Cataclysm Beta - Build 12644

[Zandilar]

malfurion seriously ?? dwarf like beard horns and wings on arms .... i know wings on arms can be prty pratical but still ....

Those wings aren't practical. They're useless decoration. And those shoes? or are they paw?

But my thought exactly - looks like a dwarven moonkin hybrid, not a Night Elf. Good Elune, what have you done to Malfurion, Blizzard?

[bahumut5]

Reason I'm nerd raging on malfurion. Imagine the basics of that model on Illidan's animation frame, if you really want to give him wings, raven wings spanning from his back in place of Illidan's Batwings. Horns are fine, drop the mouchache, perfect. If you really want to put it to awesome levels, mount that shit on a white stag. He looks nothing like his brother as is, the nose and eyes etc are all wrong

I think you are misunderstanding 2 things here:

1. Illidan's body got raped by demonic magic, changing his whole body to have some Demonic features.
2. Malfurion has been training the Druid's magic/power for quite the few decades now. Like somebody else stated: He trained under the Demigods as well. He should be as powerful as a Demigod by now, and it makes sense that he has taken some features from Demigods that have important relevance towards Druids (Wings of Aviana, Demigod revered by ALL winged creatures. Anglers which he had since... idk... I forgot >_> long time since I last read the book, but it looks a lot like those of Cenarius. Ursol and Usoc future. And of course a beard where a lot of people would kill for to have).

Even if they used to be identical twins, they changed a bit too much to even show resemblance.

[Marzenia]

I would say Malfurion looks interesting. I am not so crazy about him (i don't mean the looks here) but it is a nice change

Battle for Gilneas - doesn't look like there is going to be a city based pvp area. Too bad!
I hope I am wrong on this one.

[Deleted]

Malfurion looks like he fell in a druid fancy dress box and came out with a bit of every form on him.

I was hoping for some more....epic, but hes not bad.

[Sonneillon]

I think you are misunderstanding 2 things here:

1. Illidan's body got raped by demonic magic, changing his whole body to have some Demonic features.
2. Malfurion has been training the Druid's magic/power for quite the few decades now. Like somebody else stated: He trained under the Demigods as well. He should be as powerful as a Demigod by now, and it makes sense that he has taken some features from Demigods that have important relevance towards Druids (Wings of Aviana, Demigod revered by ALL winged creatures. Anglers which he had since... idk... I forgot >_> long time since I last read the book, but it looks a lot like those of Cenarius. Ursol and Usoc future. And of course a beard where a lot of people would kill for to have).

Even if they used to be identical twins, they changed a bit too much to even show resemblance.

1. I am aware of this. That doesn't, hasn't and didn't mean his facial features ever changed, they are identical twins except hair colour (since that changed) and they didn't have the same eye colour (But his did become golden over time but its not like we see Illidan's eyes). Still a unique NE model (frame) like Illidan would be well served here. He is unique, has some cool animations that would work well here and also has some interesting things. Blizzard likes reusing this stuff, reusing the overused NE frame (which I personally think is terrible, they used it for Medivh...) they could have used an appropriate lore wise unique frame for this one. Both dudes have horns, yeah one of them has demonic horns. Both dudes now have wings... just one of their wings are REALLY FUCKING LAME. One of them is blind... hint, not Malfurion. One of them has a beard... hint, Malfurion. I don't see your arguement...
2. Decades, try millienia. Did anything I say take away credit from from this? Not really, I even put if they wanted to put in wings how it should look, have you seen the concept art from warcraft 3's druids of the talons, their wings stemmed from their backs. Tens of thousands of years and just now he sprouds arm wings... Giving Malfurion fucking Eagle feathers like a boomkin has nothing to do with what you are talking about. If he had god damned raven wings coming from the back like Illidan's bat wings it would not only look cooler, give the brothers more semblance but would also be EXTREMELY BADASS. I personally dislike that he even has (are we calling those...) wings in the first place.
3. Side nose beard.

[Gak32]

Malfurion looks amazing.

