f13.net

Gamespy (http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/world-of-warcraft-wrath-of-the-lich-king/872185p1.html)
IGN (also have various interviews and videos on the main page as well) (http://pc.ign.com/articles/872/872841p1.html)
1Up's writeup (http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3167742&p=1)

Probably more to follow.  Haven't read through anything yet, but will probably start with gamespy's two page writeup of the Death Knight.


Edit:  Adding various quotes that I find interesting as I go through the articles:


This sounds really nice for people who are more interested in just seeing the content rather than worrying about getting the top tier of loot.


A few snippets taken from the Death Knight stuff, but there's too much to just copy and paste all of it here:

Interesting spin there on the tanking.  Reading between the lines we can expect to see mobs that will nearly insta-gib the 3 other tanks.  That'll be amusing.

I like that they got rid of the "hit 80 then do a quest" idea.  That just sounded like another stupid cock block, imo.

Speaking of Cock Blocks, I wonder if doing a 10-man version will also lock you out of the 25-man raid.  If it's not the same gear, I wouldn't see the reason to do it, but hey you never know.

Holy crap! (http://pc.ign.com/articles/872/872791p1.html)



That's a huge, and awesome change if it is exactly what I think it is.  It's yet another step off the 'raids are for catasses' platform.

This under the administration of Tigole?  AKA former EQ super catass raider?  Zuh?

Curse Gaming have got a preview (http://www.curse.com/articles/details/9634/) and an interview (http://www.curse.com/articles/details/9636/) as well.
Death knight sounds fun (says the ex-shadowknight player), as does the mounted combat and the Temple of Veeshan Wyrmrest Temple.

Edit: http://www.mmo-champion.com/ appear to be compiling the various bits of WotLK data.

Kaplan IS Tigole, guy.

I think it's called finishing school, having a kid and getting a job. I know he gets a bum rap but every interview I've seen in his Blizzard stint he's always struck me as a reasoned, funny, engaging guy... don't always agree with him but certainly he's not struck me as the raid or die firebrand he gets accused of being.

I know.  Thus the comment.   :uhrr:

I wonder if the hero class idea is how they're going to implement the /level command - drill thru one character to 70 (80) and you'll be able to open up hero classes if you want an alt and don't want to level up again.

Let's say they next open up a healer type and then a magic user type - all allowed on one account/realm. Then you'd just have to "grind" thru to 80 once and still get "useful" toons with not a f*ckton of effort (assuming 55-80 is more tolerable than 1-80.) Plus there'd be a lot of people doing the same so you'd be more likely to find people to do (let's say) the HF instances while you're levelling your "hero" toon.

Deathknights sound pretty hectic, I wonder what their weaknesses will be.

I thought you meant "Tigole allowed this?" not "I can't believe Tigole just said that!"

Nice, a 10-man version of everything? That's one way to handle it I guess.

Hopefully the 10-man loot isn't too gimpy in comparison. It'd suck to have to go back and do the 25-man version of an instance you've clobbered in 10-man form in order to be properly geared for walking into the next 25-man.

Efficient use of code and artwork, nicely done.

So, how much longer do I have to wait?

They wouldn't even give a hint of an answer beyond "Blizzard will always keep to it's "When it's finished" way of doing business. It's worked out well for us this far."

So, 2009.  You'll have plenty of time to get in some AoC and WAR before LK becomes an issue.

Yeah I really like everything I'm seeing, I'm finding myself quite excited for the expansion.

Holy Shit @:

• All raids having 10 and 25 man versions. That's a lot of work, and it lets the smaller guilds see all the shit.
• Blizz actually did what I wanted with heroics. They get their own loot tables even for the level-cap 5-mans (in BC level 70 5-mans still drop their regular blues on heroic), and may even get their own Tier of loot.
• Getting rid of the idea you need to get to 80 and do a quest chain to get a DK. Gonna be a lot of retarded DKs running around but at least it won't be a race to get one.
• Mwahahah, mounts with sidecars? I wonder what happens when you dismount in midair with someone riding with you?
• Mounts/machines inside instances. :drill:

Either I will be already bored with WAR and ready to come back, or WAR will have been so awesome that I can't possibly fathom raiding again for fun. Either way, I'm fine with the outcome since this is taking so freaking long.

The sign of the expansion coming soon will be significant nerfing of ZA, Black Temple, The Eye, etc.  Once that happens, the expansion will come about 3 months later.  They'll want  more people to get to experience those places before they become obsolete, basically.

Except they also learned this lesson with ZG blues and crappy epics...  Cleverly solved by changing ZG items from Blue to Purple!  Then again with crappy Karazhan itemization...  I expect them to learn it again for the first time in WOTLK.  I also expect them to get their new Badge Fountain 'wrong' possibly making progression counter-productive and only for the hard-core again.  Actually, that's not a bad idea.  Then the only people progressing would be the "world first" crowd and they'll have time to finish the content before the curve gets there with their higher expectations on finish.

