Posts with tag ghostcrawler

It's been known for a while that spirit gear isn't on the list for the most part right now for players leveling in Mists. DPS cloth abounds, and the idea the designers have is that you can just reforge the DPS gear into healer gear easily enough (or at least reforge it so that it's passable as healer gear).

In part, this concept comes from the new rewards system, where you don't see all the gear rewards the quest giver offers but rather only the ones that are specific to you. As a solution to this, Blizzard provides green gear vendors that distribute off-spec gear.

However, Ghostcrawler announced today that Blizzard's going to offer more spirit gear again via quest rewards. This is in part due to the constructive (read: non-trolling) feedback it's received on the issue.

Ghostcrawler

After reading more of this feedback and looking at the zones, we're concerned that there aren't enough quest rewards with Spirit on them. We are leaning towards offering more, as choices, so that players who feel like their Spirit is low can choose to have more.

source

So rejoice, healers! Getting geared up will be a bit easier for you now.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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When one takes a two-week vacation, one generally looks forward to things having changed, even slightly, when one returns. This is especially sure when speaking of the Mists of Pandaria beta test. Strangely, that hasn't been exactly the case for death knights. There have been changes, certainly, but not as drastic as we might have hoped -- and not as well-explained, either.

Today, we'll take a look at a few of the more important changes and what they imply for our class. In addition, we'll see what Ghostcrawler did and didn't say about death knights in a recent post.

Plague Leech and disease issues

There've been a few changes to death knights, but the most interesting one comes with Plague Leech. This first-tier talent, which replaces Vile Spew, will allow you to generate a death rune by canceling the diseases from your target.

The nice thing about this skill is that it gives us another much-needed Blood Tap replacement now that Blood Tap itself has been turned into a somewhat more restricted talent. The bad thing about this skill is that it's probably going to become mandatory for min-maxing DPS death knights. If your diseases are about to expire anyway and you can eat them for an extra death rune, it's hard to see how that won't become a DPS increase. Once we all reach level 90 and the math has been sufficiently mathed, it seems relatively obvious that Plague Leech will be considered mandatory by the hardcore PvE community, for better or for worse.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Well, we got it. I never thought I'd see the day, but we finally got the Trial of the Crusader Lightwell that shoots heals at allied players instead of requiring them to click. Holy priests will gain access to the new Lightwell, called Lightspring, using a glyph of the same name. Before you get too excited, however, I should mention that there is a catch. Apparently, automatic Lightwells don't heal for nearly as much as a manual ones do, so depending on the fight and your raid members' ability to use the Lightwell in the first place, you may choose to skip the Glyph of Lightspring now and again.

Good ol' Derevka has already written up a thorough first look at Lightspring in which he points out many of the spell's limitations. In the post, he points out that Lightspring only heals targets at less than 50% of their health, and it has a 5-second cooldown between heals to prevent it from being used as a raid cooldown. To read the rest of Derevka's write-up and see his comparisons on the numerical output of the two spells, head over to Tales of a Priest.

Ghostcrawler has contributed a great deal to an already large list of consolidated warrior issues on the Mists of Pandaria beta forums, and then just kept on posting. It's actually a lot to consider -- so much so that I'm fairly certain I can get two big posts out of it. This post will be the one that tries to break down what it all means.

Some of what he's posting is of more concern to beta testers than the general population (for instance, how the devs prefer their feedback), but we can still take some interesting points from the two posts where GC lays everything out for us. If you'll forgive me for a lot of paraphrasing and selecting:

• Tanking for warriors (the oft-discussed active mitigation system) is designed around the concept of turning rage into survival. Shield Block and Shield Barrier are designed that keeping them up reliably will improve your survival, but in cutting-edge content, you'll want to use them in a smart way (that is, save them for big damage situations) rather than just hitting them as soon as you have the rage. Tanking for new tanks will be designed so that missing a Shield Block now and again won't wreck you.
• Rage is the limiting mechanic for the class, not cooldowns, at least so far as the design vision of the class is concerned.
• Arms and fury have a big rage generation attack and a big rage spending attack, but that's where the similarities between them are intended to end. Arms should feel more predictable but have slower rage generation due to its use of a single, slow weapon, while fury abilities proc less reliably, but the spec has more rage to spend because it uses two weapons, to fit the distinction between arms as a disciplined blade expert and fury as a screaming madman.
• The intention for Battle Stance is to be the default battle stance (as the name would suggest), while Berserker Stance will be attractive for PvP or fights with high incoming damage. Blizzard's still working on Berserker Stance's design, but that's the goal.

