Head Enchants Removed, Priest Skill Animations, Diablo 3 Patch Incoming, TCG Art

[Snowlock]

It's not about simple - it's about boring. No one got anything out of grinding one particular faction on a toon after the first patch. It was a boring prerequisite. It added nothing to the depth of play, it just stretched the whole thing out.

My most recent toon I had ready for Raid Finder in a day. Yet I still had to spend two weeks doing dungeons just to get the helm enchant. It was boring. It didn't help anything. And it didn't make my toon more powerful, it just got it up to speed with everyone else.

That isn't fun. And if it isn't fun, why should it be kept?

Not really, as Head enchants we're BOA, not BOP, so you could grind the faction on your main, to have all factions exalted, then buy it with him and post it to your alts.....which begs the question of why anyone would feel a need to grind rep with more than one character, if you do it, it's your choice...

---------- Post added 2012-05-31 at 02:46 AM ----------

I like the idea of removing head entchants as a faction reward, maybe they're gonna do that for shoulders too. however, they dont have to go completely out of the game, why not make a recipe for enchanters or another profession?!

on a side note I think the reason behind this "we removed it because you werent able to choose which factions reputation you grind for the enchant" is kinda pointless?! when cata came out you needed something from every new faction so technically it didnt even matter which faction you grinded. I actually found that quite funny because you couldnt know which part of your gear will drop first from raids but you would swap the grinding depending on what items you get.
well, I guess even with the head enchants gone there will probably be something that everyone needs from every faction just to get started with raiding.

from what i've read, shoulder enchants are no longer a faction reward, they are now done by scribes; these could be given to scribes or enchanters too, but blizz seem to think it just complicates matters

[wownomo]

I agree with the reasoning and logic behind the whole specific faction having your chant and forcing you into gameplay instead of allowing you to play where you want, but removing them completely I think is just a lazy solution. Tabards helped reach this rep goal, but were really just a burden to carry around, swap on and off, etc... Making them BoA back when they did was basically Blizzard admitting that this was a pain in the ass form of gameplay and they were going to help you by not having to repeat it on your alts (except shoulders for w/e reason).

So developer and players both agree the previous rep enchant grind was a pain, not engaging game play. So the answer is to just remove them entirely? LAZY! Get a little more creative and figure out a way to keep them around without having to mindless grind quests and dailys. I'd rather see them remain in the VP vendors inventory and cost gold/points/whatever than see them completely removed. Give them to a vendor who's unlocked halfway thru whatever our first raid is going to be. Give them scribes along with the shoulder chants. Something, anything to keep the chants in game.

I know I'm going to be feeling a little naked in the helm department when I don't see those extra stats up there come MoP.

[nekobaka]

For myself the helm enchants was never really a problem as far as a grind was concerned. You could usually unlock the tabard quickly while leveling anyways and then do dungeons. The shoulder enchants on the other hand was easily skip able while leveling and to this day I do not have the Cata shoulder enchants because Blizzard stuck the quest chain so far into a zone that you did not need to spend much time in and I lost track of the quest, a horrible design IMO.

The whole purpose of these enchants and rep vendors was to get players to see the content along with the other repuation vendor rewards, if you want to gear out you will be doing content that you may or may not want to do. With a tabard vendor and BoA enchants, there is not as much of an issue as there was with say the shoulder enchants. To say they dont serve their purpose is basically saying that obtaining them is so easy that they might as well just remove them. Blizzard might as well remove all stat based reputation rewards so that players dont feel forced to grind a reputation.

[Lolercaust]

Why get rid of the helm enchants? They are just making this game more and more simple by the day. If anything, just reduce it down to one faction like shoulders and be done. It isn't hard to get rep anymore anyway. Get to friendly...buy tabard...hey look exalted. The days when this game actually had depth and required people to think and earn things.

Where exactly was there depth and thinking involved in the tabard system?

I'm usually one to cry "simplification," but in this case I don't see anything wrong. Head enchants will not be missed.

