Mistaya

I think the raging about the Healing Grace talent is silly. The other classes threat reduction talents all had a dispel resistance added recently, but the shaman talent did not. Bringing Healing Grace in line with other identical/similar talents was expected and should be no surprise to anyone.

I don't really think Blizzard expects that to fix resto shaman. It was simply balancing a talent with other talents of its type. If you don't spec that talent now, and consider it a bad talent investment, then why would you spec it after the change? It's hardly 'required'.

I'm very pleased with the addition of a token to bosses. Remember that this patch will introduce Sunwell- an instance designed for people wearing T6. Guilds who haven't cleared BT by the time Sunwell hits, or have not been farming T6 for over a month need to be able to gear quickly to be able to experience Sunwell before WOTLK hits. I think Blizz is taking lessons learned from Naxx's late release and trying to make sure more guilds are able to gear up and experience both Illidan and Sunwell before WOTLK. I truly hope it's like AQ40- one of each type dropping.

That change isn't for you BT farm guilds, so don't take it as such.

The PVP changes (no more Diminishing returns/blue PVP set available) sound great.

Remember that this is supposed to be the last content patch pre-WOTLK. We're going to see changes that make it easier for the average player to progress, and generally reduce grinds/easy mode things. Burning Crusade will be obsolete in 6 months or whenever, so don't get too upset when they start handing out freebies to everyone.

Just another Tauren Shaman.

 

Valen

I kind of don't understand the purpose of 3 tokens per boss in t6 content. Blizzard got to know that set tokens aren't holding guilds back, the random items are. It would make much more sense if bosses would drop an extra random piece, or just remove the "crap" items from the loot tables. Last night in BT we simply disenchanted everything from first 4-5 bosses, even if everyone in raid needs something from those. Most of the guild already got their t6 gloves and helms, but we still have to see the caster sword/healing legs/ranged weapon from archimonde.

Not trying to dig out yet another "why loot is random" discussion, but if blizzard is trying to help the guilds gear up faster, the set tokens aren't the way to go, adding additional random piece slot is.

 

◊ Shaker

Hint: It's not for your guild - it's to gear up the guilds who aren't in T6 yet so they can see the Sunwell too. Everyone asked "If Sunwell is such a gear check how are guilds just getting into T6 going to handle it?" - this is one way to speed that transition up.

Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.

 

Replica

I had to open up a talent calculator to find out what Healing Grace was. I don't think i have put points into that since well before Skeletal Ushers were made shackleable and i really don't want to start again now. But i can kind of agree with Mistaya, a buff is a buff is a buff. Protecting Heroism better could be huge for Warrior/Shaman 2v2s with an extra couple of seconds worth, if you get lucky with resists of course. Hooray for the RNG?

I also really hope that the blue PvP set becomes a viable option for new 70s to gear up with. If it requires revered rep then it's only going to serve to help older characters such as this one which has most things maxed already (thinking rep, if not gear).
If it requires revered/exalted then i guess it'll help out my offspecs. I have one piece of Resto PvP/Arena loot total on my Shaman, so i can cover the wounds of being Enhancement for so long by jumping right into a new spec with some extra resilience much less painfully than before, which will be very welcome.

Honored however would be perfect, and would give a lot of extra incentive for the rerollers. Just thinking about it some more they should probably also add the Season 1 Epic Honor loot onto the vendors at a higher rep level (revered/exalted) on top of the superior loot. Why not?

 

alkis

Adding S1 epic honor loot into the vendors would be great for rerollers or your alt warrior you never bother pvp'ing with but you want now that you've cleared the game but the honor farm is too much for you to do.

 

Umph

I think Honoured would be the best rep level to stick it at. It's not fantastic gear so I don't think it's worthy of revered, and as you say, it's somewhat pointless to new 70's if they have to grind up the PvE rep to buy an old PvP set - Might as well get stuck into the BG grind.

Especially if your battlegroup's AV has a two hour queue associated with it .

 

Viscera

And I don't see how giving one extra normal item instead of a set item will make them gear up slower (unless items like memento of tyrande, tempest of chaos, blade of savagary, madness of the betrayer etcetera aren't upgrades in your eyes). Even after a few weeks a guild will most likely be better off with a second random item already.

 

Valen

I explained that the "gear-up" issue isn't the tokens but random pieces. How does that have anything to do with my guild or a guild that started BT yesterday. Everyone gonna need those non-set items by a fair amount to get "t6-geared".

@ Boneitis (post below mine): No it's not a bad thing, however it's not fixing the problem that blizzard obviously is trying to fix and that is helping newer guilds to gear up in BT/MH faster. The gear up process doesn't take long because of set pieces but because of random drops. Infact throwing alot of token at people only makes the instances more boring and mindnumbling from my experience, because after a while you take 25 players decked in full t6 in there hoping to get some critical random items that may never drop.

 

Boneitis

Why are we complaining about more gear? Is this a bad thing?

 

david0925

The issue isn't more gear; rather bosses need to drop extra loot on their off pieces, rather than just the set tokens. This will solve 2 problems

1.There are 14 bosses in T6 content, but only 5 drops Tokens. So you have some bosses dropping 2 items, and some bosses dropping 4? a bit out of balance. If they dropped an additional non-set item, it'll make that transition smoother.

