[WoW]Wotlk:Raid instances to have 10 and 25 man versions, Death Knight starts at 55

[Cybsled]

From looking at the prelim builds they have posted, it appears they are trying to break the destro/demonic sacrifice spec that is virtually required for raiding. Which is fine, although it seems the destro side of it is being hit with the nerf-bat the most.

As for spirit, we'll see. Sta and Int are still the primary stats of a warlock, and I'd be loathe to sacrifice mana pool/survivability for a token amount of regen.

[Deathwing]

I don't like what they're doing to do the destro tree. Eternal Flames is a bullshit 45 point talent(wooo, 10% more crit damage and I only have to cast immolate once per mob...). The shadow <-> fire talents are a nice idea, but very poorly execute. Shadow bolt crits COULD mean an instant searing pain or immolate? Sign me the fuck up. They cost 1.5s anyway, so what the fuck does that save me?

Even if they make spirit important, kindling soul still seems a bit underpowered. Make it 5 points and put it at the 45 point slot.

If you take eternal flames, you can forget Improved Immo, Conflag, Backdraft, so forget those.

And Decimate is quite underwhelming(actually, all the 51 points Warlock talents are). So, I would actually consider the biggest buff destro got was the change to cataclysm. So not really a nerf, just not much in the way of power increase.


Affliction looks a bit better. Eradication probably comes out to 12% - 13% haste over time, pretty good for it's talent slot. Everlasting Affliction looks good too.


I think demo got the biggest buff. I'm really hoping they make imps usable in raids(I really don't think making him able to attack from phase is bad idea...pve only). 0/50/21 with machine-gun imp and Empowered Imp would be sick. You get some raid increases to his dps(Moonkin aura, ret pally, totem of wrath), the uptime on that buff will approach 90%. Just sick.

Speaking of that buff(Empowered Imp)...does Spell Crit push off all other chances? Or is it capped by miss? i.e., if you had 100% crit, would you still need +hit?

[kaid]

Given some of the new talents and some of their stated desires expect to see spirit be a much more common stat on caster items probably supa cheap item budget wise like stamina in TBC.

It sounds like they want to have casters in general need more similar types of gear to make itemization easier. Look at how ret paladins are going eventually they are pretty much going to use the same kind of gear fury and arms warriors do if they are not there already. While it may require some changes that people won't always like having a higher percentage chance of being able to make use of something that drops could make up for it.

Like right now take a look at enhancment shaman their main stat is STR and yet good luck trying to find any mail that has STR on it. Its all pretty much attack power, int and agil so it could be used by both shaman and hunters but is overall much better for hunters than it is for shamen.

I am guessing one change will be seeing enhance shaman sharing key DPS stats with hunters so both get the same bang for the buck from DPS mail.

[spronk]

Originally Posted by Azrayne

The funny thing is that the vast, vast majority of botters just wait a week or two until some way to get around the new detection has been coded in, buy a new account and are level 70 again in 2 weeks.

Blizzard gets $90 per ban, they get to look good in front of the community and the industry, and the game is left in the exact same state as it was prior to the incident.

This is 100% absolutely not true. Every banwave a ton of "casual botters" leave the game permanently, this latest one no exception (read any of the glider/openbot forums and you can see a ton of people saying thats it for them).

There are also tons of casual botters who have insane gear (full T5/T6, full s3, multiple 70s geared out, etc) who bot because they think its safe (and it has been for 9 months now), and to generate a few thousand extra gold "while they sleep". Many of these people are gone for good as well.

Now the ultra-addicted and the hardcore farmers of course will be back, but it does take longer than 2 weeks to hit 70. If you bot 18 hours a day Blizzard pretty much auto bans you. Its much slower leveling as a grinder than as a questmonkey, usually takes a bot 3-5 weeks real time to hit 70. And then you still take months to gear up.

It also scares future botters, every banwave the bot pop shrinks dramatically for a while, then it does rise up again as people assume its safe. The latest one snuck in its detection code into the 2.4.2 client (instead of warden) and passively logged all botters for a week (software detection of innerspace and glider) before doing a mass ban. It pretty much shows to the smart people that any patch Blizzard could do this, and there is absolutely no defense since the bot coders can't go through every single line of code in a new patch.

I did bot for 2 months a while ago, just running AV/AB, was having more fun just writing bot code than actually botting. Fortunately I cancelled my WoW sub a while ago (AOC) and didn't get caught up in this ban wave, I do know if I return to WoW I won't be botting again.

[Asmadai]

I really like the direction the Shadow Tree is going. The improvements to old talents, plus the new ones look great so far.

The MF refreshing SWP has me worried tho, as I hope there is some mechanic in place so it won't be a bitch and refresh in between ticks, causing a drop in damage.

[Antoine]

Originally Posted by Deathwing

Speaking of that buff(Empowered Imp)...does Spell Crit push off all other chances? Or is it capped by miss? i.e., if you had 100% crit, would you still need +hit?

Spells are on a 2 roll system. The first roll is hit/miss/partial resist. The second roll is hit/crit. So no, there is no crit cap (other than the fact that you'll always miss 1% of your spells)

[Zehn - Vhex]

The nerf to circle of healing looks like itw ould suck but they have a hardon for smiting instant-cast heals.

[Deathwing]

Originally Posted by Antoine

Spells are on a 2 roll system. The first roll is hit/miss/partial resist. The second roll is hit/crit. So no, there is no crit cap (other than the fact that you'll always miss 1% of your spells)

So, a crit rate of 33%(character sheet) doesn't mean you'll crit 33% of your spells because it has to go through a hit check first?

[Antoine]

exactly. If you're fighting a boss and you only have 7% hit from gear/talents/whatever, and your charsheet crit is 33%, your actual crit will be .33*(.83+.07)=.297, or 29.7%. That's one of the more significant reasons why hit-capping is so important for casters.

[Ishad]

Originally Posted by Asmadai

I really like the direction the Shadow Tree is going. The improvements to old talents, plus the new ones look great so far.

The MF refreshing SWP has me worried tho, as I hope there is some mechanic in place so it won't be a bitch and refresh in between ticks, causing a drop in damage.

The ass raping of shadow focus makes me sad.

Discipline is looking decent for a MT healer role.

[The Ancient]

That top tier holy spell screams MT healing.

[Ishad]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

That top tier holy spell screams MT healing.

It's a good "oh shit" button, but a three stack of grace on the MT for the entire duration of a fight is going to be pretty clutch.

[Everlast]

Oh God it looks like a Frost Wyrm Pet will be coming with the collector's edition of WotLK. I must have this.

source - http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/6...wyrmpetyv8.png , from WotLK Information Wiki: WotLK Alpha Official Wiki.

edit- After looking at the Death Knight's starting gear, I guess it is time to start saving GEE's and other enchanting mats as well as BoE gear to sell to the masses.

[Zerai]

Link doesn't work =/

I don't know if I can justify buying another collectors edition. I have the TBC and Vanilla ones, but really, it's just $40 extra for..a non-combat pet I use occasionally. And a large box that sits in my cupboard with some art books I never read =x

[Furism]

Originally Posted by Zerai

Link doesn't work =/

Copy/paste the URL in a new browser window in order to bypass the referrer detection.