class-changes
Latest
LotRO's Captains get buffed in Riders of Rohan
Turbine's Riders of Rohan dev diary parade continues, as today the studio previewed some of the changes coming for Lord of the Rings Online's Captains this fall. The hybrid class will see several upgraded versions of existing skills on the path to level 85 as well as a new out-of-combat rez at level 40. New skills that the Captain will be receiving include Improved Valiant Strike, which now comes with a Fellowship-wide HoT; Improved War-cry, which adds a damage bonus on top of a faster attack speed; and Inspiring Blade of Elendil, which will hit harder, help with power regeneration more, and allow Captains to buff other skills when used in a chain. System Designer Erika Ng said that the team is also working to make skills and legacies useful to all trait-lines for the class. One of the new legacies that added with Riders of Rohan will increase the duration of battle states and defeat responses so that Captains have a longer period of time to fire off reaction skills.
Mists of Pandaria: 'What has changed?' makes class changes more palatable
One of the sharpest double-edged swords in Blizzard's arsenal is the constant iteration to class and play design that comes with each World of Warcraft expansion. On the one hand, players like innovation and new mechanics and spells to keep their favorite class fresh. On the other hand, players could reject the changes as too severe or too different from the class they originally set out to play, as was the case with Alex Ziebart and myself with paladins in Cataclysm. It's a risky move to change up the core mechanics of a class, and the introduction of the "What's New" window helps streamline this occasionally daunting issue. New and old players alike will benefit greatly from the "What has changed?" tab. Simply open up your spellbook and click on the last tab at the bottom. You'll be greeted with a new screen giving you the run down on some of the biggest changes to your class coming in Mists of Pandaria.
Raid Rx: An overview of druids in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. Last week, we covered some of the more notable monk abilities along with the expected playstyle. Recently, the level cap on beta has been raised to level 87, allowing every class access to their new level 87 spell. Much of the talk this week on the major sites and blogs is about Symbiosis. We touched on it several times, but now we get to take a closer look at it in further detail.
Blood Sport: How will patch 4.3 impact PvP?
WoW Insider covers the world of player vs. player action in Blood Sport for fans of battleground, world PvP and Arena play. Steering you to victory is Olivia Grace, who spends most of her time in Azeroth as a restoration shaman turning people into frogs. With patch 4.3 imminent and Arena season 10 due to end Nov. 29, it seems reasonable to assume the patch will appear in early December. While you're racing to get your team into title range, get that last piece of gear, or just running laps of your capital city, you might be thinking forward to the arrival of the patch and wondering what your fate will be in PvP as the nerf bat winds up for another swing. Firstly, let's deal with some housekeeping. Conquest points, the PvP equivalent of valor points, will now be far, far easier to earn from ordinary Battlegrounds. The first daily Battleground win will now award 100 conquest points, up from 25, and wins after that will award 50 conquest point, up from, well, none! The conquest cap will remain, so while it will still be far quicker to reach it through Arena, it will also be attainable via Battlegrounds of the non-rated variety. This makes it far easier for solo players to build up the resilience numbers people often demand (fairly or otherwise) for access to Arena and Rated Battleground teams or just to gear for Battlegrounds.
LotRO dev diaries take a look at upcoming Rune-keeper and Hunter changes
With the launch of Lord of the Rings Online: Rise of Isengard just a short week away, Turbine is beginning to round out its pre-Isengard dev diaries. Today, we've got a double-whammy for you in the form of some new information on what will become of Rune-keepers and Hunters when the new expansion hits. On the Rune-keeper side of things, the devs have a variety of goals for the class, such as refining the class' trait trees, allowing the class to perform as a "hybrid AoE damage dealer," and buffing the class' AoE healing slightly. Chisels and rifflers will be seeing big changes in order to allow all of them to be used by Rune-keepers of the DPS and healing variety rather than gearing them toward one or the other. As with all other classes, the team is focusing on improving existing skills rather than introducing new ones, and as such the greatest changes are coming to the Rune-keeper's trait lines. Each trait line's four-set bonus is seeing changes to some degree. Meanwhile, in Hunter land, the goals for the class are much more concise. The devs want to give players further incentive to use all three of the available combat stances while performing "general cleanup" on the class. All stance-specific bonuses have been removed from all trait lines and redistributed elsewhere, thereby keeping Hunters from being locked into a specific stance based on their choice of trait line. Hunters will also be granted the ability to dual-wield and to wear medium armor from the get-go, which should help new players immensely. Of course, a variety of Hunter abilities have been improved, and the class is also gaining two new skills to round out its repertoire. For the entire set of changes to both classes, head on over to the dev diaries and soak up all the juicy details. And remember, Lord of the Rings Online: Rise of Isengard launches in just a week, so prepare yourselves accordingly.
