[OFFICIAL] MoP Beta Build Changes Discussion Thread

[iadamson]

Okay, seriously.

"I like the benefit of this Major but not the drawback" does not translate to "this should be baseline without the drawback".

The entire POINT of Major Glyphs is to be a tradeoff. Whether the good outweighs the bad will be personal and often dependent on the situation. None of the ones being mentioned as "should be baseline" are necessary for basic functioning. They have obvious benefits, yes. All the glyphs do. But if you push that argument to its logical conclusion, all Major glyphs should be baked into their abilities without their drawbacks leaving us with just the cosmetic minor glyphs. And that's clearly ridiculous.

That you want the benefit but feel like it might not be worth the price is exactly what you should be feeling. That means the Major is well-tuned.

And yes, things like Glyph of Chaining are absolutely situational. Most fights in DS it wouldn't be desirable. Most fights that require people to spread don't also involve heavy raid damage; that's WHY you're spreading, to AVOID heavy raid damage. Yes, there will be times when you'll want it, and that's when you'll glyph it, but the idea that it "should be baseline" just because it's a buff is baseless.

All Majors bring buffs. That doesn't mean they should be baseline. Nor does you wanting the benefit mean they should be baseline. It just means you should take the glyph.

There's just so much potential that out of all these glyphs at least 3 of them will be nearly mandatory for every fight. Play style & wanting that benefit go by the way side. They may also be so beneficial that even situational glyphs won't be used even in the most desirable of fights for them. I agree, you've brought up a lot of points - which I won't argue with because you're right. However it's just sad that a lot of these great glyphs will end up going by the way side because they are just out done by others. It almost brings up the notion "What's the point in having them if we never use them?" or "Why not just make this baseline as it's nice but not as nice as this?". Pretty much the cookie cutter builds from the old calculators will transfer over to glyphs and we all know once the numbers come out there will be a list of priority glyphs.

I don't think Resto shamans should complain about the lvl 90 talents since the level 75 talents benefit Resto a lot more than the DPS specs.

Fair trade IMO.

Yeah it is a fair trade, perhaps they could drop a dps talent from the 90 tier into the the healing tier and bring up a healing one into the 90 tier.

[Deleted]

The entire POINT of Major Glyphs is to be a tradeoff

Not always. Many Glyphs are straight buffs to ability.
"Glyph of Death and Decay - Your Death and Decay also reduces the movement speed of enemies within its radius by 50%."
"Glyph of Icy Touch - Your Icy Touch dispels one helpful Magic effect from the target."
"Glyph of Deep Freeze - Your Deep Freeze spell no longer has a global cooldown."
"Glyph of Meditation - You can now channel Meditation while moving."...

and many more.

Sure, we also have some only-buff glyphs, but that's not the point. Not all glyphs are tradeoffs.

[Radux]

Not always. Many Glyphs are straight buffs to ability.
"Glyph of Death and Decay - Your Death and Decay also reduces the movement speed of enemies within its radius by 50%."
"Glyph of Icy Touch - Your Icy Touch dispels one helpful Magic effect from the target."
"Glyph of Deep Freeze - Your Deep Freeze spell no longer has a global cooldown."
"Glyph of Meditation - You can now channel Meditation while moving."...

and many more.

Sure, we also have some only-buff glyphs, but that's not the point. Not all glyphs are tradeoffs.

Part of the trade off is the idea of it actually taking up a glyph slot vs something else.

Take the first example you mentioned, for instance:
- DnD doesn't always need a snare. In many cases in PvE, it would be almost pointless.

That's the idea of a Major glyph (and the talent system): Make choices and decide when to use [insert glyph/talent] when appropriate and benefits you and the encounter the most.

[Endus]

There's just so much potential that out of all these glyphs at least 3 of them will be nearly mandatory for every fight. Play style & wanting that benefit go by the way side. They may also be so beneficial that even situational glyphs won't be used even in the most desirable of fights for them. I agree, you've brought up a lot of points - which I won't argue with because you're right. However it's just sad that a lot of these great glyphs will end up going by the way side because they are just out done by others. It almost brings up the notion "What's the point in having them if we never use them?" or "Why not just make this baseline as it's nice but not as nice as this?". Pretty much the cookie cutter builds from the old calculators will transfer over to glyphs and we all know once the numbers come out there will be a list of priority glyphs.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I can't see any glyphs in there that are automatic picks, aside from maybe Glyph of LvB and UL for Elemental PvP.

