Aldur

I think that paladin offensive ability is going much higher in WotLK, not only 30 yard range on judgment and 6 sec cooldown Holy Shock, but also both seem much stronger. Add a HoW on targets below 35% health only and of course AW which you can freely use when you see it fit rather than when you're tired of the match and want to die quickly.

 

Duilliath

So... instead of running around like a headless chicken for 10 seconds, you're running around for 8 or 9 seconds (depending on how the cutoff is). I'll take the chance to resist it completely, thankees very much. I don't think it'll impact Rogues much either as to me that'd be a good enough reason to dump the talent and pick up something more worthwhile instead.

Aye, but since you can't pre-level a Death Knight that's slightly beyond the scope here (unless I missed some other abilities for other classes). Reminds me a bit of Typhoon for Druids, except there you can knockback another player.

 

Karoo

Feral Druids are going to be interesting to watch when WoTLK releases IF their new talents and distribution stay the same.

They can now feral charge in cat form, they have Berserk (not sure the cooldown on this) and they have Infected Wounds, which in it's current state is a melee Annihilator (as if feral druids weren't hard enough for melee to kill already).

Whoever designs the feral tree needs to be involved in designing more of the classes trees. That tree, and the subtlety tree always seem to have the most "fun" and innovative talents whereas a lot of other trees get bloated with +damage to such and such skill or -cast time or whatever else. Sure those talents are powerful but they're boring.

Anyway, I think most people seriously underestimate a good feral druid's potential. A big part of that, however, is how gear dependent they are because they absolutely NEED a large mana pool to be effective and they couldn't accomplish that while still dealing good damage until s3/t6.

It didn't help that Resto was/is so powerful in Arena's either.

 

mdokane

My main is a holy paladin (sorry havn't updated my profile in ages) and I have looked into several builds for the expansion and the one that seems to do it for me is 48/0/23 for sheath. While the attack power conversion is borderline useless and the hot is dispellable, that hardly makes druid HoT healing weak as it stands currently. It's also attached to a frontload heal which is what you would be doing anyway so there isn't an opportunity cost. Opponents that choose to dispell it blow a global they would have rather used on something else I imagine. What the sheath build gives you is crit for your team mates on judgement with reduced mana cost and cooldown, additional spell crit to keep up instant holy lights/sheath HoTs and Eye for an Eye for pure comedy.

It probably has a lot to do with the fact that 3v3 is my bracket of choice, but I just don't see a ton of use for beacon of light with its current mana cost in the arena. The talent I would miss most when speccing out of prot would be kings. As it stands, redoubt won't be taken by most, i'm NEVER going to use any aura but concentration, I typically BoP once per match and while imp hammer and stoicism are nice, I tend to be very conservative with my hammer use and typically use it only when a kill can be made as a result, and stoicism is better now than it will be at 80. The only wildcard is as you said, divine guardian. While I can see its usefulness, currently when I bubble I get the greatest amount of my healing done, activating divine illumination and spamming powerful heals. If anything, I would say at this point in TBC my team mates are in the LEAST danger when I am bubbled, and I typically try not to talent around least dangerous situations.

But the fact remains, the loss of kings is a big loss and you will see many paladins speccing into prot to keep it, regardless of how cool sheath sounds. I make no guarentee that I will even use this build, or that its the best for every paladin play style, just looks like it addresses our current short comings the most. Whatever the outcome, I may actually have to respec my paladin more than once every 6 months now!

Edit: oops it is indeed 60% on sheath, behold the limitations of using internet explorer 6.0 at work; nothing functions correctly on a talent calculator!

 

Ethalan

Small update, by the way, but I went and checked. Sheath is 60% of the healing done by the spell, over 12 seconds, at rank 3 out of 3. You also get Pursuit of Justice with 48/0/23, so it'd be great for pillar humping. 60% is amazing though, seriously. With the entire Paladin PvP set on, you have alot of crit, and while Instant Holy Lights = OOM quickly, this makes any heal much more worth while if it crits, making crit very good to stack.

