Shaman changes, Blue posts, Tournament

[Boubouille]

Enhancement Shaman - Item Changes
Latest beta push had 2 major undocumented changes for Enhancement shaman.

• Maelstrom Weapon no longer resets the autoattack swing timer
• All Enhancement Shaman set pieces, including PvE and PvP sets, have had the Strength attribute removed and replaced with AP at the level 70 conversion rate (1 STR = 2 AP).
  

Thanks to Malan for the tip, below are screenshots of the updated shaman sets stats.

Blue posts

Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King (full version)
Better threat generation on non-tanking specs
[...] It might even be okay if non-tanking specs can generate a lot of threat (heck, hunters do it), so long as they also don't have high mitigation.

Past issues with Protection warriors
[...] The best we can offer is flexibility so that you can pick up all the passive mitigation talents and someone else can try out a different build. The problem with Prot before, I'd argue, is that there weren't enough choices to go around so that by the time you got the bare minimum, the options left were pretty paltry.

Class diversity in raid
That is pretty much the point. No class brings anything so unique that you want them to come at the expense of others. You should earn your raid spot because you know how to tank and have some decent gear and a guild who can back you up. Maybe you're a great leader or maybe you don't argue. Maybe you've got a great sense of humor or are a good guild recruiter. All of those are better reasons to get into a group IMHO than because your buff is a unique snowflake. Quite honestly I'd rather raid with my friends than some jerk who has the perfect buff. And I really don't want to send one of my friends off to reroll a level 1 dude because we both happened to choose rogues at first level six months ago and now our group is suffering for want of a buff. If you can tank, you'll get into raids.

Prot Warrior versus Paladin Tanking
The Prot warrior should also be able to switch to dps, and they come with Battle Shout and Commanding Shout, two very solid buffs. [...] If the paladin is so much better at AE that you take him instead of a warrior, then we have a problem.

Death Knights tuned raid encounters
Again, the "best Magic boss" shouldn't be to the extent that you call the raid when she can't come. There will be no fights tailored to a particular class. Sorry. Believe me, we don't have to come up with a gimmick to encourage death knight raiders. Northrend is infested with them already. Ghouls are cool though.

Balance between tanking classes
You Sunder, you Demo Shout, Battle Shout, Challenging Shout. You might Piercing Howl depending on the encounter. You Execute. You Intervene. See where I'm going...? If you are really winning or losing fights based on whether your tank can Innervate, then we've probably made the content too challenging. The difference in skill (or gear) between a potential warrior and druid tank should have a much bigger effect on the outcome.

The situations we've had before have been more like "The paladin can tank all of Heroic Shattered Halls with no CC" or "The druid can do nearly double your dps while tanking" or "The warrior can achieve passive crushing immunity and has the only ability that can handle Shear." Those are egregious barriers to having 4 viable tanking classes, which is why we're trying to fix them.

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Blood Tanking
A Blood knight can heal herself really well and Vampiric Blood lets the healers heal you a lot too.

I think when the damage among the 3 trees is more normalized, the threat will be too. It's possible Frost or Unholy is better for mitigation, but if so, I would expect the difference to be pretty marginal over the long haul and possibly even depending on the boss. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Tanking balance and itemization
There are a lot of huge changes in the expansion though. Warrior tanks are worried they won't be useful anymore because their big niche (surviving crushing blows) was given to all tanks. Paladin tanks are concerned because better AE threat is being given to all tanks. Death knight tanks are worried that they are going to get nerfed because of the damage they're doing. Druids are worried that they won't have the armor they are used to, and might be inferior tanks because of it. Almost every class is worried that their unique raid buff won't gaurantee them a spot in the raid any longer. We're worried about pulling it all off.

Druids have talents like Thick Hide, Natural Reaction, Mother Bear and Survival of the Fittest in part to make up for the fact they aren't wearing plate, parrying or blocking. Is that enough mitigation to make them just as good end-game tanks as the other three tanking classes? We don't know yet. We haven't finished our testing and nobody on beta is in Naxx yet. If Bears are getting clobbered or their healers are running out of mana trying to keep them up, we'll fix it. (Source)

Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Protection Talent Tree Feedback
We are about ready to do our next major pass on the Paladin trees. We think Prot does have too many mandatory talents, and too many talents that offer passive mitigation without other interesting mechanics or even dps. This thread is a great opportunity to discuss the tree and offer your feedback.