Turbine dev diary outlines LotRO Hunter tweaks
The winds of change are blowing toward Lord of the Rings Online's Hunter class, and Turbine developer Brian "Zombie Columbus" Aloisio has penned a new dev diary detailing the efforts to make Hunters more interesting for high-level players. This is no small feat, as "the Hunter was intentionally designed to avoid complexity," Aloisio says. "The differences between the trait lines are a little shallow." How exactly is Turbine going to achieve the delicate balance between easy-to-play and hard-to-master? Aloisio outlines three primary focus points for the Hunter changes: a reduction of the number of "filler" traits, enhancements for underused skills (as opposed to new skill additions), and general maintenance. The dev diary goes into great detail regarding the bowmaster and huntsman lines, with the former ultimately receiving a reduction in top damage potential but an increase in the overall effective damage and the latter seeing significant changes to Fleet Stance and Strength of the Earth. Find a path to the official LotRO website for the full details.
Looking at death knight changes testing in PTR Patch 4.0.6
There are changes on the upcoming 4.0.6 PTR for death knights. Actually sorting through them may prove a little difficult, as the official patch notes and the datamined information sometimes say two different things. In short, though, we can say that blood has received a bit of a survivability hit, but a nice threat boost; unholy has both become a more solid 2H damage tree and received a sizeable (but expected) DPS nerf; and 2H frost has gotten a nice boost that may actually make it viable in endgame raiding, depending on how the numbers hold out. Remember, though, that this is the PTR, and things may (and probably will) change before this thing goes live. With that in mind, let's take a look at what the changes say.
Ghostcrawler reveals upcoming class changes in Cataclysm
Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted the blog post I think most of us have been waiting for ever since Cataclysm went live. It features a summary of where the dev team sees the PvE and PvP games at this point, including some analysis of various classes and specs, and some planned changes for those specs that are underperforming and overperforming. In PvE, Ghostcrawler mentions that Blizzard is mostly happy with the tank classes and notes that while healers do have it a bit hard, this is intentional. Heroics are meant to be a challenge. As for DPS, he offered that some classes, such as arcane mages and marksman and beast mastery hunters, are too low in their damage, while others, such as shadow priests and fire and frost mages, are being watched closely before final judgment is made on their numbers. In PvP, Ghostcrawler says Blizzard is satisfied with the decreased emphasis on healing prevention and burst damage. Crowd control and dispel mechanics, especially offensive dispels, may see some PvP nerfs, and priests will specifically be getting some PvP buffs. Stats also got some mention. A lot of stats are being neglected by some classes, and the dev team wants to fix this. Mastery will be either buffed or completely revamped for many specs, such as unholy death knights and retribution paladins. Haste may be made to scale with more attacks, such as Lacerate, Slam, and Steady Shot, in order to make the stat more desirable to certain specs. Check after the break for the complete text of Ghostcrawler's post, including a list of specifically planned (but not finalized) class changes for future patches.
Coming back for the Cataclysm
Tomorrow sees the launch of the third expansion to World of Warcraft... but odds are you already knew that. It's been hard to miss the lead-up, even if you weren't playing the game and thereby missed out on seeing the entire planet get blown apart. And it's probably been equally difficult to fight back the siren song of the game, taunting you to come back and play again... or play for the first time if you've never tried it. If you've been proud of yourself for resisting, you might want to look away, because there are many reasons to start playing again or start up for the first time. The expansion has brought with it a number of improvements and boosts to the game, some obvious and some not. If you've been considering coming back or trying the game out, there's never been a better occasion than right this moment -- whatever your reason for leaving might have been.
