tedv

Melee haste buffs auto attacks, which has no global cooldown. Spell haste only buffs casts, and for many classes this is already at the minimum (before this change). Even though the returns on ratings were the same, the stats simply weren't comparable. They don't even do the same kind of thing (one affects activated abilities and the other affects a continual ability).

A mage running the 8 fireball, 1 scorch rotation will get an additional .1 seconds of casting every 26 seconds of casting, because their scorch now has a shorter global cooldown. That's the only benefit. The fact is that haste is already amazing for casters, but this change only buffs spells that would otherwise cast as fast as the global cooldown. That's definitely not mages. It's shadow priests, affliction warlocks, resto druids, and paladins. Also holy priests on fights where they spam circle of healing.

 

Doroteasenjk

Also, there are hidden assumptions: that the tokens drop exactly in proportion to the classes present, that you never have more than 25 raiders in your guild, that you never have to recruit, and that no raider ever has to respec and needs to regear.

 

royaljester

So you're telling me that spell haste will now not be incredible for mages as opposed to just pretty good? *Cough* Arcane.


I agree, it has now benefitted some classes more, but in the process, they made it incredibly op (in my opinion) for other classes, thus defeating the "balanced" approach that one would hope.

We'll see how things flush out after this goes live or at least ptr, but I highly doubt that the classes who didnt really use it now will stack it too much more, while the classes that do love it (Mages comes to mind) will stack the living shit out of this.

 

• Playered

So mages get a 'potentially' incredible buff on their weaker DPS build, omgosh? its so amazingly overpowered... not.
The highest DPS build is Fire, and the haste buff hardly touches that spec, all the power to Blizz for making an alternate spec slightly more viable than just one (not to mention it helps Mages become slightly better on AoE where currently Warlocks tend to be superior).

 

Nezralix

Incredibly OP? By making it do what it's supposed to do? You seriously need to engage your critical thinking skills here.

 

Melador

You're also assuming that everyone is going for 5/5 of that particular tier, which isn't typically the case (usually there's at least one off-set item that beats a set item).

It's kind of pointless to argue -- a lot of us HAVE geared up with the 2-token system, and I can't recall ever wishing for an additional token -- but I constantly wished for a particular off-set item to drop, and having an additional shot at that would have been huge.

As someone else also pointed out, it will also mean that you'll get to waiting on ONLY those off-items much sooner, which is definitely the more frustrating phase of farming a boss.

 

• Sentius

From: WoW-Europe.com Forums -> 01/02 2.4 Patch notes

Very nice to see that this change will be coming in 2.4

 

Malakitoo

I agree, spending 3 talent points to protect 2 spells 30% of the time is ridiculous. We're not druids or priests where we cast buffs constantly and having a 30% protection works because it adds up to an average amount of dispel failures that make a difference. Nor are we paladins where having a dispel resist at a crucial moment can win you a match.

The spell haste change, however, assuming it works with bloodlust, is an amazing buff. I might have to start gathering a haste set to pvp with as well, lowered gcd would make such a difference.

 

topojijo

The token change is meant for guilds on the lower end of the scale like mine for example. This will be a boon to get people more gear so we can play catch up. It doesn't do anything for higher end guilds and it's certainly not their intention.

 

Denogran

This isn't aimed at people farming BT/Hyj though. It's aimed at guilds that are just now getting to those places. Blizzard's been doing this a lot recently. Instead of nerfing the content, they make everyone going through the content a little more powerful. This just continues that trend, and should really help people that are just now killing Vashj and KT.

 

Nezralix

The interesting thing to see is whether they'll carry it into WotLK. More likely, early WotLK raiding will be a hellish wasteland just like early TBC raiding, but who knows, maybe they'll try to get it right the first time.

 

◊ Hanos

Exactly, 2 Token drops in a 25 man raid was fine. This change is just going to result in significantly less motivation to go run instances once everyone has their set 50% sooner. We killed Illidan the first week of October (well after EJ and others), and everyone with 60% or higher attendance basically has 5/5 or the pieces they want, and a couple of our shaman are closing in on 15/15 with offset Enhancement and Elemental Gear.

What we really would prefer is what they did to T5, 1 more NON-Token Drop per boss, so that the Non-Set pieces get completed around the same time as the set pieces. For example we don't need any more tokens for members that are physical DPS, however, we need atleast 5-8 more cloaks off Teron, 5+ necks off Supremus, 5+ Helms/Rings off Illidan, 5+ Madnesses(or DSTs), and that doesn't even get into things like Warglaives (1 MH + 1 OH so far), Tempests (1 since August), Crystal Spires (3 better then others), etc.

