WotLK Release Date, Articles Updates, Blue Posts

[Gheed1901]

Devilsaur, awesome

Someone needs to check out a core hound :O

[Ramono]

Can somebody on Beta forums post this for priest glyph suggestions? ( http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...6142&pageNo=1& )

Major Glyph of Redemption - Gives your Spirit of Redepmtion a 2% chance to resurect you with 50% hp/mp after effect wears off.


Thanks!

I would like this one too:

Glyph of Blackout - While under the effects of Blackout your target receives an additional 15% shadow damage.

Will do wonders with Shadow priest/Lock combo's <3

And for the healers:

Glyph of Mending - When your Prayer Of Mending Bounces to another target, it has a 50% change to place Renew (Highest Rank) on the target

Edit:
Glyph of (Somthing): Your mind blast Reduces healing done to the target by 35% for 5 seconds

Glyph of HealSteal: If channeling Mind Flay on a target that is being healed, you steal +-20% of the amount being healed.

[Tygroen]

Glyph of Divine Providence - Gives your Circle of Healing, Holy Nova, and Prayer of Healing spells a 40% chance after they are cast to apply a buff for 6 seconds that allows for another spell of that type to be cast free of charge.

[omglazor]

Come on! Who cares about warrior tanking!? It's just fine! :P

Show me some Arms changes that make the class "fun"! >_< More cooldowns, more CC-breaks, give me something... A disarmable and kiteable Bladestorm does not count!

[Sulika]

Ok, I play both warrior and paladin and looking at tanking objectively the paladin is certainly looking much more desirable so far in WotLK. However it is early days yet and I am sure this will change again.

Looking at mitigation, you take away shield block and it is an 8-9% increase in melee damage taken for warriors. That is a huge amount of mitigation to lose. With critical block this could be reversed if the lvl 80 tank gear has lots of block rating. Once 75% of the attacks that hit the warrior are blocked he will have more mitigation than the paladin. With present gear at a combined 50% miss + dodge + parry that would mean the warrior would have to have enough block rating for 37.5% unmodified block chance. If block rating is on lvl 80 gear about as much as it is on current gear that is not an unreasonable amount to achieve.

As for shield wall vs divine shield the first thing to mention is that ardent defender already gives a large damage reduction everytime the paladin drops to low health. The lack of a shield wall for tha paladin was addressed already by this talent. Combine that with the changes do Divine Shield and a paladins mitigation increase by 65% when he is on low health with an ability you can spam twice every boss fight. This is, to put it mildly, incredibly good. It is basically two shield walls per boss fight. Who cares if it is only 50% reduced when the paladin has a ton of health, it is 65% whenever the paladin is close to death which is exactly when you want high mitigation. The fact that it is spammable also makes a huge difference. The primary use of shield wall is as a safety valve at the end of close fights. Boss health drops to 10% with a couple of people dead and you can use it to make it more likely to get past, the paladin doesn't even have to think before using Divine Shield in those situations, if you wipe you have it ready again for the next try anyway. Combine with also having Lay on Hands on its new shorter cooldown and you have a paladin who can soak a huge amount of damage without needing a heal.

Looking at threat and the paladin also seems to be getting buffed hugely compared to the warrior. Upgrading 1/10th of your devastates to free shield slams isn't going to make a huge difference to warrior threat generation. Yeah it will be nice in low rage situations which basically means farm content so who cares? Contrast with the paladin getting two high threat, high damage moves to use in the existing gaps in their rotation and there is no comparison. Protection paladins already do fairly substantial damage on aoe pulls.

Looking at buffs. the warrior gives 2225 health to the raid vs the 1800 armor, 3% increased healing and 10% to all stats the paladin will give.

From a paladin standpoint the new changes are great. You get lots of new abilities and certainly looks like the paladin will be the new number one tank.

