warlords-of-draenor-gear
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Warlords of Draenor: Random quest item upgrades
One of the most interesting changes to quest gearing in Warlords of Draenor is that you have a chance for any item you get as a quest reward to end up upgrading from a quest green to a blue (rare) quality drop, and even an epic (purple) on rare occasions. For example, the Karabor Honor Guard Legguards are a green quest reward usually. As you can see, they're not a green for me here, because I got lucky. They're not an earth-shattering upgrade, mind you (although with the stat squish, a few points is a lot bigger than it used to be) but it's still a nice little bump. You don't have to do anything for this to happen - it's completely out of your hands. It may happen, it may not. Purely from my own experience it's not that uncommon for greens to end up as blues (I've had it happen four or five times) but these are the first epic I've seen on my second playthrough in SMV. Your own rates will vary, of course.
Warlords of Draenor: Challenge mode weapon models datamined
Adriacraft is at it again, datamining new models and more from the alpha client. This time around, it's a look at Challenge Mode weapons -- presumably the rewards for completing Warlords challenge mode dungeons. Like some of the armor sets that have been datamined so far, the weapons feature some really unique animations and moving parts that are far more complex than any weapon we've seen to date. There's a wide variety to look at, here -- and while I'm ambivalent on some of the models, I have to say the sword that assembles itself is pretty interesting. But before you get too caught up in liking or hating the weapons, keep in mind that looking at these datamined models may be pretty cool, but these are in fact alpha models. Community Manager Rygarius hopped on Twitter yesterday to remind people of just that. PSA: Datamined art assets/models that are not used in the current live game may not be final art. - Rygarius (@Rygarius) May 23, 2014 Regardless of whether you love or hate these datamined models, remember that they might not actually live to see the light of day. If nothing else, they're definitely worth a look just to see the leaps Blizzard has made in weapon design -- these aren't your run of the mill vanilla weapons anymore. Be sure to check out Adriacraft for more models and sets.
Warlords of Draenor: Tier 17 models datamined
The fine folks over at Adriacraft have been busy digging up models from the alpha client for Warlords of Draenor. Today they released a selection of preview videos for tier 17 armor sets. Shaman, monk, mage, rogue and warrior tier 17 are featured in their own videos, as well as a look at the paladin tier 17 mythic set, shown above. As previously mentioned by Ion Hazzikostas in an interview with Wowhead, the appearance of gear in Warlords will be defined by raid difficulty, rather than just a recolor for each level of difficulty. As with a prior video that highlighted mythic tier 17 for warriors, the paladin set has a lot more flash and moving parts. I really love the draenei flavor to the set -- the naaru-like crystalline emblems on the spaulders are pretty cool. To see all the datamined tier models, head over to Adriacraft's Youtube channel and take a look.
Warlords of Draenor: New flavor items, weapons, and armor
Our fellows over at Wowhead have posted the datamined details of Warlords of Draenor's latest build, including a number of intriguing items from Ashran, WoD's new world PvP zone. The quest items, doubtlessly linked to killing members of the opposite faction, are particularly fun. Thanks to the Tauren Hoof, you can enjoy your favorite gelatin-based chewy candies, or collect and grind Draenei Tails to help spice up your love life. You know, if you don't mind some mindless slaughter (and this is Warcraft, so of course we don't!). Other new faction quest items include the Severed Night Elf Head, Worgen Snout, and Forsaken Brains. Even more interesting than these are the epic-quality PvP weapons pulled from the latest build. Not many are listed so far; just a priest staff (Nozaro, Staff of the Heavens), and a paladin mace (Rowyn, the Jailer's Gavel). Both weapons are only usable in Ashran, and will disappear upon leaving the isle. Both of them also have really cool abilities. The priest staff will levitate you high in the air for 30 seconds, out of enemy range, and the paladin mace will teleport an enemy player to your faction's prison. How neat is that? These can't possibly be the only Ashran weapons; certainly there will be at least one for each class. I wonder--what kind of effects will they all have? As if the weapons weren't enough, a single piece of armor pulled from the patch invites rampant speculation about the nature of gear we might see in Warlords. That would be the mail hunter boots, the Simplyswift Treads, which removes the cooldown from Disengage. If this effect makes it to live, it could mean huge things for class gear in the upcoming expansion. What other abilities may we see modified in such a way? If you were designing a piece of gear like this for your own class, what would it be? There are so many possibilities!
