Cataclysm: Preparing For Patch 4.0.1

[Ratman_tf]

- New trees have no room for variety in speccing really

At all. I predict next expansion they remove talents and just have players pick a specalization.

Honestly, there wasn't much room for variety with specs under the old system.  You might tweek a talent here or there for pvp but that was about it.  Paladins, for example, if you wanted to tank, you specced heavily into prot and invest the rest in ret.  Reverse was true for speccing ret.  The rest of the classes, esp. the hybrids, were pretty much the same.

True. But in the old system, you at least had the option of gimping yourself.  The new system (I've only played my hunter so far) seems pretty gimp-proof.

[Sheepherder]

Pally... I *think* I like the changes to tanking - no more 969 and mana isn't the issue it was before having to constantly keep plea up. Threat is still an issue I think compared to the old tanking but 9K shield procs with holy power up make me grin.

I found threat generation to be atrocious and mine last night.

The 15 000 DPS shaman and 12 000 DPS warlock might have had something to do with that.  On the plus side, the last boss of HoS lasted 12 seconds.

[Fordel]

Was dueling my feral druid friend. Thought he was lagging out spinning in circles, then I died. Noticed I just killed myself on his Thorns. He laughed at me.

As far as I can tell, the baseline damage is still set for level 85's, so you know, 3500+ a 'tick' 

[Merusk]

Was dueling my feral druid friend. Thought he was lagging out spinning in circles, then I died. Noticed I just killed myself on his Thorns. He laughed at me.

As far as I can tell, the baseline damage is still set for level 85's, so you know, 3500+ a 'tick' 

Nah.. i played my L17 druid for the first time in forever last night and it ripped up some rogues and warriors a level or two above me who didn't know any better, either.  Was much fun.

[Sjofn]

So I know WHY I can't cast thorns on myself while I'm a bear, but God would it help a ton while I'm tanking. I guess I'll just have to get used to casting it before an important pull and wasting some of it, QQ.

Still haven't tanked with my DK. I am nervous about it for some reason.

[Polysorbate80]

Finished my first post-patch battleground, warsong gulch.

Top damage dealers on horde/alliance, both balance druids.  1.2 million and 800k damage, respectively.

Ouch.  Where's that 100k tank hp people were promising me?

[Fordel]

Finished my first post-patch battleground, warsong gulch.

Top damage dealers on horde/alliance, both balance druids.  1.2 million and 800k damage, respectively.

Ouch.  Where's that 100k tank hp people were promising me?

At level 85?

[fuser]

Feral/Warrior DPS is back way up tonight. Would be really nice if they had hotfix notes.

[Rendakor]

Feral/Warrior DPS is back way up tonight. Would be really nice if they had hotfix notes.

We made many changes yesterday. A lot of these were bug fixes, and many bug fixes will affect damage one way or the other. So just because you don't see a specific change referenced below, doesn't mean it didn't change.

With that said, here are the specific changes we made in reference to my previous post:

1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many warrior dps abilities. We didn't do as much to tanking abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Ret abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Feral cat abilities.

2) We lowered the base points and coefficients of many Mage abilities, but lowered Fire more than the other two.

3) We nerfed Shadow Word: Death, but it is possible we didn't nerf it enough. It should not be Shadow's biggest spell.

4) We returned Searing Pain's damage to its 3.3.5 levels.

5) We increased the benefit of resilience by 50% for players level 80 and below. The tooltips will probably not reflect this change.

We don't have any other changes to announce at this time. I am reluctant to mention additional classes or specs that we are looking at currently for fear of instilling excitement or panic.

Sauce

[Ashamanchill]

Ya balance druids, like pretty much all casters right now, are pretty ballin.

Feral dps in cat form is in the hurt locker right nopw, but I never really used it anyways, as for bear form, I LOVE the changes they did. Ya I cant swipe for ever, but my single target and snap damage were increased by a lot, and the rotation is a lot more fun. Also, I like the built in power auras, it makes me think of old school gaming. 'Hey one of my buttons has a glowy thing around it....time to mash mangle!!!'

Also, I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, starting new toons is waaaaaay more fun. I had a lvl 10 lock I had parked there waiting for the patch, and when  it hit I got to spec demonolgy and get that fel guard right away. It makes a huge difference IMO.

[Merusk]

Logged in to my level 44 mage tonight.  She was Frost and now I'm all confused. Not only were there significant changes to the class mechanics (Love the new AM proc)  but there was a very significant shuffling of the spells available.  No more blizzard, but I gained ice lance.  Having a pet all the time is nice, but I'm still habitually searching for that Int buff I don't get.   Mana shield disappeared for another level or two and now I've got Arcane Blast to figure out.   Also no more ranged freezes, very disappointing from a control standpoint.

