f13.net

6 GB of data for pre-loading 5.0.4 is now on the live launcher.  Go download stuff.   :awesome_for_real:

Will the live launcher actually download it, or do we need to make the background downloaded do it? It's been a while and I forgot how WoW's preloading process works.

Mine downloaded in the background, giving me that green "ready to play" status whie the rest of the downloader ran.

Going live 8/28.  Same day as GW2.

Wut?  Post backing this up?  My updater still says 09/25.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6308782635

MoP itself, with all the new 85-90 content, raids, etc. goes live on 9/25.  There will be a pre-MoP patch that gives us all of the overhauled/upgraded systems and such on 8/28, with the one content exception being the Theramore scenario.

I'm sure it's totally a coincidence that this, the next TSW update and GW2 are all being released on the same day.  :awesome_for_real:

And the D3 update it seems as well.

Blizz is pretty good at timing patch releases to 'accidentally' happen on the same day as potential rival MMO launches. Off the top of my head I seem to remember this happening with AOC, WAR, and -I think- RIFT?

They probably have one dude sitting in a secluded office - its walls decorated with various artistic depictions of the trollface - whose only responsibility is planning patch dates "properly".

Tomorrow's the day.  As a final effort to educate the public, Bliz CS went so far as to make their own YouTube video to educate the masses on the changes.  Enjoy.

http://youtu.be/_yyK-GGvnbQ

That was both funny and helpful!

Is there a video that shows all the changes from the original WoW through all the expansions? :awesome_for_real:

Considering that every expansion either negated and/or innovated on things from the previous expansion, it'd be kinda silly, really.  What do you want to know in-particular?   

I'm just being silly. I stopped playing WoW around March 2005 but am getting ready to play it again when Mists comes out.

(http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8gpw5hnBQ1rs8019.jpg)

Damned, fooled again  :awesome_for_real:

Servers are going down for 8 hours at 3AM PST.  Between this and GW2 launching "for reelz", I think today may be good to put some time in some other games.  Although I still have hope that maybe they'll actual meet the deadline this time.

Launcher is now updated to patch up 5.0.4.  I would do this now, if you can, as the client will both patch and optimize your installation, which can take time.

Apparently a significant amount of time: I started the update before leaving for work this morning. After ~20 minutes the 'optimize' progress was sitting at 1% completion still. Expect the update to take a while.

Well, that's some straight up bullshit right there.  One week?  They added lvl 85 only loot for that scenario and we only get to have a crack at it for one week?  I think this'll be getting changed in the next day or so.

So their patch to compete with GW2 came with approximately 0 new things to do?  :oh_i_see:

Well, re-re-relearning one's class once again could count as "new"  :awesome_for_real:

You get to (re)learn how to play your character with the new talent trees!!

I agree. They really set the bar high with the WOTLK event and it's been pitiful for the last two. 

Even reusing some of the old BG events like the Spirit of Competition stuff from '08 to get the whole "Horde vs. Alliance" vibe amped-up a bit more would have been better.

The WOTLK event was just the old Naxx release event rehashed with the same loot problems as this one?

Oh wait, I forgot the zombie plague. That part was funny.

Well server start-up's been delayed to 2PM PST.  So much for hoping.   :why_so_serious:

The WOTLK event was pretty awesome for these reasons (which my shaman still has!):
http://www.wowhead.com/item=39769
http://www.wowhead.com/item=38658
http://www.wowhead.com/item=40354

And yeah, the zombie event was amusing as heck too.

(OTOH, the old naxx release event with the undead hunter gear was shit at 60 and still shit at 70)

There may yet be some completely unannounced and un-mass-tested event yet to unfold for MoP.  Who knows.

Raise your hand if you think this thing will be remotely playable this evening.

...

Anyone?

...

As I said in the other thread, 3-4 days minimum.   

I wouldn't even consider logging in until you knew for certain that at least the pets & mounts were working correctly.   When they first were migrating characters in to Beta, it wiped everything out on many players.  All mounts and companions were totally gone.   They fixed it, eventually, but several of my pets and mounts went missing and never popped-up again.   (Lost my Vampiric Batling, White Kitten and Black Drake just to name a few.)

I took screen shots of all my mounts and companions last night to have a record of what I actually had in case the same thing happens again.

Well, thanks for the warning at least. I'll wait until the dust settles before trying to play.

Define "remotely playable".

I won't consider it playable until Bartender and my unit frame mods are working again. Those are critical; obviously I want them all to get fixed eventually.
I'm assuming, here, that they'll break, of which I have yet no proof. Seems like a safe bet though.

Then will be the fun part, i.e. re-talenting and re-glyphing.

Delayed another hour.

Servers up, no/regular lag, no random crashes, no equipment issues, no rolling restarts.

Since they started allowing Addons to be used on the test server, Mods not being available on patch day is no longer an issue.  All the big mods on Curse, etc should already be updated and ready to go if the Developers are still playing.


Yeah I probably should have said something about this earlier, but it didn't really need to be done until patch day. 

Servers up! Diving in!

Aside from a couple outdated addons (which I was too lazy to manually update myself, rather just wait for the Curse app to get the update signal), everything ran smoothly for me last night.  Executed my patch plans without a hitch (reforge my tank and DPS sets to be in line with the new hit/exp rating, get new talents, write new glyphs in, setup addons that were working), and ran a few HoT dungeons with my guildies.

As far as tanking with my DK goes, I'm good to go.  With the right talents chosen, my rotation is incredibly simplified so that I can focus on other things.  All I ever wanted was Runic Corruption for Blood tanking, and not only did I get that, but Crimson Scourge and Rolling Blood?  Fucking gravy.