There's more to discuss, so let's get to discussing it.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday was supposed to be an "off" week for the column, but screw that.

You know what? I think I finally nailed why the druid experience on the Mists of Pandaria beta has felt so bizarre at times. We've seen the re-emergence of stuff we used to take for granted (shifting out of roots and the return of permatree among them), and you know what it all reminds me of? Someone once described the boot camp experience as one in which "all of your God-given rights are stripped, only to be doled back later, one by one, as privileges." Yep. That's what this is like.

Anyway, Ghostcrawler hit the forums last night to give us some news on a revamped set of level 90 druid talents that have completely altered the ratio of win to suck in the bracket.

Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has just released a new post on account-wide achievements. He makes a strong point that Blizzard's overall design goal is that it doesn't want us playing one character over another only because of achievement concerns. This is quite good news for raiders with multiple alts and others who need to use achievements as a sort of progress check on their moving-out-of-the-fire skill and game knowledge.

Some key notes from Ghostcrawler's blog post:

• While you only earn achievement points once, you will still see the achievement pop-up notification if you earn it again on a second character.
• Most achievement criteria are not account-wide. That is, if you explore Thousand Needles, you'll need to explore it all on one character to get the associated exploration achievement.
• Meta achievements like What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been are account-wide, meaning you can finish Flame Warden on one character and Noble Gardener on another.
• Faction-specific pets, mounts, and titles will not work across faction -- that is, no Alliance mounts for Horde characters.
• The goal is to share rewards across the entire account that are granted from achievements.

In particular regard to that last point, Ghostcrawler says: "I'm not going to promise this yet, because a lot of magic has to happen for that to work, but it's our intent." So that looks to be very much work in progress still, but it's great to know where Blizzard is headed.

Ghostcrawler's full post after the break.

Ghostcrawler took to the official forums to address the lack of spirit cloth gear that some players have experienced in the Mists of Pandaria beta dungeons currently available for testing. Spirit gear for pure healers is necessary to retain mana regeneration levels and output as content increases in difficulty. With a lack of spirit gear, some healers found their jobs more difficult. Ghostcrawler confirmed that the level-up dungeons found throughout the 85 to 90 content cannot be over-challenging due to the nature of their place in the progression.

The meat of the answer is that as you approach endgame content at level 90, more gear appears with endgame stats on it -- dodge, parry, and block for tanks, spirit for healers, and so on. When that gear becomes important is when the stats start appearing. Until then, pop some reforge, check reputation vendors and other sources of level-up gear for spirit stuff, and mish-mash together a set of decent healer gear. (Or, at the end of the day, you're just really unlucky with drops.)

Warlocks are the most changed class in Mists of Pandaria, and demonology is getting some serious attention from Ghostcrawler as its new playstyle is flushed out. Notable in Ghostcrawler's discussion is that the days of using both fire and shadow spells with a lot of demon damage are being looked upon as something that weren't super compelling. Importantly, Ghostcrawler also says that demonology warlocks aren't intended to be melee casters anymore.

As a raiding demonology warlock, I find that Ghostcrawler's design intentions really make me pleased. Right now, if you want to do good DPS as a demo 'lock, you're going to be in the melee group as much as possible to get the most benefits from Metamorphosis and Immolation Aura, while at the same time staying stationary to turret out your DPS. In Ghostcrawler's plan for Mists, the necessity of melee-range spells is going to be situational. No longer am I going to be pestering my raid leader to put me in the melee group for Zon'ozz, and I should be able to stay at range and enjoy such benefits there as much as I can (which, at least in my perfect world, would include less movement).

It'll be interesting to see how this kit plays out in the end. It always seems to be one of those specs that gets changed around a fair amount in one way or another, and Ghostcrawler does say that Blizzard is looking to make a home for demonology.

So have faith, fellow 'locks! Things are looking evil.

Ghostcrawler's full statements, after the break.

