Innervate T.T

Wow. Those images make Ironforge seem so... sad and empty.

Either Frost Nova has no upper bound, or it's so high that it's hard to hit it. I've basically been able to treat Frost Nova as unbreakable on beta.

Is it no longer a guaranteed break on the first crit? Surely that's a bug.

It most certainly doesn't auto break on the first crit on live. About 2 weeks ago, we were fighting a RMP as War/Ret/Resto and managed to kill the priest, only to end up losing 3v2 because the following happened to me while my paladin was kidney shotted:

Frost Nova was reverted from always breaking on critical to sometimes (usually?) breaking on damage, with the break chance being related to the damage taken but not whether it was a critical. Always breaking on crit was only around for like a patch or two. Since the break chance is related to damage crits still have a larger chance to break it, but not an "unreasonable" extra chance.

To clarify, on beta I can crit Frostbolt followed by 2-3 Ice Lances and still not break Frost Nova. I can think of maybe a single time it has broken early. But this happens on PTRs sometimes, so we can't tell if it's intended at this point.

Is anyone else upset at how Blizzard is homogenizing abilities across classes? And in addition to that, trivializing group synergy by making certain buffs/spells apply raid-wide?

Here are some examples of how classes are becoming less unique in WotLK:

• Shamans get Cleanse/Dispel (Cleanse Spirit) and Polymorph (Hex)
• Warriors get Avenger's Shield (shockwave)
• Hunters get Execute (Kill Shot) and Entangle (Bear Trap)
• Druids get OOC rez (Revive), Last Stand (Beserk)
• Priests & Druids get Chain Heal (smart raid CoH, Flourish)
• Priests get Holy Shock (Penance)
• Pallies get Prayer of Healing (Beacon of Light), Evocate (Divine Plea), Shield Slam (Shield of Righteousness)
• Rogues get Disarm (Dismantle), ranged Whirwind (Fan of Knives)
• Salv is removed, Tranquil air also- threat built into mechanics
• Auras are raid-wide, so are totems
• All AoE healing spells now apply raid-wide
• Crushing Blows are removed, Shield Block becomes insignificant

Where are we going with this? I mean we might as well give every healer a HoT, an AoE heal, a direct heal and a Dispel/Cleanse/Abolish Disease. And then we could give all DPS classes a DoT, a direct damage spell and a Pet. And all classes than can tank get a Taunt, a Cleave and a temporary increase to Hit Points.

All these changes point to a lack of creativity at Blizzard. Not only that, but also at a general dumbing-down of the game itself. I've heard people say that its in order to bring balance to 10-man raids. But we do Kara and ZA just fine with raid compositions that vary wildly.

What are your thoughts on this, EJ? Do you welcome merging class abilities and simplifying raid mechanics to make gameplay more "convenient"? Or would you rather retain the individual flavor of WoW's classes, the strategic decisions that go into raiding at the "cost" of the game retaining some small ioda of complexity even if that means not every single person who buys it can experience it all?

Those people are correct. The fact that you can do Kara and ZA with all of the abilities right now just means they were designed with TBC abilities in mind.

Giving more diverse abilities to other classes will open up opportunities for more diverse fights, because you're no longer screwed if you can't find a specific class for some reason.

A lot of those skills mentioned don't much look like each other. I'm not quite seeing how Shockwave is like Avenger's Shield, or penance is like holy shock at all. Other things like the druid OOC revive are simply just good ideas - a druid healer in a 5-man currently is vaguely annoying if anyone dies and you don't have a secondary resser.

About the removal of crushes and things, I don't think it's a bad idea, since I believe that the basic mechanics of the game as a whole should be simple and things should be built on it, instead of having lotsa exceptions that have to be worked around, such as uncrit/uncrush (these aren't obvious to people that just pick up the game, or even experienced players that haven't done extensive testing), or how certain spells only affect parties in raids, and others affect the entire raid.

With that said, having everything have similar skills wouldn't actually homogenize classes unless those skills were all base skills. I'd be happier if a lot of the new stuff is talented, so that there's some sort of opportunity cost for taking a given set of skills, but as a whole, things seem to be getting better.

I feel the uniqueness of classes is being maintained by staying within the thematic boundaries of each class. A good example if Warlocks and Mages, both classes are going through some heavy changes to "like" the same gear but at the same time the changes have kept the mechanics and play styles different. An even better example is Protection Paladins and Protection Warriors.

All your tanks having a melee slow is a good thing, all your tanks having a different way to apply the melee slow is a much, much better thing.