Siddown

I must be looking at different screenshots, because those changes look pretty substantial to me for a raiding Enhancement Shaman. Fully raid buffed, 30% extra damage is huge. Also, EVERY shock is going 60% cheaper (plus the 6% cheaper anyways) due to the fact that it's likely they'll have one melee crit every five seconds. So you have a permanent AP * 30% increase in Spell Damage (min 700 in a raid), you have pretty much static 66% reduction in Shock cost (assuming those percentages are addatitve). WFT already brings at least +200 DPS to Rogues and Warriors in the same group, I can't see how anyone can think this is anything less than amazing for a Raiding Enhancement Shaman.

Also, someone mentioned needing to drop Resto for Elemental for secondary talents, did I miss something? All the new screens show the talents being in the Enhancement Tree.

 

Zifna

I think the point of calling them Hero classes is twofold:

1. People will stop asking when Hero classes will come
2. It gives them justification for a just-rolled Hero Class Character to be L60, L70, or higher. i.e. they are extra-tough because what ought to be a L1 character registers at the same level as L60 characters.

 

Zogeth

I'm going to dive in the deep and here, and predict a 'Malygos's Lair' as one of the first 25 mans.

There has been some talks that the blue dragonflight are going to make quite a big appearance in this expansion, probably being linked in through these 'Vykrul' viking guys. I saw somewhere in a description of howling fjord, or dragonblight, that these blue dragons (led by malygos) make an appearance.

Having said that, killing a dragon aspect is a bit OTT in my books. (Guess we'll have to when Neltharian pops his head out of the buried lore)


Offtopic: How cool did that giant monster Yeti look like in the trailer

 

Valaranin

Yes but to get the most out of the shocks your now going to be throwing around, you'll want to take elemental talents.

 

• Shabadu

I'll still want Totemic Mastery and Nature's guidance to get an extra 3% hit on spells. I just won't take healing focus now in favor of getting quickness.

 

Siddown

Considering we know practically nothing about the class, I'd say it's not really worth worrying about yet. As much as we like to complain about Blizzard, they've done a pretty good job of making a fun game. They rarely repeat mistakes, and the ones they do make, they tend to fix. While individuals might hate certain parts of the game, they do have a habbit of doing right by the masses (eliminating the Attunements, changing the PvP Honor System, changing Raid Sizes, etc., etc.).

While I know you aren't all doom and gloom, this is just a video game, so even if they screw it up horribly, it's still a year away, so why worry?

 

Siddown

I guess my answer to that is, so what? To do optimal Raid Damage every class has to make some decisions, that's just the way it is. My raiding character is a Rogue, I have no choice but to go 11 pts into Assassination and have a minimum of 20 pts in Combat, a viable raiding spec is not possible without them.

So if all Enhancement Shaman have to go something like 18/43/0 to maximize their DPS in a raid, then that's just the way it'll be.

 

• Playered

Isn't Malygos within 'The Nexus' ?

 

Dejablue

Malygos is a good guy tending to his nearly devastated brood. I certainly hoipe they dont get into a rut of "OMG Malygos went mad, kill him. OMG Alexstraza is mad Kill her, OMG Nozdormu went mad kill him, OMG Ysera went mad in the emerald dream kill her" .

 

Dejablue

Unfortunately:

In the introduction panel for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, it was revealed that Malygos has apparently lost some of his sanity since the events of the Sunwell Trilogy. He has become hostile to all magic-users, particularly the Kirin Tor of Dalaran. Dalaran has therefore moved to Northrend, as a capital for both the war against the Lich King, and the Kirin Tor's fight with Malygos. He is presumably found in the Nexus, given that he is now known to be in Northrend.

 

Targrend

I'm not an expert on Warcraft lore, but from what I've read it consists primarily of good guys turning bad. Why would they stop now?

 

Felippe

What I'd like to see is if they plan on addressing the situation with heroic attunements. While it's not especially difficult to get revered, it's pretty obnoxious when you have to do it with several factions. I think it would be way better if they changed it into a quest chain. At least it would provide more depth than simply grinding away so you can unlock new versions of bosses with better loot to keep grinding away at.

 

Kokolums

Obviously this harkens back to Diablo II: LOD. Blizz seems fond of reusing its own ideas. For example, D2 introduced the concepts of trinkets in your inventory, which led to trinkets being a permanent item slot in WoW. Or being able to gem gear in D2 coming to WoW. Up to this point, however, we had not seen a reinterpretation of the concept of D2 runes or runewords in WoW. But its apparent that this "rune sword" is exactly that.

