WotLK spoilerfication

[RUiN 427]

Spoil away you spoiling websites you... I for one couldn't be happier with the way the deathknight is shapping up. Everything about it from the looks, the level the gear the talents the spells the lore... i love it. As for all the other stuff, i have no problem looking, watching and listening to ALL of it. Maybe if i spoil it for myself enough i will have no desire to continue playing WOW and i can get back to living life as a normal human being.

I won't need a boat to get to northrend, i'll be able to pole vault across the sea on my 10 mile long boner for WotLK

[Paelos]

That's quite a boner.

And yes, I'm pleased that the Deathknight may be the tank of the future for a lot of encounters in the coming expansion, as well as the lore and the cool talents. I'm contemplating just rolling up the DK as fast as possible to get in on the new stuff.

[Nebu]

I'm contemplating just rolling up the DK as fast as possible to get in on the new stuff.

You and 10 million other people.

[Paelos]

I'm contemplating just rolling up the DK as fast as possible to get in on the new stuff.

You and 10 million other people.

Yes, but 9 million will play it to 60 and get bored with the Outlands grind again.

[Simond]

Prerequisite for unlocking a DK should be "You levelled a shadowknight past 50 in EQ". 

[RUiN 427]

I'm contemplating just rolling up the DK as fast as possible to get in on the new stuff.

You and 10 million other people.

this was part of their reason for starting them at 55... that way people have to make a choice about starting new, or going to northrend with their 70... and even in northrend you have 2 starting zones to choose from. Pretty smart if you ask me.

there's no doubt that some people will even power level the thing to 70

but as a character class, i really really like the idea of a casting warrior type that has a more dark demeaner, it really hits a chord with me

[Nebu]

I think my point is that the class will get overplayed and you'll find few being accepted into groups, etc.  Since 90% of the game occurs after level 70, this would be a concern to me. 

[kaid]

There was a video on youtube about showing a DK running around using a few of their powers. The resolution was so bad you can't really read to much what he is doing but holy damn they have some kind of spell effect that makes a very big explosion looks very impressive. I am not sure how much damage it does but it looks like he is blowing those demon hounds the hell up.

From the leaked stuff I have seen the DK looks really pretty nifty. I am guessing after the DK comes out a lot of those still playing ret paladins will be shifting to DK. The role is similar and the play style and look seems a lot more fun than the seal and judge and sleep system.

[RUiN 427]

I think my point is that the class will get overplayed and you'll find few being accepted into groups, etc.  Since 90% of the game occurs after level 70, this would be a concern to me. 

that concern is totally justified, but there has been an outcry for tanking classes. Everyone will have their deathknight, why wouldn't they, it would be the best option for rerolling on another server or just making an alt that didn't have to go through the grind.

keep in mind this is the "first" hero class, there will be more... doesn't Arch Druid fit perfectly for a Emerald Dream expansion?

[Merusk]

I'm just going back to a healing class. (Since Hunters continue to look doomed.)  With the ass ton of tanks that'll be out there, my Pally or Priest will be in such high demand I'll be king of the catasses. 

[lamaros]

I played an Orc Warlock since WoW launched with the constant (ly futile) attempt to get rid of my fucking pets and tank and DPS. Basically I tried to make the class into a DK, as it was the closest possible thing. Unfortunately it sucked.

I will be playing a DK in WotLK for sure, and as it shapes up at the moment I will be very pleased.

I even put together a tanking spec based on the current talents:

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26024-warlock_wotlk_talent_preview_discussion/

I haven't played WoW in nearly a year and a half though, so I think my enthusiasm can be excused.

Oh, talent calc taken down. It was 44/16/11. 

[Kail]

keep in mind this is the "first" hero class, there will be more... doesn't Arch Druid fit perfectly for a Emerald Dream expansion?

I would assume that the current level capped Druids would basically be Arch Druids already... Making a new class called "Arch Druid" seems like it would imply that they're somehow more buff than regular, plain old Druids, and I don't think Blizzard wants their hero classes to move in that direction.  Also... think about how many million Death Knights there are going to be on launch.  Now, imagine if every Death Knight had to be a Night Elf... 

[Paelos]

I think my point is that the class will get overplayed and you'll find few being accepted into groups, etc.  Since 90% of the game occurs after level 70, this would be a concern to me. 

Didn't really happen with shamans/pallys when they opened up on the other side. They are still considered the most awesome classes to have for healing and spec-related buffs.

I think the amount of play a class gets has a little to do with finding groups, but I think overall it's coupled with the utility of the class that makes the biggest difference. For example, hunters are everywhere and their utility in raids is pretty mediocre, so you get a ton of pissed off hunters. OTOH, mages are also everywhere, but their utility is higher so you can put more of them in raids without a problem.