If they ever add in another set bonus like t6's 2 set (5% Holy Light Crit Chance), this build could go through the roof as a pvp healing build. I am just sad that I can't raid with a spec like that, where as 51/20/0 would give me Beacon of Light, and Divine Guardian(totally epic on AoE fights). I currently raid PvP specced, 41/20/0 as I am the Kings pally, so I find it nice that I don't have to respec for PvP.

 

Kazekan

While chain casting instant HL's in conjunction with a now more efficient HS would indeed make you go OOM pretty fast, you have to remember that being able to pop out from behind a pillar, heal, and then go back again will allow you to stay out of the 5SR more often, thus allowing another 100 mana or so per tick. While that won't necessarily make up for the inefficiency, it's something to consider.

While I was specced Holy (normally I'm Ret since it's easier to just one-shot all the mobs...) I really didn't get a chance to see how much mana I would get back from JotW, however I'm thinking about a PvP spec like This One. Depending upon how much dmg you do with JoR & JoJ combined (JoJ having its' own dmg. component), that could very well make up for the lack in mana efficiency. Not to mention, add some good dmg on top of whatever your partner is doing.

Also, even if the Sheath does get dispelled, you have to remember... they're spending mana to dispel it, and a GCD. Since you really only need to end up with more mana than your opponent in the healing battle, you've just evened the odds a bit more. You also essentially got that effect for "free", and since you'll probably be critting a non-MS'd target for around 8k w/ HL, your ticks will be doing around 1k+ (will be testing tonight, but critting for 4.5k as Ret gave me about 650 healing ticks for those 12 seconds.)

 

Hildegard

Rogues only are really strong at the moment because of the strong scaling of gear with the end Sublety tree. The introduction of another plate wearing class hurts as well. And the 2-DPS combos will most likely not work to well in the first season, when every competitive player has tons of resilience and rogues the equivalents of 71 oder maybe 86 DPS weapons. I can see Mutilate making a huge comeback during the first season as it won't be to easy to drop someone really fast. But rogues will be far from the dominance 4/4 human rogues with wargleaves have had in season 3.

Mutilate works really good with mediocre gear but it lacks the mobility and stealth and lots of the utlitiy that Sublety has. Sublety on the other hand just won't hit hard enough in the beginning.

A build like this looks altough very amazing. It may not be the strongest but it has many fun talents like Fleet Footed, Camouflage, Cold Blood, Improved Gouge, Shadow Step...

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I expect Paladins and Caster classes to dominate season 1. Death Knights will have some problems early on as most other classes will have more gear and 75k honor and 100 of each badges stored. Perhabs it will even be possible to store arena points.

Another big point will be the glove boni. The new combat talent indicates that rogues won't have Deadly throw as an ranged interupt anymore unless they spec deep into the combat tree. So it seems that rogues will actually lose one main ability (try duelling with a mage without it).

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

• Amera

I don't see why you'd get Beacon in a PvP build, even in 5v5. Kings isn't a big deal, either. Outside of 2s, virtually every successful team has a dispeller, and blessings aren't going to last in anything other than a super fast game anyway. It's certainly not worth giving up those Ret talents - that HoT heal is HUGE because it can let you successfully not cast like a druid with crit holy shocks and free holy lights. You'll need to cast against heavy burst, but druids often do too. The biggest loss would be the 30 sec HoJs.

 

◊ Vain

Somewhat related, but something that I don't think deserves its own thread; what do you feel the best professions will be for PvP? For casters, avoiding tailoring seems like a good idea, as all of the slots filled by tailoring will be filled by PvP gear instead. Enchanting (for the ring enchants) and Jewelcrafting (for much improved BoP gems, and trinkets) seem like the way to go currently.

 

mdokane

That seems to be the current min/max choice for pvp'ers and unless inscription has some kind of BoP type of thing, enchant/jc is probably going to continue to be ideal.

 

• frmorrison

What I like about Holy Pally is the "best" spec for Arena and raiding is different, but both specs work decently for both.