Looking at Resto PvE, I see Glyph of Chaining, Telluric Currents, Earth Shield, Healing Stream Totem, Riptide, and Water Shield that look good. The only one that even comes close to "so good it's almost always worth it" is Riptide. Which means we'll be able to spam HoTs on everyone for spread-out fights, which is why everyone wanted Chaining in the first place. The others are all VERY situational. Telluric Currents may be one you can slap in and never change, but as I said earlier, I expect that Resto regen will be fine without it, if you gear as much Spirit as other healers. So it's a tradeoff between active regen over passive regen, with the advantage that your healing-per-cast will increase significantly, while your HPS remains somewhat similar, as you're interleaving LB casts for mana.

The others are all heavily situational, and you'd swap them out depending on the fight.

[Tactic6995]

So lemme get this straight.
Enhance shamans will be INSANE. 2 stuns, incredibly self healing, and Asendance, range melee attacks.

• Pulverize
  - Instant - 40 sec cooldown - Smashes an enemy with a rocky fist, dealing 150% of the damage of a normal attack, and stunning the target for 4 sec.
  
• Capacitor Totem
  - Instant - 45 sec cooldown - Summons an Air totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster that gathers electrical energy from the surrounding air and then explodes after 5 sec to stun all enemies within 8 yards for 5 sec.
  
• Glyph of Feral Spirit
  - Increases the healing done by your Feral Spirits' Spirit Hunt by 40%.
  
• Glyph of Healing Storm
  - Each application of Maelstrom Weapon also increases your healing done by 20%.

[iadamson]

I wholeheartedly disagree. I can't see any glyphs in there that are automatic picks, aside from maybe Glyph of LvB and UL for Elemental PvP.

Looking at Resto PvE, I see Glyph of Chaining, Telluric Currents, Earth Shield, Healing Stream Totem, Riptide, and Water Shield that look good. The only one that even comes close to "so good it's almost always worth it" is Riptide. Which means we'll be able to spam HoTs on everyone for spread-out fights, which is why everyone wanted Chaining in the first place. The others are all VERY situational. Telluric Currents may be one you can slap in and never change, but as I said earlier, I expect that Resto regen will be fine without it, if you gear as much Spirit as other healers. So it's a tradeoff between active regen over passive regen, with the advantage that your healing-per-cast will increase significantly, while your HPS remains somewhat similar, as you're interleaving LB casts for mana.

The others are all heavily situational, and you'd swap them out depending on the fight.

Well agree to disagree .

I'll have more grounds to debate once MoP is live.
When there is working numbers and such.
I feel like some glyphs may prove to be a necessity over others, of course you can't see it now, its only the beta.
However the possibly is there and in my opinion likely.
As long as choice exists people will do the math, find the numbers and determine whats best.
I have a feeling once those numbers appear and testing has been done, the benefit some glyphs provide will just out shine others.
There will be a list of whats most commonly best, whats debatablely competitive/ situational, and whats never going to be able to compete.
May I remind you many of the current glyphs still exist in the beta - increasing the choice of just what glyphs to use.
Here's a link showing the old Chain Heal glyph still available. As well as some new glyphs existing together.
http://imgur.com/UEIWA

[Banzubie]

So lemme get this straight.
Enhance shamans will be INSANE. 2 stuns, incredibly self healing, and Asendance, range melee attacks.

• Pulverize
  - Instant - 40 sec cooldown - Smashes an enemy with a rocky fist, dealing 150% of the damage of a normal attack, and stunning the target for 4 sec.
  
• Capacitor Totem
  - Instant - 45 sec cooldown - Summons an Air totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster that gathers electrical energy from the surrounding air and then explodes after 5 sec to stun all enemies within 8 yards for 5 sec.
  
• Glyph of Feral Spirit
  - Increases the healing done by your Feral Spirits' Spirit Hunt by 40%.
  
• Glyph of Healing Storm
  - Each application of Maelstrom Weapon also increases your healing done by 20%.

