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Warhammer Online alters loot drops in city dungeons
Bearers of some coveted armor and items found in Warhammer Online's dungeons may have found they lost a few bragging rights this week. WAR's Community Coordinator, James Nichols, recently let players know about some changes to city dungeons that increase the frequency of rare item drops. The dungeons impacted are: Bilerot Burrow, Bloodwought Enclave, Sigmar's Crypts, and Warpblade Tunnels. New "Rare" and "Very Rare" items have been introduced into all of the city dungeons, but even general loot is now better distributed amongst lower-level monsters found throughout the dungeons. These increased amounts of (lower level) item drops that are less tied to main bosses provide greater rewards to those players unable to complete a given dungeon.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Itemization in Wrath part one
When I said I'd talk about itemization for warriors in Wrath, I did so fully knowing that it is at present incomplete. New gear comes in with every beta patch, so even if you take every single item currently present into account it doesn't necessarily provide you with an accurate picture of the way it will all shake out once you actually set foot in Northrend.So keeping in mind that not only can this all change tomorrow but that we're talking about gearing the most gear dependent class in the entire game, let's start looking at what gear we're going to require at 80. The defense cap at level 80, for instance, is going to be 540 defense requiring 689 defense rating. For a fury TG build, you're looking to overcome 15% hit penalty on specials, meaning that you'll be stacking roughly 500 hit rating at level 80 (based on this forum post which seems like a pretty good test bed to me) not to mention all the crit and AP you'll need to be effective. Frankly, I think the defense gear will be easier to assemble than the hit gear. For arms, of course, you won't need nearly as much hit, making an Arms DPS build substantially easier to gear for. (To be fair, a fury DPS build designed around Impale, Rampage and Incite would also be easier to gear for.)Of course, the real issue isn't "Does the gear exist" but rather "How easy is it for me to assemble a reasonably effective set for what I want to do?" Does a newly 80 prot warrior have a chance to tank the instances and heroics? What about a DPS warrior, will he be effective? So far, it seems that the gear exists, but can be somewhat difficult to assemble: the introduction of faction vendors in the most recent beta builds actually goes to help in these situations. This week we're going to look at the faction rewards and see what warriors would be interested in. There's also instance drops, crafted items and PvP rewards to consider before all's said and done, but we have to start somewhere.
Ask a Beta Tester: The Drakkensryd, Dispersion, and other stuff
We'll get started with Gareth's question... How is the Storm Peaks coming along? Seems like it has a lot of history and culture behind it. This zone has been closed off more than it's been open. There are a few hefty bugs that they're trying to iron out that forces them to seal it off now and then, since the bugs bring the entire world server down. That and there was an XP exploit that the beta testers found and needed to be dealt with mighty quickly, so it was sealed off for that as well. As far as the history and culture, I loved what I saw. A lot of Titan lore, a lot of Dwarven history. The introduction to the zone is pretty awful, though. Your first quest hub in the culture-rich zone is a Goblin town (K3) full of whimsy that has little to do with the zone's overall story. I guess you need to keep the mood light sometimes, though. Still, despite the silly Goblins, it was one of my favorite zones while I could get in there. Blizzard has thrown around the term "epic scale" quite a bit, and I think Storm Peaks really displays that. The place is absolutely massive, in the good way. Watch the video above if you want an example of the quests you'll be seeing. Be warned, it's kind of a spoiler in that doing this quest for the first time really leaves you in awe. Watching it beforehand might take that away a little.dotorion asked...Does Northrend have a 'level requirement' like Outlands?
Breakfast Topic: How much are expansions changing the game?
Groups of Words' anonyomous blogger bought up a rather interesting theory regarding World of Warcraft expansions: They're actually more like sequels, in that they change a lot of the basic groundwork of the game and the classes to such a point that it feels like a completely different game. As evidence of this, he puts forth a large list things that have changed between original WoW and Burning Crusade. Being a semi-old-timer to WoW, I certainly recognized pretty much all of the changes, and thinking back, a lot of them have been doozies.
Lichborne: Gearing up in Outland and beyond
Every week, Daniel Whitcomb brings you analysis, opinions, and advice on the world of the Death Knight in Lichborne. The Death Knight, as is expected, is still very much a class in flux. This sometimes makes it difficult to pontificate too much about certain aspects of the Death Knight class, because they may be completely different in the next Beta build. That said, a lot of aspects of the Death Knight class are solidifying nicely at this point. Itemization, or at least the way Death Knights use stats, is pretty solid, and worth discussing so that you have an idea of what gear upgrades to look for you as you exit the Ebon Hold and head out into the wider world.
Itemization and the plight of the bear tank in Wrath of the Lich King
One of the biggest concepts coming with Wrath of the Lich King is gear consolidation. Stat are being folded into each other and classes are being changed even on very basic levels so that fewer gear types can work for more classes and specs. Feral Druids have seen this happen as well, with talents such as Survival of the Fittest and Heart of the Wild tweaked so that they can get more benefits from Rogue gear. Unfortunately, this hasn't worked out that well for bear tanks.
Is Titan's Grip that good?