For raids you want 51/20 and PvP you want 48/0/23 with talents and mechanics in their current state.

 

• Calantus

I think enchanting, jewelcrafting, and inscription are likely to be the 3 contendors for "endgame" professions. The gathering professions seem to be of lower power and likely deliberately so since they are easier to raise. The other professions are likely to have good value early on filling in slots while you gear up, but will probably fall down in value once you're geared up. Engineering may be amazing if they haven't learnt their lesson and put in a crazy toy you can use in arena until they nerf it.

 

Terp

I realize it depends on preference, but objectively the leatherworking bop leg enchants will give more item budget than 3 JC only gems, even assuming they get rebalanced around epic gems and not blues. Not a huge gain mind you, but I find gemming around the jc only gems less than ideal anyway.

 

• Calantus

I'm not seeing anything about BoP armor kits. They all say "Can only attach to armor in your possession, and attaching causes the item to become soulbound." apparently, but that doesn't mean the kit itself is BoP. Can you supply a link?

 

Terp

Protoscale and Dragonscale Leg Armors.

JC will presumably still get some trinkets though, which are probably less replaceable than any new armor sets.

 

Hildegard

I'm still hoping for Engineering to make a comeback. Rogue T-Set Headpieces tend to look ugly on rogues (I think T0 or D1 was ok). Perhabs they come up with some nice ideas. It's a shame that JewelCrafting trinkets are better than Engineering ones and that engineering has right now no real value except being able to farm for primals more easy. I will stick with leatherworking and Engineering.

Another question is if they finally adjust the racials to be a bit more balanced. Human rogues are so insanely annoying and even blowing Vanish and Sprint is no real counter to that. I hope for the human stealth detection being only usuable while not stealthed or atleast require not being stealthed to start it.

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

Nitz

The 31/0/40 Restokin build will be ridiculous. You don't really lose that much compared to a full healing build and you gain huge PvP benefits.

 

Phonebooth

I get the feeling warlocks will be making a comeback, demonic circle is just that good and until we know if it ignores LOS or its other mechanics we won't know how powerful it really is.

Destruction with the introduction of a fast hard hitting nuke and stuns added to conflag, the ability to conflag the shadowflame immolate meaning you no longer need the 1.5 second cast to conflag. This allows instant on the move setups and conflags with a stun attached and shadowfury on the move for 3 seconds, coupled with demonic teleport allowing for mobility and aftermath being easily attainable it should be very interesting to see.

Not to mention shadowfury on the move.

 

Meghane

I think frost mages get some awesome talents for pvp. more slowing and rooting capability and a stun effect as well as more damage and survivability, and who doesn't want a longer lasting elemental. I think it was already mentioned, but a frost DK and mage could be a pretty sick pvp combo. Too bad it doesn't really matter for me though, I'm not even gonna be around when WotLK comes out.

 

Malakitoo

First I've seen of LW-only stuff, too bad it's melee-only, time to go inscription!

Another thing to consider is that gathering professions add passive boosts (from the WotLK thread):

 

Nitz

I was thinking about something totally ridiculous in 2v2, with a Restokin druid and a Shadowstep rogue taking advantage of Honor Among Thieves if Blizzard doesn't tweak it (by adding a cooldown for example). You can potentially feed a rogue with combo points spamming a 80 mana spell (Regrowth with Imp. Regrowth) to drop down a target after charging the rogue and the target with Slice & Dice, Expose Armor and landing a 5 point-KS with the druid ready to jump in and DPS.

 

Brebbia

Off-topic question, but couldn't find a better place to ask.

Is there any confirmed info about an Arena point reset when WotLK comes out?

 

Lileith

If there is no cooldown It would be way way too strong in a 5v5 setup.

 

Peekaboo

Yeh if I had to make a bet, I'd say warlock is the way to go. Moving soul link down the tree, plus the new talents and spells, plus the historic scaling of melee/clothies/pets...

 

Ozzmar

I'm personally pretty excited for the potential of just having Mutilate with Prep. In 2v2