Guess I'll have to jump in again: WoW has now been fully localized in italian, and they also opened two italian realms (took them long enough :P)  :awesome_for_real:

The amount of QQ about everything on the forums is fascinating.  While I had my own issues with the talent system changes, once I actually was able to play with it I became a fan.  The vocal minority, however, are crying up a huge storm as if this was sudden and hadn't been announced ages ago.

My favorite thread, however, is still the one from the few "Melee Hunters" that were still out there, raging that Wingclip and Raptor strike were removed.   :uhrr:  I thought those people finally went away back in the WOTLK days.

The one thing I will agree with Hunters on is that ranged weapons don't get displayed on your character unless you're actually shooting something.  The vanity aspect of having a cool looking polearm or a couple of matching axes on the hip did give them some flair.  Unfortunately it's not something they can easily address because some ranged weapons just look outright retarded if they strapped them to the backs of their toon while idle.

As far as gameplay goes though, yeah, melee Hunters were silly.  They were barely viable in vanilla because Bliz was still young and stupid in trying to make some niches work.

No, they display on your back now (I'm transitioning back to hunter from DK, so I'm playing my old main right now. They got a lot more nifty toys and buffs in Cata and the new talents than DKs)

There's still some bugs where they go invisible after zoning, but once it's unsheathed and resheathed after combat it shows on your back.   The only ones that look goofy are the oversized crossbows.

Seems the new LFR auto-loot assignment is based on class but cannot "see" if a player already has the item (or a better version of the same) and awards it anyway…

 :oh_i_see:

Are you saying you're not enjoying your new Soviet WoW gameplay?  I'm sure some comrades can show up to fix that.  :grin:

I cycled through a couple bows/guns on my hunter and to me they all look pretty awkward hanging from your back.

It'll probably get better as we approach 90 and they have designed bows/guns with this in mind.

*shrug*  My reforged Epic Quest bow looks awesome, and the old Ancient Bone Bow looked all right to me as well.  It's a bow, after all, not a 2h sword.

It was my understanding though that loot was individual so that you getting a piece doesn't negate someone else getting it. If that's the case then getting a duplicate shouldn't matter

Yes.  Loot is per individual.  The only way you can get fucked is if there's 2 drops you want off a boss and you keep getting the one you already have.  But that's no different than the time my guild got shaman drops off of some Serpentshrine boss 7 fucking weeks in a row.

Aye, RNG is RNG, and as far as match-made insta-raids go, this system makes RNG about as fair as it's going to get since it's taken the manipulation by players completely out of the picture.

And frankly there have been lots of times where I've wanted 2 copies of an item - to enchant them differently, for example.

Played my shadow priest last night and ran an HOT for funsies.  While I outgear the content by a large margin (399 in my OS), shadow priests feel very buffed.  I like that I feel more like a Cata Destro warlock while not having to manage as many buttons.

Also, shadow orbs actually matter now, so that's a fun minigame too.

Disc priest also feels awesome-- the int changes make me heals hit for a ton (in the neighborhood of a 95k crit unbuffed).  True test will be DS on Friday.  But, that being said, spirit shell made it easier for me to stack up giant absorbs on people more quickly, which I bet will be extremely effective on lots of the DS bossfights.

Played some destro lock as well with my girlfriend.  While I thought the changes were more in line with what destro shouod feel like, she wasn't crazy about the changes because she likes playing a DOT class.  Destro plays more like fire mage now.  That being said, she's going to try out affliction tonight, which should play more like Cata destro.

Oh, and hunter expertise isn't so bad.  With the new stat weights, my 398 hunter has close to 40% crit unbuffed.  40%!

Yeah, figured as much.  Still, loot isn't about giving you loot, it's about giving you a reasonable expectation that you'll get loot in the future :heart:.

Also, I totally loved Glyph of Raptor Strike during Dragon Soul so I'm kind of sad to see it gone. Small price to pay for min range to bite it, especially with how non-nonsensical hitboxes have become.

Does this mean that in the case of Deathwing (for example) who only drops weapons, a feral druid who wins loot has a basicly 100% chance of always getting the Feral polearm, since none of the other DW weapons are applicable to feral?

If you win the roll, then yes.

In other news, cross-realm Battletag raiding seems to be working just fine, eh Merusk?  :grin:

I Resubbed yesterday. Man I am shitty at this game now with all the changes and a year off

Yes, yes it does.  It was even more seamless than LFR.  Nice system.

I kinda fucking hate how they changed warrior tanking. It just feels wrong.

Yeah.  Bear is really wierd also.

Having only 3 things to spend rage on (More dodge, A self heal, or Maul) is bizzare.  The new vengeance scaling also does some really wierd shit.  Like simply Surviving an imaple on Deathwing pretty much means my next Frenzied Regen is going to heal me to Full HP.

It just feels dumb. It's like a super cool-down management mini-game now. Generating threat is an afterthought and you just fuckin mash like 3-4 buttons, but you better know when the big hits are coming because all your big-ticket mitigation skills are on CDs and require tons of rage. I can figure it out but it's going to be way more difficult for people to learn how to tank properly. A newbie tank will be able to grab all the mobs and hold them, then die over and over because they don't understand exactly when to use all of our now like half-dozen super-samey mitigation skills.

Yeah.

This is all kinds of shit, actually.  I have a char of every class and the only one that seems to have actually improved or been made more fun is the Rogue.