I'd like fewer client hangs, crashes and bluescreens please. 
And (in a related vein) a stop to tweaking the interface APIs just for grins. 

You mean like the easy-mode on Mag and the removal of attunments for MH and BT?  Nah, you are probably right that they'll reduce the 3 week phase 1 of Shahraz where you farm hearts of darkness to make shadow resist gear.

Why would that suck? If you want to do the 25s, just start out doing 25s. The 10 man gear will prepare you to do the next one... with 10.

While I was watching that 10 minute trailer - with fantastic music and beautifully rendered in HD, I wondered about the timing of this information release.  All I could think about were cheeky WoW devs leaning back in their chairs going, "Age of what?  Conan?  I'm da Juggernaut Biiiiitch!"

This is also why WotLK release will be timed to roughly coincide with WAR's launch.  :drill:

Na, Mythic did that to themselves.

All those warlock tanks will be out of a jorb  :grin:

I want to see Arthas drop a note that says:

"Congratulations! You've beaten World of Warcraft. Now go outside and play..."

Nope. Maelstrom/South Seas/etc next, then Pandaria(Pandaran PCs)/Xoroth(Worgen PCs)/Emerald Dream/Elementals Planes, then Argus/Against the Burning Legion.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=1547.0

 :drill:

I actually like the Nesingwary quests.  The key to doing them is pick them up as soon as you enter the zone, and just kill shit as you wander to the next quest objective.  If you try and grind them all at one time you'll go insane.

In the Gamespy interview Brack was quoted as saying "We have zero raid bosses designed."

See ya in 2009.

The key there might be 'zero bosses.'  As in not zero zones, items, quests, and etc..  But after TBC's atrocious early endgame (SSC), I'll wait.

Dunno about Tigole, but I played SWG PvP and WoW beta in a guild run by former senior members of Tigole's EQ guild. They didn't take themselves too seriously - funniest guildchat ever - and they were great, versatile players. The only downside was that once we'd followed one big idea, they would come up with an even better one, usually at odds with what we'd just done (e.g. build a SWG player city with awesome PvP layout, then dismantle it and build a better one on another planet - or reach level 35 on WoW's beta PvE server, then all restart on the PvP server). It was how they played.

Yep.

Tigole and Furor weren't ever the Hardcore boys yelling "WORK FOR IT OR SUCK IT UP AND BE SHITTY, BISHES!"   (Unlike some folks in WoW.)  They just had the most fucking time and dedicated wayyy too much of their lives to EQ.  They were 'uber' because they lived the game, as sad as that is.   In fact, they were some of the first to bitch about the asinine flagging requirements for things like Plane of Time and Ssra Temple/ <kunark endgame instance whose name escapes me.>  Combine that with having to "back-flag" as you got new members and the ever-increasing raid size (up to 72 people) that then dropped down to.. I think 35-40 in GoD. 

That's where they got mouthy with their "fix this or we're fucking quitting, asshats" and folks only saw them as bitchy elitists, never really understanding the nature of the actual bitching.  The bitching was, "Hey, we had to recruit-up to 200+ members so we could constantly field 72 people for your stupid ass raid design, and now you tell us we have to sit-out nearly half our raid force in the new expansion.  Way to think things through, you idiots."

Of course, that just made it all the more ironic when the hardcore flagging requirements for Black Temple/ Mt Hjyal were announced.  Of course, it did keep the catasses entertained until they dropped the reqs for us normal folks.  (At which point the new-gen "hardcore" bitched like children about how their game time had lost all "meaning."  :uhrr:)

That's all Furor and Fires of Heaven. I don't remember Tigole or his guild Legacy of Steel doing that. LoS was well-known because it achieved some firsts and was definitely an uberguild, but it wasn't quite up there with Fires of Heaven and Afterlife (led by Thott, of Thottbot fame), which also had a hissy fit over content.

The names "Tigole and Furor" only started being used near each other when Blizzard hired both of them (Tigole as a key member of the WoW team, Furor in a lesser quest design role).

The concept of multiple size tunings of zones is interesting, but I wonder how they will tune Naxx down to 10 man scale?

It is already going to be an entirely different mechanical zone as 25 man (hello 4 horsemen).

Reader comments on IGN are so insightful.

I image that it may well be the case!

No, not really.

We went back to naxx for kicks (and to finish off a guidie's Atiesh) a while back and pretty much steamrolled the place with about 28 level 70 people, 4 horsemen included.  I dont imagine it would take that much effort to re tune the place to account for 15 less persons.

10 person Naxx on the other hand, that would be pretty wierd.  I imagine the 4 horsemen will come at you in phases or something (2 at a time on a timer maybe?)

Jesus Christ, finally I can see all of the content I pay for.  No keys? No attunement?  Be still my casual-gamer heart!  10 man raids for the win.  I am guardedly optimistic.

With everyone being able to make a free level 55 tank/DPS class on any server they like, I imagine healers will be at more of a premium than ever.  /random

At level 70, healers aren't really that rare [for pug instances that is]... but there IS a lack of tanks, the influx of eleventy billion gnome death knights [kek] will hopefully help with that.

