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Ghostcrawler discusses balance in 8926
A lot of classes are pretty upset about some of the changes we've seen in beta build 8926. Shamans are dot shocking (what else is new), I'm complaining about Holy Priests (ditto), etc. In short, there were a lot of nerfs. Ghostcrawler has emerged to let us know that indeed, there were a lot of nerfs, and there's a reason for it: talents have a budget. You may be familiar with itemization budgets. Basically, an item of a particular item level has a certain amount of "points" to spend on various stats; if you want to load an item up with Stam, it's not going to have as much to spend on Agi, for instance. This is also the reason why caster weapons have low DPS, because they borrow points from weapon DPS to spend on stats like spell power.
Human racials revised again
Racials received a significant revamp recently in the LK beta. But it looks like they're already dissatisfied with "The Fall of Humanity," a new human racial that basically mimics Hunter Feign Death (but without the threat drop), and will be mostly giving it to Night Elves in the form of a Shadowmeld rework instead. The racial that will be replacing it is called Every Man for Himself, and reads as follows: Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. This effect shares a cooldown with other similar effects, such as the PvP trinket. As Vaneras notes, this now gives you the chance to not equip your PvP trinket, essentially giving you an extra trinket slot in PvP. But isn't this basically an amped-up Escape Artist? Doesn't seem very fair to the poor gnomes. I guess Escape Artist doesn't share a cooldown with the trinket, though. Even as a PvE player, this will come in handy quite often, I expect. I certainly make liberal use of shapeshifting breaking movement impairing effects on my Druid. And hey, as long as they're not removing Diplomacy like I originally thought, they can do whatever they want with the other human racials as far as I'm concerned. Just let me stay diplomatic. Edit: Shadowmeld now works as follows: Activate to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence. Lasts until cancelled or upon moving. Any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancellation of this effect.
Premade beta toons available again -- for real
After the false alarm a few days ago, premade characters are available for copy to the US Wrath beta PvP realm Murmur. (Apparently, the realm was called "Murmer" up until a few hours ago. I guess Blizzard decided on a last minute spell check.) I have firsthand knowledge that the character copy now works because I copied three toons this morning and less than two hours later they are now playable. If you have a beta key and you want to play on the PvP server, keep in mind a few things: You can only choose all Horde or all Alliance toons because it's a PvP server. You can copy up to three level 80 characters, stacked with top-notch PvP gear. This server is designed to test Wintergrasp. Other PvE areas like Azeroth and Outland may not be available for play on this server. If you like Night Elves, you're stuck playing a Druid. Dwarves, on the other hand, get a choice of three classes (Hunter, Priest, or Warrior). Every other race gets two classes each. Right now the wait time is only a couple of hours. It will get longer as more people copy toons. So go over there ASAP. Commenters have (sad to say, rightly) accused me of a US bias in my posts so I did some extra research on the this topic for our EU readers. The EU servers do not have premade templates available because -- at the moment, at least -- there is no Murmur-equivalent beta realm available to them. Sorry, folks. We'll keep you posted if that changes.
Blame beta crashes on Unholy Blight
The beta realms have been even less stable than normal this weekend, which is a bit inconvenient when everybody is trying to test Naxxramas. Apparently the cause of the crashes has been pinpointed, and it's the Death Knight spell Unholy Blight (specifically Rank 2). It seems that whenever that spell was used, it would bring down the world servers. Perhaps it was mistakenly coded to surround the world servers with a vile swarm of unholy insects, instead of the DK's target. So the devs have hotfix-disabled it; you will still see it in your spellbook, but it will have no effect if you try to cast it. A worthwhile trade-off for the servers staying up for more than five minutes at a time, I'd say. The other ranks, including the level 80 rank 4 version, are still available. The Storm Peaks and Icecrown zones were also causing issues, and will not be able to be hotfixed, so we'll have to continue to do without them until the next patch.