2.We don't really need moer tier pieces: This is true even for Beginning-to-full-clear-bt guilds. I'm sure people like to see more Madness or Skull of Guldan than another set piece that can be substitued for an off piece.

 

Akron

It isn't a bad thing, but Tier tokens weren't even a big a problem. Before 2.4, two tokens per boss were still guaranteed and achieving your 4pc bonus was not hard. You could be unlucky and have a string of bad luck over one particular token type but no biggie.

The problem is the non-set drops. In one patch (I think 2.2) SSC/TK bosses were made [b]all/b] to drop at least three items. That meant that bosses which didn't drop a tier piece dropped three random drops instead of two. This change was very helpful as it increased the chance per reset to get rare items such as Talon of Azshara. Why don't they adopt this change to Tier6 content as well? This is what would really help, not an additional token from five bosses!

 

• Chicken

I'd still say fake, fake patch notes have typically contained some notes which were either already confirmed to be true by blues, or were likely to be true based on what other classes talent trees contain, or in some cases include popular forum suggestions.

I'd say the fact that those patch notes do not contain the information about Doom Lord Kazzak and Doomwalker becoming cashcows, nor the spellhaste change indicates they're still fake, even if it contained a few real changes.

It wouldn't surprise me if a couple of other things in those fake notes will turn out to be in the final patch notes as well, but that just indicates that the person that wrote the fake patch notes knows the kind of things Blizzard typically put into the patches, not that the patch notes were an early draft that got leaked.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Fenks

I don't know what it's like for the other classes, but for a fresh warlock coming out of T5 content the main damage increase comes from getting 4pcs T6 moreso than from offset drops; especially since the offset slots tend to have viable alternatives from ZA/badges/craftables.

Maybe the whole point Blizzard is trying to achieve here is NOT making the guilds that have been farming T6 for ages even more powerful but getting the more recent ones in line with the rest quicker so they have an easier time tuning Sunwell to be at an appropriate difficulty to be challenging for both gear-wise, rather than it being horrendously simple for one or horribly overtuned for the other (assuming equal skill). At the same time it won't threaten the "racers" since the ones getting first kills will be the ones that intend to drop MH/BT as soon as Sunwell arrives anyway to go in full progression mode. The rest will probably just follow faster than they otherwise would have.

It's not like T6 gathering rate at the moment is at such a pace that a guild has half their raid in 4/5pcs a month after they first kill Illidan, it still takes quite some time depending on luck and raid composition and this will remove that for those guilds.

On the other hand with all the buffs to progression speed, I do hope they won't be removing the attunement to MH/BT aswell, skipping entire tiers of content can't be what Blizzard wants either.

 

Akron

Well, unless you have very bad luck - assuming it took an average guild two resets to kill Illidan - a month after they'de have 12 Mother tokens, 12 Council and 8 Illidan. Assuming that your average guild would have been killing Archimonde/Azgalor for far longer ...yes, getting 4piece T6 is far easier than waiting half a year between Shadowmoon capes and other rare drops mixed with the Moonkin drops.

 

Osse

20 Illidari council kills and one madness of the betrayer trinket brings back the good memories of BWL and drake fang talisman..

 

Sayessa

We killed Illidan in Dec and already don't need anymore Protector breastplates, but had zero skulls, zero crystal spires and zero signet rings. We have never seen the bloodboil trinket drop (Bloodboil loot is almost 100 % disenchant), had one supremus necklace (but the idol drops every second kill) and no Gorefiend totem. Our mages are running around in Maulgar/Prince cloaks, we have never seen the cloak off illidari council.
They really should have added a nonset item instead of a additional token.

 

graver

Heh, we killed Illidan in late november, zero bows, zero shields, zero casters heads, zero healers backs, only 1 guldan, only 1 zhardoom, but guess what - 5 healing maces, 4 melee rings and 3 warglaives. Something is really wrong

 

koaschten

reminds me of 2 pairs of Shadowmaster's Boots since July last year

But we got hook to loot discussions again, lets get back to topic...

... anyone beside me noticed ... no comments on rogues?

 

Gogusrl

What I don`t understand is why they won`t do something about haste and dot classes. Don`t think it would be overpowered if it would reduce the time between ticks and duration overall like it does on channeled spells.

 

Brissa

Nothing is wrong...
But I agree that adding non set loot instead of set tokens would be the way to go. In particular for dps warriors whos set sucks.

 

Illundai

If haste reduces the global cooldown of putting up DOTs, then surely that means you'll be able to cast an additonal shadowbolt(s) between refreshing dots? Or am I so wrong here?

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)

 

Vihermaali

Well, problem seems to be that people can't squeeze a new spell into their spell rotations. It doesn't fit, or so they say.

 

Tyrana

The problem with DoTs and faster global cooldown is that it only scales well with its damage per casttime, actual damage per second is very little touched.

 

Thebeat

Then this guy must be the Amazing Kreskin because I don't think anyone without psychic powers could have foreseen them putting that shaman dispell buff on Healing Grace (a worthless pve talent). I think it's more likely that the list was a very early (like first draft early) list of notes.

 

• Chicken

It's not like the Druid and Priest versions of those talents are also aggro reductions which were given the dispel resistance effect in TBC or anything. Oh wait.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of