Right now you cap out the set pieces LONG before you cap out the off-set pieces. I still think cloaks, necks, rings, trinkets, and weapons should just be tokenized and do something like AQ40 where you can only turn them in with a certain rep and some drops to a vendor or vendors that are progressively deeper in the instance. Sharding an Illidan Tank helm (because it was our 5th) two nights ago was awesome, when probably 23 or 24 people in the raid were still looking for a particular drop.

 

Blackthought

"Items intended for Retribution Paladins have had their stats adjusted. Retribution Paladins should see an increase in dps as a result."

source: WoW-Europe.com Forums -> 01/02 2.4 Patch notes

 

royaljester

The off-set peice drops are horrendous in most of the 25 mans and people farming illidan/archi, as a lot are doign now, are only feeling the brunt of this. Hopefully the token change morphs into offset additonal drops, but we'll see.

 

Hylo

[E] Bleh, blizzard is cruel sprinkling the notes like this. Ignore please.

 

tedv

I suspect they have learned from the failures of early TBC raiding and will release raid instances at a much slower pace. For example, imagine Karazahn, Gruul, and Magtheradon were available at launch. Then 2 months later SSC was released. 2-3 months after that release Tempest Keep, another 2 for Hyjal, and another 2 for Black Temple. Not only does this give them more time to polish those zones, but it also distributes the endless farming agony that cutting edge guilds have. It also gives them more opportunities for PR.

 

Malan

Its not unlikely, its confirmed by an EU CM posting. Nobody said which rep they'll be tied to though - it could be from normal outland reps. Or they could double or triple the rep gains in BGs and require Honored or Revered.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Shadout

Please let that happen, I have my doubts though. Seen no indications from Blizz so far that they regret the mass release at TBC.

 

◊ Hanos

And as Sebudai noted a while back, they wouldn't be anywhere near as bad if they hadn't filled the loot tables packed full of absolutely worthless items that have been sharded or gone offset since the first time they dropped. Not to mention the biggest offenders, things like the leather healing shoulders off council... aka the boss after the boss that drops the superior T6 ones, or stupid things like half the specs getting an offset pair of legs with 3 sockets, and others getting a set with 0 (same for chests). If they narrowed it down to "Teron drops a cloak" or two cloaks every week, and Akama drops Bracers or whatever it would have worked out better.

The bottomline is there was nothing wrong with the Naxx system, and they didn't realize that putting 3 sets of melee leather bracers in T6 wouldn't result in people wanting to be different, but would instead result in everyone wanting the same pair and the other ones rotting or getting replaced. In WotLK I honestly hope the tokenize far more loot, and if they want to provide offspec loot put it on the vendor, or put 2 different versions of an item with different stats (aka Destro vs Affliction), and give people the ability to swap it at the cost of losing gems and enchants. But running BT and not getting a single viable upgrade when there is a huge number of items still desired (not really "needed" per se) is just stupid.

 

Nitz

Rep vendor PvP items seems to concern PvE reputations.

 

royaljester

Or it could be that now you can buy from IF/Darn/Exodar instead of just SW? I'm not sure on that, but that seems a logical plan. Allowing people to only buy in SW seems kinda....counterintuitive to me.

 

Illundai

I can't believe they are willing to reitemise paladin ret gear, but no word about Enhancement gear + mp5. /whine

Yes, Death Knight tanks are/were too good in 3.0.x. Having 38k HP, 76.81% Avoidance (Miss incl.) and not gimping your threat in the first tier of gear is broken. (Yes this is clickable)

 

Malan

No no, the idea of this change is definitely to allow people to immediately get a survivability set for PvP. Its not just "changing where you buy the items from."

@Illundai - yah Here's hoping there's still a humongous list of class changes coming.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

• Playered

I have to say I hope they keep an eye on haste and instant cast spells, it might need a seperate formula due to the nature of how it works, or revising it into a flat -sec instead of -% cast time.

 

royaljester

So true. So many items are there for RP elements or maybe just to have fun with, the problem is, serious raiders don't give a flying eff about those, while non-serious raiders usually do. They make more money from the non-serious raiders, its sad, but true. The way they could fix this is to drop a "misc" token or something that would allow RP type items (Cat's edge that we've seen 13513554 times or Gronn Lord's axe from gruul) where a player COULD still get if he/she wanted, but wouldnt be forced to and would be on a seperate loot table. I dont mind the items, but when we see those instead of necks, cloaks, helms, lock boots and a multitude of other things... I get very infuriated.