spec procs from the offhand to that claymore.
Assuming 10-man Naxxramas will drop T7 gear, if what Kaplan said is true, then the 25-man Naxxramas will drop T8 gear.
...
Anyone else thought about how this teired loot approach will work initially?
What I'm hoping they'll do is, 25-man Naxxramas will drop T7 gear, and 10-man Naxxramas will drop Sunwell-equivalent gear.
The folks who limit themselves to 10-man content won't have T6 yet, so even that should be an upgrade. But the folks who are eager to push hard in 25-man content, who have already been doing 25-man raiding pre-Wrath, would be able to essentially jump from Sunwell directly into Naxx-25. And the new raiders who want to push into 25-man content but who are just stating from Wrath can go through one gear-up cycle in either Naxx-10 or Sunwell, and then dive into Naxx-25 and never look at 10-mans again.
What I'm hoping they'll do is, 25-man Naxxramas will drop T7 gear, and 10-man Naxxramas will drop Sunwell-equivalent gear.
The folks who limit themselves to 10-man content won't have T6 yet, so even that should be an upgrade. But the folks who are eager to push hard in 25-man content, who have already been doing 25-man raiding pre-Wrath, would be able to essentially jump from Sunwell directly into Naxx-25. And the new raiders who want to push into 25-man content but who are just stating from Wrath can go through one gear-up cycle in either Naxx-10 or Sunwell, and then dive into Naxx-25 and never look at 10-mans again.
They've already stated that 10man progression and 25 man progression are not linked in anyway. You should be able to jump right into either the 10man or the 25man right when you get the appropriate numbers and appropriate gear from lvl 80 dungeons and heroics.
Ya, the idea of Sunwell gear allowing 25ers to skip the 10-man Naxx is nice until you realize that it means that every guild that for whatever reason wasn't in Sunwell when Wrath came out will be stuck farming a 10-person zone for 25-person progression, which is exactly what everyone hated about Kara.
ZA is horribly paced. As stated earlier, the problem with ZA is that most of the rewards are bottom-heavy. Clearing the first four bosses without chest timers leads to four items and 7 badges. Clearing the last two bosses yields four items and six badges, plus [Blood of Zul'jin] which averages out to 7 badges overall for the raid.
For a guild that farms kara and not much else (like how mine started), ZA is a huge ramp up in terms of difficulty. The problem is compounded because there's no real way to gear yourself from it to make it any easier. One can spend weeks clearing the first bosses, but their loot tables don't provide much to move forward. Karazhan provides tangible loot benefits. You get two items per boss in Karazhan, and some reasonable number of badges. The loot tables for the first bosses in Karazhan provide a good spread to work from... weapons, armor, trinkets, jewelry. [Steelhawk Crossbow], [Emerald Ripper], [Shard of the Virtuous], and the chance for [Legacy], [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle], [Big Bad Wolf's Paw], [Despair] and [Blade of the Unrequited].
Conversely, the first two bosses in ZA don't provide that much, especially in terms of tanking (which is where the gear starts becoming really important - Lynx boss is a pretty big gear check). The four animal bosses drop little useful when it comes to weaponry. Nalorakk drops [Fury], Akil'zon drops [Akil'zon's Talonblade] and [Amani Punisher], and Jan'alai drops [Wub's Cursed Hexblade]. Of these, you have a weapon of limited use (+damage mace), an offhand-only weapon, a fast sword (also offhand weapon), and a really good caster weapon, off the (arguably) hardest boss of the first four. The last two bosses provide eight different weapons between them.
I thought your post was really good in principle because I agree that early ZA is pretty unlikely to gear you to clear later ZA. That said, I found your examples somewhat comical.
No one uses Legacy, Despair, Emerald Ripper or Blade of the Unrequited to kill anything in Karazhan. I'm not sure anyone serious uses the last three of those period and I believe Legacy is generally a hunter stats weapon. The Big Bad Wolf's Paw is hardly ever used by anyone. The other two are one or the other for the one hunter in your raid.
