◊ songster

What, all zero of them? Assuming you're talking about boss fights, which is the only time this will actually matter due to the 2 minute potion cooldown.

 

odie85

I believe they were referring to hunters (feign death) rogues (vanish) and mages (invisibility). Although a patch or two ago I believe they changed it so those don't actually put you out of combat during boss fights.


My question for those in beta; How relevant are the outland materials for leveling a profession to max level? Such as, rugged leather went from a 1-2 gold a stack to 15-30 gold a stack days after the release. I can see it happening again, but with inscription which materials might go from worthless to very important?

 

Ralnar

I've not been able to drop out of combat long enough to swap gear since they made that change during boss fights.

PvP or non-boss PvE sure a hunter could easily drop out to potion while the pet holds the mob, but not that often that anyone needs two potions for non-boss PvE or most PvP encounters.

 

McTurok

I'm curious as to why some of you think Inscriptions should NOT be similar to the way enchants and gems work in the game?

I've seem some posters commenting they think you only have to purchase the inscription once and be able to use it again and again. And other talk about not wanting to re-inscript (if thats the word) their items if they decide to respec (heal, dps, tank, etc.)

How is this really any different then you needing to enchant your gear or gem your gear differently for a spec? Or have two different sets of gear, etc.

I'm not in beta so I was hoping some of you could fill me in a bit more on how inscriptions work or should work differently then enchanting and gemming. From my limited understanding of inscriptions, I believe they should work the same as gemming and enchanting does now.

 

Calixtus

Well, without getting into a lengthy discussion about what exactly classifies as a gathering skill, the important bit is that a jewelcrafter prospecting is still sharing parts of his profits with a miner via inter-dependancy. You take a tailor or an enchanter, put him down infront of an auctionhouse, and tell him to start making money the norm will not involve someone else's profession. You take a jewelcrafter and do the same, and it will involve someone elses profession most of the time. I know I said I wasn't going to turn this into a discussion on gathering professions, but taking goods from another profession and using to create a new piece of goods does not really fit the bill in my opinion.

Second of all, though this might just be my server, most of the gems on the AH that are sold by jewelcrafters are already cut. It's a lot easier to get a cut gem - even an epic gem nowadays - than it is to get a complete uncut gem you bring to a jewelcrafter. Costs more, certainly, but considering how easy some of the dailies are you're still going come out on top if you listen the the goblin maxim "Time is money, friend". Anyway, point is, money is made by that specific jewelcrafter who has the recipe, not by someone's lvl 55 alt like enchanting.


On another note; It will be very interesting to see how they balance all the non-mana potions around one-potion-per-fight.

 

Harne

The difference is that you can swap on an entirely different set of PVP gear for doing arenas. You don't have to re-enchant and regem your gear twice each week. If there are inscriptions that are optimal for PVE but useless for PVP and vice versa, people want a way to be able to swap them that isn't prohibitively expensive or timeconsuming. (And after rereading your post, I'm not sure you realize that inscriptions are an attribute of your character, not of your gear.)

 

◊ songster

In boss fights there is a combat pulse every second or so that puts you back into combat. That is not long enough for the debuff to wear off (5 seconds). The boss combat pulse thing has been in place since patch 1.9.3 or thereabouts. That's almost two and a half years ago. Since then, zero classes have been able to get out of combat in a boss fight for any significant length of time.

 

odie85

You may have your patches mixed up friend, it was around patch 2.1 (if you would have quoted my whole first paragraph you would have read that I said they changed it) but this isn't the place or the thread to discuss that.



I really like the idea that some of the posters have been discussing. Tailoring items were very overpowered when you first hit 70, considering you could have almost all the mats by the time you hit 70. I would really like to see 3-4 craft able items being entry level epic in level 80 25 mans. Possibly use the same system like Vortexes, where those craft able items could be upgrade via a drop.

 

Valerian

If the Glyphs that are posted on MMO-champ are correct they are extremely powerful. In fact if the extra glyph slot from inscription can be used for a major glyph it seems pretty ideal from a min/max point of view. Not to mention the fact that some glyphs do things that extra stats cant (like the swipe one adding an extra target). I'll grant there's still balancing to do, but hell the mangle glyph (increase its duration by 6 seconds) is a much bigger dps increase than say the 35 crit rating bonus from skinning, by a LONG shot. Its probably more dps than the 30 ap/18 crit from the LW BoP leg armor too...