So, let's think about how the rune sword might function by comparing what we know from D2 vs what we've been told about WoLK

For example, Lum + Ko + Tir were an arrangement of 3 different runes that when socketed into a helm created a special unique item. There were like 30 runes. Here, we are looking at a simplified version of just 3 runes (frost, blood, and unholy) etched into your "runesword bar". The description of WoW rune mechanics is a bit fuzzy in that either runewords are 6 runes long, or they can be up to 6 runes long. In D2, runes could not be re-used. But here, they say that once used, they suffer a cooldown timer and cannot be changed in combat. So I wonder if the frost, blood, and unholy runes are actual tools you keep in your bag, like shaman totems or a mining pick, etc. WoW Shamans have to complete a quest to get their earth totem, etc., and that tool allows them to cast that class of totems. With that in mind, perhaps Blizz starts you out as a level 1 DK, with the usual class-specific quests at 10, 20, 30, etc. Maybe at level 10, you have a quest to obtain the frost rune. Then at 20 its the blood rune, etc.

That said, they seem to be running out of ideas to reinterpret from D2. The biggest single thing not yet implemented from D2 is probably mercs. A late addition to the game, Mercs were NPCs you purchased that came with perhaps a special spell that was meant to help you level. They levelled up with you and got more powerful, but weren't overly powerful. I was expecting to hear of something like that at some point when Blizzard felt the 1-60 grind had become too boring for most. Also, that third difficulty level. D2 offered normal, nightmare, and hell difficulty. WoW has introduced a "nightmare' difficulty level called heroic. Perhaps they will include a third difficulty level on top of that. They also haven't tried D2's "synergy bonuses" for talent points yet.

 

ebbv

No, it isn't. Not even remotely.

The way they've described it you get X rune slots. There are 3 types of Runes. Out of comabt you can fill in those X rune slots with any combination of Runes. Each ability you use will require N runes of Z type(s). Once used the Runes go on Cooldown and thus limit your ability to use that ability -- or another ability that requires them -- until the Cooldown is up.

This is absolutely nothing like Diablo 2 Runes or Runewords.

 

Liebestod

It's a Magnataur.. :P

Magnataur - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki

And I'm kinda surprised that Sunwell would be the next raid... it really should get its own zone as originally planned! I don't see it being implied in the reports of what were said, but I guess those reports might be incomplete?

 

Rasputin

It is in that it can require combinations, if not permutations of runes. There could be an ability that requires 6 Frost runes, or 5 Blood, or 2 Blood and 2 Unholy, or what have you. So you have to reinscribe runes to unlock those abilities, making the runes inscribed directly tied to what abilities you can have. So that is the same as Needing Lum + Ko + Tir in your item, if not in the specific order. And for all we know there could be some abilities which will require your sword to be ordered 2 Blood, 1 Unholy, 2 Frost 1 Blood to use, making them nearly identical to Runewords. In any case, I can see the similarities.

 

songster

Aye. It looks more like giving you three "flavours" of energy to juggle. To use [Weaksauce Nubspell] might cost you 1 point of redness, while using [Imba Doomspell] might cost you 3 red and two green.

Each of the energy types regenerates over time, but you're limited by your own choice of what you put in your slots. You can choose to stack all your 6 slots with "red energy" (and thus presumably have access to high level "red" spells), or go for two slots red, two slots blue, two slots green and be more of a generalist.

 

Dejablue

Since Hero Class seems to have little meaning, being balanced against the other classes unless they really are going to be more powerful, I don't see why they aren't keeping us at level 70 and having all classes do a quest to become a hero class. Then once a hero class have us level to 10 as that hero class, so were a 70 Paladin/10 Death Knight or whatever.

Since they already have to do 10 more talent points into every single tree, why not scrap leveling to 80, level hero classes instead and have separate hero class trees. It would be the same amount of work and balance and wouldn't change your class fundamentally. One could still use their old spells they would just have new hero class abilities gathered through 10 Hero points. Could even make it specific so if your a feral and become a Druid of the Claw you can only spend hero talent point in the Druid of the Claw tree, not in the Druid of the Moon or Druid of Life trees. Quests let you change your hero class from Druid of the Claw to Druid of the Moon etc.

with this, everyone gets to be a hero class, and still has to level, the hero class, still gets 10 more talent points, hero talents, and bliz doesn't have more work, less work actually. People won't eventually abandon their characters as all of the hero classes come out and will get to maintain and develop their main namesake.

Death Knight is rolled into the Retribution tree as its Hero Class and once you reach level 10 on your hero class you can embark on a quest that lets you create any class beginning at level 60. NOW they don't have to rebalance and change the low level content. Even less work for them.