Warlords of Draenor: Itemization changes on the way
According to the latest round of alpha patch notes from patch 6.0, we're in for some major itemization changes in Warlords of Draenor. While we've had bits and pieces of information regarding itemization and stat changes in the upcoming expansion, we didn't really have a lot of clarification or detail on exactly what those changes are going to be. The latest iteration of patch notes has cleared that up considerably, and expanded on what little we knew. Hit and Expertise are both gone, replaced instead with a universally useful secondary stat. Three new secondary stats have been added -- Bonus Armor, which simply increases armor; Multistrike, which grants attacks and abilities a chance to fire an additional time for 30% effectiveness; and Readiness, which reduces the cooldown of several class abilities with long cooldowns. Multistrike works for both damage and healing abilities, making it useful for all classes and specializations. In addition, the amount of role-specific stats is being reduced. Tanks will use Armor, which replaces both Dodge and Parry, and Spirit will be useful only to healers. But it's the changes to items themselves that sound absolutely intriguing.
Warlords of Draenor: Low level Battlegrounds to drop dungeon-style satchels
Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka tweeted something yesterday that will be music to the ears of any player who wants to level via PvP. @AllTheTonberrie That's the plan for warlords because @nite_moogle is awesome - Holinka (@holinka) March 19, 2014 Leveling via PvP is a hard-fought battle in WoW, XP gains are unpredictable, and unless you're using heirlooms you risk falling behind in gear gains and gold gains. So this change, put in place by Reward Systems Designer Russ Petersen, allows those players to keep up with their PvE-ing counterparts. It's fantastic news! I'd love to see some improvement to XP gains from battlegrounds, too. And let's not forget that Holinka has previously hinted at Skirmishes being potentially available for leveling, which would be an incredible change. Certainly, the rewards would need to be ironed out, but that they're even thinking about it gives me hope for PvP leveling becoming something that more than just the dedicated or foolhardy undertake.
Warlords of Draenor PvP: Everything is awesome!
I was already excited for PvP in Warlords of Draenor. I was already looking forward to the stat squish and the ability squish and the changes to casting while moving and the lowering of CC. Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has been tweeting about the internal testing in 6.0 environments, and I was already excited. You had me at the squish, Blizzard. You already had me. And now, the latest PvP blog's arrival has basically blown my mind. If you missed it, WoW Insider published a short summary of the key changes. Skirmishes are in, Trial of the Gladiator is out. Spectator invitations are in, for wargames, as well as an API allowing addon creators to build interfaces around the invitations. And all these are really, really exciting changes. Before you accuse me of being overly positive, I've been critical of PvP this expansion, highly critical in places, because I think it's had real problems. And it has -- it's fair to say that Mists of Pandaria has been an expansion of experimentation for PvP, and as is often the case with experiments, some are more successful than others.
Warlords of Draenor: PvP rework brings back Skirmishes, adds Spectator Invites
Blizzard posted a blog today that should make every PvPer really excited. It seems like they have shifted their thinking away from the proposed rework of the ladders and gone to a more inclusive feel, with a nod towards tournament organizers getting an easier ride too. What are the changes? Let's spell it out: Trial of the Gladiator is gone, removed. This is due to concerns about the proposed system. Skirmishes, un-rated arenas which you can solo-queue for or do with friends in 2v2 and 3v3, are in. Skirmishes reward honor and have the chance to award a bag containing gold, more honor, a small amount of conquest points or something else entirely A Spectator Invite system has been added, allowing players to put Wargames together and invite spectators. This is specifically aimed at tournament organizers, but could be a boon for streamers or casual observers in parties with players doing wargames. Tournament gear is in for Wargames only. Why should you be excited? Well, Skirmishes for one. These casual games allow players to try out arena by themselves, another solo-queue option that WoW PvP has sorely needed for some time, since Skirmishes were replaced with Wargames when Cataclysm launched. Not to mention earning honor from them! While many PvPers have allowed themselves to dream about Skirmishes' return, I don't think any of us ever dreamed we could earn honor from them! What's more, the addition of Spectator Invites and Tournament gear makes it far, far easier for would-be tournament organizers to put contests together. We can all hope to see more and more Arena tournaments coming out of the woodwork with these additions!