Enhance being gods in pvp? I support this idea and pray that our new shaman overlords are willing to group with us lowly ret pallies =D

But in all seriousness I think most enhance shamans would rather have the speed boost from the unleashed elements talent rather than the stun from the pet.

[Taalyn]

There was a long standing debate when Playing With Fire was a talent for Fire Mages (Do 3% more damage, take 3% more damage) about talents with penalties. It was brought back up when Burnout was added to the Fire tree. Should you have talents with penalties? Ultimately Blizzard said no and changed them all but now we are seeing this with glyphs. It just doesn't make sense to me. They want you to have hard choices with talents and glyphs. If they can accomplish hard choices in talents without having penalties, why can't they do the same with Glyphs?

The biggest peeve I have is Glyph of Chaining in that we were told the game engine cannot handle a jump increase, meaning if it could, they would buff Chain Heal. Now they can increase the range but do it through a glyph? That is just mean.

[Protoman]

That you want the benefit but feel like it might not be worth the price is exactly what you should be feeling. That means the Major is well-tuned.

And yes, things like Glyph of Chaining are absolutely situational. Most fights in DS it wouldn't be desirable. Most fights that require people to spread don't also involve heavy raid damage; that's WHY you're spreading, to AVOID heavy raid damage. Yes, there will be times when you'll want it, and that's when you'll glyph it, but the idea that it "should be baseline" just because it's a buff is baseless.

All Majors bring buffs. That doesn't mean they should be baseline. Nor does you wanting the benefit mean they should be baseline. It just means you should take the glyph.

Look at it from a mechanics POV.....we already have Healing Rain for when raid is stacked, what we need is a wider range group heal like WG, which is what Chain heal is supposed to be. Chain heal's range has been brought up before and Blizz made it sound like they wanted to extend range but couldn't cause of the coding, and it currently has problems sometimes with it's jumps. Now they fixed it, but making us glyph to make it truly effective.

Chain Heal's jump range should be 15-20 baseline, with glyph adding 10yds for a % in heal reduction.


Water Shield glyph also makes no sense to me. Lightning shield glyph has no drawback, why should water shield? The orb procs are the majority of it's mana return, not the passive mana regen....and it's ridiculous that resto has to refresh it constantly. It's just like back when Enhance had to refresh LS all the time and waste gcds on something other then damage, or healing in Resto's case. We waste gcd's on refreshing water shield, and spend gcds casting LB to gain our mana back.....other classes don't have such annoying mechanics for their mana.

Telluric currents is fine, if it is indeed optional (although hit will be problematic). I have no idea what the mana regen will be like, but Resto still only has one Mana regen cd, and it still doesn't give back greater return for the Shaman compared to other people. Meanwhile, other healers can benefit from our mana tide, plus have 1-2 extra personal mana regen cd's they can use whenever they want, and glyphs to improve them. Resto should get a buff to MTT, or another mana regen cd even if it's on a 5min cd, so it doesn't have to rely on TC anymore.


@T6 not very good for Resto

This may be true, but T5 technically has no DPS benefit for Enh or Ele, so not really a big deal if all the T6 talents don't also help Resto.

@ Elemental Blast

Does anyone know if Maelstrom Weapon will allow this to be instant? Anyone in beta already?

[Radux]

With Chain Heal and the Glyph of Chaining, it's not like they're not trying to actively improve their coding/tech all the time.

Hell, phasing wasn't available in TBC or Vanilla.

Things change all the time. They very well may have gotten new tech/proper coding that didn't screw everything up.

Look at it from a mechanics POV.....we already have Healing Rain for when raid is stacked, what we need is a wider range group heal like WG, which is what Chain heal is supposed to be. Chain heal's range has been brought up before and Blizz made it sound like they wanted to extend range but couldn't cause of the coding, and it currently has problems sometimes with it's jumps. Now they fixed it, but making us glyph to make it truly effective.

I think you have that backwards. If they made HR operate a bit more like WG/CoH, then CH wouldn't need a huge range jump. That would be the go-to-stack heal. I made that suggestion back in Firelands as a potential fix for range mechanic problems on spread fights.

With new glyphed Riptide + the-probably-not-going-to-happen-HR-being-like-WG/CoH, we'd be way too much like Druids, but much probably more potent while stacked.

