Draele

Still no word on DoT scaling with crit? That's the big thing I've been waiting to hear them say...

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

glowacks

I presume this means that Totem Twisting will no longer be possible. Praise the light! (or Elune, or whoever)

While the players of Affliction warlocks (as well as those sympathetic to their cause) are definitely not happy with the Affliction style of raiding, I've yet to see any indication that the devs know about this or even care. Scaling strongly with haste and crit as opposed to just spell damage will be necessary for this spec to be anything but a Malediction/SE buff bot leaving the class as a whole to be Shadow Mages. If the itemization style for leveling in the 60s is similar to the one used for the 70s, it's likely the the gear that makes Destro more powerful than Affliction will be continuously available while leveling, not just once you get gear from raiding.

 

• Suggestive

Affliction/ruin funnily enough, right now scales roughly the same (or better) with crit than a fire mage does. As long as ruin is available to affliction, you can't really say affliction doesn't value crit. If they intend to dissuade affliction from picking up destruction talents (which there is no indication of), then it would seriously be an issue. Right now, if you spec for it, you get decent crit scaling.

 

Kinv

? Totem twisting most likely won't even be needed anymore.... Str/Agi totems are being combined into 1 and totems are going to be raid wide buffs

 

PSGarak

Affliction warlocks definitely want to scale better, but I think focusing on scaling with crit is too narrow-minded of a take on that. Scaling with crit in particular is both unthematic, and unecessary so long as we scale better with damage and at least one other stat. I'm still hoping for haste, just not the DoTs-are-shorter version of haste (as I've detailed at length). I would even accept the spec scaling with crit if it's done in a way other than the DoTs criting, like the aff/ruin build.


Totem twisting is becoming both impossible and unnecessary, for different reasons. Rejoice, they took it away and it's not even a nerf!

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

PsyBomb

Hmmm, shaman, take a look and chew on this:

The example of the totem compression that they gave was of combining Strength of Earth with Grace of Air. In order for this to happen, they'll either have to re-flavor the totem entirely or greatly change the way totems work from the ground up. This could mean a LOT of things, ranging from "Each totem has the possibility of taking up more than one of your elements" to "You can have 4 totems out, and elements don't matter". The likely escape will be for them to rename it to Whirlwind Fortitude or Earthen Power totem and just shoving it into the one slot with both bonuses, but the twist needed to be brought to light.

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.

 

• Philondra

Given that the simplest solution to a problem is often the best one, I think you're reading too much into the Strength of Earth/Grace of Air merger. By far the most likely solution is simply merging the Grace of Air effect into Strength of Earth Totem, thus freeing up the Air totem slot for something else. When taken in light of other changes Blizzard has decided to make, it makes perfect sense:

1.) Blizzard wants to reduce shaman stacking. Air totem currently contains many more powerful buffing totems (GoA, WoA, WF, TA vs. SoE and Stoneskin -- and stoneskin is quite weak.) By merging the +agi effect into the SoE totem, the number of buffs tied to the Air Totem slot is decreased from four to three, thereby reducing the amount of shaman needed to provide full buffs in a 25 man raid.
2.) Blizzard is trying to remove counterintuitive mechanics, such as the issue with hunter shot mechanics being difficult to understand for people who don't actively research their class. Any kind of gimmicky solution to the totem issue runs counter to that goal.

 

Liebestod

I'm somewhat surprised/disappointed that apparently there are only going to be four max-level WotLK 5-mans (TBC, of course, had 7.. 8 after 2.4.) Maybe Blizzard devs are using existence of heroics to not have to create lots of endgame 5-man content, TBC still had 15 total 5-mans versus WotLK's 12. I suppose Blizzard is probably also planning on having more players take part in 10-man progression, but I'm not sure if this is a safe thing to assume, given that it's not like 10-man progression is expected to become easier to do... it'll still be heavily tiered, not like there's an UBRS planned for WotLK. Maybe they'll make up for this lack of endgame content by having more endgame solo/world content..

 

rihkama

Or they could just be planning to release more 5-mans during major content patches like they did with Magister's Terrace (and Dire Maul and Maraudon pre-TBC unless I remember totally wrong).

 

Calixtus

On the same note is the once again reiteriated intent for 5-mans no never take more than an hours worth of play. There's less of them, and they're shorter in duration.