Tertiary stats and that pesky bag space problem
I think it was really nice of Blizzard to cook up a way to fix our bag space problem with the toy box and primary stat conversion. Recognizing this, I propose a way to make it even worse. I'll start with a story. There was a brief period on the Mists of Pandaria beta where the combination of the feral 4-piece PvP bonus, the Feline Swiftness talent, and a run speed enchant resulted in the glory that was the 132% speed bear. I could run around the first boss' room in Stormstout kiting a howling pack of monkeys before the DPS even made it up the stairs, and zooming around Pandaria's countryside was equally fun. Run speed's value was obvious and it was a bummer when the PvP bonus no longer stacked with Feline Swiftness. So now that run speed, cleave, and "multistrike" are on the table as randomly-generated tertiary stats to be found (if rarely) on gear, I'll be blunt: I want enough cleave while healing that my Rejuvenation will hit, if possible, the people in local hospitals. I want enough cleave while tanking that Thrash will run out of targets in the game, physically reach through the computer and smack the people who don't read raid chat instructions in LFR. I want enough run speed that I can cap the Warsong Gulch flag before the match even starts, triggering a singularity that will cause time to fold in on itself. Here's the rub. Knowing that tertiary stats are going to be completely random and also rare, the only way I can stack any of them to a useful level is to hoard whatever pieces I can find and create specialized sets for them. It'll be great to free up all the bag space currently devoted to our offspec gear, but how long will those bags stay empty with the siren call of a "speed set" or a "cleave set?"
Potentials and pitfalls of Warlords of Draenor's proposed gearing system
Not long ago Blizzard posted a long and detailed post about the gearing system that they are planning on implementing in Warlords of Draenor. Many aspects of it represent significant departures from what we're currently familiar with, particularly the ability of primary stats to morph with class and spec, the removal of spirit from all but non-armor pieces, and the addition of the randomized tertiary stat system (along with chances for sockets and a higher ilevel). As a result, there has been a lot of discussion, speculation, and debate about how the new system will work, and ways in which it may or may not be an improvement over the status quo. I personally am excited for the new gearing system, and I'm eager to see how it will work out. I think there's a great deal of potential in it. While we can probably envision endless possibilities as to how the new system will affect gameplay, two major aspects of the change jump out at me in particular: It's extremely friendly to hybrids It's extremely unfriendly to min-max optimization The latter refers to the fact that whether the gear has a socket, a tertiary stat, or a higher ilevel is determined by chance and there is no guarantee that a given piece of gear will have any of those things. I think there are both good and bad sides to be had here, so let's look at them in a bit more depth.
Blizzard: Gearing in Warlords of Draenor
Along with the BlizzCon announcement of a new WoW expansion came, of course, a discussion of the way the game will be changing with that expansion. One of the most jarring changes will be the gear system -- and trying to wrap our heads around the way everything will work in the future has been a bit of an exercise. Never fear, fellow WoW players, it's Community Manager Crithto to the rescue in the forums today, with a long and detailed post going over exactly how (for the moment, at least) the developers are designing gear for Warlords of Draenor. This is a fascinating insight into the thought process behind the design, which strikes me as rather flowchart-like, in a good way. There are, in a sense, stat tiers within the design of each piece, meant to make our gear both more flexible and more customizable. Gear is divided into two categories: armor (head, shoulders, chest, legs, gloves, belt, boots, and bracers) and non-armor (weapons, rings, cloak, necklace, and trinkets). In general, armor pieces will have primary stats, and non-armor pieces will not, with the exception of weapons. As far as stats go, there are three types: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary stats can be one of three things: Strength, Agility, or Intellect. A gear piece's primary stat will change depending on your class and spec. In addition, all armor pieces will possess some value of Stamina and Armor, and that will not change depending on your stat. Secondary stats will not change based on your class or spec--they are fixed on an item. Secondary stats include things like Haste, Crit, Mastery, Spirit, and Bonus Armor. In addition, Blizzard is exploring new possibilities for secondary stats, for example, things like Readiness, Amplify, and Multi-Strike. These are still in development, and nothing is yet certain. Armor pieces (as listed above) will not possess Spirit or Bonus Armor. Non-armor pieces, however, can.
Warlords of Draenor's gear system and spirit as a secondary stat
There has been some discussion recently, on Twitter, between Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and several players about some elements of the new gearing system, and how it applies to healers. First up, I feel like, before we get into the specifics, I should quickly wrap up how the new system will work. You won't understand the rest of the article without this knowledge, so let's rattle through it. The new gearing system works as follows: A piece drops. It is plate, mail, cloth or leather. It has crit and haste as secondary stats. Its primary stat will change according to your spec, so if you're a caster it will be intellect, melee DPS could be strength or agility and so on. As you change spec, the primary stat changes with you. The secondary stats (in this example, crit and haste) will not change. There may also be tertiary stats on gear, such as +run speed, or -durability damage.