[Endus]

Well agree to disagree .

I'll have more grounds to debate once MoP is live.
When there is working numbers and such.
I feel like some glyphs may prove to be a necessity over others, of course you can't see it now, its only the beta.
However the possibly is there and in my opinion likely.
As long as choice exists people will do the math, find the numbers and determine whats best.
I have a feeling once those numbers appear and testing has been done, the benefit some glyphs provide will just out shine others.
There will be a list of whats most commonly best, whats debatablely competitive/ situational, and whats never going to be able to compete.
May I remind you many of the current glyphs still exist in the beta - increasing the choice of just what glyphs to use.
Here's a link showing the old Chain Heal glyph still available. As well as some new glyphs existing together.
http://imgur.com/UEIWA

I'm well aware the Chain Heal glyph is in there, I'm the guy that went through the DB with a fine-tooth comb to grab all the info in the OP. And it's just as situational as any of the others. It got taken by most Resto for Cata due to a lack of anything else that really made any difference at the Major level.

The majority of those, especially things like Chaining, are highly situational. You'd only want to use it if everyone will be too widespread for Chain Heal to bounce during moderate-heavy AoE. The only fight I can see that being really useful in DS would be Warmaster Blackhorn, really. These aren't thing you can just math out because their benefits depend on the circumstances of the fight.

---------- Post added 2012-03-22 at 06:18 PM ----------

Look at it from a mechanics POV.....we already have Healing Rain for when raid is stacked, what we need is a wider range group heal like WG, which is what Chain heal is supposed to be. Chain heal's range has been brought up before and Blizz made it sound like they wanted to extend range but couldn't cause of the coding, and it currently has problems sometimes with it's jumps. Now they fixed it, but making us glyph to make it truly effective.

Chain Heal's jump range should be 15-20 baseline, with glyph adding 10yds for a % in heal reduction.

We don't need Wild Growth. Holy Paladins don't have anything like that, nor do Priests of either spec.

If anything, Glyph of Riptide is going to help easy mobility and spread-out AoE issues. Glyph of Chaining doesn't honestly look that amazing to me. Situational, sure, but not something I'm like "OMG WANT" over.

Water Shield glyph also makes no sense to me. Lightning shield glyph has no drawback, why should water shield? The orb procs are the majority of it's mana return, not the passive mana regen....and it's ridiculous that resto has to refresh it constantly. It's just like back when Enhance had to refresh LS all the time and waste gcds on something other then damage, or healing in Resto's case. We waste gcd's on refreshing water shield, and spend gcds casting LB to gain our mana back.....other classes don't have such annoying mechanics for their mana.

We don't really know how it works; I haven't gotten into the beta yet to test it.

If not getting mana from being struck ALSO means an orb is not consumed when struck, it means you're not having to refresh it any more. And getting 10% more passive regen to make up for the loss of on-damage regen. Which would be great, IMO.

[Tactic6995]

Enhance being gods in pvp? I support this idea and pray that our new shaman overlords are willing to group with us lowly ret pallies =D

But in all seriousness I think most enhance shamans would rather have the speed boost from the unleashed elements talent rather than the stun from the pet.

Yeah I would agree, but just the option of having 2 stuns is mind boggling. Considering our feral spirits will now be gaurdians (<3), we wont have the 60% sprint so it is necessary to have that 50% sprint from UE, and the stuns would DR each too. However, it would be able to nice to switch to a spec for 2 stuns if you keep chain queing against a comp and you need more control. Keep in mind Wins shear is 12 seconds now so we wont have the 5second interrupt control we had before, so me have to actually take the 2 stuns to make up for the control.

[iadamson]

I'm well aware the Chain Heal glyph is in there, I'm the guy that went through the DB with a fine-tooth comb to grab all the info in the OP. And it's just as situational as any of the others. It got taken by most Resto for Cata due to a lack of anything else that really made any difference at the Major level.

The majority of those, especially things like Chaining, are highly situational. You'd only want to use it if everyone will be too widespread for Chain Heal to bounce during moderate-heavy AoE. The only fight I can see that being really useful in DS would be Warmaster Blackhorn, really. These aren't thing you can just math out because their benefits depend on the circumstances of the fight.