Have to confess I'm a bit divided. On one hand, that's a reduction in "total content" in order to create more "casual content". On the other hand, I'm fairly sure I have not done Mana-tombs, Ramparts, Underbog or Auchenai Crypts more than 3 times each, on any difficulty, across both my lvl 70 characters. Why would I? Once the rep is out of the way, and the loot which can be aquired elsewhere, I'll be doing the easier heroics repeatedly for badge gear. Dungeon dailies certainly help with this by increasing profitability of not-so-often-visited dungeons, but in all honesty, I do don't do that either.

Or in a less circumspect manner of speaking; Yeah, it's a reduction in total content, but I'm not sure I can argue against it because I'm not sure I'll miss the loss anyway. If anything, I'd say that's a reduction that's going to be more felt by casual players who are too casual even for ten man raiding, as they'll have less "content" to choose from at their chosen plateau of progression.

 

Liebestod

I doubt it, given that from what we know about Northrend so far, the math adds up that there are only going to be 12 5-man instances total unless they add new zones post-release with more instance portals, which seems unlikely to me.

Well, this really speaks more towards Blizzard's failure to properly-incentivize the harder heroics than to the point that variety is unimportant. I admit that my stance on this largely comes from the perspective of simply seeing it as a reduction in content (and reductions = bad) rather than really asking what the "right" number of endgame 5-instances would be.

 

SanSul

A reduction of content would be a good thing if it meant better quality content. TBC is filled with poorly designed, undesirable instances. Auchidoun, Old Hillsbrad, etc. Hardly anyone runs these because they were far to hard for far to long, and provided less badges/hour then the easier places. Not only that, they offered nothing unique to really bring people back to them. Every heroic dropped badges, and maybe that is the problem.

Weapons that drop in an instance should be upgradeable based on how many times you run that instance. Say for every 15 times you run an instance, you can add one socket to the weapon you currently have. This socket would not allow attack power, this way the dps remains the same, but the stats keep growing and eventually would offer more raw stats then a raid drop, but the raid drop would be better for raids.

Not even just stats, how about particle effects, and glowing, or the weapon gets larger and large the more you run an instance. There needs to be long term rewards for running very old content, and not just generic badges that all old content offers. They are starting this with tiered badge rewards, but I think every instance needs to provide their own unique badges, and unique rewards. Or group the related instances together to all offer the same badge and have unique reward.

I know WoW doesn't cater to Koreans, but in Korea, the grind is the biggest thing that people play for, its what matters. WoW grinds after TBC are probably the least intensive of the majority of MMOs. And this is the sole reason content is not being used. All old content really needs motivational and optional grinds that will improve your character differently from raiding, and not equal to raiding.

If you want the best damage weapon in the game, raid. If you want the coolest looking super high stat sword in the game, grind for months in an old instance.

 

orcsgotbooty

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss old hillsbrad, I wish I had a link to the official wow forums favorite 5 man poll, but old hillsbrad literally had 60%+ of the vote. Sure heroic mode pre nerf was pretty bad, but the lore, and the setup (aka not random groups of 4 mobs in a hallway) made many players very happy and I hope more 5 mans are designed like this.

As for upgradeable weapons, so you would add a socket that won't take attack power, now I'm assuming your also not going to take str/agi/hit/crit because they add crit and or ap to many classes. So your weapon can just have massive amounts of stamina and intellect? I struggle to see any appeal to this besides a tank that has had bad luck with raid drops.

 

Lamaros

They stated that they were going to do the heroics properly this time, with individual itemisation, new bosses and events, even using different parts of the dungeons. A big call, but if they do it I would say that it would not necessarily translate to a reduction in content. If I every heroic had some special boss, some timed run aspect, different boss mechanics, or just entirely different loot then you would get a new 'feel' from the places. And every dungeon would get a heroic, so instead of 15 dungeons and some different hit-n-miss heroics you'd have 12 dungeons and 12 good heroics.

Maybe 12 is better anyway. Many of the TBC dungeons were really boring and kinda odd designs. I'd much rather 12 Strath/SFKs than 15 Blood Furnaces.

The most interesting thing, at least as far as this forum is probably concerned, is how many raids we are going to see and what quality we'll get from them.

In TBC we had two 10mans and seven 25 man raids. Can we expect to see 9 10/25 man raids in WotLK by the time Arthas is patched in to the game? It would, if there is any enjoyable difference between the 10s and 25s, give players 18 options.