I'm sticking with my resto shaman though, it's pure :heart: for instance and pvp healing (not that good in arenas, but eh).


-- Z.

Doing a lvl 60 tuned zone (which was tuned for no hot stacking, no one but tanks breaking 10k health even when fully buffed/geared for stam out) with 25 level 70s is entirely different than doing a zone that is tuned to the max level.

Not to say it won't be doable, but a lot of things will have to be mechanically changed to make them challenging at 80.

I could see them being able to do it as 25 man, but several of the fights would have to have their entire concept (and why people liked the fights or hated them depending on outlook) changed to fit into a 10 man model. Noth, Gothik, Instructor, 4h, Faerlina all required a lot of off tanking/splitting of the raid.

Whether any of those death knights actually tank depends on two factors:

A. Do they have CC?  If they have a sheep, sap, freeze trap, etc quality CC, they'll mostly go DPS and never bother to tank since they can get groups fine as CC.

B. Is their tank tree as versatile as the Feral tree?  That is, can they DPS just by switching their gear set and runes?  If yes, many will be available for tanking.

---

They could preserve the challenge of four horsemen by making the 10-man version a 3 tank fight.  Most groups would get through it by bringing two 'real' tanks, plus a DPSer that can throw on their tank set (e.g. fury warrior).

Legacy of Steel had a bunch of Blizzard people in it, including Rob Pardo iirc. Hence why they got "EQ but better".

If i'm not mistaken, with the upcoming expansion, LOTRO will have 3, 5, and 24 man raids/instances, ETC...

>Eurogamer< (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=140861) has a new interview up.  There's some good info in there, but all of it's meaningless.  No, the reason I linked this article is that it contains the greatest riposte by an interview subject.  Ever.

Eurogamer: Which aspect of the game is going to be moved furthest forward by Lich King?
J. Allen Brack: [Mimes pumping shotgun] Chk-chk, loaded question.

It's be more accurate if the interviewer had said "greatest hits compilation of Velious"  :grin:

Now, I know there's a general opinion that BC got better quests than the original, but I never got that feeling during the 7 levels of BC I played. They were, from an advancement perspective, smoother, but the actual execution was horribly bland. They felt very artificial in their difficulty/geographical distribution. They did nothing for me as an explory type, while the original ones made me travel and look around way more. But I'm repeating myself. I just hope WotLK is better in this regard.

Actually that was an awesome interview, especially Tigole saying exactly what I thought about Burning Crusade (he also talks a bit about his EQ1 days):

Jeff Kaplan: But I think Burning Crusade was way too hardcore out of the gate, at the lower raiding tiers. Even the entry-level 25-person raid, Magtheridon, was way too difficult. I'd like to have the 10 and 25 both start off very accessible and understandable, so that players of any skill level who had hit max level would be able to have success, and then progress from there.

Eurogamer: So it becomes more about player skill than social organisation, in terms of moving through the game.

Jeff Kaplan: Later on, much later on. That's the thing - we didn't have any curve in Burning Crusade. We just had: "OK, welcome to level 70, here's a brick wall. Maybe you can climb it." Some players did and some players didn't. I'd rather have players start experiencing raiding and then decide for themselves if they want to keep progressing through it.

What's really funny is that in the rant the guild leader of Death and Taxes posted on his guild breaking up basically complained about all of BC being too easy despite also complaining about 'cockblocks' and of course the cursed "casualization" of the game. He said that Sunwell was great and a good replacement for Naxx (another ridiculous wankfest for people who are way too hardcore for a videogame) but the rest wasn't any good.

Did you play Horde or Alliance? I've always gotten the impression the Horde quests were far more interesting the the Alliance ones. You can still hear Thrall shouting in Nagrand every other day :)


This is one thing I am surprised by though, that Blizz hasn't put in a 'badge' system, like CoH or LoTRO. People love them some badges, will go to RIDICULOUS lengths to unlock them. Seems like a sure fire way to enthrall another chunk of players to WoW.

Quests that exploreres enjoy just push everyone else over to the IGE database sites, so I'm thinking you won't see too many "Go look for random_npc_234...somewhere north of here" in WotLK either.

I did play Alliance, I don't know if that is what's at fault. Perhaps. :)

By badge system, you mean things like titles/customisation fluff? I recall seeing threads on the WoW boards around LotRO's release where the OP suggested having titles for WoW too, but from the replies it seemed like the consensus was "meh, pointless".

I think WoW's playerbase, content-starved as they are, see things like that as something very mutually exclusive. You get a badge system, which means you can't get that new five-man instance - and so on. Doing both isn't an option, it's something Blizzard themselves have convinced their players of.

A sub-set of CoX badges are of the "explorer" type.  You need to find plaques or little stones in the game, clicking on the plaque or moving over the stone credits you for having found that plaque/stone.  The stones trigger immediately, the plaques require you to see all of a set before you get full credit for the badge.

If you collect a whole set of badges, you can get some minor permanent enhancements.