For purposes of this thread, the kinds of feedback that are useful:[*]Which talents are fun vs. which ones aren't[*]Areas in the tree that tie up too many talent points vs. areas that feel barren[*]Talents that feel mandatory vs. talents that feel fun but optional vs. talents you'd never get

For purposes of this thread, we are less interested in:[*]Mitigation and threat capabilities of the paladin vs. other tanks (we'll get to that)[*]Holy and Retribution (we'll get to that)[*]Mana, dps, interrupts or other paladin issues (we'll get to that)[*]Whether it's a good goal for Prot to be viable at healing, dps or PvP. (It's helpful to mention when talents might fit these roles, but let's not use this particular thread for a debate on whether Prot should be at all decent in PvP.)[*]Questions about other topics, pleas to visit other forums or catty arguments

Rest assured this is not our only avenue for collecting feedback. We do talk to experienced and beginner tanks alike as well as drawing on our own internal resources to make decisions. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Protection Warrior and PvP
As I said before, whether Protection shoud be viable for PvP is controversial. People on the extreme of both sides of the debate should be able to see pretty clearly that there are plenty of others who don't see their point of view. It's not an argument that is going to be won by debate, consensus or vote.

As I've also said, there are some things we want to do with Prot to improve it. We could make a very fat, very boring tree with 30 talents that promise excellent passive mitigation. I don't think that's going to make warriors any more fun to play. Here's what we'd like to do instead:

Add some more fun abilities to the tree. Warbringer is one such ability. It may not be something everyone will use, and honestly, we're cool with that. Some talents should be optional. We also know some tanks, even hardcore endgame ones are excited about the ability. As a tank it could be a good source of rage (Yes, we know you lose all your rage when stance dancing -- the design of Warbringer is not that you stupidly lose all your rage when you change to Battle Stance and then say oops.) It could also help your mobility on fights where you need to zip around a lot to put out fires -- that's part of tanking too. It's not all sitting there and getting hit by Brutallus.

To make room for some of those abilities, you have to have some options. The classic tanking build from BC doesn't leave you a lot of free talents. We need to combine a few mitigation talents together to buy you some space. Also, must haves like Imp Heroic Strike and Imp Thunder Clap may not be must haves anymore, because...

We're buffing Prot's dps. A lot. This is going to help with threat, and will make doing dps with a prot build (whether as OT, MT, leveling or doing daily quests) more fun. A lot of abilities that do +threat now are going to be doing +damage instead. You are going to see crits from Thunder Clap and Conc Blow that might blow your mind. You're going to hit Thunder Clap and have mobs stick to you long enough for you to use some other abilities. Oh and If you haven't tried Retaliation while tanking yet, it rules. For those who never got to enjoy the joys of Shield Slam with crazy +block, you'll soon get to.

Warriors lost a very comfortable tanking niche with the removal of crushing blows. We need to make sure there are still good reasons to take a Prot warrior. Vigilance and Safeguard are good starts there, but we're also looking at buffing signature abilities like Spell Reflect. A lot of the recent changes were intended as buffs, not nerfs. We'll get you your Expertise back. We'll get you your cheap Devastates back.

As we start to get the talent trees in better shape, we're going to be able to get a better handle on the state of balance. Simultaneously, people in the beta will start venturing into heroics and Naxx. This will start to give us some data for the first time on whether L80 Prot warrior threat or mitigation is too low compared to other classes. If it is, we'll fix it.