From a warrior standpoint it looks like blizzard are just taking all the cool warrior abilities and giving paladins better versions of them. Better shield wall, better shield slam. In return you get a novelty aoe threat abilty. What I do really like about the warrior changes though is that Blizzard seem to be aware what it is that makes warrior tanking fun and are expanding on it. The cool thing about warrior tanking is that it is hectic, the best rotation changes every couple of seconds based on how much rage you have etc, now it changes even more with procs on free shield slams, and many abilities getting interesting side affects etc so I think I will still find the dynamic rotation of warrior tanking a lot more fun than the fixed rotation that paladin tanking has.

On the other hand I don't think it would take a huge amount to redeem warrior. For a start shield spec could be buffed to add 3% shield block per talent point instead of the 1% it is now (15% at 5/5). This would help make up for some of the mitigation lost by the shield block change and also synergise well with the critical block talent. Giving Improved Shield Block a 1/2 charge increase also wouldnt hurt. In fact that would be better than the cooldown reduction it has now. Being able to get 3 big blocks every 30 seconds is far more useful than being able to get 1 big block every 20 seconds. Making shield block also give a nice chunk of rage when you block would be nice, 10-15 rage when the charge is used up. 1 charge is just too unreliable, even if you use it at a good time it is just too likely to be sucked up by a normal melee attack.

After that the only real issue is threat, which the paladin talents seem far better for. However that is relatively easy for Blizzard to fix just by messing about with coefficients so I don't see that being an issue beyond beta.

[Groal]

This better not the be the big Warrior changes! Growl.

EDIT: RARGH!

[Soulstorm]

The Big warrior changes.. Give them right away, they neeed to have something to do with Bladestorm!

[Finelle]

I'll admit I have concerns about warrior tanking. I would love to be in beta to actually test, but until that happens, I'll just have to stick to chewing on secondhand data (not that the secondhand data is terrible, there's a lot of theorycraft that can be worked out).

As pointed out, paladins seem to be receiving many abilities to complete their tanking package. Firstly, about single target threat, they receive a shield slam analog, Shield of Righteousness. It causes 200% of Shield Block Value as Holy damage.

Therefore, Shield of Righteousness, after application of the 190% RF modifier, 115% from Shield of the Templar and 130% from Shield Spec, scales at 596.5% of Block Value. In contrast, Shield Slam causes 756-794 damage plus 100% from SBV. After application of a 25% armor mitigation penalty(being generous with full sunders and perhaps Feral Faerie Fire), 145% Def Stance threat mod, and 130% from Shield Spec, the threat equation works out to 1.595(InnateThreat+775X0.75) + 1.706(ShieldBlockValue).

EDIT: ninja included 1h spec and Imp Shield Bash and Shield of the Templar

For Shield of Righteousness to equal Shield Slam, therefore, 1.595(InnateThreat+581)=4.259SBV

and hence:

InnateThreat + 581 = 2.67SBV

Rank 6 InnateThreat is 307. Using some handwaving, let's assume Rank 8 gives 500 InnateThreat. The equivalence point would be 404.9 SBV (less conservatively, 600 InnateThreat for Rank 8 yields 442.3) before all modifiers. (I'm going to leave paladin Divine Strength vs Vitality out for the moment) Bulwark of Azzinoth has 174 SBV. I'll further handwave to give Level 80 tanking shields 200 SBV. Hence, there needs to be 204.9 SBV through strength. For Paladins, about 356.3 strength is required to equal Shield Slam. From the previews of tanking rings:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=35661

I don't think 356.3 strength will be difficult to reach at all. Blessing of Kings is ignored because it's an external buff. From that point of 404.9 SBV (or 442.3 conservatively), Shield of Righteousness starts to outscale Shield Slam extremely rapidly.