.... and then it stops becoming a "subset of the explorer type".  :grin:

I'm going to have to go look these up so I can race my way to the enhancements!

Touché. :awesome_for_real:

Were the enhancements added later? I don't remember getting enhancements for badges when I played, back when the badges were first added. 

I remember the archmage badge from shortly after they implemented badges (probably release immediately after they first appeared) - but my old brain should be considered suspect.

Here's a site that lists them - Batches, we need da stinkin batches! (http://www.fenrislair.com/coh/coh_bdgaccola.htm)

Actually, they're "accolade powers".

Blueside (http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/CoH_Accolade_Powers) and Redside (http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/CoV_Accolade_Powers).

Some of them are small boosts to your health and endurance total, others are every-30-minutes activatable stuff: a freeze ray, a Wall Mode power (high resistance and defense, no recharge or accuracy), a Berserker Mode power (high recovery, recharge, and accuracy, low defense), and a power boost (better buffs, more duration on status effects). Also a portable crafting station linked to the crafting badges.

And acolade powers are truly not that useful to anyone. Grind2minmax matters when a game -has- an endgame.  :grin:

I'm not keen on the suggested "no 10-man raids till a 25 man group has done it" solution. Considering the people I will likely play it with it means I'd be waiting on someone else because I'm allowed to progress.

Hopefully they can come up with a better way.

The stuff about Heroics being completely itemised and even having new areas/bosses etc not included in the normal modes sounds good to me too. The most stuff like Shatt Halls, 45min Strath, BRD events, etc the more genuine fun content there will be in the game.

leet alpha infoz (http://wotlk.wikidot.com/).
New title theme is  :awesome_for_real:, talents & spells are also  :awesome_for_real: (and probably fake  :ye_gods:).

New talent/spells are legit, although obviously this is alpha and subject to change etc.  The alpha client was briefly downloadable by the public, so now people are datamining it.

I like how step 1 of the alpha is 'overpower the fuck out of warlocks in pvp'.

The big ugly wood-and-steel weapons fill me with joy after all that fucking stupid pink crystal TBC shit.

Ugh, it was like purple threw up everywhere in that expansion.

More talent info: HERE (http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/talentlist.php).
Deathknight looks more and more :drill: - corpse explosion? Yes please.

Deathknight is looking more and more like a class that thrives on mass destruction.  My guess is that they will really shine in fights that involve high numbers of mobs.  I'm not sure how their agro management will be handled though.  With all that AOE DD and DOTs, corpse explosions, bust cold damage, etc. how are they not going to have every mob in a given area on them throughout a battle?

I know none of this will be known until they launch some testing, but it looks like groups will consist of one Deathknight and the rest are healers and cc.....for the Deathknight.

The reality will be, of course, everyone will be a Deathknight.

They're supposed to, they're tanks.  Their DPS survivability will be much like Fury warriors for PVE.. back off or be a stain on the floor because no sane healer will waste mana on you.

Hey look! Hunters are not listed at all again.

Maybe they will actually delete the class and give me a refund this time like I was hoping for last time.

Could be worse...the one Paladin talent listed is basically "Throw yourself on a grenade"

I hope they do, it would instantly balance the Alliance/Horde PvE population ratios  :grin:



The abilities stink of fake to me, if only for this line:

Titan's Grip - Allows you to equip two-handed axes, maces and swords in one hand, but you attack 28/26/24/22/20% slower then normal (fury)


I could swear they already used this fake patch note!

It was (apparently) part of the original early beta.  It keeps coming back, like Bloodlust did for shaman and invisibility for mages until it was finally in game.


They're still thinking up new mechanics changes that they won't relay to the item teams, so that itemization for hunters will be fucked-up for the first 6 months, as is usual.

Honestly, at this point I just expect stupid shit.  Perhaps scorpions in a trap like from the South Park episode.  Or "pet feign death".. in the survival line.   Fire arrow?  Ice Arrow? Improve stings so they scale like caster dots?  Fuck no we can't do that shit... that'd mean someone was paying attention and wanted hunters to be more than a "Meh, I guess we've got room" class.

It was the "word on the street" 41pt Arms talent for a good 3 months between when Naxx was released and when closed Beta launched for TBC.

I doubt the talents are real, but man they would make my Moonkin awesome  :drill:


I would never have mana again mind you, but PEW PEW PEW!

I think I'm making the mistake of combining all of these powers into one build.  I'm sure there will be 3 trees that are like Warriors, so you pick your purpose, Magic Resistant Tank, Tank/DPS, or AE Melee DPS.  I can just imagine that AE Melee DPS build could get out of control fast though.  Your prediction sounds reasonable.

"Umm, if you keep pumping out that disease on everything, I MIGHT res you after the fight.  Enjoy the repairs!!"

I do have to admit that some of those abilities sound perfect for PvP.  Agro management be damned there.