I mention that because we designed Vigilance not as a band-aid to fix Prot warrior threat (because we don't know if it's too high or low yet) but because we thought it would be fun. Use it on that reckless warlock who likes to pull aggro and you turn a weakness into a strength. Use it on your fragile healer and you can, yanno, actually *protect* them. Instead of having to say "Please wait for 3 Sunders before you attack" maybe people will say "That tank has Vigilance -- no way you'll pull off him." (Source)

North American/European Warcraft Finals – September 6-7

The 2008 North American and European Warcraft Finals will be taking place this weekend, September 6-7. These events will feature the top eight qualifiers from the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena and Warcraft III tournaments for their respective regions. Attendees will also have the opportunity to try out demos of Wrath of the Lich King and StarCraft II on-site. Admission is free, so come by and check it out if you’re in the area. Details for each event can be found below.

North America
The North American Warcraft Final will be held at the Hard Rock Cafe in Boston, Massachusetts, with doors opening at 9:30 a.m.
Here are the eight teams that advanced from the regional online qualifiers of the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament:

1. Dude I got it on FRAPS -
2. duelists going for glad -
3. Frag Dominant -
4. Fnatic Orz -
5. GOT GAME DOT COM -
6. selective queuers -
7. Magical Muffin Factory -
8. Team FocaL dot org -

Be sure to follow the action at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/tournament/news.xml

Europe
The European Warcraft Final will be held at the Circulo Bellas artes, Salon de columnas in Madrid, Spain, with doors opening at 10:30 a.m.

Here are the eight teams that advanced from the regional online qualifiers of the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament:

1. Mousesports -
2. x6tence -
3. Pure Cartoons -
4. aAa Agita -
5. Nihilum Plasma -
6. Team Alternate -
7. Triple Threat -
8. Sik -

Be sure to follow the action at http://tv.esl.eu/de/esltv_stream/

New Fan Art
The Blizzard Fan Art Section has been updated with Troll artwork.

[Deleted]

FIRST !

[fuzzywuzzy]

FIRST !

Want a cookie?

[bbr]

No mention of rogue tanks. Lame :P

Inscription does unlock a 7th slot it seems, and dalaran is getting some training dummies added.


Also, that's a huge nerf for enh shamans.
1 str used to be 2.2 AP, not 1=2 ap like blizzard has given them. (due to blessing of kings)

[Jubeithar]

No mention of rogue tanks. Lame :P

Inscription does unlock a 7th slot it seems, and dalaran is getting some training dummies added.


Also, that's a huge nerf for enh shamans.
1 str used to be 2.2 AP, not 1=2 ap like blizzard has given them. (due to blessing of kings)

That has been changed alrdy for quiet a while about shamans.

in WOTLK: 1 strength = 1 AP however 1 agility = 1 AP and some crit and if talented in mental dextirity and ancestral knowledge 1 int = 1.1 AP.

It doesn't sound as bad as you think but basicly this means also no more + strength items for shamans in WOTLK.

[Deleted]

oooo... finally another nerf for shaman!

[Karpalo]

oooooooo huge nerf for shamans. They get only 200 more ap even they lose some from lack of str with bok, yet they got something between 200-250 int in their gear which also scales with bok btw...

[Kenark]

means i need to resocket and enchant my items when leveling my shaman. but me likey
love to see what results the tankadin discussion yields

[Maenetus]

Hahahahahahahaha, they need to ask the Prot Pallies for help with designing the tree, jesus christ we are paying them to do this, and yet they are so dumb that they need to ask the Prot Pallies to basically design the fucking tree, because they're to retarded to do so themselves LMAO

we pay them to design for us

which is impossible if they don't know what we want. They'll do the work of implementing and balancing (the hard part) they're just asking for help with the concepts (the fun part)

[Kenark]

oh boy. people just don't know what they want. i mean all these thousends of qq-threads on forums where everybody cries that yet another thing they wanted to be implemented for years is going to another class or all the threads about how "my tree" never gets reviewed. now that blizz askes us what we want, they are lazy?
get over yourself or for god's sake leave us for warhammer...

[Maenetus]

IT'S A BETA

the whole damn point is user testing and feedback.

[Sarevokcz]

well tbh those enhashammy chages arent THAT bad, but as said, since AP was based about str, they will have to regem every single str gem, which is... meh

[Melian_EredarEU]

Uh-oh, Blizzard Fanboi alert.

