Copernicus

Spirit is much more valuable than mana/5 for mages. We get 30-45% regen, plus each point of spirit is worth 15 mana for Evocation. Plus we have the chance of a spirit regen tick while clearcasting Fireballs/Frostbolts.

 

Omelet

That was posted by Drysc, although I don't have (and can't find) the link.

 

Kody

It also said rested bonus in the screenshot, so it was probably only like 600 xp for killing the boss. To give you an example, Doan gives a couple hundred xp when he's killed(compared to ~half that for normal mobs, maybe even less), so it's nothing new.

I've heard some values for 60-61 and it sounds fairly staggering, but I don't want to say the exact amounts until there's actual visual confirmation. But I've also heard there are plenty of quests even in the initial Outland zone so it seems like the content is there to support the increased xp needed.

 

Nite_Moogle

I'm just happy to see the items are well done, and there are no glaringly stupid auto-disenchant loots. It doesn't look like it will take very long before people are replacing even some BWL gear if this is what we're seeing in the earliest, easiest dungeon in the game. That damn healing trinket would be a flat out upgrade for me :\ Also nice to see some better HP scaling on greens, not sure if that will carry over to blues and epics or not but I relish the thought of my freshly-leveled Paladin *not* getting one shotted by raid bosses just because he isn't walking around in Judgement.

 

impossible!

WHAM! Found it. My explanation was poorly worded; it had been a while since I read the post.

http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/f...m/15403152.htm

Snippet:

 

KalelScilla

You get around 300 for a level 60 mob, double if it's an elite. Double again if you're rested. Thats around 1200. Divided by 5 for the group? Plus a small group bonus. Is how it works now, which means at 59 you get like 80-100xp for each elite in strat or scholo.

1200xp for one mob in a 5-man group is... off the charts insane unless they've changed the xp system alot.

 

• Karakas

Do the new items still follow old ilvl formulas, or do they use a different model completely?

As in, other than the reduced cost of sta on items, does it appear that the same budget points/system is in use as currently, or have they changed something so as to not have to ramp up to something like ilvl 120 epics for TBC endzones?

 

Vhal

Er, you're missing the point that strength costs twice as much as AP per point in the itemization formula, and for a rogue, AP is equally as good. AP is, point for point, twice as efficient as strength for rogue gear. Then you go AP/agi to maximize itemization usage because of the exponent. The bigger thing, though, is that every piece of rogue gear that has strength (and most epics do) but no AP could have had twice as much AP as it does strength for the same cost and yield more dps for the rogue.

 

Farstrider

Noone spotted the typo - the shaman mail legs are "leggaurds"

Possibly an authentic typo but equally possibly an elaborate fake.

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research

 

Krug

I don't know if this is sarcasm or not, but with rested xp you can easily get 1200-1400xp off yellow/orange conned elites at 50+

 

Kody

Err, Ritssyn's Ring of Choas? :P

 

taylor

Why would overcompensating and having stamina/armor scale faster be a good idea at all? Yeah, longer PvE encounters is going to make farming a lot more fun, but unless I am missing something this could potentially further throw off class balance in PvP.

I do however like the idea of crowd control abilities being less important though.

 

Oaken

In other words it tells you nothing? :D

 

impossible!

I don't know about you, but I think NOT being two-shot in PvP would be anything but throwing class balance off even further.

 

Vhal

As a class who derives a lot of PvP utility from two-shotting, I'm scared :)

 

KalelScilla

In a 5 man group?

 

henaki

I disagree, healing classes can no longer succub to having an entire gameplan overcome through sheer luck anymore. If one were to shoot off a Shadowbolt, Shadowburn combo with Illidan gear and you die in a 2v2 or 3v3, not only did you not actually get to play to your strengths or weaknesses, you didn't even get to play at all.

Essentially, the balance currently is homogenized, everyone has the same essential strength and weakness, there is no variety in a world of everbody twoshots, it's just whoever gets the combo off first. Balance is a touch issue, but when there is no variety, what's the point of even playing a specific class in PvP?

