Posts with tag disperson

Dispersion is a talent that Shadow Priests talk about a lot. The vocal majority hates it. The vocal minority loves it. The general populace... uh. Who knows. They don't talk. Me? I'm not awed by it. I also don't hate it. In fact, I've spent talent points in it and will continue to do so, and I find it fairly useful. It just doesn't amaze me.

Dispersion definitely has a PvP slant to it. If you arena or BG, you're going to see it as much, much more awesome than people who PvE almost exclusively. In the arena, it's just a good talent, especially once they changed the talent to be able to be used while stunned, feared and silenced. Foiling a stunlock or an assist train can be enough to take the wind out of your opponent's sails. Obviously it requires your partner(s) being able to play off of it as well, but I'm fine with that. PvP should be about the team, even if you're just in a battleground.

It has taken me a few tries to talk about Shadow Priests today, because I've had a difficult time even wrapping my mind around last night's Wrath Beta patch. It was one of those dreaded "balancing" patches, in which everything and everyone is brutally beaten with nerfs to bring their damage in line. The only problem with that is Shadow Priests were beaten just as hard, if not harder than many other classes, long before we ever had anything resembling competitive damage.

Edit: It looks like this is mostly being reverted, so the changes in this content patch were ultimately completely arbtirary and baseless. If you're still curious as to what those changes were, keep reading.

Let's look at what this patch had in store for us, shall we?

• Fade now only has one rank, and it temporarily drops all of your threat.
  

Well, this is good. You can make as many arguments for the old Fade as you want, but it was just dumb. A tiny temporary threat drop that didn't scale was a pain to use, even if it was possible to use. Just because you can use something doesn't mean it's especially effective. I like this change. However...

We'll get started with Gareth's question...

How is the Storm Peaks coming along? Seems like it has a lot of history and culture behind it.

This zone has been closed off more than it's been open. There are a few hefty bugs that they're trying to iron out that forces them to seal it off now and then, since the bugs bring the entire world server down. That and there was an XP exploit that the beta testers found and needed to be dealt with mighty quickly, so it was sealed off for that as well.

As far as the history and culture, I loved what I saw. A lot of Titan lore, a lot of Dwarven history. The introduction to the zone is pretty awful, though. Your first quest hub in the culture-rich zone is a Goblin town (K3) full of whimsy that has little to do with the zone's overall story. I guess you need to keep the mood light sometimes, though. Still, despite the silly Goblins, it was one of my favorite zones while I could get in there. Blizzard has thrown around the term "epic scale" quite a bit, and I think Storm Peaks really displays that. The place is absolutely massive, in the good way. Watch the video above if you want an example of the quests you'll be seeing. Be warned, it's kind of a spoiler in that doing this quest for the first time really leaves you in awe. Watching it beforehand might take that away a little.

dotorion asked...

Does Northrend have a 'level requirement' like Outlands?