 

McTurok

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I understand they are not tied to your gear (I was just comparing spells to gear for reference). I was unaware that they were so different that some would be only good for pve and others for pvp. That's makes sense that some would want to swap them freely.

 

Shakes

People can make huge sums of money from enchanting, but the key is that there's really a huge gap between the rich and the poor here. There will be a couple of enchanters who makes 1000s of gold a week, and the rest make basically nothing. The ones who are making the money are the ones who are well known on the server.

For example, there's one guy on my server who has basically every enchanting recipe in the game. I can't count the number of times I've seen on guild chat "can anyone do blah?" and the answer is "No, but talk to player X". He makes a killing from it, since he doesn't even really have to advertise anymore, everyone knows him and knows what enchants he can do, and recommends him to their guild mates.

Enchanting is boom or bust, where as gathering is a safe thing to take for moderate returns after a hard day in the field. Pick your poison.

 

virtuzoso

I certainly hope that Inscription doesnt work like gems do, I dont believe it would be fun to have to redo glyphs with every respec. Yes, you do change gear when you respec to a different role ( DPS, Tanking, Healing) but you have a set of gear ( or are working on one) for that role. When you spec back, that gear set doesnt just dissapear and you have to collect it all over again. That unecessarily making it a tedious moneysink, even if they are not very expensive.

For example, I personally tend to change specs every few weeks. One week I will be some dagger spec, the next week I will be hemo or Combat Swords. If I had backstab incscripted, that inscription would be completely wasted if I ever specced to Combat Swords and when I specced back to Daggers, I'd have to repurchase the Inscription. I'm pretty sure if a Warrior specs to Arms, his Prot gear doesnt dissapear!

In my opinion, Glyphs should become Soulbound once 'equipped' but they are swappable like trinkets or any other type of gear ( perhaps even with a cooldown, but I dont see the necessity of it)


And in a related matter, I have been an herb/alchemist on both of my rogues since release and this is the first time I looked at it and thought it was pretty much useless and something my bank alt could handle as well as I could. The Alchemical Blood not affecting flasks is dissapointing, and it may very well be a bug, but I am extremely tempted to drop Alchemy for Blacksmithing or enchanting once more information comes out. It's a great change for mana users, but as has been pointed out, it makes haste pots or destruction pots near useless ( or at least, unpopular). Alchemy had steadily becoming a bit boring for me, but now I think that it really is. I definitely will be watching how professions shape up very closely

 

Prinsesa

I'm a Paladin. I have a set of fully gemmed and fully enchanted tanking gear, and a set of fully gemmed and fully enchanted healing gear.

When I respec from Holy to Prot, I go to the trainer, fork over the 50g, reallocate my points to Prot, and put on my tanking gear. I do not need to regem and re-enchant my tanking gear every time I do this.

If Inscriptions were permanent, aside from having to reallocate talent points at the trainer, I'd have to spam "LF inscriber with Glyph of Holy Shield, have mats, will tip, PST" every time I went from Holy to Prot. Every time I went from Prot to Holy, I'd then have to spam "LF inscriber with Glyph of Holy Shock, have mats, will tip, PST".

This would be incredibly inconvenient and would be against the impression that Blizzard wants to make respeccing easier.

My own perception of Glyphs would be that they're items that you simply arm in the respective Glyph slots. I can have a Glyph of Holy Shield in my spellbook and a Glyph of Holy Shock in the inventory. If I go from Prot to Holy, I simply take out the Glyph of Holy Shield and replace it with the Glyph of Holy Shock, just like a piece of gear.

Yes, this would curb the amount of Glyphs an Inscriber could sell, since one player would only need one Glyph of <skill> forever, but the idea is that either Glyphs are NOT the intended constant-demand product of an Inscriber, or you could simply make Glyphs have a duration before they disappear, similar to Gnomish Engineering membership cards.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Shakes

If that's the case I'm already counting down the seconds until my first raid wipe caused by someone who forgot to refresh their glyphs. Honestly, having to refresh them because they disappear would be even more annoying than having to refresh them when you respec: at least when you respec it's an active action that gives you reason to think about re-glyphing.

 

Hypatia

What if, in the world of "two specs per character", inscriptions were tied to one of your "spec slots"? So you'd still have a replacement issue if you wanted to try out a different inscription or a different mix of specs, but there'd be no need to swap inscriptions on a "chosen re-spec", only on major role changes. (i.e. you'd have to choose to be raid + PvP specs with appropriate inscriptions, or two raid roles with appropriate inscriptions, but within whatever pair of choices you aim for there'd be no cost for swapping.)

