I really do not like the idea of glyphs being destroyed when switching them. I would much rather see the inscription system just add a new spell book tab where you learn the glyphs and then chose which ones are active. The costs would just be upgrading glyphs while leveling if there were multiple levels of them. Anything that involves having to buy new glyphs to be optimal in whatever role you are playing is just adding another consumable cost to raiding.
The changes to alchemy and leatherworking are aimed at reducing the consumable costs that raiders face to maximize their potential in progression content. Having glyphs be something that has to change with spec or potentially from boss to boss just replaces the costs that have been reduced with a new cost. As a hybrid I will be very disappointed if inscription does end up as a respecing or different boss fight "tax". As others have said while you need different gems / enchants for different roles those are linked to the gear that they are on so get switched with the gear and not constantly repurchased from respec to respec or fight to fight.
My suggestion is for glyphs to be a purchase once type of thing with a switching mechanism. The constant sell items for inscription would be the statistic scrolls and the enchanting scrolls. I could see buying new inscriptions to upgrade old ones as a character levels up or as they advance to higher tier content and new glyphs become available.
Personally I think that the glyph of XYZ spell approach is going to come back to bite blizzard in the ass. Just from the number of recipies that an inscriptor needs to learn.
Currently we have 15+ glyphs per class, 150 recipies minimum. multiple levels of scrolls accross 5 stats, assume 5 levels of craftable scrolls, another 25 recipies, various profession related recipies inks, parchments, enchant scrolls another 25+ recipies. And this doesn't even include the inevitable useful while leveling things they need to add for new characters leveling inscription. Especially if they want class related boosts along the way. As things are currently going it looks like a maxed out inscriptor could easily have more than 300 recipies to learn which is a LOT of recipies compared to say tailoring.
I was wondering how they were going to handle this as well. Nearly every rare gem cut for jewelcrafting is a world drop and there's a good number of them. Wotlk is going to have even more types of gem cuts, and inscription as you said is going to have a large amount of glyphs alone. What I'm hoping to see, especially if they make a large amount world drops again, is combining a number of recipes into a single one. For instance, instead of finding just the pure +spirit cut, you would instead find something like [Big Book of Blue Cuts: Volume 1]. Or a book of Balance glyphs or the like.
Examples? I am sure that there are one or two particular weirdos who retrain a profession once or twice, but can you show me even one single raiding guild that has an entire raid with enchanted rings and none of them have enchanting?
edit:
Also, please note my specific wording: "Even the most hardcore raiders are not leveling up enchanting to enchant rings and then dropping it to go back to the optimal profession for their role every time they get a new ring"
A person who does this once near the end of a raiding career and enchants all his rings at once before dropping enchanting is a little crazy but I could see it happening. What I don't see happening is a raider doing this every single time he/she upgrades a ring, starting with the 5 man blue rings, working up to Karazhan gear and through the whole PVE ladder, such that by the end he has retrained enchanting some ten or more times.
There are several who do it and post on these forums. And they do it every tier. For actual post links you'd need to be a benefactor, but you can take my word for it that I wouldn't make up something so easily refuted by anyone who is a benefactor.
You are under the assumption that blizzard wants you to reset your glyphs every time you change roles.
Why wouldn't we assume this in the face of everything else Blizzard has done (or has said they're planning on doing) with regards to talent respecs, which are of the same role-changing importance as Glyphs?
Really, is there anyone here that is opposed to having 2 Glyph sets tied to your current spec (of which there will be 2 you can switch around with)? Keep in mind, that 2 isn't all that much either for Hybrids who generally have 3 specs they can switch around (plus a PvP spec for each of the 3 roles). If you want to argue the gold sink argument, then how about if I say that they should make the first purchase of Glyphs incredibly expensive to compensate for the fact that you will not replace them in a long time? I'd be more than happy with that solution because it eases the pain of respeccing/reglyphing and you won't have to fill your bag with yet another reagent. Bag space is a rarity still, and keep in mind that we are still running around with atleast one 16 slot bag. :P
I was wondering how they were going to handle this as well. Nearly every rare gem cut for jewelcrafting is a world drop and there's a good number of them. Wotlk is going to have even more types of gem cuts, and inscription as you said is going to have a large amount of glyphs alone. What I'm hoping to see, especially if they make a large amount world drops again, is combining a number of recipes into a single one. For instance, instead of finding just the pure +spirit cut, you would instead find something like [Big Book of Blue Cuts: Volume 1]. Or a book of Balance glyphs or the like.
