Addled

For those of you at 80 and running the instances, are there any blue dungeon PvE class sets dropping, such as [Gauntlets of the Bold] or [Beast Lord Helm]?

I've already seen the Naxxramas sets and their bonuses, but how good would you consider the blue sets? Specifically the set bonuses; many hunters swore by 2piece Beast Lord since the trap cooldown reduction was so powerful. Anything similar in WotLK instances?

 

Mikari

There are no dungeon sets implemented currently.

 

Redcape

They are trying very hard to get away from drops that get constantly sharded and dungeon sets encourage that. I would think that you will never see those sorts of sets again because they led to too many dungeon runs where not a single piece of good loot dropped for the 5 people there.

 

Addled

New Blue Post: World of Warcraft (English) Forums -> Death Knight Creation F.A.Q.


Underline is mine.

This is an interesting change of stance. Previously Blizzard had stated that we could create DKs on servers that we didn't have any other characters on, now we have to have a 55+ character on the server to be eligible for a DK creation.

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

That actually makes me rather unhappy. I was looking forward to collecting Dungeon Set 4. Seems to me they could fairly easily apply the tokenized loot idea to this one too... why couldn't specific normal-mode five man bosses drop set tokens for the dungeon sets?

Or if they wanted to stay away from that, the new gear consolidation would still let them make generic "dungeon sets" like the Desolation set. Non-class-specific set bonuses, etc, so that the only "wasted" drops would be the spellpower plate.

 

Rannasha

A change most likely done to prevent any potential new realms from being flooded by DKs. In that respect, not a very surprising change.

 

Ukerric

Too few "normal 5-man" bosses around. There's 4 level 80 normal dungeons (compared to the 7 in TBC), and they're smaller.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

You also won't be running normal mode dungeons for very long. You'll pretty quickly move from those to easy heroics, then harder heroics.

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

And thus the Dungeon Sets are a casualty of the heroics dropping iLevel 200 epics off the last boss, same as 10 man Naxx and thus same as the Tier 7 sets. Oh well.

 

glowacks

The first question is easy: most people will have no clue what the tokens will be for and whether the item will be an upgrade for them - epecially since there are a ton of places to get equivalent level (or close) blues. This is not as large of an issue in raids, and the tiered raid sets are not going to go away any time soon.

I can't give a good answer to the second question - indeed, what was the problem with the wastewalker and mana-etched sets? Especially if there's no class-specific sets. I can give an answer based on what my epxerience with terrible players is though: they will always want the set, even if other loot is better for them. The whole "more loot gets sharded" is then the *non-set* loot will be completely unwanted by morons with set loot.

 

Copernicus

Do heroics have a structured tier (in terms of loot or the difficulty of the non-heroic dungeon) or is it an informal tiering system based on perceived difficulty?

And how big is the difference between normal and heroics? Is it still more hit points and damage with bosses getting a new ability or two?

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Just perceived difficulty, no real difference in itemlevel or quality of loot.

It's still increased health, damage, and some new boss abilities.

The difficulty has changed a lot over the course of beta so it may have changed, but generally it seems that the heroic dungeons that don't have normal level 80 versions are easier than the ones that have a level 80 normal version.

So generally something like Heroic Nexus (level 72 dungeon) is easier than Heroic Halls of Lightning (level 80 dungeon).

Probably pretty similar to TBC

 

Mikari

Heroics feel a lot more like level 80 instances than the heroics of tbc though, I've done most of them and none of the ones I've done require CC at all.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Part of that is the mobs doing less damage than they did in TBC heroics at launch, part of it is due to how well tanks do in LK. Since threat is such a non issue, you can generally just aoe everything down. I did a couple heroics as balance yesterday and I would shoot wrath about two or three times and then go right to hurricane on the entire pack.

 

ildon

Based on the wording, I think it's more of a technical limitation than a change in philosophy.

 

Mikari

Considering on the beta servers there isn't/wasn't any kind of limitation I can't see how it's would be a technical limitation.

 

Fiola

It seems pretty clear to me that the restrictions are to limit the use of DKs as "instant rerolls".