Gur - Level 64 Undead Warlock on Hellfire

 

◊ Drauk

Well, 1 spi is 0.28 mp5 with 45% incombat regen. Now, in item budget 1 point of spirit costs 230 and 1 mp5 is 650. So mp5 is 30% more efficient, if you take item budget into account.
Yes, evocation using Spi regen is huge factor, but i hope that rumors are true and TBC evocation will be percentile.

Fun is for casuals

 

Rabid Rob

It may seem a lot, but it's still not enough. Look at your own numbers, going solo is still going to be a lot faster than hitting instances. I was hoping the group bonus would get buffed to be more exponential, but it doesn't look like hitting instances will ever be good for xp, unles you get major item/quest rewards to go with it.

Let me put it this way. In the time it takes to kill that boss, I can probably solo somewhere between 1200-2400 xp, depending on how involved killing the boss is, and not counting the need to learn the encounter, possibly wipe, pay repairs...

 

taylor

The reason it is like that now is because damage has been scaling up faster than health. If you face two classes off with blues or crappy epics, this won't happen. It's only when damage goes up by a ton and health doesn't move that this becomes a problem. They didn't say they were going to make the scaling equal with the original class design, they said that armor/health would scale faster. Hmm, maybe what he means is it will scale faster until class balance is how it's intended, then they will scale relatively equally to preserve that class balance?

 

Nite_Moogle

You're probably going to see instance bosses be longer, more complicated bosses not like what has been done with raid bosses in the last few releases. The single-tank/healalot with slight variations is pretty well out the window at this point, by increasing player HP they make encounters less reliant on a single stroke of bad luck causing a wipe. Endurance in 5-mans is a joke since you can eat/drink constantly, where in raids your endurance through fights is much more critical. This is one of those learned habits that can be hard to break, and is part of the reason that you still see a lot of new raid healers blowing their mana pools quickly in boss fights because that's how they did it in 5 mans. Longer fights with more mobs that don't hit as hard (see: ZG) makes your staying power more important than your alpha strike capability. There are certainly ways to do PVE with that model that aren't going to end up taking longer than a buch of single/double pulls that you can unload on and recover from.

The trend of one-shotting in PVP is probably one of the biggest criticisms in WoW's gameplay. You win the fight before you start based on if your cooldowns are up or not. Woo. Hoo. Heaven forbid they go to longer fights that require more skill than trinket macroing or ambush+backstab+lol. The really intense PVP fights are the ones where each side is really digging in to the toolbox to pull out a win, not the ones where you lose the silence war and get turned into atomic matter or Windfury/MS'd by a Ashkandi-wielding warrior. I'd rather see more skill play in to it, and I don't think the small increase in overall HP we'll see from this itemization change is going to break the game at all.

 

Oaken

I don't need bosses to be longer, thank you very much. More than ten minutes repeating the same pattern on the twin emps is more than enough for me. More complicated I can see and would like.

 

duostrike

It is one of the biggest criticisms of WoW's gameplay. However, consider the 2 classes that you illuded to in the post. Mages and Rogues will suffer the most at the hands of higher hp pools all around. The longer these classes are in a fight the lower their chances of winning that fight are. That is the current design. Right or wrong that is what Blizzard put into the game. This is also why people complain about mages and rogues the most even though the current balance isn't that bad.

This is all speculation about how things will scale post expansion but if they don't consider these issues when balancing the inflation of HP then mages and rogues will get the short end of the stick in pvp.

 

• frmorrison

I am sure the devs are testing stam/armor changes in PvP settings. Blizzard understands how their customers enjoy PvP (all their major games have some sort of multiplayer).

Remember that Mages and Rogues get the stamina increase too, so they will not be as weak.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

duostrike

If you gave a 5k hp boost to every single player in the game right now and damage stayed nearly constant. Mages and Rogues would be significantly weaker in pvp than they are currently.

It has to do with a couple things

- the openers (polymorph/stealth)
- no heals.
- no dots (and no ignite doesn't really count)
- no dispel (decurse is very limited in the pvp arena 'curse of agony', 'curse of tongues')