What.  The.  Fuck.

Then Bliz is making progress on their goal for tanking.  They wanted Warriors, Paladins, and the new Monks to take a more active role in their mitigation and/or recovery from hits in tanking, much like how Druids and DKs have been doing it since their full inceptions.  They didn't want passive/auto-tanking anymore from having full combat table coverage that Warriors and Paladins could achieve through maxing out block, parry, and dodge (thus why they also moved to a two-roll hit system the break that shit as well).

I'm sure they'll continue to tweak the numbers and such, even after launch.  Keep in mind too that every raid and dungeon encounter up to this point has always been designed with the old one-roll full CTC passive tanking design in mind.  The MoP stuff is going to reflect the new active mit changes.  That said, don't expect the active mit stuff to go away anytime soon. 

At least not until the next expansion, Outlands 2: Tempest Keep Magister's Terrance Was Just a Set Back   :why_so_serious:

Blood DK's are insane right now, dps is pretty much only a small notch below any other dps, whereas my paladin struggles to limp over 15k.

Yes, well, maybe they went a 'little' overboard with making Heart Strike hit 4 targets + Rolling Blood + Crimson Scourge  :why_so_serious:

Not that I'm complaining about being #5 on DPS when I was tanking in LFR the other night  :grin:  Maybe Paladins are just doing it wrong. 

My blood DK was #1 on dps when running 5mans ever since cata launched, looks like this isn't about to change. Did Furor reroll a DK or something?  :why_so_serious:

Really? Because I find the rogue less fun now but the hunter fun went up. Ditto the mage, though I always hated fire and played ice so I'm unaffected by their nerfs and got their buffs. Dk stayed the same but he's unholy and didn't change.

Paladin tanking seems awkward with the same CD fiddly bit problems as warriors but for other people.  Giving them a mandatory heal as a talent tier is either a waste of a talent or asking the tank to take care of yet another task, which is bullshit.  IF you're good you're already concerned with when to cast hands on whom, so now they've tossed-in a talent you should be using on a regular basis, too?  I've macroed it to cast on target's target and that's the extent of thought I'm going to put in to using it.

Shadow Priest feels more intuitive to me after having been a bit of bull for the last 2 expansions.  Haven't tried healing on her, so no idea if that's any different.

I never liked feral tanking so I don't care much about the druid changes.  Haven't bothered with cat form and switched to Moonkin so I didn't have to juggle sets while leveling and it seems a little more fun than it was.  Going to try resto later today and see if that's wildly different.

The rogue really had a lot of stuff that overlapped and got confusing.  Hell, even removing the eviscerate/envemon confusion was a good start.  The rest of the changes made it more interesting to me personally and less confusing.  Some people complained when they removed blinding power and whatnot, but frankly I think they should have removed the poisons THEN.  I like the sunder armor skill being changed from a finisher also.  I really like the stealth shield for other players, but I guess that'll only ever get used for PVP and not even then. Life leech poison is LOVE and the new mechanics of Shiv is great and makes it worthwhile.

As to the other changes.

My DK hasn't changed much, though 22k dps as a tank.  Whoa.
Priest is much the same, but the talents are UTTER shite.
Druid is now a fucking mana hog and has real problems with an item level of 389.  They really notice the refresh loss on lifebloom.  Tanking is 5k dps if that and is, as has been mentioned, button mashing of the shittiest shit.
Warrior.  Don't get me fucking started.  This is ALL wank, except removing stances which is a GOOD idea, but confusing this late in the game.
Paladin, works much the same, but the loss of judgements makes for confusing play.
Shammy :  fucking hell.  Fucking Hell, I fear change.  Totems, totems, totems.  What the fuck.
Mage - He's not 85, he's 84, so I don't care.  I like removing the whole 'I can't cast fireball as frost', but some of that doesn't make sense.  Scorch procs fingers of frost ?  Eh ?  Dime Bar ?
I do Like Warlocks.  That is all.  Also, I have a companion floating squid.  Can't say fairer than that.
Hunters a bit pish.

sigh.

I think maybe, ONCE AGAIN, I have outstayed my WoW welcome.

A few random response to folks' posts here:

Warrior tanking was bollocks throughout 4.X, so I welcome the changes of actually having to pay attention and actively do something.
DKs are venerable gods now...we had folks sitting through amalgamation blasts just to stack insane amounts of vengeance.
Priest talents are really good.  I'm sorry, but utility is a good thing in PVE.  I am constantly having to consider whether I want FDCL, Mindbender, Feathers, Body/Soul, Bulwark, and Desperate Prayer.
Hunters are about the same, but it's nice SV and BM get readiness now.
Warlocks are the bees' knees...I feel like the girlfriend has been rewarded through slogging through the most unfun game of simon she ever played through 4.3 as destruction.
Paladin heals are a lot easier for folks who weren't super-strong to become middle of the pack.  Accessibility is a good thing, imo.
Mages got more fun too, but I have to agree the scorch proc is odd.
Druids are quite good still, but I think ferals should lose Tranquility (I might just be mini-butthurt since I lost Divine Hymn).

No, I'm going to have to ask you to back that up.

Did I get a different set of talents ?

Wait.. what?  I've no idea what you mean by this.. you still judge and need to for Holy Power generation.  Only thing they lost was Auras, which is fine because nobody swapped anyway.

Holy Paladins used to have to judge for mana.

I found myself judging a fair bit at first and wondering why it didn't do anything.