[lamaros]

DK is different though. It's a new class.

I expect to see a whoel hepa more DKs than there were Pallies or Shamen, simply due to the fact that no one has played them before. Even though Horde never had Paladins before they knew about them, anyone could just make an Alliance alt. This does'nt apply to DKs.

Most people will not swap classes to them though. At the end of the day the novelty will wear off for most and the catchup grind to 70 will deter others, so at level 80 the DK ratio will be a lot more normal.

EDIT: Full DK Spells and Talents are about. Looks good. 21 skills/spells. Not too many, but enough.

[Fordel]

That's my take on it, everyone will have a death knight, but the number of max level DK's won't be extraordinary.


Really the most interesting thing I wonder about with DK's is how they intend to gear them. I'm pretty damn sure the crit/crush mechanics are changing again for WoTLK, but as things stand currently, there would need to be 3 distinct styles of tanking plate across DK/Warrior/Paladins... and if TBC's release was any indication, one or two of those 3 are getting the short end of the equipment stick.

[Ratman_tf]

Lolz. Emo Paladins.

[Oban]

Emops.

[stray]

Sorry if this has been touched on before, but only having 2 races and one extra (post 50) class this late in the game's life is weak sauce. Where are the fucking blademasters?! Death Knight for everyone is stupid.

[Azaroth]

I'm contemplating just rolling up the DK as fast as possible to get in on the new stuff.

You and 10 million other people.

Yes, but 9 million will play it to 60 and get bored with the Outlands grind again.

"My plan is to outgrind the rest of WoW"

Ah, solid.

No, Death Knight would be very interesting.. if there were about five other classes going in. As it is, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) will be rolling up a DK. Making the entire thing pointless and stupid. But then they'll get 10 mile long boners for the next expansion that introduces ONE new class, and they'll all resub and roll again.

Rinse and repeat until people start going "What the fuck is this shit?" en masse. Which.... well. That'll probably never happen.

[Azaroth]

You know, Blizzard could probably just release "World of OtherFuckingClasses" and double their income.

Same shit. Elwynn and Stormwind and The Barrens and all of that. Just different classes, and everyone would play it.

[WindupAtheist]

I wish I was still on a PVP server.  Going to whatever the new Death Knight area is and ganking all twelve million of them will be lolz.

[stray]

You know, Blizzard could probably just release "World of OtherFuckingClasses" and double their income.

Same shit. Elwynn and Stormwind and The Barrens and all of that. Just different classes, and everyone would play it.

And it wouldn't take much to design a Blademaster class even..


Give me a rogue -- but give me 2 handed swords. And no armor, no raids, no teir 7/8/9 anything. Just a loincloth and a big ass solo attainable quest sword to backstab with. Perfect class right there. 

[rk47]

Considering the game is focused around raiding on end game and somewhat sport pvp it's probably easy to understand why Blizzard is reluctant to add in a new class every so often. Let's see here, if they make another tank class, how does it perform in regards to the currently existing tank? If it's DPS, can it really compete with the current existing one? If it's a healer class, same deal; is it worth it to get all the +1000 healing shit for it? and then the gear distribution follows, THAT'S the reason why those people are willing to repeatedly raid the same content. Loot. Are they gonna make a unique one for that specific class or dip in to the already existing gear and risk pissing off the already existing classes?

[Azaroth]

Well, yes. Adding a new DPS class (tanking more specifically, or healing) as the paradigm currently exists more or less would be a tricky proposition. That is, as fun as adding pure classes might be, it's a balance issue and you might piss off more people than you give 10 mile long boners to.

The balance lies in the horizontal more than the vertical. Even when moving vertically with class design, the idea is variety. Mages have Arcane/Fire/Ice. So, make an "Arch Wizard" class with Time/Poison/Darkness trees. Or whatever. Same DPS in his DPS tree as a Mage, some different snares and knockbacks, a couple of dots.. whatever. Variety, not a vertical power increase. But in the pure horizontal sense of hybrids, the idea might be to add functionality to subsets. A "Holy Knight" that heals his party as he does DPS? His DPS won't be that of a Rogue, nor his healing that of a Priest -- but he brings flexibility and functionality, and his abilities scale. The numbers aren't static so that they're not overpowered for a 40 man raid and completely useless in a 2v2.

Things like that are probably the direction you'd want to take new classes.. at least largely.

[Chimpy]

WTB Goblins as a playable race.

[stray]

I know it's pointless to talk about now, but ideally, simply basing classes more on the Warcraft units would have been the best way to go about it "horizontally".

For example, all mages would essentially still be mages, but each race would have it's own flavor. Orcs would be Shamans, Trolls would be Witch Doctors, Taurens would be Spirit Walkers, Night Elves would be Druids, Humans would be Sorcerers, Undead would be Necromancers.