From the latest Blizzcast, Blizzard agrees with you on world drops being a problem.
---
Originally Posted by Blizzard
You have a way to get it, but a world drop you don’t have any control over. So we’re going to be easing off the world drops, I’m not sure about getting rid of them entirely but moving on to other systems. One of the system we’re considering as well is – so you have profession dailies for all of your professions, and what those end up being I’m not sure, but then when you do that daily you get a token. Then on this vendor there’s maybe 20 recipes, and they cost [maybe] 25 tokens each. So you’ll start making decisions on how you want to spend those tokens and that will help differentiate you from everyone else just by your decisions rather than what you happened to have found or bought off the Auction House.
If frequent swapping looks "necessary", there may be another option than swappable templates or making the glyphs cheap... making the better ones seriously expensive, to the extent of being a goldsink to buy once.
The caveat here is that there have to be glyphs which are useful enough to all specs, or else the advantage given by (switching) glyphs has to be small enough to be, if not negligible, at least something you can do without.
I quite like this idea, as it would give some weight to the act of dropping a glyph in. But then I play a pure DPS class, and I wonder if it could be made acceptable to hybrids too.
Probably not, certainly not if your a tank in pve and a healer in PvP. You just won't have any glyphs in common between the two specs.
The token system for rare recipies would be nice, allows for a steady accumulation of recipes without the pain of random alchemy discoveries or waiting for Moroes to drop his enchant.
I'm wondering if Glyphs are a way of avoiding the trivialisation of respec costs.
It is already easy enough for "most" players to respec on a regular basis, even multiple time for one raid.
Given the increase in gold from WotLK, blizzard obviously need to do something to prevent respec costs from being essentially nothing.
Having sets of glyphs tied to a specific spec is fine, so that you dont need to reglyph each time you spec swap, but if you reset one of those specs completely then the glyphs should go as well.
If blizzard do implement spec swapping then they will have to tie glyphs to a spec because some of the glyphs are dependent on talented spells.
They cannot expect you to have to reglyph if the spec swap works along similar lines to gear swaps (which is what has been indicated so far), that would be like saying you have to reenchant every time you gear swap.
I'm wondering if Glyphs are a way of avoiding the trivialisation of respec costs.
Why ? It feels completely counter-intuitive to what Blizzard has done so far, which is to make life easier on everyone, from Joe Casual to Jack Hardcore.
They could've upped the Respec limit when TBC came. They did no such thing. Instead, they introduced the respecs costs dropping over time. They introduced more gold through dailies. They introduced more gold still from more dailies, upping the dailies limit and having raid bosses drop more money.
They are (talking about) introducing a free respec between two saved specs, which again defeats the monetary cost attached.
Why, in the light of all that, would they want to make respeccing more prohibitive ? They've repeatedly stated they like people participating in all parts of the game (much to the Arena crowd's dismay, as they're 'forced' into Battlegrounds). There is no single reason to consider they'd want to move away from that stance.
About glyph changing. One way to make it work both ways, is assigning charges to them. This way it will give a constant profession request, and on the other hand they give flexibilty to customize them as you want from fight to fight
Talent respecs cap out at 50 Gold per change at the moment. It also takes a moderate amount of tedium to go to the trainer in the old world, but can be done in ~2 minutes. If the new talent switch thing plus glyph switching will cost more than that (while including change in gold's inflation) and takes significantly longer due to the reglyphing process (if it isn't included in the talent switching mechanism) then the new system fails. It's just that easy.
Inscriptors will be able to sell scrolls as a new consumable type and with the current way Alchemy is going to allow only one potion per fight, then they are basically already a second kind of consumable providers besides Alchemy, potentially even more sought after due to scrolls not surviving death. As such I don't exactly see the need that glyphs must be a consumable.
"Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through with the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act as if there were some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged."
There's a line in the WotLK Beta Patch Notes that reads:
"Macros and key bindings are now saved server-side so there is no longer a need to reconfigure them when logging in using another computer."
Since we already know that Blizzard are looking at giving us the ability to swap between two talent specs, it's not inconcievable that Blizzard will extend this to give us two "Profiles" to swap between at a vendor in-game. Each profile stores your key bindings / macros / talent spec / glyphs.
If you swap your profile at the vendor all your key bindings etc. are set to go, you would just need to equip the correct gear.
Most players would use one profile (with possibly the second for PvP), the tradeoff being that if you use both profiles you would need to buy two sets of glyphs (and have two sets of gear).
Why wouldn't we assume this in the face of everything else Blizzard has done (or has said they're planning on doing) with regards to talent respecs, which are of the same role-changing importance as Glyphs?
