◊ Cathela

As a very minor nitpick to this, the second sentence isn't quite true. Stat point allocation varies linearly with ilvl, but not in direct proportion (i.e., there's a zero-offset.)

However, you're completely correct about the interaction of the 3/2 scaling of item point cost and the 3/2 scaling of item point budget. It's an aspect of the system that a lot of people seem to miss.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

PSGarak

Diablo II had a few interesting artifacts of itemization that I think might work well in WoW. Specifically, I'm thinking of how a few of the bonuses were tied to specific slots. Like how health regen was mostly a belt bonus, higher +skills were usually amulets, and so on. Some of the more odd bonuses like run speed or whatnot wouldn't make much sense as normal item mods, unless there was a limitation on how much of them you could get, by where they could occur. Additionally, if two item mods only ever occur on the same slot (like run speed and snare resist both being on boots) there's an interesting and non-trivial choice you have to make about your character (more non-trivial if such speed stacked with enchants).

There's already a tiny bit of this in the game, with speed boosts only appearing on boots and disarm resist only appearing on gloves, but they're basically seen as edge cases rather than a normal part of itemization, and they seem to have been dropped entirely for TBC. Things like stun resist on hats, silence resist on amulets, spell range on gloves, spell resist (reflect?) on cloaks. From my list it looks more like distinguishing PvE from PvP gear further, for whatever that's worth, but if you can come up with good mods it allows for non-analytic tradeoffs of real utility for effectiveness, which is just about the only way you can side-step min-maxing. The key thing is, the effect is limited because it can't be stacked, so there's more freedom to think about qualitative character changes.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Lanlaorn

If they do go with secondary effects as an upgrade path rather than just linearly increasing the numbers, Blizzard will really need to make sure the secondary effects (procs or whatever they are) are a) actaul upgrades and b) balanced in a PvP sense and an inter-class sense.

For example, the Netherwind 8 piece bonus was amazing, 10% chance for your next spell to be instant cast. But wearing full Netherwing as opposed to a full set of a non-tier gear would actaully lower your DPS considerably because the proc just couldn't make up for the poorer stats on NW (it was chock ful of mp5 and resists). I particularly laughed my ass off when I was the only person who wanted Mish'undare. But at the same time, that set bonus was insane for PvP. In a time of 3-5k HP pools and spells that hit for 2k, a free second cast was ridiculous.

My point is, I could easily see Blizzard make two items, one with generic stats and one with lesser stats and a terrible effect. That's just pure frustration as we now have one useless item cluttering up the loot tables. The lesser stats +bad effect item might not even be an upgrade over whatever people are currently wearing from earlier content. We already see them making poorly itemized items right now with just 'normal' stats to work with and I think most class Ashtongue Trinkets and other 'interesting' mechanics have shown they're not good at working with 'exotic' stats.

This hypothetical terrible item's effect could also be something ridiculous for pvp, say rogue gloves with 'chance on hit, stun the target'. They're useless for PvE DPS but overpowered as hell for PvP, frustrating both the raider and the non-raiding arena player.

I personally would love more interesting items, of course. The little +damage proc on Spellstrike was great, a nice little side effect on already great items. It's just I could so easily see Blizzard screwing this up.

 

Alici

But Blizzard did get some of them right. 5/8 Transcendence (50% chance to fade) was an extremely powerful proc that had application in every PvE fight yet was overpowered in none.

Unconventional set bonuses such as my example tend to be much more interesting and exciting, too. I'd think that you'd notice less about 5% extra damage or mana saved...but you sure would notice when Reactive Fade procs. Socket bonuses could honestly work the same way too, to a lesser extent. Bonuses ought to be exciting, innovative, and useful.

 

Addled

QFT. I always felt that the T3 set bonuses were fantastic, just because they were so unconventional. Mage T3 8set bonus is a chance for zero threat on your next cast. Druid 6set bonus increases the maximum health of the druid's healing target. Paladin 6set gives a target Holy Power, and 8set bonus gives a healing bonus to Cleanse.

Blizzard devs seem to be back on the boring bandwagon though, since the current tier set bonuses are pretty conventional.

 

Whiteknight

just for the record
[Swift Skyfire Diamond]
[Explorer's Walking Stick]
[Figurine - Golden Hare]

 

• Karakas

They're probably afraid of creating set bonuses that are so powerful that they are preferred over the next tier(s) of gear progression, i.e. 3 piece Trans/Stormrage, 5 piece Earthfury, 4 piece Pally T5 (pre-nerf), and even right now, 2 piece Feral T4.

 

◊ Praetorian

Yeah, I think this is exactly right. And when they made bonuses that were that powerful (t5 paladin/shaman 4pc) they nerfed the hell out of them.