Shamanistic Rage change: nerf? Guess I have to see how it plays, along with the other mana talent, but I think I'd rather have the mana regen.

[Deleted]

Blizzard-


Fire (Read this post before you check the changes or I'll punch you in the face)

Did any1 actually read the blue post? If not here goes:

Quick preview of upcoming fire changes (talents are from left to right, *denotes a change to the talent):

Tier 1:
*Master of Elements: now 2 ranks at 15/30%

Burning Soul

*Incineration: removed

*Improved Fire Blast: moved from tier 2


Tier 2:
Ignite

*Fire Power: Increases the damage of your Fire spells by 1/2/3% and gives your Flame Orb a 33/66/100% chance to explode at the end of its duration.

Blazing Speed

Impact (no useful raid utility yet... awesome ideas welcome)


Tier 3:
*Cauterize (new, 2 ranks): You have a 50/100%% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead bring you to 40% of your maximum health. However, you will burn for 12% of your maximum health every second for the next 4 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

*Blast Wave: A wave of flame radiates outward from the target location, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for X Fire damage and are slowed by 75% for 3 sec.

*Molten Shields (new 1 rank, Blazing Speed is a prereq): Reduces the global cooldown of your Mage Ward spell by 1.5 sec and your Mage Ward triggers the Blazing Speed effect when it dissipates from absorbing damage.

*Improved Scorch: Reduces the mana cost of your Scorch spell by 50/100%


Tier 4:
Pyromaniac

Combustion

*Hot Streak (the instant Pyroblast no longer costs mana)

*Firestarter (new, 1 rank): Your Molten Armor allows you to cast the Scorch spell while moving instead of reducing the chance you are critically hit.


Tier 5:
Improved Flamestrike

Dragon's Breath

Molten Fury


Tier 6:
*Critical Mass: Your Pyroblast and Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 5% and lasts 30 sec.


Tier 7:
Living Bomb


/Astral

[fishz]

Ardent Defender - Activate to reduce damage taken by 20% for 10 sec. While Ardent Defender is active, the next attack that would otherwise kill you will instead cause you to be healed for 15% of your maximum health.

i was like: yay, paladin nerfs. then i read the rest of the changes and now i'm sad.

[Dalehan]

They really don't seem to give a fuck about their own lore, do they?
In Knaak's books, like them or hate them, they are official canon, he goes on and on about how most Night Elves have silver eyes and only very special people have golden eyes, that promise future greatness or something. Illidan had golden eyes. Malfurion didn't have them at first but got them (forgot if it was mentioned in War of the Ancients) now. In Stormrage Broll constantly doubts himself but then finally gets those shiny golden eyes, although, he himself says, they don't seem to be quite as golden as Malfurion's...

Seriously... Don't let him talk so much about the fucking eyes if you don't reflect that ingame.

Other than that the model looks nice, the wings are a bit much though..



His appearance in WC3 doesn't really seem to be canon, pretty much everywhere else he has ie. green hair instead of the WC3 blue hair.
Thrall has a black wolf instead of his white wolf companion, Snow Song.

Also the way Malfurion and Tyrande talk to each other in WC3 doesn't really match their lovey dovey thing we see them do usually in Knaak's work (the main author who portraits them).

Love WC3 but imo you can see pretty well that they developed a large part of the lore, retconning quite some stuff, after WC3 and some stuff didn't quite fit afterwards.

Yeah, I just thought things through again, and you're right. Malfurion used a "standard" archdruid model, and his hair was blue indeed. But looking at the wowwiki page, none of the concept arts or official figurines share that strange moustache he's growing out from underneat his eyes. I could care less (heck, I'd think it would look better) if they'd be long strands of hair hanging from his temples instead. But instead they're a facestache. Yeah, I'll dub it facestache now.

And the goblin mount... IF those are officially the goblin mounts, left is epic, right is normal. Left one has more exhaust pipes and inflated rubber tires, while the right one has wooden wheels = left is an upgraded version of the right one.
Heck, there weren't any model differences between alliance and horde engineering mounts, apart from the color scheme and logos. These two bikes right here are not identical models, so.. There's your gobbo mount!

