I know I'm going to get hated for this, but I hope they nerf the shit out of tauren hp racial. I sure as hell don't want to have to make a tauren DK to be able to tank raid encounters. That or make model editing legal again, but I doubt they'd go that way so well, I'd rather have taurens get another bonus. It can be a good tanking bonus, without being so powerful.

They should probably rework all the crafting/resist racials too. Resists become worse and worse over the expansion due to being static values, and crafting are still as worthless as they used to be when the game was first released.

I'm quite interested in seeing what kind of DK dmg changes this patch brings however. The talent calculator has some changes, but those are rather minor, I wonder if they're going to nerf AE unholy damage(and they probably should). It's somewhat stupid when the tank outdps everyone else on AE pulls.

How would you handle the huge bonus from rested XP? Or the fact that levelling in a fixed "/played" time changes significantly for alts (if you have good gear you can mail them to help them level faster) or even if you're not trying to exploit, changes significantly as those zones become more/less crowded as you get past launch time?

I'm not sure I want a Feat of Strength that encourages me to take longer to level to 80, since I'd like to go out on raids, etc.

Feats of Strength don't matter, and titles are purely cosmetic. They don't have to be balanced. As has been said, they aren't going to encourage anyone to do it other than those who already would have. Now, I'm as much pro-useless-cosmetic-changes as anyone (my stash of non-combat pets guarantees me multiple acheivements on patch day), but the idea that a title has to be balanced or fair just strikes me as odd. I'm slightly miffed I will never ever have the opportunity again to become a scarab lord, but I'm ok with that, because the scarab mounts are awesome, and it's basically a comparable situation. Is a title too big of a cosmetic reward compared to a feat of strength that they have to be taken seriously?

I don't see how Endurance can stay in the game in it's current form. It's already equivalent to having ~two flasks on at all times. With the way stamina is increasing again the gap is going to get even wider between tauren and non-tauren tanks. I know I sure as hell don't want to switch to my tauren for wrath and throw away years of character progression.

I'm with you on the Tauren racial. With the capability to gem and/or enchant your gear, you can pretty much trade those extra hp into other stats at will, and it's crazy how much stronger 5% hp is compared to 1% dodge, for example.

As far as DK AE tanking, my paladins on live often out DPS my entire group for a full run. Easily with typical puggers, geared and skilled players with some sort of AE can usually beat me, and any instance that doesn't allow me to AOE tank 4+ mobs makes my damage suffer. With the new retribution aura scaling, I understand it will deal as much as 150-200 damage per hit. That is going to do crazy things for any tanks DPS in AE situations.

The crafting racials have always seemed odd--I have no idea what to think of those. As far as the 'resist' racials, perhaps something like

"[Night Elves] - Nature Resistance - You take 2% less damage from Nature spells and effects"

Though 2% might be too low--it comes down to how they change the other racials. I wonder if the new orc racial will stack with talents/metagems? Of course, the post implies changing *passive* racials and not activated ones, but I think many players would like to see activated racials balanced, as well--and this doesn't even mention priest racials.

The crafting racials aren't "worthless". They make skilling up the profession they affect a lot easier. Recipes get learnt earlier, and can be used to skill up longer. As a gnome, it makes leveling engineering almost effortless. Not helpful if you don't take the profession, but can be very nice if you do.

I'd wager that they'll nerf the human spirit racial to 5% now that they're making spirit not so worthless.

Looks like an icecrown questline has us entering the emerald dream

Hope Within the Emerald Nightmare - Quest - World of Warcraft

Never understood how that works. Do you keep gaining skill even after +5 after it went yellow if you have a tradeskill bonus? To me it only seems to save you a couple of peacebloom pickups for taurens, or some copper bars for JC on BEs. I don't really see how it affects anything further, but I might have always misunderstood the mechanics. Still sounds extremely worthless in most cases, but I guess every racial can't be good.

As for my comment about DK AEing, I've seen geared protadin damage, this doesn't look anywhere close to D&D+blight dps. I'm talking of ~1300DPS with fear procs on a rather large zone, almost passively. Add to that bloodboils for 800, frost fever ticks for 450 and you still have time for some good hard hitters on main target. I'm not talking about simply outdamaging pugs, I'm talking about doing twice the damage of sunwell geared people in my blue crafted/pvp tanking gear. Oh and the best of it is, you don't actually need stuff to be hitting you. It can be done while DPSing(not like you won't end up pulling aggro though).

It does seem like blizzard knows though, there seems to be some random abilities nerf in this patch, server isn't up but they also might have tweaked AP contribution and stuff like that. Deathcoil shows as doing 130dmg base now at 80 for example on mmochamp ^^. I'm not too worried about DKs going live like this, was just pointing out last build state was way way broken.

The sole difference between a Draenei JC levelling 6-375 and a JC of any other race levelling 1-375 is that the Draenei needs to make 5 fewer Delicate Copper Wire. Net saving: 60 seconds mining in Goldshire, or at most 50 silver from a total cost measured in hundreds if not thousands of gold.