Because blizzard is also moving away from separate +heal +spelldamage items and instead will rely on talents to determine how the the items effects will be handled. I see this as a method to reduce the amount of gear people need to carry/hold and that leads into requiring less other character management.
I am curious about inscriptions, has anyone encountered inscriptions which only work on talent granted powers? Say for example a pyroblast specific inscription? Those would pose a problem if the talents specs were severely changed depending on the role.
Because blizzard is also moving away from separate +heal +spelldamage items and instead will rely on talents to determine how the the items effects will be handled. I see this as a method to reduce the amount of gear people need to carry/hold and that leads into requiring less other character management.
Exactly. Why add more if everything you've done so far has been moving towards streamlining?
I am curious about inscriptions, has anyone encountered inscriptions which only work on talent granted powers? Say for example a pyroblast specific inscription? Those would pose a problem if the talents specs were severely changed depending on the role.
There have been Glyphs released for Mangle, Swiftmend, Starfall, Lightwell, Circle of Healing, Mind Flay, Holy Nova, Spirit of Redemption, Mana Tide Totem, Stormstrike, Totem of Wrath, Seal of Command, Crusader Strike, Avenger's Shield and Blessing of Kings, all of which are talented abilities.
I am curious about inscriptions, has anyone encountered inscriptions which only work on talent granted powers? Say for example a pyroblast specific inscription? Those would pose a problem if the talents specs were severely changed depending on the role.
Not only are there glyphs for talented abilities, but there are glyphs giving severe disadvantages in an area of the game. Take these three glyphs for example:
Glyph of Moonfire - Increases the periodic damage of your Moonfire ability by 75%, but initial damage is decreased by 90%.
Glyph of Mindflay - Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 5 yards but it no longer reduces the target's movement speed.
Glyph of Avenger's Shield - Your Avenger's Shield hits -2 fewer targets but for 100% more damage.
The moonfire glyph is very good for pve, but gives you a severe disadvantage in pvp. The mindflay glyph may be very useful in some pve boss fights, useless in others, and crippling for yourself for pvp. The avenger's shield glyph is good for boss fights, but a disadvantage for aoe tanking. With glyphs like these you can actually be worse at a specific part of the game compared to someone who doesn't have any glyphs at all.
The moonfire glyph is very good for pve, but gives you a severe disadvantage in pvp. The mindflay glyph may be very useful in some pve boss fights, useless in others, and crippling for yourself for pvp. The avenger's shield glyph is good for boss fights, but a disadvantage for aoe tanking. With glyphs like these you can actually be worse at a specific part of the game compared to someone who doesn't have any glyphs at all.
Well its glyphs like those you listed which make me want to believe they should be no more expensive than pots/elixirs. You just swap them out on an as needed basis. If they work like 'permanent' pots I think it would be a great mechanic. If they work like gems I won't be too much of a fan. Cost will depend on just how rare the ingredients get. Yet this can create tiers from which we won't feel the need to replace specific glyphs, only the lesser ones.
Example, if they were structured around class and then talent builds it could setup a system where the class one is expensive but less likely to be changed throughout the life of the character but the talent ones which need cheap mats are swapped on demand without much regard. So the class one would be like comparing flask costs to the talent ones at elixir cost. The class level gylph would rely on one rare item (like fel lotus is to flasks) and other regular availability items.
So tier it like.
Class, very powerful but generic (like agility/ap bonus to hunters, some form of permanent haste for mages)
Ability, target a specific one (like +x to fireballs as all mages have them, +x to hots etc)
Talent, target to talent granted abilities.
Cost structure would be similar, Class level would be highest and it would go down from there. Now of course some talent rebuilds might be better supported by a different class level glyph but only for those going for the ultimate mini max... for the majority it would serve regardless.
Probably not, certainly not if your a tank in pve and a healer in PvP. You just won't have any glyphs in common between the two specs.
Sure you would, that is practically two of the same thing. Any sort of glyph that increases survivability would help in both cases to some degree.
Originally Posted by Duilliath
Why ? It feels completely counter-intuitive to what Blizzard has done so far, which is to make life easier on everyone, from Joe Casual to Jack Hardcore.
They could've upped the Respec limit when TBC came. They did no such thing. Instead, they introduced the respecs costs dropping over time. They introduced more gold through dailies. They introduced more gold still from more dailies, upping the dailies limit and having raid bosses drop more money.
They are (talking about) introducing a free respec between two saved specs, which again defeats the monetary cost attached.