[Ikkatsu]

Malfurion looks like an Owl... even his face.

[Kelticfox]

Is it wrong to hope those are a new Engineer-exclusive ground mount? Cause that's what I hope they are.

I think they are as well.

One looks like it was designed for the Horde and one for the Alliance.
Plus the Horde looking one has a spanner icon on the seat.


Plus, are those cannons on the front?

[Alraml]

That Malfurion model is a joke right? I know I laughed my ass off when I saw that thing.

Dunno, I like it. They probably won't change it cause I laughed my ass off when I saw Garrosh's model and it's still there

[Jackalrat]

Demonology

* Demonic Aegis now Increases the effectiveness of your Demon Armor and Fel Armor spells by 15/30%. (Up from 10/20%)
* Empowered Imp now gives your Imp's Firebolt a 12% chance to cause your next Soulfire spell to be instant cast within 8 sec.



Wtf? That's a destro ability that hasn't changed since the last build and is still in the destro tree... ...
I'd love for them to move this to tier 1 demonology and give destro something more useful for PvP, but so far the destro tree has hardly changed at all since the first beta build, and has consistently been pretty lame.

[Yaminho]

gief go karts to goblins. these 3cycles arent bad, but go karts are go karts. Malfurion looks silly

[Leftineus]

Stromrage. Wow.

[Alianthos]

Warrior love <3

[Destrokk]

Wow, moonkins are being raped up the ass. So much for a space chicken with lasers of doom that can shift the universe with a single thought process.

[Sensa]

It always amazes me how one "model" can be debated for 9 pages yet there has been little comment on the class builds which ultimately are much more important.

Blizzard is creating a pretty interesting situation for themselves with these dramatic overhauls of the talent trees. One of the purposes of the overhaul, beyond making it easier for noobs, is to make it easier for blizzard to balance the classes and design encounters by having a much more standardized set of numbers (math) and talents to work with.

The dilemma for them is that if this experiment fails and classes remain "Wrath" unbalanced (which is highly likely) and most classes end up with specs that are blatantly better for raiding (i.e. arcane being the only viable raiding spec in the 2nd half of Wrath) who or what are they going to blame it on this time, besides themselves, and what level of delusional rationale (burst is not a problem in pvp) will GC trot out?

A free MMO membership (joking) for the person who comes up with the best excuse GC should use when the time comes.

[Kurz]

Finally they changed enrage how it should have always been. For Warriors that is. But it's still beta, so who knows what's gonna happen.

[The Last DJ]

Yanno, for a guy who's been stuck in the Emerald Nightmare for as long as he has, he ain't lookin' too shabby. (I guess he's all but confirmed as a Druid of the Talon, huh? Or at the very least he's representing almost all of the aspects of Druidism. The wings for the Talons, and the paw boots for Claw/Fang. He's always had antlers as Cenarius' thero'shan, though.) He's usually depicted as having a very furry face, but the stark placement of the "mustaches" are off-putting. His lips are also too dark for his skin tone, or at least too bold. Other than that, not bad, not bad at all. I just wish Cenarius himself wasn't a recolored and slightly-tweaked Keeper of the Grove model, though.

Diggin' the Warrior changes. Still eeeeenh on the use of Focus as a hunter, though. It's gonna take some getting used to. Not used to having to keep track of focus like I do energy. As for Enhancement ... one lone change, still no news or even a sniff of a decent AoE that doesn't require a mana dump and a waste of GCDs. As for the change to SR ... aside from having to bust out Magma Totem/Fire Nova for AoE, I'm not noticing a severe problem with running OOM. Of course, things are bound to change at 85, but unless mana costs for items quadruple, it's really nothing basic replenishment and Primal Wisdom can't handle. (Aside from taking a dirt nap and popping up - that's the only hurtful change to SR.) This seems more like a PvP-based talent, or for high-mobility fights where you've gotta put a little hustle in your bustle and chain drop a certain totem.