Hammer of the Righteous is much more in line, and is very debatably in need of a buff. It deals 100% weapon damage as Holy Damage. Therefore, the threat scaling is at 199.5% of (WeaponDamage + AP contribution). Devastate, after considering relevant talents and armor, deals 50% weapon damage plus 315 at 5 Sunder stacks, and therefore scales at 0.598(WeaponDamage + AP contribution) + 236.25 + 1.45(InnateThreat). Devastate Rank 3 has 176 Innate Threat, so I'm going to handwave Rank 5 to approx. 350 InnateThreat.

Rank 5 Devastate would therefore look like 0.598(WeaponDamage + AP contribution) + 743.75. Solving for equivalence point, we get:

WeaponDamage + AP contribution = 532.4

This means, when your weapon damage is 532.4, Hammer of the Righteous produces threat equal to Devastate. Less and Dev wins out, more and HotR wins out. There's still the 6sec cooldown and 3 targets vs spammable and refreshes Sunder.


From a purely subjective point of view, paladin emergency buttons have been heavily improved. 4min Divine Protection, 20min LoH and always on Ardent Defender vs 6min Last Stand and 30 min Shield Wall. Leapfrogging AD is not considered, because something that can leapfrog 35% of the paladin's HP can very well leapfrog the 30% granted by Last Stand.

Again, from a purely subjective PoV, paladins remain by far the strongest AoE tank, while warriors have been given AoE threat sufficient to hold against healing. I don't think Bloodbath, Tclap and Shockwave can hold against any sort of serious AoE, but I have not been in beta. I hear that Shockwave aiming sucks, but here's hope that it will be changed.

Assumptions used in the calculations:

Innate Threat was roughly doubled from the 70 versions, as Devastate's bonus damage also roughly doubled and from various sources regarding theorycrafted 80 DPS numbers.

Native SBV of 200 on Shields at 80, derived from 174 on Bulwark of Azzinoth.

Disclosure: I play a warrior tank, but not a paladin tank. I would welcome civil corrections/critique to the above calculations and assumptions.

MOAR EDIT: HotR wording indicates Innate Threat, but of unknown value.

[MasterOfNone]

"Wrath of the Lich King to be Released in 2008
Shacknews reported that according to Mike Morhaime (Blizzard Entertainment's CEO), Wrath of the Lich King will be released between October and December 2008."


This is not a release date....its a release month....and knowing blizzard its probably off by 4 months...lol

[Marvdatboi]

--As for the Wrath of the Lich King beta, Morhaime noted that "testing is going very well." During the call, Morhaime also mentioned that 40% of the World of Warcraft subscribers that left for Age of Conan have since returned.--

LoL, I left WoW for AoC, and still i'm playing it, but idd as the article say, ppl that were playing AoC are back to WoW (40% of them), it's probably true, considering that i sold my mage for 600£, so in someway it seems that the owner of that account is back from a short break, however is just a new player/owner. funny ;D

Yet your still on a site dedicated to WoW and WoW news. Funny how things work huh?

[Miranger]

Great on top of huntards getting alot of dps now they get OP'd pet gg blizz

[Finelle]

Great on top of huntards getting alot of dps now they get OP'd pet gg blizz

Eh, hunters got smoked by the pot changes, don't knock them. With crap for regen, zero spirit bonuses, the JoW nerf, and the need to take a rather severe DPS hit (Hawk adds RAP and more importantly, chance to proc Imp AotH) to use their built in regen mechanics, they might not be in as good a shape as you think. Blues have already stated that they'll balance the pet around what the hunter is capable of doing, so hunters aren't getting a freebie in that regard.

[Amgyn]

Great on top of huntards getting alot of dps now they get OP'd pet gg blizz

um how do you think the pet will be OP? .. because its so big?

its just a regular pet, with 1 'special' skill and an additional 5 talent points.

[Sulika]

I'll admit I have concerns about warrior tanking. I would love to be in beta to actually test, but until that happens, I'll just have to stick to chewing on secondhand data (not that the secondhand data is terrible, there's a lot of theorycraft that can be worked out).