I'm telling you right now, not every glyph is situational.
Some may have interesting effects on healing out put when coupled with certain abilities.
If you think every glyph will be used for the situation its designed, that won't happen.
If your saying all glyphs are valid because they are situational and therefore equal, that's false.

Glyph of Chaining is far more then situational.
Chain Heal jumps to the most injured people first.
Its a smart heal.
If you have more range, a more badly injured person will receive the heal.
It stands to reason you will have less over healing, because a target with lesser health will be jumped too.
Imagine chain healing a cluster of people but it's able to jump away from that cluster and get that lonely guy with low health as well.

[Alhoon]

With new glyphed Riptide + the-probably-not-going-to-happen-HR-being-like-WG/CoH, we'd be way too much like Druids, but much probably more potent while stacked.

I don't think it's realistic to discuss about Riptide glyph, the way Riptide works currently, that glyph is incredibly broken. It would reduce us to WotLK Druid, blanketing the whole raid with Riptide without having to worry about mana at all. It's safe to say either Riptide or the glyph will be nerfed massively before the release.

That said, the Chain Heal glyph sure feels strange. Maybe they rewrote the code for MoP, maybe they just lied to us in the first place. Having double the jump range for Chain Heal in current or any of the previous patches with no drawbacks would not make us imba, seeing we're the worst healers currently, and have been for the whole expansion. And the expansion before that.

[binkenstein]

Does Primal Elementalist make the totems permanent, or leaves the cooldown/duration as per normal?

[Deleted]

Chain heal's range has been brought up before and Blizz made it sound like they wanted to extend range but couldn't cause of the coding, and it currently has problems sometimes with it's jumps. Now they fixed it, but making us glyph to make it truly effective.

I agree with that. I'm sure, that if Blizzard would have been able to implement the range increase earlier, it would've come without a healing nerf anyway. So why taint this long needed change by adding a healing malus to an already only mediocre Hps spell? Making the range available through glyph only and with that healing nerf just doesn't seem right. I don't want to be so dependant on glyphs. Blizz should give the Resto spec a major overhaul instead and not try to fix everything with glyphs. I think that's a bad way of improving the spec, and also hard to balance. Glyphs should be like a little additional bonus and not essential mandatory things to make a class competitive.

It just upsets me and I'm amazed that there are actually people who find this good and justified.

I don't see a reason why we shouldn't get the range boost baseline.

[Eliot123]

What I like is how through MoP glyphs and talents, you can (as resto) basically specialize between raid healing and tank healing.

[rayden54]

Could someone clarify the changes to the Spirit Wolves. It just says they're guardians. I'm assuming they're going to lose their taunt (as an uncontrollable taunt would be bad) but they could end up sharing a downside with a DKs Army of the Dead. It seems like they're going to lose most of their utility. It looks like you'd have to spec into Primal Elementalist to get it back. /shrug.

I do think that the Elemental should be controllable without the talent (even if it's just the basic Passive, Defensive, Assist and /pettattack functionality). If we have to lose control of one of our pets, I'd like to be able to control the other. Unlike a lot of people, I have no desire for a perma-pet.

Other than that, I guess I'll just have to wait for the theorycrafting.

[Recom]

Lava Surge is now : Your Flame Shock periodic damage ticks have a chance to reset the cooldown of your Lava Burst spell and cause your next Lava Burst spell to be instant.

So we don't know the chance to proc but this is HUGE.

Credit to Dragon-Hawks : http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...mp-Specs-Video.

[iadamson]

Could someone clarify the changes to the Spirit Wolves. It just says they're guardians. I'm assuming they're going to lose their taunt (as an uncontrollable taunt would be bad) but they could end up sharing a downside with a DKs Army of the Dead. It seems like they're going to lose most of their utility. It looks like you'd have to spec into Primal Elementalist to get it back. /shrug.

I do think that the Elemental should be controllable without the talent (even if it's just the basic Passive, Defensive, Assist and /pettattack functionality). If we have to lose control of one of our pets, I'd like to be able to control the other. Unlike a lot of people, I have no desire for a perma-pet.

Other than that, I guess I'll just have to wait for the theorycrafting.

- Pet bar removed.
- Spirit Walk was made into an Enhancement ability
- They seem to like to attack whatever you stormstrike.
- Not sure what abilities they have now.