Posts with tag changes

No matter what class you play, it's going to change in Mists of Pandaria. The talent system alone is so different that you're going to have to reassess some basic ideas about your spec. Some classes are changing more than others, and this fact is making people dump their mains once the expansion launches.

Cynwise at Cynwise's Warcraft Manual is playing his warlock. He writes

I want to enjoy playing a Warlock as they are now, flawed yet challenging, before they go away.

I can understand this sentiment. For many, it's like their classes are changing so much that it's not the same class. Even if the changes are for the better, it can be hard to accept so many differences from the character you know and love.

Personally, I'm impatient. Now that I've seen what's up in the MoP beta, I want it. I want it now. I love my red panda and mistweaver monk, and I don't want to play anything else. I think that my attitude is unfortunate; however, as I'm not taking advantage of the game I'm paying for as much as I should.

Are you savoring the now-ness of your main? Will you miss your class as it is? Or are you anxious for the changes that will come in Mists of Pandaria?

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With the Mists of Pandaria expansion comes many quality of life improvements. All expansions add little details to improve our experience in some way. Players who have only played since the latest expansion take these changes for granted. And veterans cringe every time newbies complain about something that is so much better than how it was when we began playing.

For example, MoP has AoE looting: just one right-click and all the nearby corpses are relieved of their valuables (or organs as the case may be). I have seen some people in general chat confused by this change. "I can only loot one body!" But once this change goes live, all new players will consider AoE looting the norm.

Do alts even count as alts when half of them are the same class as your main and the other half are rarely played?

I have a troubling relationship with the concept of playing an alt. First off, I don't really get alts. I know people who have four or six or even eight level 85 characters, geared and kitted out for raiding or Arena/RBG play. One woman I know has completely filled up two servers with level 85 characters (full character window, a server she plays Horde on and a server she plays Alliance on) that can at least run a random Hour of Twilight heroic. I accept that this exists, but I can't imagine doing it.

See, I'm middling at best about my achievements in game, but there are things I've done that you can't do anymore. I mean, every time I ran the 5-man Zul'Gurub, I kept thinking about how I'm a hero of the Zandalar tribe. Shouldn't they at least try and talk me out of killing them? Shouldn't I at least have the option to say, "Hey, guys, it's me, can we chill out on this?" and then we could express our sorrow at having to come to blows?

I can't do that on an alt. Well, OK, I can do it on the other two warriors who are also heroes of the Zandalar tribe, but you get my point. An alt's not going to have all those titles I barely realized I was earning, or my Mimiron's Head, or a Sulfuras in the bank laughing at me every time I got to the trasmogrification ethereal and get a hit of sweet, sweet gear changery.

Folks closely following the Mists of Pandaria beta may recall that Ji Firepaw had some problematic interactions with player characters. Without getting too deep into the controversy, Ji praised male characters for their strength but praised female characters for their appearance.

Sharp-eyed Alewen reports that interaction has been changed. Ji now simply greets characters by saying, "You seem poised and ready. I can tell we are going to be good friends." This means Ji is no longer concerned about physical attractiveness; Ji remarks only on all characters' readiness for battle.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Epic gems will come in patch 4.3. They'll not be prospectable from Pyrite or anything else -- instead they will drop from geodes on raid bosses. This may not be the final design, but it's what Blizzard has decided so far. The people who need the gems most are going to be the source for the uncut gems, and the quantity available will be very low.

Every time I've talked about this before, I've hedged my bets that Blizzard might drastically change the design for epic gems compared to the last expansion. As things turn out, it did, and we're going back to a design reminiscent of epic gems in The Burning Crusade, which were mostly available to raiders. Everyone who stockpiled Pyrite now has to decide what to do with it.

Nica the Herbalist - Changes is the first full-length movie from Aedonix and Raven. This duo is just getting started in machinima, publishing their movies on YouTube under the name The Raven Bristow.

The video shows a lot of promise and effort. They clearly scripted out the movie and put a lot of time into learning how to animate WoW characters in machinima. The voice track was challenged, however, and the dialogue was a little muddied. Improving the vocals would go far in improving the film.

There's definitely talent and potential here. I especially liked the use of the Azeroth outhouse as a TARDIS. I hadn't seen that gag before, and I felt it was absolutely brilliant. That bit alone was enough to make me send the video to a few friends.

Despite several bright moments, though, I think the script could have used a little tightening. It's important in machinima to have a strong narrative whose plot points almost leap out from the screen and punch the viewer. I think stronger narrative conflicts would have helped hold audience attention, letting payoffs like the TARDIS stand as stronger punch lines.