Why, in the light of all that, would they want to make respeccing more prohibitive ? They've repeatedly stated they like people participating in all parts of the game (much to the Arena crowd's dismay, as they're 'forced' into Battlegrounds). There is no single reason to consider they'd want to move away from that stance.
Because currently, talents have such a huge effect on a character that it's simply not viable to perform a role against your talent spec unless it's trivial content anyway. So blizzard is giving free talent spec switching. On the other hand, glyphs sound like like an interesting extension of the talent system but compared to the changes based on your talent tree the benefits of the glyphs are rather small, and you could easily perform a role without the best possible glyphs in most cases.
And then as far as glyphs, if the cost is high enough it forces players to make decisions about what role they want to be optimized for. I don't see this as a flip-flop from any previous stance. It's not like you can change race between pvp and pve, even if for example orc warriors are better at pvp than tauren warriors, but tauren is better for pve tanking. I think blizzard saw how trivial the talent respec cost was at 50g, and rather than increase it and upset a lot of players they are going to just make the glyph system the more or less permanent character customization system.
I could be totally wrong, but I think it's just as likely of a possibility as free multiple glyph specs.
Originally Posted by urotas
Not only are there glyphs for talented abilities, but there are glyphs giving severe disadvantages in an area of the game. Take these three glyphs for example:
Glyph of Moonfire - Increases the periodic damage of your Moonfire ability by 75%, but initial damage is decreased by 90%.
...
The moonfire glyph is very good for pve, but gives you a severe disadvantage in pvp.
Then obviously if you are a druid who likes the option to spam moonfire in pvp, you should not take the moonfire glyph. I like the way glyphs have both advantages and drawbacks, hopefully players have to carefully consider which glyphs they take instead of mindlessly taking the 4 best raiding glyphs and then switching to the 4 best pvp glyphs twice every week.
The problem with glyphs is the same than chainpotting or stacking flasks and elixirs. Blizzard needs to balance encounters around the fact that many people will use everything to enhance their chances on killing the boss, so the boss has to be tuned accordingly often making it mandatory for "casual" raids to do it, too if they want to stand a chance at beating the encounter in a "reasonable" time, and yes, some glyphs have a big impact. The changes to flasks and pots clearly indicate that they want to make a sort of baseline that can be expected of everyone and is not too expensive and restrict everything that goes beyond.
Therefor I wouldn't expect expensive reglyphing and me personally I would hate it, because even with my paladin alt I switch roles in kara/ZA/Heroics sometimes three times or more per evening just because someone else comes online and wants to join the group and I just don't like being suboptimal in any of my roles just because glyphs are to expensive. Of course i could do the heroic without optimal glyphs but it's way more fun to be the best you possibly could be.
Either it is really cheap or free or totally restricted and I don't think it will be restricted because it contradicts the respecc for free/take part of every part of the game thing and, as I said before, some glyphs would NEVER be used if you can't swap them (like aforementioned Mind Flay or Avanger's Shield Glyph)
The problem with glyphs is the same than chainpotting or stacking flasks and elixirs. Blizzard needs to balance encounters around the fact that many people will use everything to enhance their chances on killing the boss, so the boss has to be tuned accordingly often making it mandatory for "casual" raids to do it, too if they want to stand a chance at beating the encounter in a "reasonable" time, and yes, some glyphs have a big impact.
But they DO re-tune encounters regularly.
Remember how impressed everybody was with the first guild on their server to clear Kara? Remember the pre-nerf Magtheridon before they simplified cube-clicking?
I'll never forget the sight of a shadow priest tanking Ragnaros shortly before the BC release.
Bosses are incredibly tough at release, making it possible for only the best of the best hardcore min/max guilds to succeed.
A series of nerfs and the introduction of easy "welfare" gear makes it possible for hardcore, midcore and "casual" guilds to have their turn. Many of these guilds maximize their consumables, and many do not. But eventually everybody has their turn.
Blizzard tunes encounters so that you can only be FIRST if you have time, skill and a fortune in consumables.
Then obviously if you are a druid who likes the option to spam moonfire in pvp, you should not take the moonfire glyph. I like the way glyphs have both advantages and drawbacks, hopefully players have to carefully consider which glyphs they take instead of mindlessly taking the 4 best raiding glyphs and then switching to the 4 best pvp glyphs twice every week.
I'm in agreement with this.
One thing I see so many people arguing for is "I want to be more versatile, have more flexibility, make it easier for me to switch between specializations". I understand the desire for easy/free secondary specs, but by lowering the cost instead of raising it they eliminate the idea of specialization in general.