They put a little more in-depth info up on the wotlk site with a link on the patcher.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/features/deathknight/gameplay.xml

The talent trees are, DPS-focus, Tanking focus, "PVP" focus.  Perhaps they'll have an aggro-dump, but if so I can see warriors pitching a hell of a fit.  Not to mention, it wouldn't solve the lack-of-tanks problem.  DPS is sexy.. tanking isn't.. (unless you're a Pally.)

Has anyone mentioned the leaked alpha yet?

http://wotlk.wikidot.com/start

About 12 posts back.  That's what we are discussing.

That makes sense. 

Yeah, warriors will start to feel some envy here.  Although, it looks like they are adding some things I thought would make a Prot War valid in PvP and enchance PvE.  I see some abilities there to physically intercept damage for other characters in your group.  That might help with the issue of not being able to use all those fancy agro tools outside of PvE.   I can see a Prot War with these abilities being able to hold a node for a very long time (if they are good.)

In PvE, it makes Warriors better at protecting while tanking.  They will handle emergencies better than an SK.  Plus, I'm still thinking the SK's weakness will be lack of agro management.  Sure they'll be able to tank and have much higher DPS at the same time, but at a cost to themselves and the group.

It will be interesting to see how this works out.

P.S. Pally tanking isn't very sexy.

I didnt see this linked yet.

http://wotlk.wikidot.com/start

I'm going to punch you.  At least put a  :awesome_for_real: in there, jerk.

If I play much in the expansion, I fully expect to drop my Warrior tank and pick this up. I've given up MTing and OTing as a warrior sucks. I'd love to try something new without having to roll from 0. DK tanking would be pretty interesting.

Two things I didn't catch before now:

- You can only have one DK per server per account.  What fer?  Would be nice to have one specced and geared for PvP and another for something else.  Makes me want alternative ways to respec rather than 50 g per.

- DK's can raise players to be ghouls.  The player will play as a ghoul.  WFT?  How'ed I miss that?  Isn't that pretty major in terms of "something new?"  Instead of being able to save people from dieing you can just let them die and then raise them up as a ghoul?  Ideally that sounds quite awesome.  I'm anxious to see just how that pans out.  Even if it sucks and nobody uses it, it would be good for some laughs regardless.  Please to be making the artwork appropriate.  I'd love to see people just as they are normally...just a bit "different."

"Hey numbnuts, I can see where that last fireball burned a hole right through your midsection."
"Shut up and rez me asshole.  The fight is over."

Then you're not doing it right.  Pick-up more mobs.   There's a bigger thrill holding onto 8+ mobs while your group beats them down than there is doing the actual beat-down.  At least for me.  But then I'm crazy and like to pull the first floor of Ramparts in about 2-3 pulls.

Pally tanking is awesome (I don't play one, but my neighborhood catass does). I've played Druids and Warriors, but the typical tanking game is just too boring at this point. I used to purposely not try to be conservative, and get more aggro than I could handle or taunt just to make it more interesting. In retrospect, I would have been better off making a Prot Pally. Didn't realize that there was an entire class built around that kind of fucked up, chaotic gameplay.  :awesome_for_real:

The coolest setup I've seen is a Pally and at least two healers in the group (one main, one off). Coupled with the paladins own healing abilties, you can pull twice as many mobs as Merusk mentioned above (well, if you're lucky).

Heh, don't tell the raid alliance that.

Meh, they know I'm not pleased with the class. It used to be the preferred tank, but TBC expanded our defenses without really doing anything about rage generation. The further you get, the less likely you'll be effective tanking at the lower levels. Compare that to a druid, where they rule at all levels regardless of gear, or a pally that can steamroll 5-10 man content without batting an eyelash.

Reposting what I posted elsewhere.

---

The changes they made to the prot tree are universally good, addressing every single complaint we had and then some.

-We wont be rage starved when tanking content we overgear thanks to stalwart defender giving +2 rage every time we dodge/parry.
-Shield bash and improved revenge now have a place in a real, big-boy tank build - coincidentally, taking up 5 points that can be cannibalized from Cruelty. This gives us more random pvp viability and more general awesomeness.
-Rend might be worthwhile, giving us a dot that we can use for...something.
-We now have a solid aoe threat builder/oh-shit trash button/pvp toy/ that isn't just boring like consecrate.
-Conc blow deals damage now and it scales!? Hurray!
-Devastates and shield slams now have a chance to reset the cooldown on shield slam, meaning we have both a more dynamic rotation than ye olde shield slam/revenge/devastatex2/lather/rinse/repeat.

If this build went live tomorrow, prot warriors would be forming conga lines in the streets and everyone would be joining in. My only concern is that they're going to start polluting our tank gear with strength, which would be a massive step backwards unless they redid the formula for shield block value.


Edit: >A fairly complete list< (http://elitistjerks.com/753723-post2890.html) of changes made in the Alpha; does not include new abilities.

Well, some of those changes are just pure suck.

Mages: Polymorph now has a percentage of base mana cost instead of fixed cost.
Warlocks: Demon Skin/Armor now increase healing on the Warlock by 20% instead of giving health regeneration.
Hunters: Steady Shot's bonus damage slightly reduced. Scaling unchanged.
Priests: Vampiric Touch now gives mana to your party members for 2% of your shadow damage dealt, down from 5%.

