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.)

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.