Overall, this video was a lot of fun. I sincerely hope The Raven Bristow keeps creating videos, honing their craft, and improving their skills. There's a whole lot of potential here, and I'd like to see it realized.

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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• Rallying Cry is a new ability that seems to work like Last Stand for the entire party or raid.
• Colossus Smash now only lowers armor by 70% for 6 seconds, down from 100%.
• Intercept stun is reduced to 1 second. In addition, Juggernaut will no longer increase the stun duration of Charge.
• Whirlwind will now reduce its cooldown by 6 seconds if it strikes four or more targets.
• Several arms abilities have had their damage increased, from Mortal Strike (175% weapon damage) to Overpower (145% weapon damage) to the talented Improved Slam (increases slam damage by 20/40%, up from 10/20%). These are most likely intended to compensate arms for losing Colossus Smash's armor penetration, indicating that nerf was aimed at fury DPS.
• Finally, Improved Hamstring will now also reduce the global cooldown on Hamstring by half a second for 1 point and a full second for two. Less stunning for warriors and more snaring seems to be the order of the day.

With the final content patch of this expansion on our doorstep and Cataclysm following close behind, we'll be taking the next several weeks to look back on Wrath of the Lich King and everything that made it what it is, for better or for worse, in WotLK Retrospective.

When people talk about raiding in Wrath of the Lich King, a lot of the complaints often boil down to Naxxramas. It was out too long before a new tier of raid content, the fights were too dumbed down from the original raid's difficulty and it was too easy. It was an unimaginative way for Blizzard to cut corners and save time developing Wrath. While I'm personally critical of Naxxramas as a raid instance in its current implementation, let's look at these points and discuss their validity.

• Naxxramas was out too long before a new tier of raid content. This one's pretty subjective, but we can consider two factors. First, Naxx went live with Wrath's release in November 2008, alongside Malygos (Eye of Eternity) and Sartharion (Obsidian Sanctum). Malygos' itemization was half a tier superior to that of Naxx itself, so that items that dropped in the 10-man version of Eye of Eternity were equivalent to those that dropped in 25-man Naxx. Malygos-25 drops were superior to anything that dropped in Naxxramas off anyone but Kel'Thuzad himself. So while we could say that this entire tier of raiding lasted from launch until the release of Ulduar in April 2009, it's unfair to single out Naxxramas as the sole offender. Furthermore, Trial of the Crusader launched in August 2009, meaning that Ulduar's duration as the top tier of raiding was only a month shorter than that of Naxxramas/EoE/OS. Are we really arguing that the 20 bosses of those combined three raids had so much less raiding potential that an extra month or so wasn't at least subjectively justifiable?
  

You psyched about the latest 3.3.3 changes? In case you need a download mirror, check out our sister site over at Big Download. I'm not looking forward to fixing my addons but I know there will be a few issues with it. For me, there are good number of updates that I'm extremely happy about:

• The changes with the Frozen Orbs being greed only and the new uses for it? Excellent.
• Auction house updates and cooldown removals? Nice. I'm a tailor myself. Free raid buffs just by being able to manufacture the specialty cloths anywhere, right?
• Changes to the way raid buffs function? Score!
• I haven't tried out the new Random Battleground system yet, but I think I'll be sold on it as well.

I'm a little disappointed about:

• The changes to the healing priest tier 10 4 piece bonus. (Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster's Power Word: Shield by 5% and Circle of Healing by 10%.)

But my favourite change of all?

• The ability to skip the Culling of Stratholme introduction dialog. In my dungeon runs, I'd always see players who drop group upon finding out that was the instance we were in. Truly awesome!

So what's been your favourite change so far in the latest patch?

Well, we knew the times would be a changing with Cataclysm, but how much they're going to change has been revealed, and it's quite a lot all told. For warrior tanks, what are the big issues?

• Block will be heavily redesigned. There will be no more block value of any kind and all blocks will remove 30% of a blocked attack's damage. Block rating will still improve your chance to block as it does now, but if you do block an attack, rather than the current system where you block (as an example) 2000 damage because you have a shield block value of 2000, you'll block 30% of whatever the damage would have been. This means a gimmick block set won't make you invulnerable to trash mobs, but also that block will be more useful against bosses who hit for 50k. (A boss who hits for 50k now would hit for 48k using our hypothetical block value. He'd hit for 35k with the new system, as 30% of 50k is 15k.) This also means that Shield Slam will need some other method of calculating its damage.

