The Future of World Buffs

Lumi · 11/13/06, 10:19 AM

Currently in WoW there are a ton of world buffs available for players. Darkmoon Faire, Spirit of Lordaeron, Warchief's Blessing (Go Horde!), Spirit of Zandalar, and Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer are used on many of the end encounters of Naxx for first kills or to trivialize the harder aspects of a boss. With the expansion coming out, these buffs are still just as powerful as every buff has a scaling aspect to it (bar some darkmoon buffs).

So a question to you guys.

- Should world buffs continue to have such a large impact on end game raiding? Will we continue to farm for the Heart of Hakkar 2.0 to beat an encounter several tiers above it?
- If no new world buffs are offered, should the old world buffs still be farmed?
- Should end game encouters design themselves to accomidate world buffs? For example, Loatheb seems to balance itself on either farming Naxx for more dps gear or using a world buff. Sapphiron on the other hand seems to not be designed around world buffs, and thus getting them makes the group healing/frostbolt burst trivial.

Kalroth · 11/13/06, 10:25 AM

I think that Blizzard should make world buffs stick to the world where you got them. Meaning that they drop if you zone into an instance.

This should make life easier for [end-game] raiders and Blizzards instance designers. They have to design around gear/flasks/potions only and raiders doesn't have to waste time outside an instance to kill something inside an instance.

Rz · 11/13/06, 10:29 AM

There is a new Warchief's Blessing attached to a questline in Nagrand in the Burning Crusade. Exact same stats IIRC.

blindworld · 11/13/06, 10:46 AM

Originally Posted by Kalroth

I think that Blizzard should make world buffs stick to the world where you got them. Meaning that they drop if you zone into an instance.

This should make life easier for [end-game] raiders and Blizzards instance designers. They have to design around gear/flasks/potions only and raiders doesn't have to waste time outside an instance to kill something inside an instance.

The mechanic to accomplish this is even already in the game. There's 2 buffs you can get in zangar marsh by talking to the two ancients that wonder the town, each lasting 30 minutes and disappears the instant you leave the zangar marsh zone. All the pvp buffs are zone oriented as well. There's also a "turn into a human" buff I recieved last night when I zoned into Caverns of Time - Durnholdt. I was just messing around so I'm not completely sure how the buff works, and if the horde get it as well, but it also disappared on zone out.

There's also the arena mechanic that (haven't tested personally) deletes all buffs when you zone in, and then limits what you recieve. It shouldn't be too much effort to expand this into the raid instances. First thing everyone does is buff up anyway, so your current buffs upon zoning don't really matter, unless you've got a flask from the night before. In that case, they could just kill you as you zone, and res you when your done loading, without the durability loss.

Lokoki · 11/13/06, 10:54 AM

IIRC, the It's good to be the King buff from Dire Maul drops when you zone out, as well.

Bubba · 11/13/06, 11:00 AM

Was going to suggest the same thing. They should simply make world buffs get wiped when you zone in to an instance.

I suppose the counter argument then, is why would anyone get them? It seems like the original intent was for it to simply be a scripted reflection of one's achievements (like the first time a Rend/Ony/Nef head went up), as opposed to being something farmed so heavily that you actually have to plan around other guilds dropping it so that you aren't prevented from getting the buff yourselves.

torrent495 · 11/13/06, 1:35 PM

Originally Posted by Kalroth

I think that Blizzard should make world buffs stick to the world where you got them. Meaning that they drop if you zone into an instance.

This should make life easier for [end-game] raiders and Blizzards instance designers. They have to design around gear/flasks/potions only and raiders doesn't have to waste time outside an instance to kill something inside an instance.

I agree.

spronk · 11/13/06, 3:14 PM

They could always implement the arena system and clear all buffs when you enter 25 man zones... it would be nice if they put in GYs inside the raid zones so you could keep oils and such while you raid.

Emeraude · 11/13/06, 3:52 PM

What about current world buffs? People still running Ony/ZG for those massive crit/stats buffs @70?

Elendril · 11/13/06, 3:56 PM

the tooltips for world buffs currently in the game have been changed in TBC according to thottbot beta such that they don't spell out their exact benefits anymore. i wouldn't be surprised if they somehow scale with level.

• QControl · 11/13/06, 4:36 PM

I can confirm that the 15% haste from Warchief's Blessing has been changed to 150 haste rating.

Lord BEEF · 11/13/06, 5:32 PM

I wonder how much haste that is to a level 10 or so character

Whitemane · 11/13/06, 5:42 PM

I hate the fact that it's almost required that you go out and get world buffs to take down Loatheb reliably. You simply don't joke around with those material costs and hope for a good run when you know it's going to be so close.

Fres · 11/13/06, 6:01 PM

Originally Posted by spronk

it would be nice if they put in GYs inside the raid zones so you could keep oils and such while you raid.

Not to devalue the night elf racial; yeah, this please. I don't mind the release/run back mechanic, but please fix that bug that prevents oils from carrying across zones or whatever it was.

Kalman · 11/13/06, 6:11 PM

Originally Posted by Fres

Originally Posted by spronk

it would be nice if they put in GYs inside the raid zones so you could keep oils and such while you raid.

Not to devalue the night elf racial; yeah, this please. I don't mind the release/run back mechanic, but please fix that bug that prevents oils from carrying across zones or whatever it was.

Given that the stated reason for removing the persistent temporary buffs was due to server load, and that they said once TBC hardware/architecture was in place server load wouldn't be a concern in this fashion, you'd think we'd be seeing them re-enabled some time soon.