I feel gimped in dungeons, (particularly since Locks kept Hellfire at this level range, but I have to wait until 50s for Blizzard)  but I'm uber out in the world.  I was taking on 3-4 mobs at a time without a problem, even lacking the extra control from my spells freezing things.

[Polysorbate80]

Finished my first post-patch battleground, warsong gulch.

Top damage dealers on horde/alliance, both balance druids.  1.2 million and 800k damage, respectively.

Ouch.  Where's that 100k tank hp people were promising me?

At level 85?

Hey, *they* didn't have to wait :P

[kildorn]

Logged in to my level 44 mage tonight.  She was Frost and now I'm all confused. Not only were there significant changes to the class mechanics (Love the new AM proc)  but there was a very significant shuffling of the spells available.  No more blizzard, but I gained ice lance.  Having a pet all the time is nice, but I'm still habitually searching for that Int buff I don't get.   Mana shield disappeared for another level or two and now I've got Arcane Blast to figure out.   Also no more ranged freezes, very disappointing from a control standpoint.

I feel gimped in dungeons, (particularly since Locks kept Hellfire at this level range, but I have to wait until 50s for Blizzard)  but I'm uber out in the world.  I was taking on 3-4 mobs at a time without a problem, even lacking the extra control from my spells freezing things.

The buff still exists, but I don't know at what level. It's now +mana/+spellpower

[Polysorbate80]

Isle of Shitty Vehicle Mechanics battleground kept telling me I'd gained something like 536 million honor points.

Alas, such was not really the case.

[Selby]

The buff still exists, but I don't know at what level. It's now +mana/+spellpower

It's like 56-58 or so.  My 53 mage is godly as frost and my 80 raider is pretty much so OP she has to hold back or go splat.

[dd0029]

Isle of Shitty Vehicle Mechanics battleground kept telling me I'd gained something like 536 million honor points.

Alas, such was not really the case.

The others seem to like to rub your face in failure with the "You have gained 0 Honor Points." message.

[Sheepherder]

She was Frost and now I'm all confused. Not only were there significant changes to the class mechanics (Love the new AM proc)  but there was a very significant shuffling of the spells available.  No more blizzard, but I gained ice lance.  Having a pet all the time is nice, but I'm still habitually searching for that Int buff I don't get.   Mana shield disappeared for another level or two and now I've got Arcane Blast to figure out.   Also no more ranged freezes, very disappointing from a control standpoint.

1. Arcane Missiles isn't worth using as Frost.
2. Arcane Blast is useless to you.
3. Arcane Brilliance makes a return eventually.
4. Your Water Elemental has a ranged freeze.

[Setanta]

Ok, 5.6 GS prot pally vs 4K GS warrior vs 5.5 GS Druid bear.... bear wins for threat/tanking ease.

The warrior GS plays  big role but god it feels underwhelming (admittedly I hit 80 7 days ago so). I can hold 3 as long as the DPS isn't retarded. TC-rend-SW-TC seems to be a good starting point.

I've respecced a few times on the pally now, I can soak up a lot more punishment but god you break out in a  sweat holding 3. I *think* threat is the weakest at the moment - I've moved consecration to a secondary threat generator as Holy Storm seems to spike aggro more (I'm also using i on single mobs). DPS needs to really not go nuts unless they can tank a mob - which most seem to be able to :( If they fix threat this could be fun again.

Druid Bear - OMFG! Threat in fur and holds aggro as well as it did pre-4.0. Alternating Glyphed maul and swipe with the imp FFF, it's just fun. Prevously I had mangle on one key swipe on another with maul macro'd to both. Spam them and nothing would let go of you. Now you think a bit more, press more buttons and the threat is fantastic especially when you get berserk procs. Easily the highest TPS generator of the 3.

First impressions: Hunter feels gimped and Enhance shaman (5.6GS) doesn't feel like DPS has changed - and it's lost the frenetic pace that made it more fun for me compared to elemental.

[Morfiend]

I think my brain just broke.

[Rendakor]

I honestly thought my Prot Pally held the best aggro of my 3 tanks (DK and War being the others).

[Merusk]

She was Frost and now I'm all confused. Not only were there significant changes to the class mechanics (Love the new AM proc)  but there was a very significant shuffling of the spells available.  No more blizzard, but I gained ice lance.  Having a pet all the time is nice, but I'm still habitually searching for that Int buff I don't get.   Mana shield disappeared for another level or two and now I've got Arcane Blast to figure out.   Also no more ranged freezes, very disappointing from a control standpoint.