The only time racial profession bonuses are of any real use is when you're making a twink, as it gives you access to recipes above the normal skill cap of 150 for lvl19s or 225 for lvl29s. That's still a justification for keeping them, but Engineering is the only one to provide significant benefit.

Looks like there's a Naxx thread now, moving this comment to there instead.

Not sure if it's intended or if it's just due to the server being ill but ice crown is no longer no mans land and I can fly around freely, even saw some npc's with quests.

Icecrown was opened with today's build, MMO-Champion had a note about it.

Blizzard now show excess damage in the combat log, similar to over healing.

Well, for example, as a gnome when I got the Smoke Flare recipe from the trainer, it was orange to me. I ended up getting like 30 or so skillups off of making smoke flares. I know I was making them at least until they turned green to me. The smoke flare recipe turns green to a gnome at 360, when to a normal person it turns green at 345.

It lets you skill up on stuff that people normally can't skill up on, and lets you use cheap skillups longer.

The crafting racials are immensely useful for twinks. Gnomes, in particular, have a +15 engineering racial, making it much easier to get a high level engineering to craft bombs, guns, etc.

As for the resists, I agree with you, +10 resist to a single school of magic becomes increasingly useless as the level cap increases. Perhaps Blizzard could move it to a felhunter-style resist method, where you get x resist per level.

It doesn't work like that. Tradeskill bonuses stack on top of your current tradeskill level. For instance, a gnome engineer (+15 engineering racial) would only have to do the equivalent of leveling to 360 engineering via creating items; the +15 bonus would stack on top, making 360+15 = 375. It's an incredibly money saving racial, since the last 5-10 levels of a profession is generally the most expensive.

Of course, the player has the option of maxing out their professions; thats why you see draenei (+5 JC) with 380 Jewelcrafting, or gnomes (+15 engr) with 390 engineering skill. Pre BC, gnomes had a nice advantage, in that the Mithril Mechanical Dragonling and the Gnomish Battle Chicken scaled with your engineering level. So all other engineers had pets that were L60 (300 engineering skill divided by 5 skills per character level), but gnome engineers had L63 pets (315 engineering skill divided by 5).


I'm not entirely sure why everybody gets so uptight about titles. Frankly I think they're completely dumb. I just leave my old pvp titles on my pre BC toons, even though I could choose more recent titles to use. A lot of titles don't really take that much to earn. Justicar/Conqueror, for example, just require a lot of time in BGs. And chances are, if you BGed even half-seriously, you're more than halfway to the title. Champion of the Naaru is easy to pick up too, considering you can pug most, if not all of it (depending on whether your server has pugs for Gruul and Magtheridon).

Well, unless they're dramatically changing how easy it is to get rep (championing sounds like it will make most of the need for rep-grinding go) diplomacy doesn't really max out as easy as a profession. How many people are completely maxed out on every BC and Pre-BC rep? Not very many.

I do see some of your point, it can be quick to max out on the basic reps, and then you feel like it's worthless after that. I still think Diplomacy is one of the cooler racials.

Profession racials used to be really good Pre-BC, when there were Higher-then-max-level crafted items. I kinda miss the change to make it flat at max crafted level.

Does the gnome engineering racial work differently from the rest? I'm certain a blood elf's enchanting skill increase doesn't work like that. I have maxed enchanting 385/385, and all recipes are orange/yellow/green as if I had the skill at 385. Or does it influence the skillup chances but not the displayed difficulties of recipes? For example

Enchant Cloak - Steelweave - Spell - World of Warcraft is yellow for me at 385, even though it should be orange if the skill bonus doesn't affect it.
Enchant 2H Weapon - Major Agility - Spell - World of Warcraft is green at 385, should be yellow if the bonus doesn't affect the chance.
Enchant Chest - Defense - Spell - World of Warcraft is green at 385, should be yellow

The enchanting bonus Blood Elves get is pretty useful for leveling as well. For example, enchanters learn Large Prismatic Shard - Spell - World of Warcraft and Small Prismatic Shard - Spell - World of Warcraft at 335 skill, but both recipes are grey. However, since Blood Elves get 10 free skill points the game treats them as if they're 325 skill, so you can get up to 345 skill just turning SPS into LPS and vice versa (I've personally done this on an alt).

I'm curious as well to see how or if these tradeskill racials will be changed in Wrath, since they're effectively useless outside of skilling up in the profession.

I always hoped for a special gimick. Like giving Engineers that reach the 15 points over the cap a special firework or something similar.

I run two gnome twinks (mage and warlock, both with engineering) and they work like I described. The +profession doesn't increase the displayed difficulty of the recipes. For instance, a gnome engineer at 375 engineering would have a Engineering tab with recipes that are colored as if any other race had 360 engineering.

Of course, I don't have any BE toons (I have draenei, Tauren, and gnomish toons, my Tauren with +15 herbalism seems to work like my gnomes in regards to herbalism) so your BE might work differently. If it does, then Blizzard needs to buff the BE profession racial, because you guys are getting screwed. Even +5 profession saves a shocking amount of money when leveling a profession.