Blizzard announces patch 4.0.1 releases tomorrow
The stars and planets have aligned. Some celestial body out there is in some sort of retrograde. Ancient civilizations have predicted something akin to the events tomorrow. Patch 4.0.1 is coming, and you need to be ready for it. Here's the official announcement: Bashiok -- Extended Maintenance 4.0.1 Release - 10/12 Extended maintenance will begin tonight at midnight, Tuesday, October 12 for the release of patch 4.0.1. Maintenance will begin at 12:01 AM PDT and conclude at approximately 12:01 PM PDT. During this time all realms and many web services will be unavailable. Due to the size of the patch we highly recommend you enable your background downloader. If you need assistance doing so please visit http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=35274 source There are some pretty major changes coming to World of Warcraft tomorrow, so it's time to learn to play all over again. Read about your new class features here. Read about the new glyph system here. Read about the new reforging system here. Don't forget to turn on your background downloader if you want to be able to log in sooner tomorrow. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
Dream a little dream of Allods Online's patch 1.1.02
Patch 1.1 was a contentious period in the life of Allods Online, but the dev team is hoping to get past the controversy with the impressive improvements of patch 1.1.02. Although those excessive decimal points may not instill your heart with awe, the patch is quite beefy indeed. At the cornerstone of this update is a new zone, the Dream Factory. Meant for level 22 Imperial players, the Dream Factory will shed some light on Yasker's war against the League. Also included in the update is a bevy of new social options, including a calendar and a bulletin board system. The bulletin board offers three helpful features: guild announcements, general announcements and a looking-for-group tool. Most of the classes were on the business end of a major tune-up, and as a result, affected classes have had their talents and rubies reset. The patch notes list extensive changes for classes such as the warrior, although scouts are left with this maddeningly vague statement: "Significantly changed all spells and abilities." It's a new minigame: figure out what "significant changes" have been made to your class! You can read the full patch notes over at Allods Online.
EQII class changes now live on test server
Sony Online Entertainment's Dave Georgeson, senior producer on EverQuest II, weighs in on the game's official forums with some interesting information regarding upcoming class tweaks. As he indicated in a recent interview, changes are in the offing for the venerable fantasy sequel, and if this teaser is any indication, they're likely to be considerable. "The skill progression for the lower levels was a) drowning new players in skills that they didn't understand, and b) often giving players certain skills way before they needed them. Also, some classes just simply weren't getting enough useful skills in order to have fun. So we've shuffled things around," he writes. Highlights of said shuffling include the oft-neglected Dispel Magic mage skill being changed to Absorb Magic (which consequently drains the target of mana), a new level 6 priest damage ability called Wrath which scales with your character's level, and the removal of the fighter's Intercept skill since you'll rarely be grouping at low levels. Check out the full list of tweaks on the official forums.
Paladin class preview schedule change
The patient Paladins that have been awaiting the Paladin class previews have some very good news on the EU forums. The Paladin class preview that was previously scheduled for Friday, April 16th has been bumped forward to Wednesday, April 14th. For those of us in the US, that could very well be today. The blue post from the EU forums: Wryxian We are thankful for all the paladins and their patience in having to wait just a bit longer than others to get their Cataclysm class preview. While we had initially announced that we were planning to post the Paladin preview on Friday, April 16, we can now reveal that it will instead be posted on Wednesday, April 14! source Will Paladins see Radiance Aura as a full-fledged ability, or does Blizzard have something else up their sleeves for the Light-swingers? We'll be posting the Paladin class information once it's live -- a little sooner than expected. In the meantime, check out the other class previews, changes, and analysis in WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm.
A roundup of World of Warcraft's major class changes
Love it or hate it, World of Warcraft is the 900-pound gorilla of the MMO market at the moment. Nearly everyone who games online has at least tried it, and even those of us who play other games very possibly still play it as an old standby. So it's hard to miss the news about the newest expansion, Cataclysm, which is poised to remake the world in many ways. It's also home to an ambitious series of overhauls to classes and their talent structure, with far-reaching changes for every class in the game. Our sister site, WoW.com, has been keeping abreast of the development team's slow roll of new information about each class, with every class but Paladins having their upcoming changes previewed. (Paladins are due out on the 16th, due to being "deep in development.") They've also gone through an in-depth analysis of each different set of changes, from the good to the bad. So if you've played the game at all -- and the odds are you have -- take a look past the break for a quick version of everything coming when World of Warcraft brings down the end of the world.
Analysis of the priest Cataclysm class preview
You've probably seen the summary of the upcoming priest changes for Cataclysm, and now we're pleased to bring you our columnists' analysis of what these changes might mean. Our resident priests put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) as soon as the changes were announced, and you can check out the analyses below: Discipline and holy priest analysis by Dawn Moore Shadow priest analysis by Fox Van Allen If you haven't seen them yet, make sure to check out the list of upcoming changes. We'll continue to analyze these class changes as they're released, and don't forget that we're also looking for guest posts on these subjects.