In a two-part interview with The Baltimore Sun's entertainment blog, Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street (lead systems designer) sits down to talk about his days at McDaniel College, how he got started in the game design business, and what it's like being Ghostcrawler.

Of particular interest to those here is that Ghostcrawler says Blizzard is a little paranoid about changing things too much, and that it doesn't want to alienate the old players in favor of the new players. Of course, some change is necessary to keep things fresh, but Ghostcrawler makes good points on how there is a balance.

He also weighs in on Mass Effect 3 and all the fun players are having at the end of the game. Ghostcrawler sums up the situation nicely:

When you make a two-hour movie, and people like it, but they don't like the ending, they'll say "that was disappointing." But when you make three video games where players have invested 30-plus hours each, and the ending isn't good, they're mortified. That's been an investment in their life that now feel wasted, specifically because of what they did with it really rubbed a lot of players the wrong way.

Read the full interview over at The Baltimore Sun.

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Ghostcrawler is back on the blog with a comprehensive look at how the new loot systems are going to work in Mists of Pandaria. This newest blog post reads like a lesson in loot design and is valuable if you are interested in the development process of these systems. One of the most interesting things to come from the new design is that there will be no rolling on loot in the Raid Finder, eliminating the "callous jerk" problem. The game chooses who gets the loot, not any of the potentially trollish players (not to offend any actual trolls in the raid, taz'dingo, etc.).

While rolling for transmog stuff is definitely an issue when the game decides who gets what, Ghostcrawler flat-out states that Raid Finder is not the place for vying for transmog loot. There are other places for that. This new personal loot system will be used for world bosses as well.

Ghostcrawler also revealed the bonus roll system, where players will be able to earn tokens from various factions in Pandaria to spend on (among other things) a bonus roll when attempting to get loot off of a boss. This system will award tokens through tasks and dailies, giving people who prepare for Raid Finder a bit of an advantage if they choose to spend a token earned. Faction rewards, enchantments, epic items, and factional gear can also be purchased with these tokens.

The valor points system is also undergoing a revamp, with points taking on a new role of upgrading existing gear, but the final system is not really ready for much discussion. And, yes, the explanation for AoE looting is priceless. Hit the jump for the full post.

Not only is there a ton of information about the next expansion's features floating around, there are plenty of interviews with the minds behind the expansion as well. All of the fan sites got their own chance to ask developers questions about Mists, so each interview has different information. Check out these links to other developer interviews from around the web.

• Wowhead interviewed Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton about professions in Pandaria, bind on account pets, titles and mounts, transmogrification, and more.
• Wowhead also quizzed Lead Game Designer Tom Chilton about monks, questing, dailies, updating old world instances, and the player community.

Ghostcrawler has continued his series explaining some of the system changes coming to World of Warcraft in Mists of Pandaria. The newest blog post discusses which buffs players will be bringing to groups as well as which debuffs certain classes can inflict on enemies. Blizzard is giving a variety of classes each category of buff and debuff in order to make setting up 10- or 25-man raids a breeze.

First, Ghostcrawler outlined the main design goals of the new buff and debuff categories, saying that making the player feel more powerful in a group as well as making group-building easier were two of the biggest reasons for the changes. DPS classes should be excited to know that buffs and debuffs will vary per role rather than spec, so a DPS warrior will bring the same utility whether he is arms or fury.

After discussing the design goals, Ghostcrawler gave some notes with regards to the new categories of buffs and debuffs, with the new categories as the big finish. Check out all of the categories in Ghostcrawler's post after the jump.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

Two weeks ago, I asked you to throw out everything you knew about rogue poisons. I was being silly, because I know that would be a lot to ask. Many of us have spent years learning the intricacies of the poison system, studying PPM charts and evaluating our options. Unfortunately, it looks like there was actually no hyperbole in my original request. With the latest round of info we've received, every single poison mechanic in the game will be overhauled in Mists of Pandaria.

We already know about the new lethal/non-lethal designations and how we'll be able to have two poisons on both of our weapons at all times. We already know that poisons will be critting for double damage in Mists and that their crit chance will be calculated based on our melee crit rate. These improvements are just what we needed to increase our utility options and to boost crit's viability as a secondary stat. In addition to these sweeping changes to poison crit mechanics, we've learned that poison's hit mechanics are also being revamped.