It prevents everyone and their friends from making a DK on popular raiding servers the second WotLK hits.

 

Douglas

I am not sure it's actually a change of stance, per se. I don't think it's intentional.

We know that Blizzard wants (at least some) achievements to be account-wide. We know that they're not account-wide yet, and won't be in time for Wrath launch.

I suspect this is related. The ability to check statistics across the entire account... apparently there's infrastructure that's not in place yet. So, no account-wide achievements yet, and I would bet that this is the real reason behind the DK change. I bet they simply can't in time for release.

(Edit to add the following.)

Remember, in beta you can create any number of DKs, even if no character of yours anywhere has even gotten to 10th level yet. It's clear that we have never tested the code path that is supposed to be used to determine if a player is allowed to create a Death Knight or not.

 

Addled

Is that because the pulls were 1-2 mobs (tank can hold mobs easily with just single target threat moves) or because the pulls were 5+ and the tank was using aoe abilities like shockwave, consecration, etc?



How are the mob packs? Are they a mix (i.e. Shattered Halls where the initial packs had a hunter capable of Scatter Shot, warlock casters, melee, etc) or are they fairly homogeneous (Steam Vaults where packs tend to be either melee or casters, and only the big packs are mixed)?

 

Cloudgatherer

Most pulls in just about all the 5 mans are 3-4 elite mobs, no more of the shattered halls 5-6+ elite pulls in WotLK. The mobs are varied too, usually a caster or two with some melee. AoE tanking is more manageable and spread out to the other tanking classes, so it is pretty rare for anyone to CC anything in a 5 man from my experience. You certainly could use CC though, some of the stationary mobs (casters, hunter type mobs) aren't as easily moved as melee mobs, so that is an option.

 

• adamb10

Blizzard on resist fights: WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> If you don't hear us....

I dont know about anyone else but I think resist fights were a pain to gear for(especially if someone was to leave with said resist gear). Glad blizzard is considering phasing them out.

 

kysta

They could still use a token system without using actual meaningless token items. For example, the "token" could be a blue plate chest with somewhat generic stats and 3 sockets, and "This item begins a quest." When you you accept the quest, you will see what you could potentially trade it for.

 

Bregonn

The MC type resist fights were a huge pain and I hope (and expect) never to see that again. However, a fight like the Curator certainly had an added charm because of resist gear. You can do without and with a bit of overgearing it's not any problem either. But if you went in in the 'expected' gear having a dedicated bolt soaker with some arcane resist certainly helped. The gear wasn't too hard to get (any Scryer tailor had probably made it just to level tailoring and you'd have the Kara crafted gloves to help as well) so a bit of preparation could make the difference between killing him and wiping. That's fun and rewards good players. I certainly hope to see things like it occasionally in the future.

 

Jebraltar

To be honest, Frost resistance for Naxxramas with Frozen Runes seemed like a sensible mechanic, as did the Shadow resistance gear crafted from Hearts of Darkness in BT/Hyjal. As long as the gear is reasonable to acquire for an entire raid, not buried at the end of level 40 five-mans, resistance fights aren't too bad. What I do wish would change is resistance mechanics themselves, because 25% resisted Blaze ticks + melee from a Flame of Azzinoth, for instance, were rather nasty burst and absolutely impossible to control. (A lack of defense-heavy resistance gear for tanks also tends to be irritating when trying to gear for resist fights, because it's a mechanic that only hurts Paladins/Warriors/Death Knights on that particular fight.)

 

Xaev

I agree that the resist mechanics and their randomness are somewhat annoying and I also agree with Blizzard that preparing for a resist fight can help with the anticipation of it. I'd say when the items within the raid instance itself help your reach that resist goal, I'm definitely okay with it in concept.

However, my biggest issue with resist fights is the need to keep separate sets of gear. Already tanks and hybrids carry many, many pieces of equipment and resist gear sets only serve to magnify the problem. I understand that Blizzard is taking steps to increase the amount of inventory space available in Wrath, but even with those additions, the inventory management minigame still won't be fun.