Alright, so from a shadow perspective, I get a choice between Mindbender (bursty, 1 minute CD) and From Darkness, Comes Light (sustained, +overall DPS talent).  I can use the former on fights such as Hagara, Zon'ozz, and Spine.  The latter works better in most dungeons and current raid content.

From a discipline perspective, I get a choice between Body and Soul and Angelic Feathers.  I like Body and Soul on Zon'ozz, Hagara, and Blackhorn.  I could also see it being useful on the last guy in Grim Batol.  Otherwise, I like feathers for encounters like Alysrazor, Baelroc, and other five-mans with movement.

From a survivability perspective (so regardless of spec), I can choose between the old standby emergency heal Desperate Prayer and Angelic Bulwark.  Bulwark is exceptionally good on Morchok, Hagara, Blackhorn, and Madness since it greatly reduces the chances you'll get one-shotted by a weak amount of overkill.

I haven't played much with the level 15 talents since most dungeons and raids don't require them.

But, all of this feels like an improvement to me because the only choices I had previously as a discipline priest was whether or not I'd play atonement (which I did, atonement was incredible in 4.3) and whether or not I wanted to spend points in spell haste.

I felt like I had even less choice as shadow.  I had one build and it never changed.

As an aside, healing as a shadow priest isn't wtfnerfed any more.  I can drop a 40k Power Word: Shield and a 35k Flash Heal in case of emergency.

Edit:  Posting from my cell phone is exceptionally difficult.

Out of all the classes I think priests got the best set of new talents. For most classes it feels like you pick from a large number of borderline useless talents, then you pick one talent that impacts your main role (the other two on the tier usually seem designed for pvp or other specs). With priests you're picking between at least two good talents that are appealing to every spec at every tier.

Impressions of other class changes:

Rogue - I certainly didn't feel like rogues got worse with the patch but they didn't get much better either. On the positive side having an aoe finisher is nice, Assassinations rotation got some simple but welcome changes, and I'm glad that poisons no longer take inventory spots. On the negative side, talents are completely uninspired and 90% of them only affect pvp. After selecting all my talents at 85, I had shadowstep and nothing else that was interesting or that I didn't already have before. Glyphs are in the same boat: mostly what we already had mixed in with some really bland changes to abilities we don't use. It's hard to be excited for the class when it is clear that Blizzard spent so little time on them in MoP.

Druid - I still don't like the gameplay of any of the specs, but the new travel form is nice. More importantly, you can now glyph out of Moonkin form. The new "astral form" isn't great, but it's still an improvement.

Warrior - I really like the tanking changes. So much so that I'm planning on playing a Prot Warrior or a Brewmaster for MoP. Prior to the patch most of your abilities were about generating threat. Threat hasn't been a concern for the class for over a year, so it didn't feel like there way much benefit to attempting to play well rather than just watching tv and tapping your Devastate and Thunderclap buttons every 10 seconds. Now there is a purpose to everything you do (either building rage or defensive rage spenders), which I find much more compelling.

My Flabber is Ghasted.

I don't agree with you pair at all.

But that's ok.  I'm probably not right.

Tanking has been the easiest job (usually) for the longest time, but it's gonna be interesting to see if people can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time now that they need to keep an eye on like a dozen stupid mitigation abilities rather than just shield wall/last stand for the shitty parts of a fight.

I just don't like it. It's not more or less of a valid design choice than the previous way tanking worked tbh; I just don't like it because it's too different. Everything feels too different. It feels like they're trying to do with WoW classes what they did with D3 classes.

These are the MMO boards, where people can come to two opposite and completely valid conclusions!

I know some other folks who aren't particularly thrilled with priests, but most of those qualms come from not being able to spam their spell of choice.

What specifically is blah about priest talents for you?  Do they just not feel...talenty enough?  An analogy would be like decorating a Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center -- adding three ornaments toward the top just isn't very noticeable.

I think there will be a fair amount of this.  What do you think is the middle ground?  Tanking has been exceptionally boring for awhile.

I dunno to be honest. I get why they're doing it. I didn't mind being able to watch TV and do taxes while tanking 5-mans but I think people who raid wanting to be a bit more engaged is a perfectly valid desire.

I'd settle for a mix of rage generation by damage and ability usage. Little less rage generation from ability use, and a very small amount of rage from incoming damage (like 1 rage per 2% of your life or something). You're never really "starved" for rage to do something unless you're stupidly mashing rage-wasters, and the occasional spike in damage might give you enough to hit that shield barrier or shield block a moment sooner.

On this topic, I doubt the tanking changes will impact normal/heroic 5-mans much. Most of the aoe threat abilities (thunderclap, thrash, etc.) are completely free at this point. Since heroics will be 4.3 difficulty, you probably won't need to use your cooldowns to survive either. Your primary role will be setting the pace of the group, making pulls, and (easily) keeping threat just like it was in Cata.

I haven't gotten around to trying the warrior changes (I'm a Diablo 3 'deal' sucker so I do have the option - will get around to it at some point) but on paper and after my 15 min or so of MoP beta, the prot warrior playstyle changes look and feel horrible. I really like the talent system change, but the changes to tanking and rage mechanics don't look fun to me at all. Good thing Jedi Knights are pretty much exactly pre-this warriors, I guess.

What's so different? Less worry about spamming crap? More situational crap?

I upped my Hit and expertise to 7.5% it helped a lot, I pulled 38k on DW HC until they had me switch to Ret for the extra dps.

Well yeah, having Hit and Exp capped are pretty much 'must haves', esp. for melee/magic hybrids like Shamans and Paladins.  Once you get those two capped, you're also spell hit capped for the 15% as well, which I'm pretty sure it still a good portion of Pally damage.