Naxx-10 loot discovered
The ten-man version of Naxxramas was enabled in last night's beta patch, including loot. And thanks to insomniac beta testers and to MMO-Champion, we now get to see a whole bunch of that loot, including class sets, which is what I'm most interested in at the moment. The class sets aren't quite finished yet – their names are things like "Naxxramas 10 Rogue Set," and there aren't any set bonuses – but it's still interesting to see what sort of stats Blizz is planning on giving us. Some observations: The item level on all this stuff is 200; Kil'jaeden's drops are ilvl 164. Given that two tiers are typically about 14 ilvls apart, this implies that when we see Naxx-25 loot it will probably be ilvl 214 or so. I know that we've got spell power now, and no +healing, but it still took me a few minutes to figure out why I couldn't find a healing weapon. Melee one-handed weapons are doing 143 DPS; by comparison, Hand of the Deceiver, from Kil'jaeden, does 114 (the highest currently available in a one-handed weaopn). I don't like to see items with shield block on them that aren't shields (Deflection Band, Waistguard of the Tutor), since only half of the tanks can use them. There's an oddly large amount of crit rating on the Priest healing set. Is this a consequence of some change I haven't quite digested yet? Anyway, this all looks good; go look at the items yourself at MMO-Champion. I can't wait to see what they're going to do with tokens, and to see some of the Naxx-25 stuff start to drop.
Aspect of the Viper changed again
The Hunter mana regeneration tool, Aspect of the Viper, has been revised again. Currently, in live, it provides passive mana regen. It was recently announced that it was going to be changed to provide 100% of your damage as mana regen, but cut your damage output by 50% (less with talents). This lets the hunter switch it on when they need mana, fill up their mana pool, and switch back to Hawk to DPS some more, as opposed to being in Viper all the time as many hunters do these days. Apparently, though, it was just a bit too powerful, as many users have commented. Hunters with good gear were filling up their mana bar way too fast. So it's going to be changed again, this time to restore a percentage of your base mana each time you hit. While this does do away with some scaling issues, it seems to introduce others. For instance, this makes a fast weapon vastly more desirable for mana regen. But (say it with me) it's still beta, so I'm confident that they'll work out any game-breaking flaws there may be in this new incarnation.
New options button in beta
In the LK beta build that just went live tonight, build number 8905, there's a new Options button on the login screen, just above Cinematics, Credits, and Terms of Use. What lies behind its blue mystery? [Edit: apparently it was there in the last build too. I never noticed.] Unsurprisingly enough, it contains some options that you might want to change before entering the game. Specifically, it has options for video resolution, video effect quality, and sound. For the most part, these are the same options currently available in-game. "Enable Reverb," "Headphone Mode," and "Death Knight Voices" have been added to the sound pane. "Disable Resize" has been added under "Windowed Mode" in the resolution pane; I'm not sure why you'd want to do that, though, unless you kept accidentally resizing the window (which I've never had an issue with, and I often play windowed). The big innovation here (and yes, I realize innovations in option dialogs may not strike you as particularly interesting) is a master slider for video quality. Now you don't have to fiddle separately with terrain distance and ground clutter density if you don't want to; just drag the slider somewhere on the scale from "Low" to "High," whatever's prettiest without being too devastating to your framerates on your particular system. Of course, there's a "Custom" setting, so if you want to tweak all the little sliders, you are still free to do so. A nice change, and it will especially benefit people who don't necessarily know what all the options mean. %Gallery-31297%
Crit DoTs for Affliction, sorta
The Shadow Priest world was recently pleased to learn that Mind Flay is going to be enhanced in an upcoming beta build with the ability to crit (as well as a 30% increased spell power coefficient). The Affliction Warlock community, meanwhile, just wanted to know if they'd get a similar treatment, and it looks like the answer is: maybe? Kind of? Let me explain. Last night, class designer Koraa said the following in the beta forums: There will be a new talent in Affliction in an upcoming build. Keywords: "DoT" and "Crit" (Well, sorta) How do we interpret that "well, sorta"? Who knows, really. I'm sure we'll all see soon enough. In the mean time, it's always fun to speculate! What's like critting, but isn't actually a crit? Well, there could be a chance of 1.5x/2x damage, without actually being counted as a crit. This way it wouldn't trigger effects that trigger from crits. However, it would then not solve the issue of crit rating being next to meaningless for Aff locks. "Sorta" could also mean that crit mechanics will apply to DoTs, but not in a traditional way: A crit DoT could have each tick do extra damage (this would be the closest analogue of a regular crit, I think). It could be extended in duration, which would save on mana but not really raise DPS. Each tick could have a separate chance to crit. It could actually compress the DoT, making it do the same amount of damage in less time, which would raise DPS and keep DPM constant. I think that last one is my favorite. What do you think they'll do? What do you want them to do? Update: Semi-crit mechanism revealed! New talent: Pandemic - Each time you deal damage with Corruption or Unstable Affliction, you have a chance equal to your spell critical strike chance to deal 33/66/100% additional damage.