 

Killmour

The trade off however, is that set bonuses are boring. I think it would be great to see more 6-9 part set bonuses that were fun and powerful, but because they require you to use 6-9 pieces it would balance.

If everything was perfectly balanced, we would all play the same class and wear the same armor, there has to be some variety to make it interesting. I love the idea of tailoring specs around gear set bonuses and talent synergies.

If loot continues to just be +141s to +149s every instance there will be little motivation to play for quite a few people.

 

Enova

Am I just the only one that thinks they could emulate the whole arena/PVP set bonus system onto PVE sets?

Simply get some awesome, "think outside the box", PVE set bonuses, like some of the examples above, and have every tier piece contribute to them, be it tier 4, 5 or 6.

They could make things interesting by adding bonuses at 2, 4 and 5 pieces, and the more vital a bonus is for a class, the less pieces it requires. That way, you wouldn't have to worry about breaking set bonuses or favoring a lower tier set against parts of a higher tier. And you could actually tweak the raiding efficiency of a raid geared character a lot, compared to equal level "welfare epics", giving more purpose to raid earned gear.

EDIT: I know they made the tiers consist of less pieces so you wouldn't get too attached by the bonuses, but at least for hunters, 2/5 tier 5 (heals the pet for 15% of the damage dealt by the hunter, for clarification) is so great that the only reason worth breaking it is the combined stats and set bonus of 4/5 tier 6 (10% extra damage on steady shots). And even then, you're still going to use the tier 5 set bonus on some fight, because, quite simply a pet dying on you is a major annoyance. Furthermore, after cruising through a whole tier of raiding healing your pet based on your damage, simply tossing in the occasional mend pet won't cut it anymore, on stuff like Najentus or ROS.

Guilty as charged ^

 

Addled

Yes, but I'd like to see those "overpowered" abilities at least for a small while. It makes the game fun. Devs can always go back and nerf when the next big patch/xpac is rolling out.

For instance, I would be very surprised if the current Alchemist's Stone remains unnerfed into WotLK. 40% increased effect on mana/health potions would still be terrific for healers, never mind the stats.

 

Starfire

They don't actually need too as long as they keep providing upgrades to it.

E.G wotlk Alchemist Stone will provide 190 +heal or something.

Further, normal Alchemist stone bonus can be modelled as 40 mp5. Illidan's trinket is 119 +heal and 21-26 mp5. Is 14-19mp5 worth 119 +heal?

 

Touf

The thing about the stone is that it only scales with potions, which are static.

 

Douglas

Something else that could be interesting is interesting set bonuses that inherently self-limit, so they're interesting while you're using them, but still don't tempt you to avoid the next set in the progression.

Ilidan had ties to the Well. Imagine if in his lair you were able to loot gear which had extra abilities when they got close enough to the Sunwell to power 'em up. When you're on the Isle of Quel'Danas, in Magister's Terrace, or in the Sunwell Plateau, that extra ability is powered up and can proc. But when you're in Outland or Northrend, nobody expects it to. So the temptation will be there to keep a set in your bank, for when you go back to the Sunwell, but when you're actually adventuring in Northrend, it's not nearly as tempting to hold on to it.

This is really an extension of the basic "you need MC's FR gear and Ony's cape to do well in BWL" idea -- have instances give you gear which for some reason is particularly potent/useful in the next instance in the progression, but don't have that extra potency carry over into all the other areas of the game. Then you can do really really interesting things without worrying that they'll result in people ignoring future upgrades.

 

Addled

My implied point was that we'll get increased potion sizes in WotLK, so the Alchemist's Stone will scale. By how much, we don't know until we see the numbers of the new mana pot.

 

vorda

We can always hope they find a better way to implement mana potions in WoTLK. Nothing is set in stone in an MMORPG.

 

Melkunie

Ptr/trr just got patched again. The only change so far i noticed is the reduced range on cyclone. Its down to 20 yards now.

 

Maax

Confirmation (not my screenshot): WoWScrnShot_031108_205252.jpg - Image - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

I wonder if they might consider lifting the diminishing returns in PvE on cyclone now.

Also haven't seen this on this thread yet, new daily on the PTR (from Worldofraids forums :: 2.4 Bloodberry Elixir, Arena TTR, Security warning, Comic):

Quest: Open for Business - Quests - WOWDB
Reward: Bloodberry Elixir - Items - WOWDB



Reportedly it persists through death. Another blow to alchemy.

Devs: Our nerfs will block out the sun!
Druids: Then we will tank in the shade.