The thing that interests me the most is where we are going to see the Naxx/Kara/BRD/Uldaman kind of design approach. Not necessarily the number of players in the place, but the big instances that have a heap of bosses and aren't necessarily done in one sitting until you know the place really well. I assume we're going to see these left exclusively as raid content, which makes sense, but it might also mean we see fewer of them. TBC only really has Kara and BT, with only Kara going the whole length. The 'success' of Kara might mean we see more of this in TBC, but who knows. Hopefully there will be a good mixture, from Kara to Mag length, and at least as many raids overall.

 

SanSul

Understand the problems, wasn't devoting much time to thinking of the long term consequences. But I do know there are ways to make weapons desirable for non raiders/raiders that do not detract from the performance of raid dps weapons (such as the way arena weapons do).

 

orcsgotbooty

A weapon is either going to be optimized to the point its the X numbered best at tanking/dpsing/healing, if its not very good for any real use the only option left is for it to be giant and "shiny" so people wear it with thier pirate outfit running around shat like I do with a +20 spirit broom. There really isn't much room for anything else.

 

◊ Cadfael

Which are the 8 max-level instances in TBC ?

As far as it concerns me, we have Shattered Halls, Steamvaults, Shadow Labyrinth, Botanica and Arcatraz (and Magister's Terrace). That's 5 on TBC release, 6 now.

Heroic mode always counts as max-level anyway but that's not what we're counting. I don't really see much difference here.

 

Mordant

The Black Morass and The Mechanar.

 

Jangro

Mechanar and Sethekk Halls make up the numbers.

 

◊ Cadfael

I guess you can count them, I find those significantly easier than the ones I listed.

 

Liebestod

Black Morass and Mech. Given that you can't even enter Mech as a non-druid before 70.. I debated including Sethekk too, yea, but decided against it.

Right now it looks like WotLK will have:

Malygos 1-shot raid (unknown progression tier)
Chamber of the aspects likely 1-shot raid (unknown progression tier)
Naxxaramas (14 bosses, 1st progression tier)
Ulduar (looks like <8 bosses, 2nd progression tier)
Gun'Drak (?? bosses, ?? progression tier)
Azjol-Nerub raid (?? bosses, ?? progression tier, could be a one-shot)
Icecrown Glacier raid (?? bosses, last progression tier)
Possible Utgarde Raid, may have been dropped however.

At release, we'll have Malygos and Naxx and probably Ulduar and maybe Gun'Drak. Can't speak for anything else. But tbh it's not that much for the entire content cycle, and it only seems like a decent amount because Naxx is being recycled, which is kinda cheesy. Overall it seems that Blizz is being parsimonious with the actual new endgame instances overall... maybe there'll be a quality over quantity focus, and the outdoor content looks really awesome, but it doesn't seem like the bar is very high to start off with in this regard.

 

Nakari

If you define "max level instances" as instances which drop ilvl 115 blues and provide reputation with their respective faction until exalted you have Shattered Halls, Steamvaults, Shadow Labyrinth, Black Morass, Mechanar, Botanica and Arcatraz. Sethekk Halls only partially fit into this (only Ikiss drops ilvl 115 items, and until 2.3 reputation gains stopped at honored).

 

Ukerric

Report from the D&R panel is three tier 1 raid, and they want to pace the content instead of trying to release all at once, so we have only 3 raids scheduled for release.

 

Liebestod

Three tier 1 raids? That seems rather excessive, although I'd imagine that the Malygos raid would probably count as one of them (I suppose technically TBC had 3 Tier 4 raids..) Still, though, putting other full instances on the same progression tier is probably too much. Maybe they could do something creative and make Naxx 2.0 overlap multiple tiers of raid progress, but I kinda doubt that.

But really, if the only 3 raids at release are Naxx+Malygos+Gun'Drak??, that'd be somewhat underwhelming.

 

• Chicken

Assuming Naxxramas's size doesn't change it sounds like there'll be less first tier raiding content in WotLK than there actually is; Naxxramas by itself is already more content than any single tier of raiding in TBC had after all (This is when putting SWP on it's own tier, which I think it deserves when compared to BT and Hyjal). If there really will be three raid instances right at the release, all three available both as 10-man and 25-man, that's still quite a lot of content for the playerbase.

It also points to a hopefully better spread of raid instances. For TBC tier four through six were basically "Rushed out the door" as quick as possible, and after that was an extremely long time before new content was released. Long enough that guilds that were used to farming instances for a while before new content became available had people get bored in the wait, and also long enough that those guilds not used to having a chance to farm had to do so for the first time. Both severe causes of player burn out, something undesirable for both us and Blizzard.

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