Premades now available in Wrath beta
The option was just opened up to create premade level 80 characters on the LK beta realms. Up till now in the beta premades had not been available, and we don't know exactly what kind of gear they'll have, but my guess would be blues. None of the high-end content has been implemented yet as far as I know; however, Daelo did say that Naxxramas, the first raid, will be open "soon" in both 10- and 25-man editions, and will have loot in. So hopefully we'll be able to see just what they're planning on doing for the different gear in 10s and 25s. If you're in the beta, you're eligible for three premades, so get cracking if you want to play in the deep end.[Thanks, Kenzi]
Cutting a more perfect gem
WoW's crafting system has always been relatively straightforward. Collect mats, press button, receive item. This lies in contrast to crafting systems from other games, which may contain mini-games, convoluted learning systems, or varying levels of success in production. In WoW, you can't even fail at making something; if you can make it at all, every attempt will result in an item, and they're all the same (aside from some recipes with random enchants. This fits in with WoW being on the simple side for MMOs (simple to learn, that is; often difficult to master). Jewelcrafting in LK is going to shake that up a little bit. There will be a quest available to jewelcrafters that gives them a chance to craft a "perfect" version of an uncommon-quality gem when cutting it. For the first time, it's possible to have a critical success from crafting in WoW. It looks like the perfect versions of gems are positioned precisely between the uncommon and rare versions of a cut, in terms of stats. For instance: Delicate Bloodstone: +12 agility Perfect Delicate Bloodstone: +14 agility Delicate Scarlet Ruby: +16 agility Delicate Cardinal Ruby: +20 agility So far, Gem Perfection appears to work only on uncommon-level gems, not on rares or epics. I also don't know what the chance is of cutting a perfect gem instead of a regular one. It's a nice change, and a little something extra for cutting those buckets of green gems on the way from 375 to 450. Would you like to see more critical successes in other crafting professions?
Realm first level 80 titles removed
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/First_to_level_80_titles_removed_from_WotLK'; The Feats of Strength for realm-firsts have been raising some controversy for a little while now. Briefly, the worry is that it only rewards people who are willing and able to either play 24 hours a day from when Wrath is released to when they reach their goal, or share their account with friends and play in shifts. Either way, it's not really a measure of skill or accomplishment so much as a measure of who's got a lot of uninterrupted time on their hands. There is additional worry that playing for 24+ hours straight is just not healthy, and Blizzard probably doesn't want people rushing through the content either. So it is with some pleasure that I report that the titles for the feats of strength for realm-first level 80 with each class, for first 80 on each realm, and for first to 450 in the various professions are being removed. The title for realm-first Northrend Vanguard (achieve exalted with various factions) is also getting removed. Note that the Feats of Strength themselves are still in – the game still keeps track of who got to 80 first, and will tell you if it's you – but there's no longer a title to show off for other players. This is an interesting compromise; the feat is still noted, but there's much less incentive to do it now. Finally, Tigole notes that the realm-first boss kills will still give titles, which is as it should be in my book. Given raid lockouts, you couldn't raid 24/7 even if you wanted to, so this is more of an indication of skill. One interesting alternative, for those who still want titles like this to be in the game, is presented on Blessing of Kings. Basically, the suggestion is that the titles should be given to those who take the least time /played to get from 70 to 80. This would mean you'd have to optimize your playing in a different way, and it would also mean you could lose the title if someone outdoes you in the future, which I see as a plus (though some here at WoW Insider vigorously disagree with me). Edit: on second thought, I agree that this is probably not a great idea. Hopefully they'll come up with some kind of very long questline for each class or something.
