Addled

Perhaps Blizzard is saving the rest of Azjol-Nerub and Ulduar for another expansion? To me, it sounds like WotLK is setting up for the return of the Titans, especially considering the revelations that:

 

Dancing Wu Li Master

I guess it'll give them a chance to test things like Inscription and Hunter Pets on a wider scale, not to mention the new talent trees. As well as indirectly nerfing a lot of content to allow more people to see it.

 

Copernicus

Quoting the blue posts-

With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade's release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions.

We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:

* New class spells and talents.
* Barbershops in capital cities.
* Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades.
* Stormwind Harbour.
* In-game guild calendar.
* Hunter pet skill revamp.
* New profession: Inscription.
* Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles:
o Orgrimmar Arena.
o Dalaran Arena.

As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re available.

Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.

---

Wrath of the Lich King Arenas

We want to provide some information about the direction of the Arena system. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players will find they are still able to access the Arena system at level 70 for rated matches. Those competing in the Arenas at 70 will still be able to attain items using Arena points and rankings; however, we do not currently plan to offer new items or titles for this bracket. Players who level past 70 will have their Arena points reset to 0 and be removed from all Arena teams in the level-70 bracket.

Two new skirmish brackets (71-75, 76-80) will be available for players who wish to hone their Arena skills while leveling in Northrend. Those who reach level 80 will once again have the opportunity to create new Arena teams and play in rated matches once a new season starts. New items, titles, and end-of-season rewards will be offered to the most successful teams at level 80. Additionally, the sets released for the Arenas in Wrath of the Lich King will no longer share aesthetic similarities with tiered raiding gear. We want those equipped with the best PvP rewards and those with the best raiding sets to stand out from each other. Players at level 80 will also have the opportunity to compete in two new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Content Patch before Wrath of the Lich King

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Wrath of the Lich King Arenas

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Probably not worth it to start a new thread until the beta servers come up. There's going to be some interesting stuff with a few of the raids - Illidan with a lengthy Shield Block cooldown will be amusing.

 

Axl_Stukov

Forget Illidan, I'm more worried about Brutallus/Entropius with no Salvation.

 

seminarca

Tanks will have gotten their better scaling threat in that patch as well.

I'm more worried about tanking Brutallus or M'uru having my Agi to dodge go from 14.7 per 1% to 20 per 1% =/

 

• Playered

Unless they implement the gear changes too then tanks (less so on Druids?) might receive a loss to threat due to a lack of "DPS" stats on their tanking gear though - who knows.

 

LiquidHAL

I'm wondering if the actual inscription slots (and the spell inscriptions) will be available. Raiding between this patch and WotLK release will be a whole 'nother ballgame with talents, with inscriptions as well that would make it a very interesting transition.

 

PSGarak

I'm curious whether all the "mainline" glyphs like shadowbolt, steady shot, fireball, etc will be restricted to 375+ or otherwise Northrend-only recipes to mitigate the effect of the new profession before the expansion.

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

 

clavarnway

They don't really care at this point how it affects raiding progression or PVP. If they did value those things that highly, they wouldn't release the patch before the expansion.

Oh and I really do hope they update all the tanks gear with the "new" itemization that features strength, otherwise for example Shockwave, the Warrior 51 point talent, will be a joke until we get gear that has strength.

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/sig.php/1424974uXyta.png

 

Prinsesa

I don't think the pre-WOTLK patch has anything to do with balance or progression and everything to do with server stability issues.

That being said, I do agree that several mechanics changes, most notably towards Warrior and Paladin tanks but also towards Enhancement Shaman are all in need of retroactive gear changes if they still want those classes/specs to be anywhere near enjoyable in the weeks before Northrend.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

• alcaras

I wonder how this patch will change 2v2 and 3v3 arena balance. Specifically, Druid heal dominance. Anyone care to speculate whether Druids will maintain their dominance?

 

• Falk

Brutallus has always been tankable with stam stacking instead of avoidance stacking, and you most likely get to bring 8 healers (+1 for each side) to M'uru after the changes and DPS skyrocketing. Just saying. :P

But much like 2.0 changed Naxxramas raiding a ton (Hi, Maexxna) this will likely change current raiding in many major ways and innumerous trivial ones.

I don't really think it matters; it's like an unofficial break period for 'competitive' arena - the new talent trees are ultimately tuned with 71 spendable points in mind, and I'd bet most serious competitions and/or the tournament realms will stick to TBC talent trees much like how people stuck with CS 1.6 long after CS Source was released. Bad analogy, I know, but there you have it.