Or something to that effect. And it pretty much applies to every archetype. And most races have an upgraded hero version of those respective units as well (Archmages, Farseers, Shadowhunters, Liches, etc).

[edit] And I am by no means saying that I could have designed a better game. I'm saying that Blizzard could have. They had all the material to work with right in their own games. Hell, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the original plan....and then some non WC playing guy got involved and fucked it all up.

[Fordel]

I know it's pointless to talk about now, but ideally, simply basing classes more on the Warcraft units would have been the best way to go about it "horizontally".

For example, all mages would essentially still be mages, but each race would have it's own flavor. Orcs would be Shamans, Trolls would be Witch Doctors, Taurens would be Spirit Walkers, Night Elves would be Druids, Humans would be Sorcerers, Undead would be Necromancers.

Or something to that effect. And it pretty much applies to every archetype. And most races have an upgraded hero version of those respective units as well (Archmages, Farseers, Shadowhunters, Liches, etc).

[edit] And I am by no means saying that I could have designed a better game. I'm saying that Blizzard could have. They had all the material to work with right in their own games. Hell, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the original plan....and then some non WC playing guy got involved and fucked it all up.

No thanks, the idea sounds good in theory, but sucks very much so in practice. Shit, trying to balance the factions across Paladin/Shaman itself was a shitstorm. Hell, the small handful of priest racial spells caused game changing balance. Even now, Seal of Blood vs Seal of Vengeance. One allows a Ret paladin to be a serious DPS contribution to the group, the other is a sub par tanking seal that doesn't work very well.

Also, see DaoC 

DaoC did pretty much that, a caster was a caster was a caster, but they had their own 'flavour'. Of course this flavour was the difference between shit and awesome. It also caused classes to be horribly watered down in terms of abilities, ending up spreading 1 class worth of skills across 2-5 

The amount of effort required to keep everyone 'unique' yet balanced, is simply not worth the trade off. Not even a little bit. DaoC has something like 40 classes total. It's just plain silly, and a unfixable situation.

[stray]

I refuse to accept that it's that hard (and don't care to let DAoC be an indicator of anything) -- because I've seen better balancing in smaller, lesser funded, lesser staffed games like Shadowbane and CoH.

Also, the bread and butter skills that differentiate the rts units are already in the game. They just dumped them all in the existing generic classes that exist now. So it's not like having more classes would be introducing anything new, skill-wise. It might be an even simpler way of looking at things. Instead of one class with 3 talent trees and a buttload of skills, you could make at least two classes from those same skills, and give them just one talent tree. Cookie cutter? Yes. But in the overall picture of things, you'd have more variety in classes, more to play with. The game as a whole wouldn't be cookie cutter -- it'd start resembling Warcraft, instead of this "Mage", "Hunter", "Priest", "Warrior" shit.

Casters wouldn't be that much different from each other other than the type of damage they used (just like it is now... Shadow, Arcane, Nature, etc), with a few unique abilities (Totems, Night Elf Hide, Sheeping, Troll Regen, etc..). Again, not different than what it already is. Shamans already have Totems, Druids can already hide, Mages already sheep, Trolls already regen (but not enough!). Some classes would be moved to different archetypes as well (like, the Shadow Priest wouldn't be part of the Priest line anymore... The skills would just be divided between Witchdoctors and Shadowhunters or something...But it'd basically be a similar class than what's already in the game).

As for the Hero classes, say a player wants to be an Orc fighter type. In the RTS, it was an Orc Grunt. So that would be the class, an Orc Grunt. No balancing issue there.. It's basically a warrior (and on the human side, it'd just be a Human "Soldier"). You'd stay an Orc grunt forever, unless you catassed your way to the Hero version: The Blademaster. The Blademaster can stealth and backstab with a two hander and use mirror image (replicate himself, as a getaway power to confuse an opponent). At first glance, that sounds like a nightmare (a stealther who could hit harder than a Mortal Strike, and get away by creating a couple of NPC's that look like him). But it wouldn't be. They don't don armor, their stealth and mirror image is magic based (can be silenced), and it only lasts for a minute (20 sec at first rank). It could be balanced.

[Azazel]

I get it. You have a boner for the blademaster. It would never work though, given that you want him naked while LOOT is the thing that makes the game go 'round. The "racial mages" idea of yours, as mentioned, see Pally vs Shammie.

More relevent I think is that the talent trees ended up essentially inregrating the hero classes as originally envisonaged. Mage > Fire Mage/Frost Mage/Arcane Mages. The thing is, there's been an endless stream of "where r teh her0 classes you said in the game!!1!?" since release, so throwing in the DK takes care of that. Putting them in starting from 55 is also a smart move - as it's high enough to not be mentally on the same vein as "oh fuck, I have to grind up from 1 again?". It'll help to spread the day-week-month one player pool around even more than the 2 starting zones of Northrend, so we don't have a repeat of Hellfire Peninsula as Grand Central Station on day 1. (well, not as much).