Would anyone care to hit me up with a Scroll of Resurrection? I may even sub for a month to make sure you get the mount thing.  :awesome_for_real:

I already have it, but if you're EU I can.

I am EU. What do you need? Char name and server?

Aye, that or bnet e-mail, prolly safer with the former though.

DM'd. Thanks.  :grin:

Maybe this has been mentioned before, and correct me if I'm wrong, but is heroic strike gone for warriors?  If so, what do we use instead?

Nope.


Edited to Add :  I'm also looking at these 'banners' we get at level 87.  They're kinda just shouts, aren't they ?  Gimmicky Shouts.

Gimmicky short-duration totems.  Fuck em.

Funny thing you should mention short-duration totems...  :awesome_for_real:

(Fuck the new hyper-short same-cooldown elemental totems double.)

Yeah, Shammy totems are a bit of a joke now.

Just now?  :why_so_serious:


Even when they have actually been really really good, they're annoying to use.

Aye, I can't say I'll miss the totem droppings and such.  A lot of times in 5-mans I'd rarely ever see the Shamans in my group use them.  That they made a lot of the good stuff to be always-on passives is pretty nice, IMO.

Looks like Bliz caught onto DK Blood tanks topping the damage meters.  Heart Strike just got nerfed by over 50% in the damage department  :ye_gods:

Overdue.

Agree.  We had a DK tank doing close to 50k on Madness.

I do like the change though.  I feel like tanks should be DPSing meaningfully in fights.

Just not stacking insane amounts of vengeance.   :oh_i_see:

I still think paladin and warrior tanks need a little bit of dps love.

I haven't played since GW2 came out, how legitimate is all the forum screaming about that cross realm phasing stuff?  I will have to start harvesting again come mists and would be upset if there were no nodes to be had.  Will the new zones be cross realm or just the old low level ones?

I will be particulary annoyed coming off of GW2's refreshing resource nodes which stay spawned just for me regardless if someone else also harvests it.

Depends on how busy the zone is. I'd expect all expansion zones to be your-realm-only but the older zones will be the ones you run in to the cross-realm crap.

It's not a problem unless you get out-of-country players.  The language barrier on top of the usual internet dickishness causes a new breed of cockmunchery.

I thought they were localizing this, but I admit this is US-centric.  Anyone know how this works for EU servers?

Also, I'd rather have people speaking a language I don't understand than internet dickwads I do understand.

Everything I've seen says it's not localized.  You can get any of the South American units on US servers.  I understand the same being true on the EU servers.  After all, if you still have to maintain 5 different-language servers there's no cost savings on server gear.

It's not the speaking of the language, it's that the language barrier means people tend to treat each other as badly as you'd treat an opposing-faction player.  Node jacking, quest mob traffic, spawn denial, etc.

So, having played enough of this patch to give a comment on it now, it's time to speak my piece.

My Bear Druid has been my main (and for a long time my only played) character for a long time, but you know what, fuck it. I'm done with him this patch. This new active tanking thing is fucking retarded. Blizzard's pathetic attempt to make tanking 'meaningful' has resulted in the exact opposite, at least on Guardian druids. All you do is wait until you have 60 rage, then use your tanking button. You can fucking macro it in. This is what we gave up all our passive mitigation for? or in other words, the effects of the gear we collected? We now get to hit a button on a very specific condition? Fuck you Blizz.

Oh wait up Ash! what about magic heavy fights? Oh yeah, I forgot. This is where it gets really crazy (and super meaningful as well!!!). You spend your rage on a totally different tanking button. Oh, well then.

I know I'm being harsh and vitriolic, but the whole thing just feels so....lame. Not overly difficult or overly simple, just languishing the dead wasteland of blech.

That being said, I am still playing the game and having a blast after coming back from Guild Wars, all because of my Enhancement Shaman. Holy shit that spec is fun, enen though, yeah; totems are a big fat joke now.

Thanks for the heads up Ash, was going to respec my druid into bear, but I'll keep cat and resto for now.

Been leveling a hunter with a friend who play's horde.  It has been a fun ride.  I like the new hunter feel and talents, but on dungeons I feel like a third wheel till an over pull or the boss, I'm sure that will be better at higher levels.

My son is leveling a warlock from scratch and is really enjoying it too.

My druid has alwasy been Boomkin / Bear.  Bear cause it almost always guarantees me a spot in a raid, and Boomkin for the fun of Blowing shit up by shooting stars out of my ass.  However, I do sort of agree with Ash now,  Bear tanking went from interesting, to super fucking boring.  I might be able to get behind the active mitigation model if we actually had more shit to spend our resources on (like DK's, who have something like 8 different tanking cooldowns).  As it stands though, with only 3 things to spend rage on: More Dodge, More healing / Health, or Damage, there really is no complexity to it at all.

I very well may go Boomkin / Tree for MoP.  Still guaranteees me a raid spot (even more so, because raids always need more healers then tanks), but with the added benefit that most of my Boomkin gear has stats beneficial to Trees on it anyway.

By default, DKs get Vampiric Embrace,  Icebound Fort and AMS as 'tanking cooldowns'.  We can pick up AMZ for raid-wide mitigation (which does come in handy, I might say), and Conversion (admittedly, I've thought about picking this up, but Death Pact just does the job 10x better without having to sacrifice my RP generation) but that's about it.

Rune Tap?  A minor self heal that requires me to sacrifice a Blood/Death rune that could be better used for other things, esp. if it's a Death Rune.  I only smash this if Will of the Forsaken procs, and when that happens it's actually worth it.

