WOTLK November 13th.

[Mazakiel]

Warlocks and hunters have pets that are always out.  Pretty much everyone else has a 'pet' that's on a timer that makes it an occasional deal, on top of most of them needing to spec deep into a talent tree to obtain.  Add in that usefulness can be somewhat limited, especially in late game encounters, I don't see it as a problem at all.  And I have a warlock. 

[Fordel]

Still.  No one find it odd EVERY caster class now has pets?  Long ago it was only the Lock and Hunter, now everyone has an aggro/pet-pull capability.  I just wonder about balance.  May not be a serious issue, but I saw DAoC partly go down the toilet once they started handing out pets/turrets etc.

You are severely over-estimating the value of these 'pets'. The only temporary pet with any real ability is the mage pet, which they have to spend quite a few talent points on.

at 70, my Treants have roughly 2500 HP, no resistance or avoidance at all. The only thing that makes them remotely useful is the fact most people just freak out when they get tossed out. They are stupidly easy to kill, stupidly easy to confuse and only live 30 seconds.


It's nothing like say, DaoC Animists and their unlimited shroom spawning. (which has been nerfed again and again and again to the point of being reasonable.)


They're just glorified DoTs.

[Simond]

at 70, my Treants have roughly 2500 HP, no resistance or avoidance at all. The only thing that makes them remotely useful is the fact most people just freak out when they get tossed out.

Fire elemental is pretty much the same thing, with the added bonus of the fractionally brighter people having the (bad*) idea to try and kill the totem.


*Why is it a bad idea? Because the elemental totems have about the same number of hps as I do so if you're killing that...you're not killing me. 

[Zetor]

The totem only has 3k hp and zero armor/dodge/resil/etc, it's a lot easier to kill than any non-enhancement shaman. On my resto shaman, if they stay on me, I get a ton of free damage from the fire elemental (edit: resto shamans are notoriously hard to kill in a BG environment unless they have mortal strike on them and at least one attentive counterspeller/dispeller); but any dps class will just 3-shot the totem instead. Sure, that gives me the time to cast.. maybe one lightning bolt. Or I can run away about 20 yards with a snare on me, followed up by a shadowstep/intercept/etc, so I'm back to where I was.

Edit: Some classes aren't getting pets in WOTLK either; paladins, warriors and rogues are petless (with good reason). Though it'd be semi-amusing to have a "summon healbot" spell as a warrior. 


-- Z.

[AcidCat]

November 13 can't come fast enough. I already got my Hunter to 70, which was my main goal before the xpac. But other than grinding out Engineering to get him his nice new gun, I'm just not motivated to seek out any gear that will be vendored in my first few hours in Northrend. And I just don't have the tolerace for repetition to grind out gold for my epic flyer training on any of my characters. So I'm really at a low point for wanting to log in right now. Hopefully the pre-xpac patch will come soon, it will be fun to mess around with the new talents.

[Merusk]

If you've got badges, get the x-bow from the Shattered Sun vendor.  Nothing's going to replace that for a while in Northrend and it lets you sell off other weaps for gold or DE them for mats.   (last quest reward bow I saw was about 84-85dps.. the badge bow is 95)

As far as other armor for hunters, all I've seen is complaints that - like BC - the quest rewards have very little AGI and lots of them have spellpower.  Since I've been playing a pally I figure that's probably the case, but haven't looked closely.  I did notice all plate has been DPS gear, as you'd expect when leveling-up.  Almost no Dodge/ Parry/ Def on any rewards in the first zone.

[Dren]

What are we apologising for now ?

Just Dren, really. For being wrong and wrong in an annoying manner.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14245.msg501627#msg501627

Though technically I guess you could say "damn, I was wrong, you were right" for this"

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13254.msg472968#msg472968

But you shouldn't really. The stuff Dren wrote lower down there was much stupid too. :)

I said I wanted Blizzard to do just what they are doing.  They are releasing the **NON Expansion features** well before release of the expansion.  If it releases tomorrow, that gives us 2 months to chew on it.

I'm not sure what your point is other than not predicting the release date right.  Fine, congratulations or something.

[lamaros]

I said I wanted Blizzard to do just what they are doing.  They are releasing the **NON Expansion features** well before release of the expansion.  If it releases tomorrow, that gives us 2 months to chew on it.

I'm not sure what your point is other than not predicting the release date right.  Fine, congratulations or something.

Ok if it comes out tomorrow I'll cede you're not a complete fuckwit.

[Xeyi]

Given the number of bugged abilities on the PTR, I sincerely doubt the patch will be live as soon as some people think.

Some talents still aren't implemented at all yet.

[Merusk]

Hmm.. hunter changes.  Like Aimed shot's new direction.. it actually starts to address the whole "Hunters have to stand still to do ANY real damage" problem.

Greetings.

I have some good news, and some bad news. First, the bad news. Unfortunately we won't be able to do the Aspect of the Viper change I discussed yesterday (passive instead of requiring you to attack the target) at this time because of technical limitations and its potential to shake up our current balance goals. However, we will evaluate it as an option for a future patch.

Now, the good news.

- Aimed Shot - This shot will now be instant cast, its damage/effect/cooldown will remain unchanged.
- Scatter shot - This will now be an 11-point Survival talent.
- Readiness - This will now be the 21-point Marksmanship talent.
- Trap Mastery - This will now be the 41-point Survival talent. Granted, not very sexy for a 41-pointer but we'll do some changes there in a future patch (after WOLK ships).
- Surefooted is swapping places with T.N.T. (so Surefooted is now in tier 2)

These changes will be live in an upcoming beta build.

Hee hee hee.  *snort* tee hee hee.

- Trap Mastery - This will now be the 41-point Survival talent. Granted, not very sexy for a 41-pointer but we'll do some changes there in a future patch (after WOLK ships).

I can't stop laughing.