Websites putting a fuckton of WOTLK articles up.

[Merusk]

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.

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.

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.

[Chimpy]

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 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.

[Fordel]

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


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

[Dren]

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?

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.

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.

[Merusk]

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.)

[Ratman_tf]

Has anyone mentioned the leaked alpha yet?

http://wotlk.wikidot.com/start

[Dren]

Has anyone mentioned the leaked alpha yet?

http://wotlk.wikidot.com/start

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

[Dren]

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.)

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.

[Morfiend]

I didnt see this linked yet.

http://wotlk.wikidot.com/start

[Rasix]

I didnt see this linked yet.

http://wotlk.wikidot.com/start

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

[Paelos]

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.

[Dren]

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."

[Merusk]

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

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.

[stray]

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. 

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).

[Fabricated]

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.

Heh, don't tell the raid alliance that.

[Paelos]

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.

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.

[Gobbeldygook]

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.

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< of changes made in the Alpha; does not include new abilities.

[Merusk]

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%.

 

[WindupAtheist]

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.

[Dren]

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

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.

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!

[Merusk]

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.

[Dren]

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.

[Paelos]

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, 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?

[kaid]

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.

[Gobbeldygook]

The shitty drop rates of off spec items

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Putting the best tanking shields on the last bosses

Why is this a bad thing?

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?

I still watch people die in the fucking fire every week, whatever form the fire might take.  It's clear they still need practice.
---

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.

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.

[Paelos]

The shitty drop rates of off spec items

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Putting the best tanking shields on the last bosses

Why is this a bad thing?

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?

I still watch people die in the fucking fire every week, whatever form the fire might take.  It's clear they still need practice.
---

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.

[Gobbeldygook]

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.

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.

The fire thing sucks. It's a copout mechanic ... Find something else to annoy us with; that one is all played out, imo.

How else would you propose making healers pay attention?

[Paelos]

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?

[lamaros]

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.

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.

[Gobbeldygook]

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?

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.
---

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.

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[lamaros]

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.

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.

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[lamaros]

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.

[Fordel]

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.