Blood Parasites?  Another minor raid-heal that I have no control over.  If it procs, it procs.  Much like how Leader of the Pack works for Druids  :oh_i_see:

What are the other DK abilities that you consider to be "tanking cooldowns' am I missing?

It is more along the lines that allmost all of your stuff plays better with your rune resource system to make things more interactive.  As a rage tank, I basicly have 3 things (as mentioned above) to spend rage on.
- A large, short boost to dodge
- A self heal (or if glyphed, a short duration Increases in healing recieved)
- A damaging mele attack.  Thats it.

LotP is completely passive, basicly just a "here, here is some heal over time you get every few seconds as long as you are bashing something".  Sure, bloodworms is technically similar, but at the same time, much much more interesting in action. Plus the worms also dps, and probably do better healing (since i dont believe spells cast by DPS casters can trigger LoTP, makeing it completely useless for casters / healers).

Other then that we have:
- Bark Skin: Short is cooldown damage reduction
- Survival Instincts: bascily improved version of barkskin with a longer cooldown.
- Might of Ursoc: temproary boost in total HP.

We have no Raid utility tank cooldowns like AMZ, Rallying Cry, or the Paladin one (think paladins have a raid wide tank like cooldown, unless that was removed / moved to a different spec), unless granted through tier bonus like with t13.   I would love to have an AMZ like ability as a druid.

As it stands now, we are basicly the kings of Physical Damage tanking, but all our cooldowns are boring as hell.  Hell, even our mastery is now boring as hell.  Whee, more armor.  At least with old savage defense, Mastery could really effect how efficient your tanking was in some situations.  Now it's just: you take a bit less mele damage passively, whoop.

The worst part is, we have absolutely nothing we can do to prevent big unavoidable incoming damage we know is coming (like impale).  We can only Mitigate the hit and then heal up afterwards.  We cant stack an absorb shield or the like (like you could with old savage defense).

Someone on the mmo-champ forum had an interesting thought that they could make a glyph for Frenzied Regen that allowed overhealing from FR to act as an absorb.  Which would be really neat i think, and add an interstign element to Druid Tanking.

Stampeding Roar can be pretty effective if used correctly within the raid., as there are a number of encounters that use mass snare/root stuff, and some that do it prior to using a big direct damage ability too.

And you're getting Symbiosis in MoP, which the FSM only knows how broken that'll make encounters.  Not only will you be giving a free cooldown spell to a class you're casting it on (which will always be a spell related to that class' active spec), but you'll be getting a free cooldown that the class you're benefiting uses (which will always be a spell related to your active spec).  In the case of Guardian Druids, that will almost always be a tanking/mitigation ability (Paladins/Warlocks/Shaman Guardian Symbiosis grant you offensive/utility spells, but will still help with tanking)

I logged into my druid on patch day to assign talent points and redo my bars. When I switched to my bear spec, I had to check the spell book 4-5 times to make sure I was not missing something. I only had one worthwhile thing to spend my rage on most of the time? That couldn't possibly be right. It seemed over-simplified like I had to be missing some abilities.

I thought about it a bit though, and this is how bear tanking has always felt to me. I think Blizzard didn't add a ton more buttons you needed to hit because they didn't want to alienate people that liked what had been the bear style of tanking. It's always seemed boring and plain, with few buttons to press and even fewer that were actually worth pressing. Almost all mitigation for bears in Cata was passive or outside of the player's control (savage defense). In MoP, it'll be the same style compared to other tanks. Hell, look at the new bear mastery which is just a flat increase to armor.

I can understand if you think bears are boring to play in MoP (they are) but it seems to me like there is still a need for an option of that style of tanking in the game. Warriors, DKs, and Monks might be more your style of you're looking for something more active (I don't really know anything about the paladin changes).

I was always under the impression that bear tanking was boring as well, like...throughout the history of wow.

Based on the little amount of time I've played mine (and it's only 5-mans, not raids)  not much changed with pally tanking.  You can spam Consecrate a lot more like the BC days but it's still build-up HP via Shield procs/ judgement/ hammer or crusader and then use on Word of Glory or Shield of Righteous.

Of the talent changes, I've found the barrier one to be the most useful.  It lasts for 30s and pulses the damage shield every 6s.   I macroed it to cast on the target of my target and voila, fire and forget.   I'm considering doing a castsequence macro with judgement just to remove a button.



What level are you?  Trap launcher & explosive trap along with multishot means no more 3rd wheel.   If you're CCing mobs you shouldn't be having a problem feeling like your AOE is subpar, which is the only time I ever felt the 3rd wheel syndrome.

I'm not going to lie, yeah they were like that. But that was at least in the days of 'the more gear you get, the better tanking you get from your stats'. Now, you can get better gear, reforge into dodge all you fucking want, and that little number will hardly move. Because, now if you want that, you press a button instead. With this being the 'changing tanking up' patch, I though they were going to give us 'choices on how to spend our rage' or w/e Ghost Crawler said. Nope. Literally two buttons.

And the new bear mastery is a bad joke. Someone should really be fired for that. It's the kind of mastery that only someone who raids world firsts, and switches out their tanks at every fight could love. The rest of us get the most boring mastery in the game.

I dunno man, I'm sure on paper you could prove how bears are the exact same as they've always been, but they really don't feel that way. They feel a lot (heres that word again) lamer then they used to be.

