The Hog confirmed, Blue posts, WotLK Cinematic

[Unclean1]

About the cinematic wotlk trailer: I got the same message through a Vivendi Games marketing manager yesterday. So pretty much straight from the source. Consider it real.

[velourea]

I hope the "hogggg" or whatever it's called will drop in a timed run just like the armani bear (lol), because it's certainly as stupid looking and wouldn't want to see the whole server racing through northrend on them like idiots.

prepare for guilds like the paladin hell's angels gang.

Give me a mechanic pony then.

How about I give you a lollypop instead... :

[Coh]

Im assuming that they are going to come up with some new animation for riding the (ugly) HOG. Cause we would all look pretty dumb sitting on that thing like we were riding a horse. …..A.N.D….. [size=10pt]the hog is an ugly piece of junk looking mount that doesn’t have anything to do with the game and shouldn’t even exist but does just cause someone at blizz thought it would be cool[/size] ;D :P

[Edden]

Gief some tauren powered bicycles ok? (Gnome powered is fine too, but kinda slow)

[blahblahnameblah]

"Even if another tanking class ends up having slightly more armor than a druid, the differences should be so minor that neither of you is at a significant disadvantage on a boss."

Let's see...
1. Less armor = more damage per hit
2. Still no parry or block = less mitigation per hit
3. Agility nerf = less dodge = more damage per hit
4. More HP = more healing needing to be done due to larger hits and getting hit more often = healers going OOM healing a druid = no one wanting a druid tank.

I realize that they are not done with working on ferals, but the way they keep talking about them is making me more concerned that they have absolutely no idea how druid tanks work now, and no idea what to do with them in LK.
Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised by the next pass on druid talents, but at the moment I'm not going to be holding my breath.

[Veliane]

Im assuming that they are going to come up with some new animation for riding the (ugly) HOG. Cause we would all look pretty dumb sitting on that thing like we were riding a horse. …..A.N.D….. [size=10pt]the hog is an ugly piece of junk looking mount that doesn’t have anything to do with the game and shouldn’t even exist but does just cause someone at blizz thought it would be cool[/size] ;D :P

Nobody's forcing you to use it.

[Prometheus]

Moreover, even if they are talking about "gigantic HP pool", if we have to roll on rogue stuff, I do not see any reason why we would have more HP than prot war for example.

+25% stamina is cool for bear form, but these 25% more are largely included in plate for tanks.

Feral druids REALLY need a solution to have a better mitigation than today on beta.

[ascote]

Seems like mitigation is taking quite a minor role in wotlk when compared to TBC, I hear warriors in the beta are ditching t6 and tanking with s4. True, druids shouldn't have less armor than warriors for tanking, it simply isn't an option when you have less avoidance.

[Marvdatboi]

Good, hopefully this will cut down the pointless "QQ wow is a medieval game and shouldn't have motorbikes" whines.

WoW is not a medival game.... its based on fantasy and fantasy is way more flexible then Medieval times. If you played any of the rts warcraft games you would understand where their technology comes from. The hog should be Engineering only based on the fact that peopel sacrifice so much to have it capped. The bike is far from stupid so if your not a fan of it get over yourself.

Next point blizz is working on an ability that is the equivalent of ES rank 1.... now do the same for all the other downranked mage spells and were good to go.

[Irspriest]

I like how the license plate number is "pwn" lol

[fian]

2 interesting things to bear in mind about "The Hog".

1 - It seems like you get the key as a quest reward. Perhaps as a rare drop from professional daily (engineering) quest - much like the fishing hat / pets / eye of the sea / 2 ring ( <- hope not that rare) from fishing daily? This would prevent the "everyone will be riding it" that people are qqing about. That is my guess anyway. Though not having "requires engineering level XXX" makes it unusual and if it were from professional daily it seems you could drop engineering after winning it. Maybe it is not engineering specific at all, but i still suspect it is likely to be.

2 - Can't use in old azeroth or in BGs? that is the only place i ever use a land mount. especially with flight form being instant cast and way faster, I could see it sitting in my spell tab but never really getting used (much like my roflcopter tbh).