 :awesome_for_real:

So everyone on the WoW forums refers to a dev named Kalgan as the head honcho when it comes to class design.  Turns out Kalgan is the developer formerly know as Evocare from UO.  Go figure.  The WoW devs don't whore it up on forums, so to be honest I barely know who any of them are.

Sure they are sexy for tanking 5-mans.  Otherwise, not so much.  I'm talking about raiding, not 5-mans.  I don't do very many 5-mans anymore.  I'm in a mode of either doing Kara/Gruul's/Mag's or solo'ing.  Tankadin isn't good for my situation.  Could I tank and/or off-tank the raids?  Yes, and we have several that do, but it isn't anymore sexy than our warriors or feral druids.

I guess my main point was that this game doesn't make really any form of tanking sexy.  Thus, the lack of them.  I've often cried for more functionality beside a meatshield and it looks like they will get some of that for warriors.  Huzzah!

I still contend that feral druids have the advantage overall here.  They are more than competent as tanks/off-tanks and can shift into more than competent melee/dps whenever they want...shift and you are a backup healer!  I have a lvl 70 feral druid now.  Yeah, the difference is significant.  The problem?  All the gear for the different sets I use now.

I've turned my healdin into a healdin/shockadin hybrid that works very well.  I can even off-tank well in that configuration if necessary.  Now I can main heal, off-tank, and provide misc. DPS as necessary.  I actually DPS'ed a heroic the other night quite successfully (rare occurrence.)  Yes, I have 4 gear sets for healing, shocking, tanking, and PvP.  Hooray for Outfitter!

Kara/ Gruul/ Mag suck for pally tanks, I'll agree.  The fights are designed around HP++ with the hateful strikes and magic-immune mobs.  Then they also give shitty pally tank gear, to boot.  Then you hit SSC, The Eye, Hyjal and BT.. guess, what you need 1-2 good, well-geared pally tanks for those instances.

 So you sigh, go equip them with shitty gear, or turn one of your healers (or in my case an alt) into a pally tank with the drops (and now badge gear, since Blizz realized "whoops.. itemization for this spec sucks.. guess we should fix that or change the raid encounters.)

The poor coordination of of raid mechanics, loot dropped and class/ talent revisions in BC really irritates the shit out of me.

Yes, having been running multiple alts through the Kara/Gruul/Mags progression has shown me that the lewt tables are all kinds of messed up.  Every healer in our guild (including my two) are ready for ZA or more, but everyone else isn't.  Even the people with healer off-spec are extremely well geared now.  Huge disparity.

Yes, overall were I to rate the expansion, I'd give it a 4/10.

Some things, like heroic dungeons, daily quests, badges of justice, and tokens for loot. Those were all good ideas.

The shitty ideas were things like the raid designs that revolve around killing ridiculous amounts of trash
The shitty drop rates of off spec items
Putting the best tanking shields on the last bosses
Fucking random targetting bullshit spells and abilities (Oh hey look, The Prince dropped all the infernals on our tank, or oh hey look, Teron picked all our healers for ghost duty)
Attunements. God I hate attunements.
Also, glowing shit on the ground. My god we get it at this point. Does every other boss have to drop massive pools of firey death all over the place that don't despawn for 2 minutes?

Gearing up any tank at the moment is a pain in the ass. Doing pve or pvp gears out your healers up the ying yang. Hell just about anybody who can potentially heal has a full set of purple healing gear by now in my tiny family guild. Our dps'ers are behind them but doing well due to arena stuff as well as what they are getting in khara.

Our tanks not so much my warrior is about as fully decked out as I am going to get short of 25 man raids but our off tanks have had horrible luck. Our druids are SOL they are not getting jack from khara that helps tanking and unfortunatly our druid does not care for pvp  much as a druid so no pvp gear there. Our paladin off tank is starting to get geared up but its a pain we have done like 5 or 6 khara runs and he has gotten two armor drops that are even somewhat decent for paladin tanking.

The biggest problem for tanks now is to gear up to tank you have to do a ton of dungeons nobody wants to do non heroics any more so they are left with heroics and khara. Nobody wants an undergeared tank so to get the gear they need they pretty much have to have that gear already or respect healer and go in as that and hover tanking gear.

Badge gear helps but you can't get into the heroics to get the badges if you don't have good enough gear to be there in the first place its just a horrible catch 22. For dps'ers they can get 5 pieces of the new pvp gimp blues which gear them up fine for basic heroic runs but tanks have nothing comparable.

I have no idea what you're talking about.
Why is this a bad thing?
I still watch people die in the fucking fire every week, whatever form the fire might take.  It's clear they still need practice.
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You can get in full level 70 blues or better just from quests, crafted gear, and rep rewards.  That's enough to blackmail your guildies into letting you tank an easy heroic for them.  Alternatively, hoover epics in kara; None of the stuff that you want an off-tank for in kara really tests your gear or TPS.  Gearing a tank is, admittedly, harder than gearing up any other sort; that's precisely why there are always people yelling LF1M TANK 4 <X>.