[Ihnasir]

I'm kind of pissed, I have a 525 Scribe, but spent the past 3 days milling/farming stacks of herbs for pigments to powerlevel Inscription for my Monk for easy Shoulder enchants without having to grind rep. WELP, looks like I'll have 2 Scribes to make the same damn things.

[slimj091]

great.. can't wait until i have to pay 30k gold for a shoulder enchant that cost 10 gold to make. /sarcasm

[Spellweaver]

I'm kind of pissed, I have a 525 Scribe, but spent the past 3 days milling/farming stacks of herbs for pigments to powerlevel Inscription for my Monk for easy Shoulder enchants without having to grind rep. WELP, looks like I'll have 2 Scribes to make the same damn things.

Pretty sure those inscription-only shoulder enchants will still be better, so it's not like you've suddenly lost out on something.

[Vesci]

Why do they keep posting Diablo crap on this site? They don't post SC2 crap here and they don't post WoW stuff on the D3 site. I don't come here for D3 news. I come here for WoW news.

[Zokten]

I see blizzard still does there "when in doubt just remove it." lol

[stonhinge]

Shoulder enchants going to scribes makes sense. Leatherworkers and tailors make leg enchants, and get cheaper versions for themselves. Scribes have already gotten cheaper (and better) shoulder enchants, so moving them from rep vendors to scribes is appropriate.

As for helm enchants, I would be in favor of engineers making them. Engineering is the only profession that doesn't make something similar - other than scopes which are only used by one class.

[davep]

They should just give engineers the ability to make head enchants, that way engineers have something worth a shit to sell.

[deathonabun]

Taking out the head enchants is a cop out. There's any number of other ways the head enchant could have been made available without tying players into a specific rep grind. You could have a 'helm enchant' vendor unlocked at exalted with every rep, they could have added them to an existing profession, they could have been a JP or VP purchase, they could even wait and introduce them in a 5.1 rep-grind (think molten front). Hell, they could even go the vanilla route and make them obtained through raid content like the old ZG enchants. I don't think it will make a big difference at the end of the day, but it shows a lack of creativity. I like working for things and this is just one less thing to for me to work towards in MoP.

[plaits]

I don't think it will make a big difference at the end of the day, but it shows a lack of creativity. I like working for things and this is just one less thing to for me to work towards in MoP.

I say this with all due respect, but I think you're in a minority. I think most people "work towards" things in real life at work or school or uni so much that when they sit down at their computer to play a game, they just want to run into a dungeon and kill stuff with their friends (or strangers!) for a while - not do daily quests over and over, or worry about this rep or that being most important or whatever. I think that's just the way it is. Blizzard wisely need to cater to the majority of players - if they don't, they lose subs, and lose money, which isn't great for the game as a whole. Lose 1% of hardcores, or 99% of casuals - it's just math.

Obviously those stats are a WAG. Not even a guess, just a representation...

[Leodegrance]

While I understand his reasoning, I do think it would be appropriate to split it into a Diablo news update and a WoW update. And some option to hide the Diablo ones would be nice. While I'm playing and like the game a lot, I really think this a WoW site. Diablofans exists if I want MMOchamp-style data on the D3.

This site stopped being a WoW only site when Curse took over.

Curse deals with multiple games and so to does MMO Champion now.

[TheSweetness]

I could not care less about helm enchants. I'm not even sure if my character has one.

The names of some of those priest spells are a little lol, but I like a lot of the animations.

[Quackie]

Lame. Farming rep for necessary raid enchants is part of the game, and forces bads out into the world so I can kill them. This makes me sad. Just keep giving people stuff the easy way Blizz.

[Zeglo]

There will still be lots of grinding and stuff, just less for raiders and more for random rewards/profession stuff.

[greyghost]

"My most recent toon was raid ready in a day. Yet I still had to spend time doing raids/dungeons just to get attuned. It was boring..." See where I'm going with this?

I'm not bashing taking out head enchants, but we have to remember what makes WoW the MMO it is. Take out all of the grindfests and what are you really left with? That's when people will start complaining about being bored, because they have nothing that takes time to accomplish anymore.

Take a look at it this way.