What about advantages for those of us who WANT to specialize in PVE or PVP content? Don't you think there should be some systems where you can make a hard decision of "Ok I'll be sacrificing a lot of PVP/PVE viability, but I don't care because I just want to focus on PVE/PVP".
As a PVE balance druid I love the moonfire glyph, and I don't want it to be cheap or easy for me to switch things up. If I specialize in PVE content, I should get some sort of bonus. If someone specializes in PVP content, they deserve something a bit extra. Glyphs are a PERFECT place to put this sort of decision. You can make the choice to focus on PVE or PVP through your Glyph choices, or be more generalized. Profession choices are going to allow for the same thing in the expansion.
Last edited by erragal : 08/13/08 at 1:23 PM.
Reason: Clarity
And then as far as glyphs, if the cost is high enough it forces players to make decisions about what role they want to be optimized for.
You CANNOT make people do that. You're making people who play more aspects of the game suffer more because they're enjoying more parts of the game. If you want to be competitive in PvP you must get the PvP glyphs, otherwise you're at an inherent disadvantage in an area where the difference between winning and losing is a single crit over more than a hundred thousand damage done. If you want to push the limits in PvE, then you must use the best possible raid glyphs, or you're at an inherent disadvantage.
You're trying to penalize the people who enjoy more of the game, which is the exact opposite of what you should be doing, either by making them put even more time in to fund their endeavours, or by limiting their capabilities. People who are interested in more aspects of the game should be rewarded.
Originally Posted by erragal
As a PVE balance druid I love the moonfire glyph, and I don't want it to be cheap or easy for me to switch things up. If I specialize in PVE content, I should get some sort of bonus.
You have it backwards too. Noone should ever get a bonus for specializing except for their own personal skill. You should never limit what people can and cannot do in a game artificially like that.
Either it is really cheap or free or totally restricted and I don't think it will be restricted because it contradicts the respecc for free/take part of every part of the game thing and, as I said before, some glyphs would NEVER be used if you can't swap them (like aforementioned Mind Flay or Avanger's Shield Glyph)
/EDIT: typo, probably still some more there ^^
I think it's a bit crazy to say they would NEVER be used. Especially in this community, where most people will do everything they can to maximize their performance. That also implies there are no or very few players that focus only on PVE/Raid content, and don't care about the drawbacks.
It's only a drawback if you want everything to be free/no consequences/no specialization. I'm surprised how many people posting are opposed to having options for specialization, is homogeneity that desirable to everyone?
It's only a drawback if you want everything to be free/no consequences/no specialization. I'm surprised how many people posting are opposed to having options for specialization, is homogeneity that desirable to everyone?
There's a reason the arena realms have everyone in the same gear with the ability to choose any race/class, and I'll give you a hint, it's not homogeneity.
You CANNOT make people do that. You're making people who play more aspects of the game suffer more because they're enjoying more parts of the game. If you want to be competitive in PvP you must get the PvP glyphs, otherwise you're at an inherent disadvantage in an area where the difference between winning and losing is a single crit over more than a hundred thousand damage done. If you want to push the limits in PvE, then you must use the best possible raid glyphs, or you're at an inherent disadvantage.
You're trying to penalize the people who enjoy more of the game, which is the exact opposite of what you should be doing, either by making them put even more time in to fund their endeavours, or by limiting their capabilities. People who are interested in more aspects of the game should be rewarded.
The question becomes: are the people that want to be at the very top of both aspects of the game, really going to care what the cost is? Shouldn't there be a cost to be the BEST at both aspects of the game? Why should it be easy to specialize in multiple things? Why shouldn't you be a little bit limited if you want to casually enjoy both aspects of the game? You have a free secondary talent specialization, and alternate gear (Which you had to put time in to acquire additional). Should gear be applicable in all situations with no differentiation at all? It hurts people interested in more aspects of the game that they have to farm multiple sets of gear, as well. They also have to enchant it differently, as well. They have to put more time into that.
Why shouldn't you reward people that want to focus on only one aspect? Is that supposed to be considered a poor playstyle decision?
I hate using ridiculous realworld analogies, but they do have some merit: Rarely is there a world-class decathlete or pentathlete that is the best in the world at any (And certainly not ALL) of their individual events. Clearly this is a game, but why shouldn't dedication and specialization be rewarded? There are plenty of people who play just for that, and certainly take offense to the idea that someone can spend thirty seconds and a small amount of money (Or none) to become equal to them.
08/12/08, 11:50 PM
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