[ascote]

Its not about utility, its about style.

[Nathanyel]

Does the tooltip say that it does not bind? Well then, in case it stays at least BoU, and the faction-specific skin is determined by the item and not the player (say, two different items) I'm guessing we will see many Horde versions on the Goblin AH :P Horde just looks more awesome.

[gnoop]

"Even if another tanking class ends up having slightly more armor than a druid, the differences should be so minor that neither of you is at a significant disadvantage on a boss."

Let's see...
1. Less armor = more damage per hit
2. Still no parry or block = less mitigation per hit
3. Agility nerf = less dodge = more damage per hit
4. More HP = more healing needing to be done due to larger hits and getting hit more often = healers going OOM healing a druid = no one wanting a druid tank.

I realize that they are not done with working on ferals, but the way they keep talking about them is making me more concerned that they have absolutely no idea how druid tanks work now, and no idea what to do with them in LK.
Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised by the next pass on druid talents, but at the moment I'm not going to be holding my breath.

Unless Blizzard backpedal on something, this looks to be the way we're going. No healer is going to want to heal a tank whose sole tanking ability is that he just has a ton of health to absorb all those blows for a while. Unless mana is almost useless for healers since they always have it, meaning they can spam heal all day long, I don't see this as a realistic option.

The comments thus far are that Druids will be a different healing style than Warriors. If, by having to have multiple healers spam heal the Druid because the Druid is taking a lot of that damage rather than mitigating it, no one's really going to bother with Feral tanks unless there's some trick boss that does such an insane amount of un-resistible damage that no one other than a Feral can do the job. So, great, you may have a boss or two tossed in that only Druids can tank because no other tanks can stack the sheer amount of stamina. What, then? Back to cat form?

Thus, we're left hanging. Waiting to see what, if anything, Blizzard comes up with for mitigation. Damage reduction either via talents or integrated into Dire Bear would be something. So far, all we hear is that we'll have a big health pool. It's not enough. No one wants a sponge tank. No one wants to heal a sponge tank unless they have to.

[Anielin]

"The Hog" says it req lvl 80....Does that mean all passenge mounts will req lvl 80?

[haeresis]

I agree druids are like healing a blackhole.. but since down-ranking will no longer be available.. healing a blackhole won't be much of a problem.

[Anielin]

they are also changin lifebloom to not be OP, it has been said by blizz that is healing too much. They dont want to relpace it right now b/c that will stop druids raid viability. They say the fix will be the new spells nurish and fulourish (SP?) and a reduced lifebloom

[Ibbi]

That is so lame! That mount screams engineering and should be made by them. Why is it restricted to Outland and Northrend? Doesn't make any sense at all.

[Newor]

This mount will be probably the WotLK Collector's Edition special item or a new TCG loot mount (so, it won't need a specific profession + have Horde and Alliance versions and level 80 req) for a WotLK booster series.

Also, maybe the passenger mounts will work only in OL and Northend 'cause blizzard doesn't want all that speed powerleveling for low levels (maybe the aggro range will be the driver one, so you could give a ride for a lvl 1 all the way to northend without aggroing lol).

But it's all beta, everything could change for things like mounts.

And can probably be used in EotS and the new BGs, if those are considered OL/Northend areas.

[blahblahnameblah]

I agree druids are like healing a blackhole.. but since down-ranking will no longer be available.. healing a blackhole won't be much of a problem.

That's funny, I usually have our healers tell me that I take less damage than the other tanks...
The "druid healing is a blackhole" in TBC is really not true, unless your druids suck at itemization?
Or are you talking about in Beta?

And if Blizzard does continue down this path, even with down-ranking no longer available, it would still be a problem.
Let's say that Warrior does 65% mitigation with avoidance, parry, block, armor.
And bear gets 35% from dodge and armor.
Warrior has let's say 18K HP
Druid has 30K HP
Boss hits for 12K pre-mitigation, and hits 30 times per minute.
Warrior will take 4.2K hits 126K damage per minute
Druid will take 7.8K hits 234K damage per minute
Which would you rather heal?
I know I would rather heal the warrior, given this scenario.