Execpt that Stampeding Roar isnt really a "tank" ability, as much as it is a "generic druid" ability.  Hell, with the glyph, pretty much every spec of druid can (and probably will) run around with it glyphed for encounters where movement speed matters.

As to Symbiosis, if the list from http://www.wowhead.com/spell=110309 is any indication, Most of our choices as a tank boil down to "yet more Bark Skin buttons", some Slows (which might be valueable on some fights, but seem kind of redundant what with Infected Wounds), some Extra AoE ish damage (which we dont really lack what with Thrash / Swipe being pretty much spammable), a "rage tap", Fear Ward, and Spell Reflect on a 2 minute cooldown with 1 charge.   Out of that entire list, Spell Reflect and Fear ward are the only ones that looks even remotely new and refreshing as a Druid Tank Button.

So, is a 120K+ execute crit (arms warrior) the new normal???  Because thats what I hit a boss for in an HoT heroic.

Edit: I got a 200k+ execute on Deathwing in a LFR last night. :ye_gods:

Yeah, this (crazy abilities balanced around +5 level health pools) happens in every end of x-pack/new x-pack transition patch. I remember in one of the old transitions my warrior with the (at the time) new sudden death talent I could randomly proc an execute and basically one shot someone. It was fun for a week or so.

I remember as a warrior the first time they gave us devastate.  It was so fucking strange doing ANY dps whatsoever, so you'd just run around questing and devastating fucking mobs.

Now, it seems silly, but it was HUGE at the time.  Ditto the Vengeance changes much much later.

"Three sunders! No dps until then!"  It's all I remember vanilla warriors doing.

We were fail.  We had to wait for 5 sunders.

Darion Mograine is sick of Moon Guard Goldshire's shit: http://imgur.com/a/CEzuc
(There was a bug with DK diseases that let them land on friendly targets with a /cast macro).

All you need to do is infect one guy, given how fast diseases spread through that particular zone  :rimshot:

The Fall of Theramore scenario is unlocking a day early, and should be available this afternoon in the US.  Might be avail around now in the EU.  Party on, people.

Whee!

A list of loot from the scenario (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1195204-Lvl-85-Theramore-s-Fall-Scenario-LOOT?p=18386263&viewfull=1#post18386263).  Note that some of it is Horde/Alliance specific.  And that these loots at the listed ilvl will only be available from now till next Tuesday, when the scenario goes to lvl 90 only.

Well the listed iLevel is pointless as I had quest items in the second zone at higher ilevel and the 3rd zone gave me a level 419 blue item.   The question really is: are these unique visual pieces or will the same models be used in the L90 scenario.

Pretty sure it's this. 

Most of them aren't even unique models; I clicked a couple and wowhead has a bunch of "Same model as..." options for all the ones I hit. They might be recolors (can't tell yet) but they're not real new art.

The Theramore stuff is fan--service/RP stuffs for the classic Human vs. Orcs thing.  I was waiting to get the two-hander axe from the scenario for my DK tank, but then the 397 from DS finally dropped for my guild run a couple weeks ago  :awesome_for_real:

I'll probably try to snag a couple of the one-hander DPS swords and the DPS helm for my off-spec.

You are fucking crazy if you think that +armor% is not a fucking huge, possibly game-breaking mechanic.  That it is boring is undeniable, but then so is the warrior and paladin mastery, and the DK mastery may very well end as the worst of the four due to scaling issues.

All he said was that it was boring, not that it wasn't effective. Which is pretty much the most important thing.

Rolled through the scenario a few times.  Pretty short and sweet; as a Blood DK, I just rolled diseases through essentially all of the trash at the same time and won  :awesome_for_real:

I'm sure it'll be more difficult at lvl 90, but for now, I can see how these little scenarios can be a nice diversion at 90.  Not sure I'm down with getting just a random loot bag that 'might' have an item in it (i.e. I ran Theramore three times, got a one-handed tanking sword in the third bag while in my DPS spec), but for the risk/reward ratio, I approve.  For now.

Well, to be honest, I am not sure exactly how "effective" it will be.  If there would ever be a point where stacking mastery would be encouraged for tanking over, say, dodge.  Especially with the deminishing returns on Armor, and the fact that there is very likely an armor cap on what we can reach, not to mention that for all general purposes, all it really does is make up for our lack of a shield.  DK's have their runeforge, druids had our Agility to Armor conversion, which let us make up the armor gap present from not having a shield.  We no longer have that Agility to armor conversion any more.  Unless our scaling up bonus in bear form from leather was calculated to roughly balance out to the same amount of armor as a plate tank with shield.

There theramore thing was kinda boring honestly but it's a decent way to get big lore stuff across and hand out loot.

He said the current mastery isn't efficient.  It is the most efficient tank mastery in the game since they put (effectively) diminishing returns on block via the multiple roll mechanic.  There also might be actual diminishing returns on block (some people are saying this), though if so the tooltips haven't been changed yet.

My ilevel 325 druid has more passive always on physical damage reduction than my ilevel 372 warrior.

Yeah I did it with two buddies. I can't tell what the bomb was supposed to be. A Goblin Nuke?

How would it be the most efficient mastery?  There is a flat cap on Armor (you can never reduce physical damge to less then 75% through armor), and the diminishing returns for adding armor the closer you get to that cap are probably much more punitive then any diminishing returns on block.  Given how high our armor already is, with the Guardian passive boosts from Bear Form and Thick Hide, the mastery is pretty much just a bit of added filler.  You are never likely to reforge away from mastery, but you are never likely to reforge TO it either.