It'll also keep those new DKs spread out through old world and outland content for a couple of months, so keep that stuff being used.

I'm sure my wife and I will start up a pair of them for something different to do as well....

[Azaroth]

I get it. You have a boner for the blademaster.

How long of a boner?

[stray]

Uh, no you don't get it apparently. I'm just using the blademaster as an example. It has two class defining skills, doesn't take long to describe, and is pretty much the first thing anyone familiar with warcraft thinks of when they hear "hero class".

The point isn't my preferences. It's that there would be 2 tiers of each class -- a basic one, and a hero one. And it would be race specific. In an orc fighter's case, it'd be Grunt > Blademaster. That's just one example. If it makes you feel better, I'll list more (or should I bust out a chart?): In a human's fighter's place, it'd be Footman > Knight (or possibly Paladin); a Troll could transition to a Beserker; a Dwarf into a Mountain King; Undead into a Death Knight; Blood Elf into a Spellbreaker; Tauren into a Chieftan, etc.. The only one that's a little tough to apply are Night Elves, since most of their weapon wielding Hero units were female only.
 
Paladin and Shammy, as they are implemented now, are complicated classes. The problems in balancing them doesn't even apply to what I'm saying. None of the theoretical classes I'm pointing out would have nearly as many skills as they have.

To address your other points about loot, re-leveling, and whatnot.. Well, humor me for a second here. For one, I'm not talking about World of Warcraft. At all. No point in trying to understand or reference anything I'm saying under any of WoW's current rules.  Ultimately, I'm just trying to have fun talking about a completely different, theoretical game.

I'm not HRosing, thinking I can fix the current game. The current game is quite fine for who it's addressing. This game, otoh, would definitely not be very loot heavy, leveling would barely exist (as in all of my theoretical games), and it would have not one raid. The endgame would strictly be pvp, with gameplay ideas actually based on Warcraft and not Everquest (peons, camp building, sieges and mortars and vehicles and flight units, race differentials, hero classes). Anyone else would get an automated message to go fuck themselves.

[Fordel]

I'm not HRosing, thinking I can fix the current game. The current game is quite fine for who it's addressing. This game, otoh, would definitely not be very loot heavy, leveling would barely exist (as in all of my theoretical games), and it would have not one raid. The endgame would strictly be pvp, with gameplay ideas actually based on Warcraft and not Everquest (peons, camp building, sieges and mortars and vehicles and flight units, race differentials, hero classes). Anyone else would get an automated message to go fuck themselves.

That REALLY sounds like DaoC pre-ToA (minus no leveling  ) and once again, class balance was(still is probably) a fucking *nightmare*. Doubly so if the base classes are also unique across race let alone the heroic classes.


Using the Warcraft theme, start off with the 8 basic races, 4 to a side. Every race can be a 'warrior' type. So do you now have 1 'warrior' class that's differences between the races are superficial and in name only, or do you have 8 unique base warrior types? Then you add on the heroic upgrade class (assuming there is only one upgrade path per base class) per race and you end up with what 16 total? Even keeping the 'base' class the same, you still have 9 unique classes to balance. All the little 'flavor' differences in the classes will add up and really cause balance issues. Unless they are entirely superficial, as in simply renaming the exact same skill to fit the race theme, it will cause you enormous balance headaches, doubly so in a competitive PvP game where every advantage has to be min/maxed out for victory.

Even with fewer skills per class, the number of unique skills would be greater across the entire spectrum, which is where the trouble begins. Any time one side has X and the other doesn't is grounds for a shitstorm AND it might be a legitimate shitstorm. See FearWard, Blessing of Salvation, Windfury, WoTF, ShadowMeld(pre-nerf at least), Warstomp etc...


It's an idea that can't be executed nearly as well as it can be thought up.

[lamaros]

Seriously stray... it's a little embarassing.

[Hellinar]

That REALLY sounds like DaoC pre-ToA (minus no leveling  ) and once again, class balance was(still is probably) a fucking *nightmare*. Doubly so if the base classes are also unique across race let alone the heroic classes.

It only a nightmare if you are hand balancing each class. Thats stupid. The Server knows exactly how well each class is doing against the others. Make the class abilities dynamic on each server. Update them regularly. If Blademasters are winning significantly more encounters than intended, tone them down a bit.

Once people get the idea that each class will be, on average, as good as another, then they can play the class they want without feeling like they are losing out. If you are winning lots of encounters, its because you play the class better than average. 

[stray]

Seriously stray... it's a little embarassing.

Hmm? I haven't even made a chart yet.