 

• Intermission

In addition, to reward higher tier set items, you could have some sort of bonus system that makes t6 worth more than a t4 item. So... "12 set points, runes, whatever", which show in a nice little picture or diagram where the current item set list appears on item tooltips. A t4 item may activate 1 point. A t5 will count as 2, t6 for 3.

The bonuses may be activated at 4, 8 and 12 set points:

• 4pc t4 will be 4 set points (unlocking bonus: % reduced FD resist chance)
  
• 2pc t4 and 3pc t5 will be 2 + 6 = 8 points (unlocking bonus: % of dmg done will heal your pet)
  
• 2pc t5 and 4pc t6 will be 0 + 2 + 9 = 13 points (unlocking bonus: % increase steady shot damage)

(I chose the favorite hunter set bonus from each tier)

With that example, you can see how off-tier items can be used much easier now, as well as making upgrade paths REAL upgrades, because you wont be forced to trade set bonuses for stats.

 

Icywind

That's clearly the nerf we needed to bring Feral and Balance druids in line with other classes in PvP.


Before TBC, the "overpowered" abilities made very little difference to class balance in WoW since class balance is a little bit more lenient in PvE and even BG PvP situations. However, with arenas introduced, people scream bloody murder whenever something resembling "overpowered" is released which increases the value of a specific class, causing Blizzard to be (perhaps overly) cautious with novelty.

While the Fade example demonstrates a set bonus which is exciting in PvE without affecting PvP (unless you count SS/TM guards or pre-NPC-nerf AV), very few abilities are PvE-only like Fade.

 

Prinsesa

I think it's very possible to create rather unique set bonuses without necessarily making them so good you're using them way past their expected lifetime (pre-nerf Transcendence, pre-nerf Crystalforge healing to a lesser extent).

The key would be to use Blizzard's own scaling system to make sure this doesn't happen.

Consider the Moonglade bonus: Rejuvenation increases dodge rating by 35. By level 80, 35 dodge rating is going to mean a lot less, naturally nerfing the unique bonus over time.

The Tier 3 Paladin set makes Cleanse heal for 200 HP, but since it doesn't have a spell coefficient nor can you cast Cleanse on a target without debuffs, 200 HP goes out of style very quickly.

See what I'm getting at here? There's room to make unique set bonuses without having to hit them like you did the [Lifegiving Gem], as long as you look towards the future and build the Gem like it is now in the first place.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Mode

-Black Bow of the Betrayer now only gives mana on ranged attacks.
-Looks like everything that gave just +healing (like socket bonuses) now also gives +damage.
-They went back reitemizez ALL ret gear, not just PVP gear, removing spelldamage from them and turning it into strength.
-Nether Vortexes are BOP again.
-Hand of Edward the Odd nerfed to just give +spellhaste.

Didn't spot anything else.

 

vorda

The one from the badges vendor?

edit: nevermind, stupid question. Obviously you didnt just kill Vashj/Kael.

 

◊ vorpalblade

All the vortexes and nethers in my inventory are still BoE, and I just bought one of each from the vendor, and those are still BoE as well.

 

• Playered

The problem with all Druids in PvP is they share the same generic pool of abilities, with just some additional spec related benefits - which mostly are minor additions in comparison to the stronger generic ones.

Cyclone as a base spell should be a shorter range to lower its effect from the Hybrid specs and a high talent in Balance should provide the additional range (superior to the 10/20% which will become 2/4 instead of 3/6) to give an edge to Balance.

Feral charge could/should be moved higher up in the Feral tree to stop Resto being able to dip into it (although to be fair this will have to be something like 31pt to manage that..) and made into a more significant ability or so.


The strong abilities need to be key signiture ones to the talent spec, not one general to the class (via sub 20 point talents) if any form of real significance should be applied to them.

Talents do little to actually enhance the base abilities and the base abilities are far too strong generally to allow the designated specs be real primary providers of them (I'll use Shamans as an example in more of a PvE context as it's clearer):
Consider if the base Windfury/GoA/SoE Totem effects were lowered by 50% and that 50% was made up by talents in the Enhancement tree (Enhancing Totems 15%->65%, Improved Weapon Totems 30%->80% [numbers are not exact but you get what I mean]).
Resto Shamans would be less effective to be used 'anywhere' while Enhancement Shamans would gain their higher desirability where thoses buffs were actually significant, currently however the only key difference noticed between Enh/Resto is UR and potentially Totem Twisting - your loss of the enhanced talents are not that big a deal.


Regrowth is a good example here, the base spell is somewhat shitty and (even with the buff) inefficient unless you have the Improved Regrowth talent.
In PvP it's again worse because the HoT is very likely to be dispelled and it's a major component of the ability, without the talent it will remain close to worthless for anything beyond a simple perk.