I mean, sure, it's a lot of different hypothetical weapons, but basically you proved early Karazhan gives your hunter a better ranged weapon option if you get BBW or Attumen drops the bow. This is not radically different weapons-wise -- vis vis useful weapons -- from ZA. And no, the Shard of the Virtuous, while a nice piece, is not going to be the difference maker. If your healers are good, they are using oil/elixir/food and bridging the gap. Later, when they get a shard, they are probably just not using it once prince comes along. That's the way it goes with Karazhan progression.
Again, your premise is sound, I just don't much buy that early Karazhan weapons itemization is what pushed people forward in Karazhan. In fact, when Karazhan opened, we DE-ed everything because before the items were buffed in the itemization overhaul they were almost universally terrible. Romulo's had no +hit on it among many wonderful features of the zone. People moved through Karazhan through execution and learning the encounters. ZA is pretty much the same. Now, beating the timers in ZA past the 2nd one? Probably some gear is required. Although I'd guess a halfway decent geared group with a paladin tank can get the 3rd timer without much challenge to be honest and therefore get every piece of loot from the instance that improves dps/healing/etc.
The 2H DW issue really isn't one. AP applies to attacks according to the base speed ALWAYS, so DW-ing speed-3.6 maces is going to make Slam and WW hit absurdly hard. At lower gear levels, the rage generation will be a problem. However, once you get your hit and expertise at or near the cap with crit at 33%, then each strike is going to be doing enough damage to keep you for more than a GCD (20% slow brings it to 4.32 speed, 30% from Flurry takes it down to 3.02, which means you get an autoattack every 1.51 seconds at zero haste). That's it, that's all it takes. 55 rage every 6 seconds, which is darned easy to generate from attacking effectively 3 times with a 2-hander, plus incidental rage-generation abilities. Any extra generated just goes into instant Slam whenever you get a proc.
One huge thing about this is that Haste has a greatly amplified absolute effect on dual-wielded 2H weapons, and getting even 50 rating onto your gear (at 80, mind you) will set your swing timer fast enough that your auto-attacks come faster than the GCD. Then we consider the effect of having 50-75% more stats in the weapon slots... well, let's just say i think it'll put Fury warriors as top melee DPS, and possibly top DPS period once we get a couple of tiers in.
This of course assumes that the procced Slam won't reset your swing timer on the MH. If it does, then attempting to include it in attack rotations will greatly slow rage generation. The entire thing is also somewhat vulnerable to the RNG, since going without a crit for more than about 8-10 seconds will set you back to nothing.
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.
No one uses Legacy, Despair, Emerald Ripper or Blade of the Unrequited to kill anything in Karazhan.
Maybe not anymore, but those daggers were quite ok at that time. I remember it was quite hard to get any mainhand sword except from Kazzak and Netherspite. I played fist/dagger during leveling, combatdagger after I got the Emerald ripper and switched to swords at the end of season one, when I had enough points to buy other weapons (I played fist/combat in season one). At the beginning I chose the spec based on which weapons I could get my fingers on. I rememer Teza from Curse played combat dagger and mutilate all through T5 progression.
Those weapons were a definitive upgrade and combat dagger is still a quite popular spec for casual guilds. If I remember correctly the difference is between 1,5 and 3% depending on the gear level and so it was a big upgrade when compared with 71 DPS swords/fists from heroics.
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Mideci, it depends on what perspective you're talking about. When people were learning Kara early on, they sported mostly 71 DPS blue 1handers and 93 DPS blue 2-handers. BBW's paw, Despair and Legacy were distinct upgrades for melee weapon users. Before people could get S1 weapons for honor (Nov 27, 2007), the early Kara weapons were better DPS for new players.
I have a friend who, during season 2, used Legacy as his chosen weapon in the arena for most of the time while earning points, because he didn't have blacksmithing. BBW's paw is a pretty significant boost over blue 71 DPS weapons.
My point with regards to the weapons was twofold:
#1. There's a good variety of weapons to choose from.
#2. The weapons they provide are decent upgrades for the intended target audience - people who are kitted in blues and progressing through Karazhan. Sure, [Gorehowl] and [Light's Justice] are better than [Despair] and [Shard of the Virtuous]. But those two are still a hefty upgrade over [Hammer of the Penitent] or [Plasma Rat's Hyper-Scythe], and it comes early enough in the instance that the players who get them feel like it is a worthwhile upgrade. There's a distinct lack of this in ZA.