As pointed out, paladins seem to be receiving many abilities to complete their tanking package. Firstly, about single target threat, they receive a shield slam analog, Shield of Righteousness. It causes 200% of Shield Block Value as Holy damage.

Therefore, Shield of Righteousness, after application of the 190% RF modifier, 115% from Shield of the Templar and 130% from Shield Spec, scales at 596.5% of Block Value. In contrast, Shield Slam causes 756-794 damage plus 100% from SBV. After application of a 25% armor mitigation penalty(being generous with full sunders and perhaps Feral Faerie Fire), 145% Def Stance threat mod, and 130% from Shield Spec, the threat equation works out to 1.595(InnateThreat+775X0.75) + 1.706(ShieldBlockValue).

EDIT: ninja included 1h spec and Imp Shield Bash and Shield of the Templar

For Shield of Righteousness to equal Shield Slam, therefore, 1.595(InnateThreat+581)=4.259SBV

and hence:

InnateThreat + 581 = 2.67SBV

Rank 6 InnateThreat is 307. Using some handwaving, let's assume Rank 8 gives 500 InnateThreat. The equivalence point would be 404.9 SBV (less conservatively, 600 InnateThreat for Rank 8 yields 442.3) before all modifiers. (I'm going to leave paladin Divine Strength vs Vitality out for the moment) Bulwark of Azzinoth has 174 SBV. I'll further handwave to give Level 80 tanking shields 200 SBV. Hence, there needs to be 204.9 SBV through strength. For Paladins, about 356.3 strength is required to equal Shield Slam. From the previews of tanking rings:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=35661

I don't think 356.3 strength will be difficult to reach at all. Blessing of Kings is ignored because it's an external buff. From that point of 404.9 SBV (or 442.3 conservatively), Shield of Righteousness starts to outscale Shield Slam extremely rapidly.



Hammer of the Righteous is much more in line, and is very debatably in need of a buff. It deals 100% weapon damage as Holy Damage. Therefore, the threat scaling is at 199.5% of (WeaponDamage + AP contribution). Devastate, after considering relevant talents and armor, deals 50% weapon damage plus 315 at 5 Sunder stacks, and therefore scales at 0.598(WeaponDamage + AP contribution) + 236.25 + 1.45(InnateThreat). Devastate Rank 3 has 176 Innate Threat, so I'm going to handwave Rank 5 to approx. 350 InnateThreat.

Rank 5 Devastate would therefore look like 0.598(WeaponDamage + AP contribution) + 743.75. Solving for equivalence point, we get:

WeaponDamage + AP contribution = 532.4

This means, when your weapon damage is 532.4, Hammer of the Righteous produces threat equal to Devastate. Less and Dev wins out, more and HotR wins out. There's still the 6sec cooldown and 3 targets vs spammable and refreshes Sunder.


From a purely subjective point of view, paladin emergency buttons have been heavily improved. 4min Divine Protection, 20min LoH and always on Ardent Defender vs 6min Last Stand and 30 min Shield Wall. Leapfrogging AD is not considered, because something that can leapfrog 35% of the paladin's HP can very well leapfrog the 30% granted by Last Stand.

Again, from a purely subjective PoV, paladins remain by far the strongest AoE tank, while warriors have been given AoE threat sufficient to hold against healing. I don't think Bloodbath, Tclap and Shockwave can hold against any sort of serious AoE, but I have not been in beta. I hear that Shockwave aiming sucks, but here's hope that it will be changed.

Assumptions used in the calculations:

Innate Threat was roughly doubled from the 70 versions, as Devastate's bonus damage also roughly doubled and from various sources regarding theorycrafted 80 DPS numbers.

Native SBV of 200 on Shields at 80, derived from 174 on Bulwark of Azzinoth.

Disclosure: I play a warrior tank, but not a paladin tank. I would welcome civil corrections/critique to the above calculations and assumptions.

While I am sure your maths are all correct the point you are missing is that Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous are both new abilities that a paladin can squeeze into an existing rotation, a rotation that already pretty much equals a warriors threat generation. Since seals are now 2 minute duration the paladin has one extra gcd freed up from their existing rotation.