Analysis of the shaman Cataclysm class preview
Now that you have the basic upcoming shaman changes for Cataclysm, we're happy to bring you detailed analysis of what the changes mean to your class and spec. Our class columnists have been hard at work and have put together a series of posts detailing exactly what the changes mean for you, what's good and bad about them, and how they're going to shape the future of the game. Check out the analyses below: Elemental shaman analysis by Mike Sacco Enhancement shaman analysis by Rich Maloy Restoration shaman analysis by Joe Perez Don't forget to read over the entire list of upcoming shaman changes as well! Other classes will have their analyses come out in a similar fashion soon. And don't forget, in addition to commenting, we're also looking for guest posts on the shaman changes. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Cataclysm Class Changes: Shaman
As we've been expecting, we now have the first glimpse of what the shaman class will be like in Cataclysm. These changes are straight from Blizzard, and they provide great insight into where the designers want to take things. Please remember that these changes are for the beta and will very likely be modified as the expansion nears release. Some of the major highlights: Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects We plan to add Earthquake as a deep Elemental talent for targeted and persistent AoE. Spirit Link will likely be worked back into deep Restoration in some form. The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage. Elemental will have a deep talent that allows Spirit (which will appear on the gear they share with Restoration shaman) to boost their Hit rating. Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. The full Blizzard announcement after the break.
Call for posts: Upcoming Cataclysm Class Changes
Unless you've been living under a rock you know that Blizzard is getting set for a major Cataclysm info dump over the next week. This kind of information sparks a lot of comments and intelligent discussion, and WoW.com wants to feature it prominently. To that end, we're looking for short guest posts on what you think about the changes to your class. We're going to operate this guest posting opportunity much like we did our BlizzCon 2010 opinions. Write a paragraph or two, sign up for Seed, and then go and submit it on the Seed project page. If it's something we like we'll post it and you'll get paid $10! Easy and awesome. You can find out more about the guest writer program in our announcement post and at our Contributing to WoW.com page. A couple things to note: If you write a really great comment here, feel free to submit it through our Seed page too! No penalty for leaving a comment and submitting it through Seed. We're expecting to get a ton of submissions for this, so we're not going to be able to publish all the great thoughts and opinions we get, even though we want to. If you'd like you can include a short bio about yourself, things like your character name, guild, server, blog, etc... Totally optional, though. The sooner you get these in the better! We'll be publishing our first batch of guest posts in the next day or so, and will continue to do so every couple days for the next week or so. This project closes on April 19th at 11:59 p.m. EST. We hope that you all keep this in the back of your mind in the next few days as all this info gets released. So many of you know this game so well, we're excited to be able to feature your knowledge and opinions to the masses! If you have any questions, just leave a comment here or email seed@wow.com and we'll get back to you. Edit: Please note, this submission should be based off the upcoming Cataclysm class changes, released April 7th through April 16th.
Cataclysm class previews coming soon
In a surprising middle-of-the-night blue post, Bashiok has announced the schedule for an upcoming series of Cataclysm class change previews. The series will start this upcoming Wednesday, April 7th, and continue through to the 16th. The schedule is as follows: Shaman - April 7 Priest - April 7 Warlock - April 7 Warrior - April 8 Death Knight - April 8 Rogue - April 8 Hunter - April 9 Druid - April 9 Mage - April 9 Paladin - April 16 (More details on this in the blue post) This is just one more step in the deluge of Cataclysm info being passed on to us before the beginning of the encroaching beta phase of testing. Expect more and more of this in the next few weeks, because we're certain to see it. Check behind the cut below for the full blue post from Bashiok. It's a long one.
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: New info on Facebook
There's a new notice up on Warcraft's Facebook site with some intriguing new information: Official Warcraft Facebook Death knights, druids, hunters, mages, rogues, warlocks, warriors, oh my! For those participating in our public testing of the upcoming minor content patch 3.3.3, look out this week for a host of fascinating new adjustments to these classes. Chains of Ice innately does what? Nature's Grasp has how many charges? Vitality boosts stamina by how much? Stay tuned to find out the answer to these and more questions! source What does this mean? No idea, but it appears as though the various class changes and tweaks that were announced for patch 3.3.3 aren't set in stone just yet, which is what Ghostcrawler said late last week. This fluidity should be expected, after all, as it is a public test realm. Players on the PTR may want to keep an eye out for the changes, and possibly expect some sort of minor patch this week. When an announcement is made about the changes, we'll let you know!