Rogue changes, round two
The Rogue class is going to be the target of a vast array of smaller and larger modifications in the LK beta. We saw a set of these changes already, and last night Gamnin came by the forums to post another set. The interesting changes (and there are a lot of them): Cloak of Shadows cooldown down to 1.5 minutes, from 2 (1 in live). Elusiveness will now reduce the cooldown of CloS by 15/30 sec as well as its previous effect. Tricks of the Trade confirmed; they note that "we'll need one type of solution or other to prevent the need for 5 rogue Trick rotations." Assassination: Vigor moved to tier 3. It's long been a sub-par talent, so this is sensible. Relentless Strikes moved to Sublety tier 1, and raised to five ranks (from one) for the same effect (4/8/12/16/20%). Fair, but a little difficult to stomach too. This does somewhat achieve their stated goal of making it more accessible, but quintupling the cost and putting it in my least favorite tree is not what I had in mind. New tier 7 talent that I assume is taking Vigor's place: Overkill: Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy. I'll need to play with this, but it looks pretty great. Master Poisoner has been moved and redesigned. It's now in tier 9 and has three ranks, and instead of increasing chance for poisons to hit, it now increases everyone's crit chance against targets you've poisoned by 1/2/3% and lessens the duration of poisons on you by 17/34/50% [fixed, thanks]. Hunger for Blood's effect increased to 30 sec, from 10.
Misery and company
Yes, this may be the third post I've made in a few days that mentions the Shadow Priest talent Misery. You got a problem with that? Previously on "Eliah talks about Misery:" Misery gets nerfed in the beta from +1/2/3/4/5% spell damage, where it is now, down to +1/2/3% spell hit. Eliah complains that this makes it either required or useless. OK, now that you're all caught up, let's move forward. In the comments on my last post, several people made the helpful observation that Misery isn't the only debuff that gives +spell hit against the mob. Balance Druids' Improved Faerie Fire is now going to give the same effect of +1/2/3% spell hit (the +melee/ranged hit is getting removed). And of course, in the new raid buff/debuff system, these effects will not stack. So you only need one Shadow priest or one Balance druid to give that +3% spell hit.
Riding Crop in flux
The Riding Crop. If you're level 70 (and not a druid) you probably have one, and if not, why not? Jeez, just buy it from your friendly neighborhood leatherworker already; they have few enough ways to make money without you cheaping out. However, everyone's favorite mount-speed-increasing item is going to be changing a little bit in LK. Blizzard realized that it's "no fun" to be swapping your trinket around all the time, even with addons, and that it's relatively common to be stuck in combat with the Crop equipped when you really want to have your Bladefist's Breadth or whatever. So they wanted to get the Crop out of your trinket slots. There was a brief period of time, reflected in some spells mined from the data files, when the Crop was going to be an item that would be right-clicked to enchant your mount with extra speed. This led to many people complaining that they would now have to buy one Crop per mount. Anyway, now that mounts are going to be learned instead of kept in the inventory, this doesn't work anymore, apparently. So Blizz is still undecided on what precisely to do with it. It does seem certain that it won't stick around in its current trinket form, and virtually certain that it won't disappear entirely, but everything else is up in the air. What do you think they should do?
The new Misery
Many Shadow Priests are not feeling very good about the state of the class in LK right now. Yes, buffs to DPS are promised. But a lot of our utility has tanked, from Shadow Weaving not affecting other players, to Vampiric Touch being dialed down and given to other classes, to Misery. It's sad, but amusing that a talent named Misery would get nerfed this hard. Currently, in live, Misery gives 1/2/3/4/5% increased spell damage for all players against targets affected by your Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay, and Vampiric Touch. Pretty sweet. As of the latest beta version, it's +1/2/3% spell hit for all players against targets affected by the same spells. The reason this is especially bad (besides that the last two ranks of the talent were removed) is that most casters are hit-capped when they raid, which means that additional spell hit doesn't help them at all. So either players are going to start gearing assuming Misery will be up – which defeats Blizzard's stated goal of making it so no class is truly essential for a raid – or Misery is going to be worthless most of the time (outside of leveling maybe). This seems like a good case of a broken talent, and so I have every hope that it will get addressed during the beta. But as of right now, Misery is pretty miserable indeed.
Rogues in 8885: Tricks of the Trade
Most of the shiny gifts that were given to Rogues in the latest beta build were previewed last night in an unusually large post by Blizzard, but there is one that they were coy about, and it's the new level 75 skill: Tricks of the Trade. Fortunately, MMO-Champion is resourceful, and has found it out: The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage caused by the target is increased by 15% during this time. As many people have mentioned by now, this is basically an amped-up Misdirection for Rogues. The damage increase gives it some utility in PvP, where threat is meaningless, and of course it doesn't hurt in PvE. Rogues don't usually have problems with threat, but we do have problems occasionally with not bringing much to the group besides DPS. This will certainly help change that; we can now help cement aggro onto the tank whenever needed (the word is that the cooldown on this is 30 seconds). And the way it's shaping up these days, pretty much every class brings something special; why not rogues? Even if, in true Rogue fashion, we've stolen that "something special" from the Hunters -- I love it.