So a paladin while tanking can use many new, high threat abilities without having to give up any of their existing threat generation while the warrior only gets a slight increase on some existing abilities. A warrior tanking is already using every single global cooldown, a paladin is not even close to doing that.

Even if Shield Slam and Shield of Righteousness caused the same threat what matters is that Paladins can squeeze the new attack into their rotation while warriors still will be using the same rotation as before. Paladins gain the extra threat, warriors gain nothing. To balance that they would have to double the amount of threat shield slam causes and then both classes would gain 1 shield slam worth of threat every 6 seconds.

[Finelle]

While I am sure your maths are all correct the point you are missing is that Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous are both new abilities that a paladin can squeeze into an existing rotation, a rotation that already pretty much equals a warriors threat generation. Since seals are now 2 minute duration the paladin has one extra gcd freed up from their existing rotation.

So a paladin while tanking can use many new, high threat abilities without having to give up any of their existing threat generation while the warrior only gets a slight increase on some existing abilities. A warrior tanking is already using every single global cooldown, a paladin is not even close to doing that.

Even if Shield Slam and Shield of Righteousness caused the same threat what matters is that Paladins can squeeze the new attack into their rotation while warriors still will be using the same rotation as before. Paladins gain the extra threat, warriors gain nothing. To balance that they would have to double the amount of threat shield slam causes and then both classes would gain 1 shield slam worth of threat every 6 seconds.

Yes, I agree that the GCD issue is significant. A minor correction, while resealing is no longer needed, Judgement now takes a GCD, so no change in that regard. A lot depends on how the other paladin abilities scale. The standard rotation now is SS/Rev/Dev/Dev. Revenge doesn't scale, while it's the cheapest and most efficient (you're not beating a 2 rage ability on efficiency...), it will be dropped from a high TPS/high rage rotation. Incite will help a little, but the rage cost limits its effectiveness.

My math was primarily to show that a combination of Holy Damage (bypasses armor) and a built in threat mod of 190% vs 145% creates funny scaling. Using static components to balance against scaling abilities makes one class clearly gimped at one gear level, but ridiculously OP at another.

Still, I view the biggest challenge at the moment to be better AoE tanking (read: 360% shockwave with a slightly better coefficient). Warriors should be able to handle low-threat/careful AoE, while leaving the all-out Seed spam to the paladins.

[Bareno]

Ooo... eye of eternity = pretty!

[ateve]

Therefore, Shield of Righteousness, after application of the 190% RF modifier, 115% from Shield of the Templar and 130% from Shield Spec, scales at 596.5% of Block Value. In contrast, Shield Slam causes 756-794 damage plus 100% from SBV. After application of a 25% armor mitigation penalty(being generous with full sunders and perhaps Feral Faerie Fire), 145% Def Stance threat mod, and 130% from Shield Spec, the threat equation works out to 1.595(InnateThreat+775X0.75) + 1.706(ShieldBlockValue).

Small problem with your numbers, Shield Spec "Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 30%", it does not increase your SBV by 30%, so it should not effect the amount of dmg (and therefore threat) of Shield of Righteousness.

[Clasifyd]

Eh, hunters got smoked by the pot ...

What a clever change of pace.

[omglazor]

Yet your still on a site dedicated to WoW and WoW news. Funny how things work huh?

I am also playing AoC at the moment and following WoW news... as well as AoC news, Darkfall, Huxley, Warhammer and a number of other games - what does your statement prove?
It's just fun to see which direction the developers take different games as well as seeing what's new in those games.

World of Warcraft is not a relationship, you don't have to "break up" and never come back to it or never hold any interest in it again - it's a game.

[Manbearpig]

hope they decrease devilsaur size ;D ;D

[img]http://It gets bigger xD
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/8171/tyrantussmgm9.jpg[/img]