 

james

• 1 potion per combat + 2 or 3 minute debuff on drums
• Raidwide Bloodlust/Heroism/Shouts/Totems
• Moonkins being awesome
• Sunflare becoming a decent healing weapon ? Hammer of Sanctification becoming a decent caster weapon?
• Mixology + Crit Rating from Skinning and Stamina from Professions
• 2% nerf to Vampiric Touch
• No downranking
• Seal of the Martyr
• Smart Heal on Circle of Healing but perhaps a 6s cooldown.
• No crushing blows from +3 lvl mobs.

Should make Sunwell raiding a little different.

 

Mideci

Honestly, there's a pretty good chance that many average-skill, average-gear guilds will be completely unable to beat existing raid encounters if they go ahead with this ill thought out plan.

The new shield block and shear? Good luck if you don't have a prot pally to tank Illidan.

The downranking nerf? Those endless mana priests are suddenly OOM.

The new talents are designed around the Lich King stats and lvl 80 gear and they are going to be dropped into a lvl 70 game and lvl 70 encounters that are based on the existing stats, existing gear and much more important existing mechanics. I'm sure there is a Maexxna here where the changes are going to trivialize something that was hard. But a lot of what works now is fairly tightly balanced around existing mechanics. Having them suddenly break is not going to help people who were pushing to kill Illidan -- or for that matter Brutallus -- right before Lich King.

 

Prinsesa

I wouldn't put it past Blizzard to change the Illidan mechanic to make it more friendly to their new changes. Yes, it's content that's about to be obsoleted, but barring healers going OOM and anything else we haven't thought of just yet, it's the only fight that needs a change in the first place.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Vihermaali

About that, only healers that have even remotely chance of going OOM thanks to this change are paladins and shamans, whose almost only way to affect their mana usage is by downranking. Priests and druids are fine as of now, even without downranking.

So yeah, only place I'm bit sceptic about is Brutallus (full 6 minutes of max rank spam can be hard to maintain), but otherwise I don't see anything that would make those encounters impossible. Except shear maybe. But thats 1 encounter in many.

 

Zurgat

Can use a paladin for Illidan.
Possibly no drums for brutallus though, tricky.
Raid wide totems and buffs to offset.

Can use a ret paladin for the mana issues.
No salvation, but threat mechanics will be reworked. Tank threat increased.

-= Random Ravings - RSS Feed =- Rogue and Hunter stuff here. As well as guides to get you trough your spare time.

 

Exewut

Um you're all forgetting the biggest change, no more crushing blow immunities, so they are going to have to remove them from the table or fights will become untankable. Which should make a lot of the fights a lot easier. Coupled with the double blocking change warriors get this should mean that a lot of content will become trivial. And with the shorter cd's on shieldwall etc. I doubt this patch will make raiding impossible.

 

Prinsesa

Warriors can still gear themselves to become passively uncrushable if they so choose. It is only impossible to become uncrushable in Northrend, because there will be far less avoidance on gear and much more will be required with the rating conversions.

If a Paladin plans his gear in anticipation of losing Anticipation's defense, he will be just as uncrushable as the day before 3.0 gets patched in.

Of course, crushing blows will probably be patched out for current content anyway, but I just thought this bears mentioning.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Mode

They've already announced how they're removing crushing blows: Crushing blows will only happen if a mob is more than 4 levels above you, instead of 3 as it is now. This means no boss will ever crush.

 

Jagiya

Without the truckloads of Attack Power tacked onto tanking gear, I'm a bit concerned about this one actually.
Tanking in all of my BT/Sunwell gear on Beta isn't really a threat increase. They'd have to modify the stats on all Warrior tanking gear... highly unlikely. Warriors will probably end up stacking AP consumables to compensate. Raid-wide Battle Shout and Totems will help considerably, though.

 

• Falk

What? They're obviously going to rework some items if (when) they roll out this patch. Can you imagine playing an Enhance with Strength all over your gear?

 

Jabez

All they need to do to fix the warrior tank gear for the patch is to convert block value directly into strength, much like how they reworked hunter gear for the TBC patch. You keep your shield slam damage, and the threat of your other abilities scale with your gear

 

Zedd

On Illidan, you can let the p2 warrior tanks/dps warriors Intervene on shear.

not elegant but it works.

 

Hylo

You might as well include paladin to your "list" in the spirit of all tank classes being "equally able to main tank" in WotLK. We obviously want our spelldamage AND block value converted to strength. Too bad our main single target threat ability is trainable at lvl75...

That hardly is all you need to do though - lot of different things need tuning.