Class specific buffs become craftable items

The developers mentioned at BlizzCon 2009 that they wanted groups to be a little less reliant on specific classes for the buffs which are considered to be "must haves." Good examples of these include Blessing of Kings, Gift of the Wild, and even Power Word: Fortitude. These buffs are so commonplace in most raids that the lack of them feels wild and strange. Not to mention, you feel downright underpowered.
Patch 3.2.2 is going to help raids out with that issue. Three items will be making their way to Azeroth, each of which mimics a class-specific buff. MMO-Champ posted them, but I've transcribed them for you below:
- Runescroll of Stamina (Inscription) - Snowfall Ink, Resilient Parchment x 5 - Increases Stamina by 165 for all party and raid members for 1 hr. This is an obvious replacemeent for Power Word: Fortitude.
- Drums of Forgotten Kings (Leatherworking) - Heavy Borean Leather x 8, Icy Dragonscale x 8 - Gives all members of the raid or group the Blessing of Forgotten Kings, increasing total stats by 8% for 30 min. This is your new Blessing of Kings when you don't have a Paladin.
- Drums of the Wild (Leatherworking) - Heavy Borean Leather x 4, Jormungar Scale x 20 - Gives the Gift of the Wild to all party and raid members, increasing armor by 750, all attributes by 37 and all resistances by 54 for 1 hr. Going Druidless, and lacking Gift of the Wild? Drums of the Wild will get you there.
There's no official or even unofficial word about whether these items will be useable in the Arena. However, it would really, really surprise me if they were. They obviously seemed focused on enabling 10-man raids to get by without too many required classes, without handing these three buffs out to other classes.
Filed under: Leatherworking, Analysis / Opinion, Inscription
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Reader Comments (Page 6 of 6)
Avan Aug 27th 2009 7:17PM
Honestly, who raids without a priest? No need for the fortitude scroll because EVERY raid should have a priest. 10 or 25 man, disc, holy, or shadow, it doesn't matter. If you're raiding, you have a priest. We all bring Hymn of Hope, Divine Hymn, and Mass Dispel/Dispel Magic. People getting low on mana? Priest to the rescue! Need to make or break a wipe? Priests are there. Need something dispelled? Look to the priest!
Disc brings great raid mitigation and great tank heals. Holy brings great raid heals and can heal even after dying (I'd like to see a paladin do that!). Shadow brings... well, they need less healing than other casters because they've got such great survivability.
Honestly, the introduction of this scroll just says that raid leaders are being stupid and aren't bringing priests to raid. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU TERRIBAD RAID LEADERS?
Bronwyn Aug 29th 2009 8:07PM
You know, it was pretty clearly stated that this thing is intended for TEN MAN RAIDS and I can't imagine that anyone is seriously stupid enough to think that just because you don't have a priest in a TEN MAN RAID that you must be a TERRIBLE raid leader. What if you're a small guild (lets say 15 raiders, about 10 make it per night) and you have one priest. What do you do if one can't be there? Just say "no raiding tonight" or pug for a healer when one of your other raiders is there and would have to sit out? I think not.
These are great for that.
jbodar Aug 27th 2009 7:30PM
Regardless of how hard or not hard it is to get Replenishment, it's still not a standard buff. It's a proc dependent on specific abilities (e.g., Judgement for Ret). They'd have to make it give everyone a nerfed Replenishment with 100% uptime otherwise it would be somewhat buffer than the current implementation.
yayforwow Aug 27th 2009 8:48PM
We can has standard buff items?! ( ^ FF12 mote fan here)
alpha5099 Aug 27th 2009 9:21PM
I didn't go through all the comments, and maybe this was addressed already, but are the Drums on shared, mutually exclusive cooldowns? My shammy's a LW, and it'd be pretty sweet to get both those two buffs out if I'm running a group without a pally and a druid (which is admittedly pretty rare as those are common classes, but I'm still mainly doing 5-mans).
Yay for more sweet LW things.
seanthehorde Aug 27th 2009 9:39PM
Actually I think that this is an AWESOME idea. I love this whole "bring the player, not the class" attitude that Blizz has had lately.
This is great because you can play whatever you class you want, instead of a class that your guild "needs".
Lemons Aug 27th 2009 9:47PM
This is a great change. I think they shouldn't equally match the class buffs, but I'm guessing they'll nerf the ones that do.
Sad that they're giving these to leatherworkers and scribes tho...I would like to see more done with enchanting. It's like...enchanting has one thing it does...enchants...it gets pretty boring after a while having literally nothing else to do with the profession.
But I guess every profession looks a little weak in comparison to jewelcrafting. I mean...EVERYONE needs gems...and lots of them.
dushkarn Aug 28th 2009 5:59AM
This is going to be great for scribes and leather workers to have another item to get gold from. Plus, it will be easier and faster to set up a raid group because you're not looking for specific classes anymore to suffice your buff needs. As a scribe, I'm pretty excited how much the runescroll of stamina will go for. :)
http://www.wowstability.com
Rikkitikki Aug 28th 2009 5:01PM
Personally I am looking forward to this. The guild I'm in has been raiding a few times a week in 10 man Ulduar and quite often we don't have a priest in the group but we still manage to get through the same content week to week buff or not. Having that extra buff could help us clear a little more content sans priest.
I think it hinges on the fact that if you don't have a particular class you can still get a buff, not we can get rid of all the classes that give buffs since we only bring them along for those. I agree with a lot of the people on here when they say if you are bringing someone along only for the buffs they are supplying then something is being done wrong.
Each class brings whatever they can to the table and the fact that people are complaining about their "unique" class abilities being used by other classes and how this will affect them being brought in a group are all a little silly.
As a shaman I don't really care if they give a Bloodlust/Heroism to some other class as long as we get something in return of theirs. Occasionally I've noticed groups say "we have a bloodlust now" when i join the group and i'm the only shaman, but the guild I'm with now doesn't bring me for my Bloodlust ability, instead they do it because I'm good at playing my class in all aspects. So even if my Bloodlust was put in the form of some animal carcass sacrifice from a cooking recipe I would still be fighting along side my guildies.