 

Shakes

I'd thought that might be how they do it. It still wouldn't completely solve the problem though, for the same reason that only having two specs doesn't solve the problem: some people need more than two specs. If you play a healing in raids and PvP, you still don't have room for a farming spec. If you raid as both a tank and healer depending on needs, you don't have room for a PvP spec.

I don't really see the problem with glyphs being items that you can keep permanently and swap in and out. Does there really need to be an ongoing market for glyphs? Everyone is going to need at least 6 glyphs, and for some classes many more (I can certainly see druids picking up as many as 48: bear/kitty/moonkin/tree ones for PvE and moonkin/restokin/tree/feral ones for PvP). That's a big market to start with. Then you have to consider people will probably upgrade their glyphs as new/better ones come out or their want to try something different. Inscription has an ongoing market anyway: enchanting scrolls and buff scrolls, do the glyphs themselves really need to be an ongoing earner for them too?

Then you have to consider inscriptors get an extra inscription slot, which unlike other profession benefits, isn't just a stat upgrade but potentially opens up new playstyle options (there may be things you can only achieve with 3 glyphs in synergy). I really don't see the need for inscriptors to also be making a huge ongoing profit on top of all that.

 

seminarca

Just going back to a few earlier posts.

Well, no. On release, the Heavy Clefthoof set was garbage, it had low armor, and only Stamina and Defense as stats (plus the sockets). It wasn't until patch 2.1 where it got buffed to its current high armor values that made it a viable option for a starter tank, and even then it was/is far worse than post-2.1 T4 for tanking. In any case, it wasn't anywhere near the level of Frozen Shadoweave.

They're not. It makes it cast faster, but heal for less, essentially giving Druids a Flash Heal/Lesser Healing Wave/Flash of Light equivalent spell (1.5 sec "top up" spell).

I'd guess Nourish will be balanced vs the other classes' snipe spells with the 20% HoT boost in mind, which means if you're topping up random raid damage, the target won't always have a HoT ticking on them. In which case (depending on how the numbers work out re: talents, coefficients etc), it could be worthwhile using a glyphed HT instead of Nourish on people who don't have HoTs on them.

Re: Alchemical Blood only working for stuff you can make.

If they are going to go through with this only having it affect stuff you can make (Alchemical Blood not working on Flasks is surely a bug?), they need to get rid of the ridiculous discovery mechanism. All TBC flasks were discovery only. I've been an alchemist on my Druid since ~Apr 2007, churning out a fairly consistent amount of Elixirs weekly, plus the daily transmute. I haven't yet discovered the Fortification recipe and only just got Relentless Assault like a week ago (but I do have every single useless "throw money into the garbage" transmute!). So, for me, Alchemy does nothing if I want to use Shattrath or AH'd flasks. So, either Alchemical Blood not working on flasks is intentional because of the discovery mechanism (which they plan to keep around for WotLK), or it's a bug and discovering recipes needs to go away.

 

Hypatia

See, I think that's a reasonable thing. You have to make, you know, choices. Right now, the choices are too restrictive because of the way the depth of the talent trees have been extended. Having two specs and two sets of inscriptions would mean that you still can't do everything, but, for example, not every raiding warrior is different. Some might really specialize for raid DPS and have two different DPS or tanking builds. Some might prefer to keep their "off spec" available for PvP, while others might prefer to use it to switch between DPS and tanking builds. If inscriptions were stuck to two talent choices, then people could still do the things they don't have inscriptions for, but they won't be quite as good at it.

If talents and inscriptions are both completely freely swappable, every character is identical except for what gear they have on. Everybody has the optimal build for every specific fight. And that would be a tragedy. It's much better to have more diversity than that.

Personally, I think that a single set of inscriptions and a pair of swappable talent builds is just as much as is needed. It brings a bit more variety back into things, while still having each character specialize in one area where they really shine. *shrug*


Anyway, I think I'd be very sad to see inscriptions act like gear. Why? It's not because I think it would make inscription be less of a money maker--I really couldn't care less. Rather, it's because gear is something we already have--even if this would be "gear with a specific purpose" it would still just be glorified trinkets.

Having it be a serious investment in your character to improve on a specific ability? That's something special.

 

Anedris

If I'm a paladin who is sometimes needed in raids as prot, sometimes needed in raids as ret, and who PvPs as holy, I have to make choices.

If I'm a mage, I don't have to make a choice. I have only one raiding spec and whatever spec that is will also be a good farming spec, and I can have a PvP spec.