 

• Shabadu

Magnataur are like mammoth centaur. That was almost certainly a wendigo.

 

◊ Abradix

Dejablue, that would be making Hero classes glorified Talent trees. I imagine this is why Hero classes were originally scrapped, because that IS what talent trees do.

 

Rasputin

Because, as was pounded into my head over in the Does WoW Need More Class Differentiation thread, people do not want any type of permanent change to their characters. This was brought up in the Q&A also, how they preferred to unlock, and so prevent anything form happeneing to the character people are playing.

 

Zogeth

Also, don't blue dragons like guarding things?

Its been a while since i played TFT, but didn't Arthas kill Saphirron because he wanted something Saph was guarding?

Maybe another reason that the blue dragonflight becomes hostile.

 

Talgog

This is a more than fair point, and what has been mentioned about the Death Knight indicates that they're building something that's pretty unique, at least as far as WoW is concerned.

There's nothing like the rune system in game at the moment at all, and it certainly sounds more complex than rage/mana/energy mechanics. Combined with the Level 80 ---> "warlock mountish" quest ---- > Level Death Knight 60/70-80 layout, and it looks like Blizzard is trying to make "noob" Death Knights rare as well as highly ineffective even if they do complete the pre-reqs or have a 3rd party service do it. See the panel comment about six Unholy Runes being a poor Death Knight.

Whether they succeed in finding some medium between the original Jedi pain in SWG and the fiasco of people just rolling them up later, who knows. But it at least seems like they're going to try.

Probably why they want to try one hero class first, as that's only one new variable and while that has balance issues, it's far, far fewer variables than introducing four or more hero classes at once, all with different mechanics and roles. In that case, you wind up with a simultanious equation from hell.

As far as that balance, PvP is probably the most glaring area, not cutting-edge raiding. Everyone on that edge min-maxes, which means Death Knights won't be favored over rogues for DPS or warriors for tanking unless they really are tremendously more powerful than either, which Blizzard has said they aren't, or if they have indespensible buffs or debuffs. Their summons (looking at game trailer) are most likely not even wanted in raids given how popular hunter pets and warlock pets tend to be in high collateral damage, high penalty environments.

However, a reasonable DPS class that is meant to tank with his 2H (implying he's very tough) and wears plate, with powerful cooldown special abilities from rune combinations could very easily be a mess to deal with in PvP. Breadth of abilities can be more important than depth of abilities there, even if it won't win a "perfect" raid DPS slot. A warrior using Deep Thunder/Stormhearld and Mace Spec may not have the CC abilities of a rogue, but its still damn effective, for example.

Even a summon that's little more than throwing sand in someone's eyes could certainly win a fight if it was used well. People already do that with Barov Peasant Callers.

 

Dejablue

So hero classes don't have talent trees? Where is alternate advancement at?

People don't want to make decisions because they may not like them. What do you do 2 xpacs from now when your class is obsolete and now you have to choose a new permanent Hero class that has nothing to do with the character you spent 5 years developing and advancing?

Barring these things, blizz really has nothing. They have 10 more levels some UI improvements and a pet class you can get if you level to 80. There is no class or character differentiation, no dyes for armor, no alternate advancement of any kind. This will be fine if it is simply Hero before the name because you have to get 1 character to 80 beforehand. I would rather be able to start a mage at 60 rather than a DK.

More of the same, more of the same. But that is why I haven't logged in since July 3rd.

Great point Abradix

 

Dejablue

True shouldn't jump to conclusions. I am pretty sure it is a regular class with Hero before it to show you have a main at 80.

Still I think the implementation is rushed. It looks to me like they had nothing. More content, UI improvements, Northrend is major but nothing for classes other than more leveling. No new races, no new classes, sooo Lets introduce this rushed Hero class.... That is what I see hopefully they will develop and introduce more Hero Classes with the expansion and this is just a taste of what is to come.

So on that note what are the implications of having another class in raids. On a macro scale.

The paladins on horde side were really accepted with open arms and sought after yet on Ally side Shamans were really kind of few and far between. Cant be too specific but what do you all think about having a new class or possibly, hopefully, more Hero classes in the game, assuming they are regular classes and Hero because they take an 80 to roll.

What about raid spots and people rerolling. Do you think it will be good for the whole as people that are ostracized, Ret paladins, Moonkins, are able to reroll a coveted, presumably, class?

Do you anticipate this causing any guild stress as the change from 40 to 25 man raids? With Paladins and Shamans we knew what we were getting and this was a small part of the problem. What if your MT wants to be a DK now or all of your Healadins do?

What are the ramifications?