1.11 PTR Patch Notes

[Malvesti]

I'll agree with Cad and Torrid on Mage itemization. Actually, any itemization dealing with +dmg and +crit (+healing to a lesser extent).


It seems like nobody on their itemization team has actually gone through the experience of calculating what stats maximize sustained damage. They know how to make godly melee weapons and armor. But they have no clue how to make godly mage items. For one thing, I definitely have the sense that they think crit is about three times as powerful as it actually is. Another illustration is the stats on Sorcerer gear and gear that is easier to obtain. For sustained dmg,
Drakk drop >> T0.5 hat
Scholo mini drop >> T0.5 shoulder
Immol'thar drop > T0.5 robe
DMN drop > T0.5 bracer
Silithus quest >> T0.5 gloves
LBRS drop >> T0.5 legs

For all the money, effort, and time you have to shell out for T0.5, you'd think they'd reward you with gear better than that which you already had. I'm sure they *wanted* to make T0.5 an upgrade. They just don't know how.

[Makata]

Originally Posted by Amahk

For the sake of not giving you a brain aneurism, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and agree that pvpers do spend more time per day ranking up and only a few of you all per week gain access to epic gear. I can speak for myself when I say my guild raids for 6 hours a day for at least 6 days a week. I'll totally ignore all the time spent farming gold for repairs/consumables(not many of us use consumables tbh)/travelling/EVERYTHING and just focus on raiding.

6 hours a day, 6 days a week, 40 people. That's 1440 man hours per week. My guild has warsongs running at least 14 hours a day. During prime time there's usually 2 sometimes 3 groups running. That's over 2000 man hours per week.

The key factor you seem to be forgetting is that this isn't a 3-4 month process for us.

It's not a 4 month process for us either. You can hit r14 in 3 months if you hit standing 1 every week. GL with that. You either pug 24 hours a day and your server hates you, or you join in with a group / pvp guild, and have to have your standing in check. It will take me a minimum of 6 months to hit r14 and that's me hitting my cap every single week. I'm fairly certain that in 6 months you can go from full greens just turned 60 to full t2 and working on naxx. So even if you just stop right there, you already have better gear and are in position to keep getting more.

Yes you may spend 14 hours a day for 4 months playing WoW however when you're done you get 8 epic pieces of armor(I assume you get your epic braces/belts from whichever instance you are exalted with) and cornucopia of epic weapons depending on your class and after this process using this 'retro' upgrade you reap the rewards for god knows how long, just upgrading your armor as Blizzard sees fit whenever a new PvE raid dungeon comes out.

First of all, you might want to double check epic belt. Because .. there is none. Also the mail bracers from WSG are garbage and the leather ones are fairly mediocre. Even the cloth and plate ones are no where close to as good as the current r12/13 set, which are in turn no where close to t2.

Though I'm curious, what do you think would be a better solution? Make you grind r14 twice? Never ever upgrade pvp gear? You see, when we hit r14, we're done. There's no more gear for us to get. You however, will continue to get upgrades. What are we supposed to do a year from now when our gear is utter shit? Accept Blizzard doesn't give a fuck about the pvp system and grudgingly join a pve guild?

And what adds insult to injury is that pvpers don't keep on pvping(from what I've experienced on our server). PvPers join PvE guilds and start raiding after they're done ranking up and then the pveers end up gearing you all up for raiding... and you still think retro upgrades are fair?

Even if this is true, which I'm dubious about, what is the problem? They just spend months and months and months achieving this one goal .. of being a High Warlord. Now they join your guild and .. bank every last fucking piece of it within a few weeks. If the pvp epic set isn't better than even fucking MC gear (and in many cases .. it isn't) what the hell is the purpose of having it?

However this all leaves one question unanswered: Why are YOU mad pvp gear is upgraded? It doesn't affect you in any possible way. These people don't raid with you. They aren't your friends. You never ever encounter them .. except in 1 place. The battlegrounds. And you'll pardon me if I don't feel sorry for you that PVP PLAYERS gear is better than PVE PLAYERS in a PVP SETTING. It damn well should be. If my team has been running pvp for months, you should have absolutely no chance to win the game whatsoever. Period.

[BurnemWizfyre]

Originally Posted by Cybsled

Only problem with removing the aggro from searing pain is we use that to tank emps, since our DPS aggro is hurt by the fact you have to load up on shadow resist gear to negate most of the bolt damage. ;( Plus he casts bolt so often that the 1.5 casting time of SP is all but required...shadowbolt channeling would get knocked back too often.

For all our spells, only 5 are fire based (not counting conflag). Everything else is shadow. 2 are AE, 1 is a long cooldown nuke that sucks shards, 1 is a DD/dot, and our only regular nuke has paltry damage on a non-crit and generates shitloads of aggro.

Although fire DPS on locks suck as it stands in a PVE environment (it owns hard in PVP, though). Hell, Im conflag build and it still sucks in PVE. It's horribly mana inefficent if you just spam immolate. It's basically immolate...wait awhile, conflag. Rince repeat. I cringe anytime we get Anubisath Defenders that are shadow immune. Soul fire takes a shard and is a 60s cooldown (plus it always seems to get resisted, which truely pisses me off). SP would make for an ok spam nuke, but soon you'd find the mob stomping your ass into the ground because of the aggro component. Conflag is by far our best fire nuke in terms of dmg/manacost, but its a 31 point talent, has a 15s cooldown, and it requires an immolate to be used.