More changes after the break.

There's a new notice up on Warcraft's Facebook site with some intriguing new information:

Official Warcraft Facebook

Death knights, druids, hunters, mages, rogues, warlocks, warriors, oh my! For those participating in our public testing of the upcoming minor content patch 3.3.3, look out this week for a host of fascinating new adjustments to these classes. Chains of Ice innately does what? Nature's Grasp has how many charges? Vitality boosts stamina by how much? Stay tuned to find out the answer to these and more questions!

source

What does this mean? No idea, but it appears as though the various class changes and tweaks that were announced for patch 3.3.3 aren't set in stone just yet, which is what Ghostcrawler said late last week. This fluidity should be expected, after all, as it is a public test realm. Players on the PTR may want to keep an eye out for the changes, and possibly expect some sort of minor patch this week. When an announcement is made about the changes, we'll let you know!

There's only two, but they're reasonably important.

• Revenge: Damage done by this ability (base and scaling) increased by 50%.
  
• Rampage: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc from critical strikes.

We talked about Revenge this week, and while this change is fairly unexciting, it's still a sizable buff. 50% more base and scaling damage to the ability will definitely make it attractive to use again. I may even change my spec back to take Improved Revenge again. Then again, since I used to spend 2 talent points to get 20% more damage on Revenge and now I'll get 50% without spending them it may still be better to put those points somewhere else. The stun isn't terribly useful for boss tanking in most cases, although when it does work it's nice.

The Rampage change, on the other hand, is what the ability always should have been. While a talented Leader of the Pack will still be better with its healing benefit, Rampage is now exactly as good as the baseline ability. I never understood making Rampage, an ability you have to spend quite a few talent points to get, inferior to one 10 points cheaper. Sure, it's nothing that's going to make or break the spec and it really should have been what we always had, but at least it's finally here.

Patch 3.3.3 is going to the PTR soon, and there's a bunch of stuff that will affect those of us who play the auction house. I'm going to list them in the order I see them, and then we'll go into some analysis:

Professions

Runed Orbs: Recipes which require this item have had their material requirements significantly reduced.
Frozo the Renowned has moved into the Dalaran Magus Commerce Exchange and will be trading your Frozen Orbs for various other trade goods.

Update: Omega points out in the comments that Zarhym posted a list on the forums of what we'll be able to buy :

Crusader Orb (6)
Runed Orb (4)
Eternal Fire
Eternal Earth
Eternal Water
Eternal Air
Eternal Life
Eternal Shadow
Frost Lotus
Pattern: Frosty Flying Carpet [Tailors Only] (6)

Inscription

• Most recipes that required 2 inks now only require 1.

Wryxian has written a book on fishing over on the forums -- he originally responded to the thread with a quick link that affirmed in patch 3.3, you will never ever catch trash from fishing pools, regardless of your fishing level. If you put the bobber in a pool, you'll get what you're supposed to, no matter what (presumably to allow even low level players to do the fishing quests). But players have problems with that. First, there's the old issue of things always getting easier as the game changes -- people are complaining that they had to level with missed catches and trash, and those who level fishing after 3.3 won't. For that, I don't have a better answer than Wryxian does: that's just the way it works. The game is ever-changing, and most changes make things easier. That shouldn't devalue what you did before.

The other issue is that this may destroy the fishing economy -- if even low level characters always get the fish they want 100% of the time, that means more fish in the market, which means any money high-level fishermen would have made off of rare fish will probably go bye-bye. But Wryxian says that's OK -- people will still use fish for themselves, and he believes that the pain of losing that AH sale will be solved by the bonus of always getting the fish you want. We'll have to see -- it's true that between the updates to cooking lately (and the future fishy updates we're expecting), Blizzard is making sure the secondary professions are much less exclusive, which means there has to be the balance of also making them less lucrative.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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WoW's fifth anniversary and the interviews surrounding it have ended up providing us with some previously-unknown tidbits of information -- which is a good thing, especially when it comes to stuff we've been wanting to hear about for a long time.

This particular tidbit comes from the Warcry network interview with J. Allen Brack and Samwise Didier about the game's anniversary, and it's about a subject near and dear to our constantly-complaining hearts: new character models. They might even be coming in Cataclysm.

Says Brack:

"Even though things would be better with new (character) models, we'd probably spark a lot of player outrage. So we've talked about giving players a choice between the classic models or the new ones, but it might not be something we want to take on at the same time as we remake Azeroth."

That's pretty big news.