In addition, your druid needs to respec to resto or start PVPing.  Feral druids need to wear pvp gear and some of it remains best-in-slot to tier 6; there's no way around it.  The only thing they really, really want from kara are accessories (e.g. cloaks, rings, etc) and 2t4.

I should have said drops at all, not the rates. A lot of offspecs don't have diddly shit for itemization in raids outside of tokens, so they have to pvp to pve. That's retarded. It's less of an issue as they got towards T6 stuff because I think they finally realized it sucked, but the T4-T5 stuff had some gaping holes. The badges were the main fix/work-around for that, and in many cases it's working better.

The shields on last bosses thing is annoying because the drop rates are usually the lowest on the boss, and it's at the very end of your kill cycle. That means you are getting lower drop rates on awesome items and you are going to get less chances at it. Also, you're fighting your way through an entire dungeon with a shield that's a tier behind. Every other class will get nice shields off earlier bosses, but not the tanks. I'm fine with the best armor pieces on last bosses, but the shield is essentially the warrior's best tool. It's an annoyance.

The fire thing sucks. It's a copout mechanic. "We couldn't think of anything better, so we're going to constantly molest you with mystical pools of doom to keep you running around all the time like a bunch of jackasses." I don't care if people still die to it, it's just been overdone. Find something else to annoy us with; that one is all played out, imo.

That's exactly why they get one and you don't.  Non-tank shields are just crap that doesn't contribute much to performance.  It's the same reason all of the best pure DPS weapons are always on the last, hardest boss: It's the biggest upgrade for a DPSer, especially a physical damage DPSer.

How else would you propose making healers pay attention?

Who says we need to make healer's lives more difficult? It's hard enough to find them due to the job sucking, we want to make it suck more?

TBC for me is probably about a 5/10 and is very well summed up by "good ideas, but:".

Most of the zones in outland look like ass. I have no desire to quest there and will rush through it on my DK ASAP.

Most of the 5-mans are rubbish. Uninspired, lore-less, rails. Original WoW had SM, Shadowfang, BRD, Scholo, Strath. TBC has Kara. That's it. Shattered Halls, CoT and some other instances are OK, but they don't come close to the feeling of the really good original ones.

Heroics were a good idea but sucked because: 1) The original instances sucked. 2) They were not created/itemised/designed from the ground up but were put together ad-hoc. However the potential is there.

Gruul and Mag were good quick raids, but were way over-tuned. They should have been a higher level (Killing Gruul pre-nerf was still an amazing rush) or easy from the start. Of course that wasn't possible because the other raids weren't ready yet.

For TBC to be significantly better they need to fix some of these things:

Winged instances are fine, just don't make them all rails.
Tie-in everything much better to lore/quests/etc. This should be much easier due to the nature of this expansion, plus they've menetioned their intentino to do this.
Have more raids stuff ready before release. This should be helped by Naxx being an intro raid.
Heorics are going to be itemised individualy, and even include new bosses and areas. Ideas like those used in Shatt Halls heroic, Baron runs and the like could all be used in them. Making them challenging, epic feeling, and rewarding.
The zones will have snow and shit and be set on earth. No retarded outland "omg colours!!!!" shit just for the sake of it. Just good solid design.

No, healers lives sucked more pre-bc precisely because there was so much less going on.  You generally had about a half-dozen priests, some paladins or shamans, and a druid or two, all just standing around spamming max rank heals on the tank.  It was INCREDIBLY, mind-numbingly boring.  The whole reason you have fire on the floor, mag cubes, and all the other random bullshit damage to the raid is so healers have stuff to do besides spam heals on the tank.
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Scholo, strat, etc were fun.  I kind've enjoyed stumbling about sunken temple for 3 hours with some friends.  The problem is that it was -3 hours-.  Blizzard is aiming directly at the casual masses that don't want to be confined to their seat for 3 hours.  The reason every BC instance is like SM is that SM was so massively popular thanks to only taking an hour for a group of PUGs to clear the place, vs a solid 2 hours for...pretty much any other instance.  There's a very good chance instances will be -even shorter- in WOTLK.  You should view Magister's Terrace as a preview of what every instance, heroic and non-heroic, will be like in WOTLK.

I'd like to see an even bigger push towards armor being totally based on tokens that are open-ended (ie-non-classed), and having the weapons, necks, cloaks, trinkets, and offhands be the ancillary loot on bosses. Also, make one really good raid instance for a tier. It made sense when you went from MC to BWL to Naxx and you advanced teirs. This bouncing around between two places just makes things all that more complicated and unfocused. You can pretty much pick one instance from each tier that wasn't that well put together. There wasn't any need for 2 Lairs at T4, SSC was imo horrid, and Black Temple is fun but has entirely too much shit in it.

I think if the devs focused more on well-balanced and well stocked quality of the instances with solid history and lore instead of a large quantity at the tiers, the middle raiders would be better off. The hardcore would run out of shit to do, but they always do.