You do realize that its much easier to just have the MT on each side maintain being the MT through the melee and magic emp yes? Screw healing a warlock over a MT.

[Samus Aran]

Originally Posted by dak

This just in! Warlocks are going to be gimp as hell in Nax unless they get a spammable fire nuke.

Remove the +50% aggro modifier to searing pain and call it a day. Thanks!

That's why they made the T3 Warlock armor look like an abortion. Because they knew no one would actually be getting it.

[DiscW]

Originally Posted by Makata

If my team has been running pvp for months, you should have absolutely no chance to win the game whatsoever. Period.

Then by that same logic your team shouldn't even be able to clear strat or UBRS in your best pvp gear.

[Makata]

Originally Posted by DiscW

Then by that same logic your team shouldn't even be able to clear strat or UBRS in your best pvp gear.

No, by my logic we shouldn't be able to do MC in it, which I basically agree with were it not for the fact it's already better than the blues most people have who first start MC, and if you make them worse than the blues, pvp has no purpose.

[Cybsled]

You do realize that its much easier to just have the MT on each side maintain being the MT through the melee and magic emp yes? Screw healing a warlock over a MT.

Easier? Hardly. Our warlocks require less healing then warriors, because our warlocks can gear out for resists and get over 300 shadow resist + soul link their felhunter for %30 less damage on top of that. The amount of damage they take from the shadow bolts can be healed far far easier then a tank who is gearing for melee survivability and therefore has shit for SR. Plus, in my experience, warlock tanks can keep aggro far more reliably on magic emp, which in turn lets your mages/locks do more DPS to him to end the encounter faster. The only dangerous times are when he decides to spawn an exploding bug and blizzard where you are standing all at once...but then again, thats dangerous for everyone.

[Samus Aran]

Originally Posted by DiscW

Then by that same logic your team shouldn't even be able to clear strat or UBRS in your best pvp gear.

lol Next time get your quote right cause I didn't say that. WTF?

[DiscW]

Wrong button, fixed. Calm down buddy.

And I actually pretty much agree with some of your points makata. Its just that you're living up to your rep on these boards quite well.

The honor system is fucked in so many ways theres no possible way to have balanced rewards. By adding these items in you either screw over old gms by forcing them to do the entire grind again, or just give them free stuff for doing nothing. Lose/Lose.

[Sabyn]

Makata: fuck Blackrock PvP.

Has a horde guild on Aggramar even killed nef?

[Shaod]

I finished HWL in Jan or Feb, then went raiding with my guild and upgraded every piece except the staff within a month. I still use the staff because I'm waiting for all our other casters to get Femur / Shadowflame / Regalia first, although I could have upgraded it a long time ago if I wanted.

The PvP gear is shit, its still shit after the upgrade, and I still wont use a single piece of it over random AQ / BWL drops. Now before anyone comes out with something witty like "stop fucking crying" I'd like to point out that I really dont give a shit, if people want good PvP gear they can run ZG or MC once a fucking week and get over it.

THAT SAID

Anyone comparing the amount of effort it takes to raid with the amount of effort it takes to get rank 14 is just wrong. I dont care how liberal you are or how many manhours (lol?) you work it out to be, no raid content exists in WoW, and no raid content I've ever done since the start of EQ upto GoD requires anywhere close to the grind that rank14s go through.

In conclusion; I dont know what the fuck I just said or who is right and who is wrong, I mostly just hope I dont have to regrind to get my free fucking femur.

[Scaffa]

I feel sorry for you Makata. If you have to PvP that much, i'm sure you're not working to agreed caps per week....meaning half those "man hours" invested could've been avoided after a 30 minute conversation.

[Scaffa]

Oh btw, just for all you guys to completely lose your mind over now. Blue response on the forum:

The updates to the rank 12 and 13 armor are retroactive.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...&t=8412113&p=1

[Jovec]

Originally Posted by Makata

Though I'm curious, what do you think would be a better solution? Make you grind r14 twice? Never ever upgrade pvp gear? You see, when we hit r14, we're done. There's no more gear for us to get. You however, will continue to get upgrades. What are we supposed to do a year from now when our gear is utter shit? Accept Blizzard doesn't give a fuck about the pvp system and grudgingly join a pve guild?

Blizzard needs to add a new level 60 bracket based on an ILvL cutoff (sum up the highest level piece for each slot - whether worn, bagged, or banked). With it, new PvP gear can be added to better keep pace with PvE progress, and it should promote better PvP since you won't have steamrolling groups that win solely based on superior gear. The higher bracket could have higher honor and token rewards to encourage the ubers to mix it up. I'd also suggest a hard delineation - if your gear meets the ILvl cutoff, you have to queue for the higher bracket. Preferably this would be done with some changes to the way rankings work, and with cross server BGs.

-Jovec

[Sabyn]

Originally Posted by Scaffa

I feel sorry for you Makata. If you have to PvP that much, i'm sure you're not working to agreed caps per week....meaning half those "man hours" invested could've been avoided after a 30 minute conversation.

No, his guild has agreed weekly caps.

It still kills me that they are on a pve server though.