We pay them to make this game, we should not be the one designing talents, they should make the talents the right way from the start, not make retarded talents and then go: "WELL THEN TELL US WHAT WE MUS DO!1!1!1!!"

you call this a fan boy alert? i call you dumb.
every guy who plays this game with a bigger ambition than hangig arround in crappy 10men inis, is happy about blizzard asking for feedback.

get over yourself or for god's sake leave us for warhammer...

/sign

[Maenetus]

They have no clue how to correctly design a class

last I checked they have the most popular MMO ever created. They're hardly incompetent. But part of HOW they've manged to create an excellent product is through user feedback.

Blizzard then doesn't answer

because of whiny QQers like you.




One of the big things I like about blizzard is that they're humble. You don't have to be a professional to improve a game. That's why they have absolutely fantastic addon support.

My favorite part of WC3 was DOTA

[Dismas]

Except for the random shaman in those arena teams is it just me or do all the teams look oddly similar? You figure that would be an eye opener to Blizzard.

[woeye]

History shows that Blizzard has done some, erm, "funny" things regarding class balance quite often. I remember how they tried fixing resto druids, but instead nerfing them, they just nerfed ferals and moonkins. Sometimes I really wonder whether Blizzard developers play their own game? Otherwise some of their suggestions would never have seen the light of day.
On the other hand WoW has become an extremly complicated game (from a developer's point of view). Tons of several years old code, lots of stat values, lots of skill trees and talents and so on. Everytime they try to fix one aspect, like making offspecs more viable in TBC, some clever geeks will find new unintended tricks - like warlock/spriest stacking, bloodlust stacking and so on. Now Blizzard tries to fix this again. But I am pretty sure that some geeks will find other nifty tricks Blizzard hasn't thought of.
Maybe, at some point in the future, it will be the best to just stop it and start from scratch with a new fresh and clean approach, don't know.

[nemesisevil]

Vyomesh it's all good to talk about how Blizzard can't design a class but it's not so easy when there are 1000 things to consider when tweaking even one small thing.

What I hate is that they are greedy and rather ignorant. I can't believe how they completley ignore things until an expansion. They left shamans in hell when it came to PvP the whole of TBC, they did very little to tone down the druid over run in arena, they ignored mace stun, Ret paladins still suffer in raidingm they basically ignore major issues until an expansion! Just to make money I'm sure.

[woeye]

Except for the random shaman in those arena teams is it just me or do all the teams look oddly similar? You figure that would be an eye opener to Blizzard.

You mean like the stats on arenajunkies.com?

http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/2v2/

Blizzard says 2on2 is not balanced anyway, so this one doesn't count 8)

[Maenetus]

Just to make money I'm sure.

They're human, they make mistakes.

It's not that they're ignorant, they have very good data. They just don't make public statements about things they're not going to fix.

Why not fix it? because the issues where not easy to fix.

[woeye]

Vyomesh it's all good to talk about how Blizzard can't design a class but it's not so easy when there are 1000 things to consider when tweaking even one small thing.

What I hate is that they are greedy and rather ignorant. I can't believe how they completley ignore things until an expansion. They left shamans in hell when it came to PvP the whole of TBC, they did very little to tone down the druid over run in arena, they ignored mace stun, Ret paladins still suffer in raidingm they basically ignore major issues until an expansion! Just to make money I'm sure.

"We know that there is a bug in our product. But we will address it in our next release".

Well, it's not only Blizzard is using this trick. Many major software companies act like this. If everyone was happy why would they buy a new version? Ok, MMORPGs provide new content as well. But anyways ...

What I really can't get is why they did not fix resto druids in TBC. Blizzard said they added a new spell in LK so that they could tone done Life Bloom.
Yeah cool. But what about Regrowth or Healing Touch? Why not buff those? Yes, Healing Touch has a long cast time (Oh noez! I haz to stand still to cast! Oh noez!), but why not tweak a talent to grant a lower cast time? Or a proc to lower the cast time? And what about roots and cyclone not sharing the same DR timer? What about a CD on cyclone? The community has written a lot of suggestions - yet Blizzard refused to look at them.