The Alpha has just been updated with a 200 or so MB patch so there will be even more talent changes and maybe talents added for the rest of the classes.
Mideci, it depends on what perspective you're talking about. When people were learning Kara early on, they sported mostly 71 DPS blue 1handers and 93 DPS blue 2-handers. BBW's paw, Despair and Legacy were distinct upgrades for melee weapon users. Before people could get S1 weapons for honor (Nov 27, 2007), the early Kara weapons were better DPS for new players.
I have a friend who, during season 2, used Legacy as his chosen weapon in the arena for most of the time while earning points, because he didn't have blacksmithing. BBW's paw is a pretty significant boost over blue 71 DPS weapons.
My point with regards to the weapons was twofold:
#1. There's a good variety of weapons to choose from.
#2. The weapons they provide are decent upgrades for the intended target audience - people who are kitted in blues and progressing through Karazhan. Sure, [Gorehowl] and [Light's Justice] are better than [Despair] and [Shard of the Virtuous]. But those two are still a hefty upgrade over [Hammer of the Penitent] or [Plasma Rat's Hyper-Scythe], and it comes early enough in the instance that the players who get them feel like it is a worthwhile upgrade. There's a distinct lack of this in ZA.
Even when we first hit kara everyone already had S1weapons that were vastly superior (for melee at least).
The only weapons people seemed to ever be interested in were decapitator (because you can throw it) and the hunter weapon from opera. The rest everyone just wanted for offspec.
I know personally this put me in a VERY awkward situation when it came to S3 (I quit the game after we killed Illidan partially due to game issues, partly due to a new work schedule). When S3 weapons came out, I was praying the archimonde 2h sword could drop, so I could use my pve weapon to do better in pvp (I'm BAD) to get 1850 to get pvp one handers to use in pve (I was fury in raids at the time). Just seemed so ass backwards.
Now that I think about it, this was a problem throughout TBC in SSC and TK and even BT-Hyjal melee weapons were almost always offspec-shard even the first time they dropped because of S2 and S3 weaponry that was way better than the t5 and t6 equivalents (warglaives aside).
Last edited by orcsgotbooty : 06/12/08 at 8:28 PM.
Getting back to the 10/25-man discussion for a little bit... someone made the statement earlier that (paraphrasing) many people that raid at the ten-man level won't ever see the later dungeons because they're harder and the players aren't as good. I would just like to point out that player skill is not something innately given at birth, it's something that comes about as a result of experience and devotion. A smoother and more accessible progression curve will, I am absolutely certain, make more players rise to the challenge.
Plus, many former 25-man raiders will go down to 10-man raiding out of preference, possibly myself included.
I believe you might be refering to something I said. However my point was that there will still be a difference between the number of people who do 10-man Naxx and the number of people who do 10-man Arthas.
How it compares, percentagewise, to the number who do 25-man Naxx and 25-man Arthas will be interesting (will we see a greater difference in 10-mans because there will be many more random guilds (that fail to go the whoel way) doing them than 25s, or will we see greater difference in 25s because their progression will have a steeper curve? I suspect the former) but there will still be a difference.
I don't doubt that with the 10/25 system more people (%) will see the 'final' content of WotLK than in TBC, but I still suspect that the greater majority will not. The reasons more will see it is because there is less of an orginsational barrier to running a 10-man group thana 25, so people who were otherwise disinclined to participate or unable to participate will get the chance, however I fail to see how there being more 10mans will simply make players better generaly. You only have to look at ZA vs Kara to realise that even moderate steps up in difficulty are a barrier for some; more substantial steps up will only make this more apparent.
e: Offical Wording of how it's going to be, folks:
Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both
melee attacks and spells.
All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell
healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This
stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant
“increased spell damage and healing” such as on typical Mage and
Warlock itemization.
For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the
character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the
character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been
modified to receive more benefit from spellpower than they received
from bonus healing, with a net effect of no change to the amount
healed by their spells. Some talents have had to be rebalanced to
accommodate this change, but the amount healed will remain roughly
the same. In addition, some talents will provide only healing spell power.
06/12/08, 11:29 AM
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