Yeah, but SM was fun. It was focused and made sense. That's fine with me. I have no problem with things taking 1 hour, as long as the zone still feels like a zone.

When you do Strath you have two 'wings', yet the place feels real.

Ramparts doesn't feel like a place. It feels like a half arsed effort to disguise a hallway.

As people have said in the past. You could take BRD, give it 5 enternaces and make it so once you've fought your way to the next enterance you get a key to unlock it from there. Then you have one big instance that can be done in 5 hours, or 5 1 hour intervals. And yet it still feels like a place.

I havn't done Magister's Terrace as yet (Havn't played for 1 year+, as I've said). I might have a look.

Magister's Terrace isn't fantastic. There's one fight in there that's interesting, and it's the 3rd boss that's a computer controlled PvP group. The rest of the place makes no sense. It's like they stuck a half-dead Kael in there so that all the people who couldn't kill him in the Eye got a shot.

Sounds like a TBC instance, to be sure.

The Terrace is a perfectly fine instance outside of that trash between the 2nd and 3rd boss. Easily the most annoying set of 5 man trash ever created in a TBC dungeon.

Kill this exact same group of mobs, 18 times.  :uhrr:

Well, except for the fact that the 1st and 2nd bosses are essentially carbon copies of fights you've already seen. The first boss is almost identical the last boss of Steamvaults, and the 2nd boss is a smaller version of the Curator.

But yes, the mid-point trash is god awful. I wish they would stop doing that kind of thing.

I hope they give pallies, specifically ret pallies... well... not more power, exactly.  Just a reason for people to take them in groups.  And maybe a more fun combat system in general.

Short a complete revamp of that class, it won't happen dude. People have been asking for combat skills forever -- but seals are what you're about.

Just spec Prot and AoE lots of shit -- and not die.

Hey, ret pallies are great when they get some good equipment. It's just that 90% of the relevant blues for them drop in heroics, which is retarded.

Ret pallies have a very good reason to be taken along in large groups.  3% crit for everyone in the raid plus whatever other judgements you want on a boss is a big deal.  They just lack reason to exsist in a 5-man environment.

  This is the case for all DPS that doesn't have a reliable in-combat CC method, however, which is why you see LFG for Mages/ Locks before Hunter/ Rogue and never for OOMkin/ Ret Pally.   Yes, it's fucked up. No, they're not going to change it.

The major problem with Ret pallies beside what Merusk stated above, which is 100% true (they SUCK in 5 mans) is that they are so hard to gear. Not only do they need very strange stats, they need a a lot of them.

That's what makes the 2nd boss awesome! Believe it or not, there are still BUCKETS of players that have never even seen Curator so having a mini-Curator lets them get a general feel for the fight. It's also different enough that it isn't REALLY Curator, and the fight can be approached multiple ways depending on who/what you have in group that night. I can't hate on the 2nd boss, it's probably one of my favorite 5 man fights.


The first boss is indeed a near carbon copy of the end dude from SV, but it's the entry boss to the zone. "Your group must have X level of ability to pass" boss test. Probably the only issue with him is that if your DPS is good, you can just ignore the crystal tanks entirely and burn him down.  :oh_i_see:


Really, what we need is a 5 man boss that uses FlameWreath  :grin:

The first is not a carbon copy of the 3rd steamvaults boss.  The Steamvaults enrage is a hard enrage; if you don't outgear the content to a fairly dramatic degree, he destroys your tank in seconds.  This boss is superficially similar and whether you want to bother destroying the crystals depends not on your DPS, but your healer.  It's kinda rough for a paladin, but 100% healable.  Priests, druids, and shaman just laugh at the aoe.  So my guild just doesn't bother switching.

The third boss looks like curator, but the actual strat you need to use to complete it is completely different.  Back in the day and for any guild that is progressing naturally through Kara, Curator was a straight DPS check.  Do you have enough DPS to down the flares in time, y/n?  The third boss is a pure control fight.  If you try to be a balla and just DPS through it, he'll eat a group in full tier 6.  Depending on your class spread it can be easy or hard.  It's significantly easier if you bring mages, rogues, or warlocks, but remains doable even if you don't bring any of those.  Take him down 15%, stop, wait for the debuff to drop, keep going.
As long as I have enough CC to control the pull (ie get it down to 4-5 mobs up at once, which frequently means "no cc necessary" if the pulls are small enough or feature squishy casters), it doesn't matter what the rest of the DPS is.  Boomkin have strong synergy with mages and ele sham, they bring cyclone, and are one of 2.5 hybrids that can off-heal if the healer dies or whatever, so I'm happy to bring them along in 5 mans.  The real reason ret pallies have such a bad name is that they really, really need windfury to be relevant.  It's unfortunate, but them's the breaks.  Hopefully they'll get a good weapon imbue in WOTLK.

+STR is a strange stat?

They pretty much need DPS warrior gear.  Not so strange anymore.  Well Horde ret paladins at least, the days of + spell dmg are over.