Now that reputations aren't mandatory to grind for raid preparation, perhaps they can remove the rep tabards and make rep grinds a bit of a challenge to do again, for those who like mount or tabard collecting, a la Burning Crusade.

There's no need to view changes as all minuses, but as the potential to lead to entertaining pluses down the road.

But the reality of it is, most people I've spoken to about the change are in huge favor for it, especially those people who detested Deepholm questing. Why? Because they don't want to have to do an obnoxious quest chain just for the ability to buy a tabard to rep grind in dungeons (which is what they want to do). Nor did they ever want to have to do 8 dailies each day in some out-of-the-way location somewhere just to get some sort of raiding requirement handled. Quite a few people don't like doing daily quests, and they shouldn't have to feel obligated to do them just to prepare for other completely separate elements of gameplay that holds the most draw for them as players.

And yes, as it stands, Questing is "solo PvE" and dungeons/raids are "group PvE". That's Blizzard's catigorization there, as you've noticed that most group quests have been eliminated from the game... hence this is their design philosophy. It is such as that because there are persons who can and will prefer one element over the other, and the ability for Blizzard to allow people to enjoy one solo element without feeling obligated to the other is why WoW thrives to this day. It's the reasoning for PvP stats/gear back in TBC, and it's the reasoning for this change, too.

You don't have to like their reasoning, but it makes sense. But it's certainly not a 'cop out' or 'bowing to laziness'. Just because people play WoW in a different way than you do does not invalidate their worth of having some sort of design decisions made that facilitates them and ultimately makes the game less of a damn chore for all players.

edit: and to the poster immediately below me, you realize how much of an insane minority you're in, right? Do you remember the statistics of people who even cleared Sunwell before its nerf? Or how many cleared it after the nerf?

Catering to what amounts to 1-2% of your player population to experience content that takes the vast majority of development time is stupid game design no matter how you cut it. You can go ask game companies that are ATTEMPTING to cater to your tastes though. Like let's ask Trion, for instance. Ask how Rift's "We have 1 million game accounts!" a year ago is doing now, now that 4 of their servers literally ghost-towned after the launch of Diablo 3.... and that was AFTER they announced they had only about 200,000 players left back in April.

[SYNTH3T1K]

In my opinion its stuff like this that makes WoW go downhill... WoW was a a grindfest back in Vanilla and in TBC (in the beginning) and I found it fun, but yet people find the helm enchant pointless and stupid because you have to grind a faction? You mean like Oracles who could reward a mount? So it wasn't a flashy mount.. It was a helm enchant but guess what you learned a lil more that day by doing the quests and unlocking more by doing them. Plus you earned a lil more gold each day. Kept you from becoming those bums who ask for gold in Capital Cities... At some point enchants themselves will just be stupid, nothing a gem cant do.... The only enchants left will be ones that make your weapon shiny and thats because the the base of this game is children.. Yes Pandaria has lore from way back when but honestly... This looks more like Nick Jr's World of Warcraft... and if you don't know what Nick Jr is, its a children's progrem on Nickelodeon. I've played the game for 7 years and honestly I think its just getting too easy. With each expansion content was getting cleared faster and faster.. The only dungeon to swift kick raiders in the nuts was Sunwell Pre-nerf... I don't know about you, but I like a challenge.. I don't want to feel like I wasted my money to get handed everything.. All in all, having faction rep and certain items or enchants earned was a displaly of dedication and the fact you don't want to look like a chump or for that matter like everyone else.... Thats all its becoming is equal opportunity without the whole dedicated part. Fair maybe, but the only objective for the hardcore base now is "how fast can we clear this". There is no standing out because everyone has either the same gear different color. Nothing really impressive anymore. Mounts are great but I enjoy the whole package when it comes down to it. I know some will see my point and others will disagree which I expect but dont last out at me if you feel offended.. Because if you're offended you need to get out more.

---------- Post added 2012-05-30 at 10:49 PM ----------

Pardon my typos.

[Beefkow]

Still no spell changes? dang i guess every class is balanced for the expansion.