8885 is not entirely kind to Priests
My favorite class was certainly not left out of the party when it came to this beta build. The most interesting changes to me: Inner Fire works on spell power now, not just healing spell power as was the case in previous builds. This only makes sense, given that spell power is unified now. Penance has been buffed for all ranks, but I need to see proper numbers before I can make any conclusions. MMO-Champion is noting that it now ticks twice instead of thrice; I'm hoping that's a bug related to lowering the channel time to 2 sec. The new Disc talent Grace got the stuffing nerfed out of it. It now reads as follows: Your Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance spells have a 50/100% chance to bless the target with Grace, reducing damage done to the target by 1%. This effect will stack up to 3 times. Effect lasts 8 sec. Yikes. It was a very strong talent, but I'm not sure it deserved to be hit quite this hard. Focused Power reworked to increase your total spell damage and healing by 2/4%, and reduce the cast time of Mass Dispel by 0.5 sec. Anything that makes you 2% more Priest per talent point is practically a must-have talent. New Disc talent: Renewed Hope (Tier 8): Increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Penance spells by 3% on targets afflicted by the Weakened Soul effect. Our Shadow brethren were not left out either, though perhaps they will wish they had been (this is all stuff that had been previewed in the big "raid stacking" post). Vampiric Touch changed to implement the new mana battery model ("cause up to 10 party or raid members to gain 0.5% of their maximum mana per second while you are dealing shadow damage"). Misery changed to 3 ranks, now gives 1/2/3% spell hit. Shadow Weaving changed to 3 ranks, and now only increases the shadow damage you deal. Definitely a bittersweet moment in the Priest development cycle. I really hope Shadow gets some major buffs soon. [via MMO-Champion]
8885 for Hunters: AotV reworked
There is a surprising amount of new and interesting things in the latest beta version, build 8885, for the Hunter class. Let's start things off with a bang: Aspect of the Viper changed to: The hunter takes on the aspect of the viper, instantly regenerating mana equal to 100% of the damage done by any ranged attack or ability, but reduces your total damage done by 50%. Only one Aspect can be active at a time. That's a total reworking of the skill. Now it's sort of a cross between Evocation and Shamanistic Rage, but with no cooldown. If you need some mana back, just turn it on and go crazy for a little while. Your DPS will suffer a bit, but you'll have full mana by the end of it. I like the idea.
Druid changes in 8885
The latest beta push, build 8885, had changes for pretty much every class. Druids, of course, were no exception. Balance received the bulk of the changes, though it's mostly on the level of small tweaks. A few talents were moved around in the talent tree. Notably, Insect Swarm has been pushed down two tiers and correspondingly buffed up to 5% reduced chance to hit. The really interesting part of the Balance tree changes is some great synergy for Resto druids. For instance: New Talent Nature's Splendor (Tier 3): Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom and Flourish spells by 10/20/30%. New Talent Genesis (Tier 1): Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%. Focused Starlight renamed Nature's Majesty and now affects Nourish and Healing Touch as well. Looks like yet another step in the new quest to open up the talent trees and give us more options. Oh, and the Moonkin Aura now hits any raid member within 45 yards. Edit: Nature's Grasp now trainable, 100% chance to hit.
Many Rogue changes incoming
Rogues were one of the last classes to get new talent trees for LK; in general, it seems like they've been a bit behind during the beta. However, today another blue I've never heard of, by the name of Gamnin, dropped a lot of information about what's in store for the most stabbity of classes. Here are the changes that jump out at me:General: All reagents and tools (such as Thieves' Tools and poison reagents) are being removed. Poison skill is being removed. Poisons can now be bought from vendors. Evasion, Sprint, and Vanish cooldowns reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes (2 minute with talents). Cloak of Shadows cooldown raised to 2 minutes (1 minute with Elusiveness). An unspecified new level 75 ability is coming, which will "add some much needed group utility." The previous level 75 ability, Dismantle, will be trainable at level 20.