I'm noticing a disturbing trend in perusing the Wrath blue posts. Well, disturbing for me, and possibly for any other warriors out there. All that awesome we seemed to be getting? It doesn't seem that the warriors are finding it quite so awesome. A case in point is Titan's Grip. The Wrath forums seem to indicate that's it's not all wine and roses. There is a lot of math going back and forth in that thread, so I'll simplify it (probably too much, but that's what comments are for): At present, the white damage of Titan's Grip does not exceed that of dual wielding one hand or off hand weapons. This means that the damage increase of the talent must come from specials such as Bloodsurge hasted Slams, Whirlwinds and Bloodthirsts. However, since Titan's Grip slows the weapons down considerably (fully talented, Titan's Grip means you swing 20% slower, so a 3.5 speed weapon can be over four seconds between swings) any miss streak can be crippling for rage generation. No rage generation means no rage to use those specials, so that you're dependent on white damage that's actually inferior to what it would be without the talent. It seems a little counter-intuitive that so evocative and exciting (on paper, anyway) a talent would actually lead to a DPS decrease.I find myself wondering if the issue is not with the talent itself, however, but with the itemization of all 2h weapons in the 60 - 70 game.
The Wrath of the Shaman Part 1: Enhancement
Okay, there's so much happening with Shamans that I don't think we can wait for the next Totem Talk to discuss it all. Between itemization changes, patch notes and new talents, there's a lot to discuss. First off, the new itemization.In part, the real power of the shift towards granting AP from agility isn't even that it will make agility more attractive on our gear, although it will. The real power is in this move's synergy with the incoming enhancement talent Mental Dexterity. A great deal of the mail currently sneered at as 'hunter mail' has both agility and intellect on it. One example is the Mantle of the Tireless Tracker, an SSC drop. Under current itemization these shoulders grant 64 AP. With the new way items work with shamans, they will grant 86 AP, or 109 AP if you have full Mental Dexterity.
Enhancement shamans, now 50% more huntery
Yes, I know 'huntery' isn't a word.Tipster Korgak sent in a piece of news from the Wrath Shaman forums: shamans now get AP from agility. To quote Blue poster Koraa: Sorry about that, it should of been in the patch notes. The idea is for DPS mail (with AGI and AP) to be viable for both Hunters and Shaman. Strength is mostly now only a stat for Death Knights, Warriors and Ret Paladins. While this won't immediately take shamans out of wearing leather for their enhancement DPS needs, it does make the leather that feral druids wear less attractive. Rogue leather, which tends to have agi, attack power and crit will still be fairly attractive, but now all that mail that has stats for hunters will look a lot more appealing to our melee branch of the best class in the game. One depressing note seems to be that our agility to crit formulas seem to have changed negatively as well, most likely because we're expected to push agility more than currently.(Thanks again to Korgak for the tip)
Hybrid Theory: Healers, hit, and homogenization
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. Today's Hybrid Theory is purely guesswork and speculation. In no way will I pretend that these are facts, and you should not take them as such. It's a topic that grabbed my interest, and it's something I really enjoy trying to figure out despite the missing pieces of information we don't have yet. I welcome all of you to add your thoughts on it in the comments section below. Perhaps we can get a decent idea of what's to come.Let's get started, shall we? In the previous weeks of Hybrid Theory, we've discussed all we knew about some of our favorite classes. During this discussion, matters of itemization often came up. Most notably, the new Spellpower mechanic. This would allow healers and DPS classes to use the same gear, but Healing spells would get twice the benefit.First thought is that DPS and healers will share gear. Right? Well... maybe. Possibly. There are a lot of factors we don't really know yet. While it isn't always the case, for some classes there is a pretty large divide between gear that is good for a caster and gear that is good for a healer, and the deciding factor isn't how much damage or healing is on that item. In some cases you'll be able to switch seamlessly from DPS spec to Healing spec and not need to change your equipment, but trying to optimize your gear in both cases is not going to be so easy.
Age of Conan's system designer explains combat stats
One of the most difficult things about getting up and running in a new MMO world is figuring out what all the stats mean, how they relate to one another, and which ones you should focus on gearing to achieve the greatest return for your character. There's been a distinct lack of clarity with Age of Conan's itemization up to this point, and Funcom System Designer Jayde recently made a post on the official European boards in the hopes of clearing up the confusion.What's most interesting to us is the way that they've designed their system so that there are separate statistics for PvE and PvP. The goal, according to Jayde, is to provide a reasonable parity between high and low leveled characters so that players of all sorts can compete on the same battlefield. You're still not liable to beat a fully-decked out level 80 when you're fresh out of Tortage, but you'll actually be able to do damage without having all your attacks parried, blocked, or resisted, as happens in many other MMOs. Jayde has promised a more complete guide to Age of Conan's stats in the near future, and we anxiously await seeing what the amateur statisticians make of that.
Player Consequences: Item Binding
Players often feel like they have no control over their favorite MMOs, but the truth is every major design decision is made with them in mind. Developers listen to forums and every complaint and suggestion has a chance of changing the direction a game takes. Player Consequences is a new feature that follows some of the modern trends in MMOs and the player concerns that created them.