Why should the game further discourage healers and tanks?

 

Shakes

Sure, you have to make choices. Unfortunately with the current system, or even with a 2 spec system, the choice is between "farm enough gold to spec/glyph as I like" or "be at a disadvantage to those who do farm enough gold". I don't know about anyone else, but personally I don't find that mechanic to be a fun choice. It's the reason why pots have been restricted to one per fight: people don't find farming large amounts of gold just to play to be much fun.

I don't think every character is identical. Different people will always make different spec choices. For example, as a resto shaman 8/0/53, 0/5/56, 0/12/49 and 0/0/61 are all raiding specs that various people use, while 0/7/54, 0/9/52 and 0/20/41 are all popular PvP choices. Even within those basic specs, different people take different talents (eg some people find mana tide to be useful within a PvP build, others don't). The great thing these days is because respecs have become (relative to the pre-BC costs) cheap, people can personally try each of these options out and make up their own mind. I think this leads to more, not less, variety.

Making glyphs fixed is probably more likely to make people pick generic glyphs that have been theory crafted out to be the "best". If you can swap glyphs around with minimal to no cost/penalty, people are more likely to choose situational ones, or experiment with them and see which suits them best. Sometimes they might even find out the so called "best" glyphs don't work well for them, and instead go with something different.

 

Larisroth

I'm also curious about the specializations. Arguably the only ones that actually worked very well were the alchemy ones, and (similarly) the double cloth production of the tailoring ones.

If you're going to have the professions specific rewards in the form of BoP items then it does kind of limit you if you have to change specialization if you wish to use your crafted items which you respec.

Tailoring seems especially problematic as it seems unlikely that they'll repeat the mistake of having school specific spell power available on the items. I guess you could make the specialization more cosmetic like the top end version of tailoring, or leatherworking (my main recently picked up leatherworking, and I haven't bothered to specialize). If you just have BoE gear then that's fine.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

Hypatia

Well, one thing to think about is that if everybody gets two specs, it's no longer rude to throw large numbers of damage-type-immune bosses at people.

While I look forward to the possibility of having a bit more choice (with the two spec thing) in how I take care of business, I'd be terribly upset if "choice" was so free that not respeccing for every fight was actively stupid: if there's no cost to any of this, then min-maxing for every situation becomes expected. And that means there'd be no choice at all any more.

Anyway, I'll stop now. Sorry for crapping up this thread with a religious debate.

 

Prinsesa

My problem with a single set of Inscriptions has nothing to do with people looking the same, specs losing flavor, cookie-cutter builds, etc., and has everything to do with looking for an Inscriber with the Inscriptions I need, looking up the mats, buying the mats, and having them made.

If we set aside the 50g cost of respeccing, constant respecs aren't all that bad, because the Paladin trainer will always be in Thrall's throne room at all hours of the day. However, let's suppose that respecs were caused by using a "Respectful Earthstorm Diamond", created by a JC.

Even if the mats were much cheaper than 50g, if you couldn't find the mats on the AH and you can't find a JC who'll make it for you, either because they're all offline, they don't have the recipe or just plain can't be arsed to get to a capital city, you're stuck.

Huge hassle, right? That's how much of a hassle permanent Inscriptions would be.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Tavik

What if the glyphs were semi-permanent with a limited number of uses? Allow them to have X number charges, and each time they get put into the glyph interface it would consume a charge. You could have your PvP glyphs and your PvE glyphs and you could swap them out, using a charge on each glyph each time you swapped them. People who respec and reglyph daily have to buy them more often, but not daily, and people who respec weekly/monthly will have them for much longer. You wouldn't be as dependent on finding an inscriber with a particular glyph you need whenever you respec, as some have been concerned about, and it would still have economic consequences for those who want to respec twice daily.

 

Shakes

Why do we need "economic consequences" for respeccing? All it does is disproportionately hurt hybrid classes, who already have the "economic consequences" of having to gem/enchant multiple gear sets (and in the case of healers or tanks, the "economic consequences" of their farming set lagging behind in quality to those of their DPS peers).

I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation for a healer or tank to want to be able to participate in all aspects of the game as easily as a DPS player. Blizzard seem to be slowly getting it, first with the 1/3 damage on healing gear, now with the unified spell power and the 2 specs. They've almost got it right (I'd argue the only tweak required is adding a third spec, so you could have a PvE/PvP/solo choice for those who want to both PvP and PvE as healers/tanks). Why on earth do people want them to take a big step backwards and make inscription a barrier to it?