Merple

The ZA Bear Run is exactly what people should be referring to.

ZA Bear runs, especially when they were first introduced -required- classes, due to BC role design.

1 Prot Pally, 1 Shadow Priest, AoE classes were all required in order to have a chance at finishing.

So when we're doing 10 man progression raids, which are tightly tuned, we really don't want to be in a position where we're looking at the T8 raid zone with your geared and skilled T7 Warrior tank and thinking "Ok, so warriors are completely useless in this instance. Dave, you're sitting for a month. We'll pull you in as fury once we've got this on farm."

-In our country, any CBC reporter can dream of becoming head of state.

 

Shadout

I guess there is 2 reasons for making classes more equal, making stats usable for more classes, removing pot spamming etc. One is obviously 10 man raiding. You got to have various classes that can fill a specific role in there, since its hard to expect a certain number of each class represented. Same for gear, if you cant expect X class to be there its harder to make gear dropping for that specific class. This will obviously benefit the players, its annoying to feel unneeded in raid content (and 5 mans).
But at the same time I feel they are doing this to make it easier for themselves to make new raid content. Going to have both 10 man and 25 man raiding is quite a task, especially going forward where its likely some of the higher ups will move on to new game projects. By making everything more equal, balancing and designing raid content (and some other content for that matter) should be easier and less time-consuming for the devs.
And maybe more boring for us unfortunately, but that really remains to be seen.
Who knows, less time spent on balancing might mean more time being creative, its way too early to be negative about these changes.

Some skill consolidating isnt exactly a bad thing either. Like the much needed druid ooc Res.
I'm glad to see more 'smart' aoe healing too, combined with the shaman changes, maybe we can get away from shaman stacking which has been a bit prevalent recently.
Its surely not easy to give interesting and unique abilities to each class in a game like this, where people will min-max if it means 1% better performance. This isnt anything new really, palas and shamans got changed for those exact same reasons.

 

Caryna

On the topic of Frost Nova: in all three instances I have tried so far in beta I was able to Frost Nova (rank 1) bosses and Ice Lance spam them. So either Frost Nova is bugged or the bosses are as I don't believe that's supposed to work.

You know that you play too much WoW if you partners pants become a rare drop.

 

Douglas

Don't forget the changes to Felhunters. My affliction warlock is likely to change from imp to felhunter by default. Felhunters get a built-in seal of wisdom. I imagine that interacting very well with Dark Pact.

 

• Chicken

This is probably of some interest, the first complete blue confirmation I've seen of the removal of Crushing Blows from raid bosses:

Source: WoW Forums -> Crushing Blows, whats the plan?

It was already unofficially confirmed they were being removed, but it's still good to have an official confirmation of this change.

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

 

Tacitus

The devs are tweaking the frozen status in order to make most of the Death Knight frost tree usable on bosses according to a blue on the official DK boards.

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

Sheshonk

My apologies if this has been answered allready, but can mages invis, rogue vanish, Pali DI, or hunter FD clear potion sickness?

 

koaschten

No not since the implemention of the combat pulse in boss fights and you really shouldnt need to pot twice on trash

 

Nurru

It's not merely an issue of getting out of combat. It took 7 seconds for it to go away with me out of combat both times I tested today, and boss pulses likely will prevent it. That's worse than evocating in the case of a Mage needing mana for what it's worth.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Shuror

Invis/Vanish/FD doesn't work, it's been mentioned already.

If I remember correctly, DI puts you out of combat disregarding everything, not sure though. However, having a Paladin suicide mid-combat isn't such a good idea just to allow one char to pot one more time.

 

• Chicken

Actually DI doesn't actually drop you out of combat until a boss resets either. I've been DIed during a wipe numerous times, and my scrolling combat text mod doesn't say I've dropped out of combat until after the boss resets; and I've been DIed for up to a minute before the boss reset.

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

 

Macblade

This might be a bit off topic, but wasn't mitigating crushing blows the reason behind stacking defense and once you reached the defense cap you were supposed to stack straight dodge/parry/etc because it was more bang for the buck?

Does the change to crushing mean that defense will always be a subpar stat now?

(please excuse any errors/misguided assumptions, I've never played any sort of tanking class seriously.)

 

Denogran

Does the debuff persist through death? Could use a DI/ss if you really needed that pot.

Also, I assume that bubble and Ice Block don't clear it?

Edit: Macblade: You're thinking Critical hits, hitting the defense cap will still be important to remove those.

 

• Chicken

Defense is actually primarily for getting rid of critical strikes for both Paladins and Warriors, though it currently has some additional use beyond that for Paladins for getting enough avoidance so that Holy Shield pushes off Crushing Blows as it's fairly cost effective for that.

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

 

Macblade

Ah, my bad, thanks for the quick answer.

 

Pheroz

Way to slow <response removed>

 

Smurrf

Nope. There was actually two magic numbers for tanks. 490 defense made a person uncrittable, and 102.4% avoidance (combined miss, block, dodge and parry) made one immune to crushing blows against bosses. Removing the crushing blows will now mean a much smoother process of gearing for tanks for entry-level raiding. Of course, there will still be a minimum requirement for defense capping to remove crits, but unless they hose itemization, that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

 

Mikari

I hope this is a bug, or maybe some indication they are changing how weapon skill levelling works.

WoW Forums -> No Allistarj weapon leveling?

Though I guess there's still the totems in SMV that still work hopefully.

 

Dralmoo

I have to agree with the majority of the posters in that thread - what purpose does leveling weapon skill serve, anyhow, other than wasting the player's time? It might be the single least fun mechanic in WoW - "cool, I got this awesome new weapon! oh wait, I can't use it until I go kill gray mobs for 30 minutes".

 

Wafzig

I'd rather see weapon skills be like riding skill. You just purchase another level of it.

 

Rasputin

I'd rather see weapon skills be like talent skills. You get 5 points per level.

 

spanko

This is a dumb misconception and has never been true for the ZA timed run. I was in the first group on my server to complete the timed run and we never used a prot paladin and often did it without a shadowpriest or a mage/lock.

 

nfw

Yes but what kind of gear did you have? My understanding is that ZA is designed for Karazhan farming guilds, I can't see how they complete the bear run without the perfect raid setup.

 

Doncabesa

The instance itself without time constraints was the next step from Karazhan, but that very tightly tuned gauranteed mount run was for the cream of the crop.

 

rhea

Too Slow, sorry.