1. Arcane Missiles isn't worth using as Frost.

Yeah I started to notice that.  It's a nice free thing to dink around with and I'm primarily using it when it procs after I've killed something so I can get a manaless start on the next mob.  I've got the Brain Freeze talent now, though, so no more AM and the Free Instant Fireball (and later frostfire)  seems much more amusing and useful than the channeled spell, yeah.

[Ginaz]

I can confirm that whatever dps problems fury were having are now gone.  I did over 5.5k dps in a HHoR today, whereas before the patch I was only doing around 4k.  My GS is only about 5.2k, with 2 tryanical beheader axes as my weapons.  I was getting 20k+ crits with bloodthrist, raging blow, cleave and execute.

[Evildrider]

There's definitely something wrong with Warrior tanks atm, my guildie was doing almost 8k dps all night long through ICC 10.    

[SurfD]

There's definitely something wrong with Warrior tanks atm, my guildie was doing almost 8k dps all night long through ICC 10.    

Vengeance?

I havent had a chance to tank anything major on my druid yet, but I imagine our numbers could hit something similar with a full vengeance buff running.

Nifty note for druid tanks also, I think that when they did the balance patch, they tweaked Diminishing returns to reflect the level 85 level cap.  This means that, at least for the moment, agility is probably the single best stat a druid tank can stack, after Stam.

- Bears now get AP from Agility.  Infact, they get  the same AP from Agility then they do from Strength now, and most AGI items seem to have More Agi then a similar Ilevel item has strength.
- Agility gives you Dodge, Crit and AP now (strength only gives you AP)
- Agility will often give you MORE dodge then the dodge rating on a similar Ilevel item with dodge rating instead of agi.

I actually replaced my Old Tank Cape (Bonus armor, strength, dodge) with a Dps cape (Agi, crit, haste), and gained in nearly every single stat.  More dodge, more ap, entirely new crit and haste (haste is AWESOME to reforge into mastery btw), at the sacrifice of a bit of armor.

Ilevel 264 agility dps rings are now better tanking rings for a druid then a comparative Ilevel 264 strength dodge ring, with the bonus that you will get a full extra stat (crit, or haste usually) on the Agi ring most times since you get more dodge from the agility then you do from dodge rating on a strength ring (which often only has dodge raitng on it).

[Ingmar]

A tank with vengeance fully stacked up gets 10% of their (unbuffed I believe) HP as attack power. So say you've got a tank with 50,000 unbuffed HP, with a full stack of vengeance that's an extra 5000 attack power. 5000 is... quite a lot, relative to level 80 stats. It shouldn't be as insane at 85 relative to everyone else, in theory.

[Fordel]

Who gives a shit if Tanks do awesome DPS while actually tanking?

[Simond]

Lazy DPS. 

I had a stray throught today - take how confused some people were with the 4.0.1 patch, then extrapolate it to the world changes due in 4.0.3.

[Sjofn]

Who gives a shit if Tanks do awesome DPS while actually tanking?

I like NOT doing awesome DPS as a tank because it's easier to shame dpsers with. "I'M DOING MORE THAN YOU, FIX WHAT YOU'RE DOING."

[angry.bob]

PvP seems to be completely fucked. I've spent most of this weekend being one-shotted by equal level players, and it's not like I have shitty gear. It's not bleeding edge at level 64, but it's the Heirloom chest, shoulders, and staff with the rest filled out with the old Grand Marshal stuff.

[Fordel]

PvP is utterly fucked and likely will be till we actually hit 85 again.

Probably for some time after that too.




You either EXPLODE, or you NEVER DIE EVER.

[Paelos]

Yeah it's off the charts stupid right now. I went from 45k health to dead in matter of 7s.

[Fordel]

Because of how wonky resilience is atm, you can get like 50-75% DR against players.

[SurfD]

A tank with vengeance fully stacked up gets 10% of their (unbuffed I believe) HP as attack power. So say you've got a tank with 50,000 unbuffed HP, with a full stack of vengeance that's an extra 5000 attack power. 5000 is... quite a lot, relative to level 80 stats. It shouldn't be as insane at 85 relative to everyone else, in theory.

Vengeance is actually based on Current Total Max Health.  Which means that it is actually pretty rediculous in ICC, since a bear tank will likely get around 8k ap from a max vengeance stack.

[Ivanneth]

PvP is utterly fucked and likely will be till we actually hit 85 again.

Probably for some time after that too.




You either EXPLODE, or you NEVER DIE EVER.

My disc priest with mostly furious (232) gear is nearly immortal in the BG's now.

Also it's nice that I finally have a weapon, wand and offhand frill that are itemized for pvp. I never understood why they wouldn't make pvp weapons available to those of us who don't enjoy the arena.

[Soulflame]

To force you to arena.

Of course this ignores that you'd have to somehow get up in the top 30% or higher to obtain a weapon, and that gets more difficult if you don't have a weapon...