Edit: Did some asking around, and it seems like bears now have a LOT more armor then plate tanks, from what i can see.  Was with a warrior in a DS pug, and he had around 45k armor, with shield.  Said his DK (who was geared a bit better) is sitting at around 55k.  My bear is currently sitting at 68k (almost 71% phys reduction).  Not sure how much of that is from mastry, and how much from our passives.

For the same reason that armor rating has always simulated as the most valuable tank stat in the game until the block changes in 4.0, which have been nerfed to shit in 5.0.

A tank with 60% damage reduction has 250% of his displayed health as effective health.
A tank with 65% damage reduction has 286% of his displayed health as effective health.
A tank with 70% damage reduction has 333% of his displayed health as effective health.
A tank with 75% damage reduction has 400% of his displayed health as effective health.

The only fly in the ointment is magic damage, which is still not even close to a majority of the damage taken by tanks and likely never will be unless they want to completely marginalize the effect of all tank gear.

Right, but the question I am asking is what the actual return on investment from our mastery is.  Bears have always statistically had very high armor.  Adding more when we are already sitting on the top end of the diminishing returns for armor curve means that we need way more mastery per point of return then someone else, with a different mastery.

I remember that. It was annoying. Nowadays I hate the rage changes, the too many goddamned buttons (almost all of which are mildly useful) problem and the fact that they took away one of my actual most useful buttons - my AE taunt.

Incorrect.

The armour DR curve is constructed so that each point grants the same benefit as the last point in term of time to live right up until the 75% cap.  This has been mathematically explained since 2007 at the earliest. (http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?33109-diminishing-returns-math)  Presumably the other DR curves are similarly weighted.

A mana-bomb apparently.

Disappointed to see that they kept a high iLevel requirement for the scenario this week. Is there a realistically quick way of gearing up a new 85 who is a lot rusty?

The scenario was utterly boring and pedestrian.  It also required a 30 minute wait and dropped no loot for me.

I'm not even sure what the point of it was, really.

/lorelol beyond the /spoiler



I don't understand the queue times myself.  You just need three people that now how to kill things.  You don't need a tank or healer (though they do make things SIGNIFICANTLY easier).  Even when I was partnered with one guildie last night, we were in the queue for a good 10 minutes without getting a hit.

As far as the content, Bliz's stance is that this wasn't supposed to be some sort of grand preamble to MoP; just a small taste of the mountain of content to come next week.  Scenarios in general are just supposed to be short little romps of content to give people something do to while trying to convey a story or dish out the lore.  One of the scenarios is actually the MoP version of the Ring of Blood thing they've done since BC.

1) LOLore infusion
2) A return to the pub-stomp that WOTLK dungeons were - As requested.  Roll through, chance at loot, roll again.

The wait is the headscratching part. Despite not needing Tank/Heal/DPS the one I ran had all 3.   Maybe it's the scenario servers being too damn full?   I'm tempted to queue as a healer spec and see if the wait goes down.

Speaking of shortages... what's up with the bribe bags (satchel of exotic mysteries) you used to get as a healer/tank when queuing for roics? When I returned to WOW several times in cata, I swear I haven't seen them pop up once. Are people gaming the system somehow or are there really so many tanks/healers that the dps queue problem for heroics has dissipated?

The queue problem hasn't dissipated for DPS but I'm fairly certain they raised the threshold on when the bags pop.  They never pop in the evenings anymore when I'm online; only during the early morning on weekends.

Tanks like to sleep in.

Actually, I have to weigh in on the queue times for dps. I have two tanks, and a healer, and four dps at 85. DPS queues used to be as long as 45 minutes, I almost always get in within 10 minutes now when playing my dps. Tank queues are always instant, and healer queues are almost always instant or if not right around the three minute mark.

I have seen the rewards recently.  I think it's only triggered when there's a real shortage of DPS waiting.

I usually switch just for the sake of it.

I ran it on a few chars last night and the wait was never longer than 30 seconds regardless of what I was playing (ran it on healer/dps/dps/dps). Maybe certain battlegroups share a limited server pool for scenarios.

queue was 43 minutes on Zul'jin US tonight.  I didn't wait.

Shy of that +STA trinket from Benedictus, there's nothing my tank needs from any heroics now. I'm also sitting on 4k Valor, so aside from the occasional run I'll do to try for the trinket "just because" (once a week or less at this point) there's no point. I also hate herding fuckwits and sheep, so there's also that.

My queue estimate tonight was 57 minutes. Spoiler: the Theramore scenario is not worth waiting in a 57 minute queue.

I really don't understand why they didn't steal the best thing about LOTRO skirmishes for this - that they scale down to solo.

We should really do a Battletag thing for the WoW forum now, similar to the D3 one. I'd be happy to play with/tank for most of you guys as opposed to randoms. I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one, either. By Battletag is in the D3 forum, just mention that you're an F13 person since I refuse spam invites.

Something has to be fucked up with the queuing.  My wait on Alleria was only 5 minutes at 7:30 EDT.

I tried.  Responses are few and far between. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=22543.0)

Looks like they hotfixed the NPCs in the scenario to have more health.  Soon as I get pass these 30+min queues I'll try it again  :awesome_for_real:

One of the minibosses in the scenario is called Grunk.

Just putting that out there.  :awesome_for_real:

Today is a great day.  Does he have any dialogue?

Nah, he is one of the captains (the orc one - rightmost dock). His name seems to be somewhat random, I got some other dude when I played the scenario again.

Still... GRUNK LIVES ON!!111

Missed that. I'll add mine when I get home from work.