WotLK spoilerfication

[Lakov_Sanite]

The dwarves have fucking tanks parked outside their city, a subway system covers a couple miles of underground tunnel between cities, and a network of trans-continental blimps ferry people around in the sky.  Plus, robots.  Motorcycles really aren't a stretch given how much we've already seen.

Really, the only thing that doesn't make sense in the world is that they haven't built a Roman-esque road network to make the most of their vehicles.

Good points, well made. Maybe this is the real subconscious reason I play Horde? :D

Edit: I have sausage-fingers!

just an aside but i think the shield behind the headlight is the horde symbol...so alliance get tanks and we get bikes?

[Phred]

I guess, or maybe they'll have a mix. Account-based achievements would allow for a bigger range of achievements (level one of every class to level 10, 20, 30. Get at least artisan in every crafting skill etc) whithout being ridiculous.

Oh, damn you're right.  I think it is a mix, because of something else I saw.. one of the achievements was "Has leveled every class to 70."  I wonder if that one comes up as "Mr. Poopinasock" for a title.

The really important bit of info, is the confirmation on the barber shop. 

That was confirmed a while ago, along with "learn new dance moves," I thought.

Ya you'd really have to stay glued to your chair for oh, around 1-2hrs a day to accomplish that.

[ClydeJr]

Its rumored that crushing blows are being removed from raiding for woltk which is the reason for changing prot warrior's Shield Block to have a cooldown of 30 sec (20 sec with talents) and only 1 charge. Currently, SB is used to prevent crushing blows.

[K9]

Soooo, Deathknights seem pretty powerful currently in Beta, at level 60

It is possible to pull 10-12 mobs and come out with near full health.

 

[Simond]

DKs are going to get 'nerfed' in the beta. Frost is probably about where Blizzard wants it, Unholy is a little OTT (D&D needs fixing) and Blood is insanely broken.

[Calantus]

Not seeing any HOTs for Paladins. Or did I just not see any holy changes.

Fairly sure Paladins were seeking some form of HOT to be considered viable in Holy spec.

As well as different CC in certain specs.

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=53503

There be your HoT.

[Register]

Interesting to know that there's still quite some warlock hate going around... I do play a lock main currently, and it’s an interesting contrast to the lock forums where the general tone is doom and gloom about how locks are helpless against geared rogues and warriors, and how hunters are chewing up locks too.

Just a few comments - some of the green cloth gears like the nether weave set is very popular to pre-70 locks, it gives lots of sta and moderate spell damage at the cost of giving 0 int 0 spell crit and 0 mana5 or spirit, so there's definitely a trade-off.

Demo-specced locks are pretty common at 70, mainly because its pretty much the only spec that offers some chance of survival against melee dps, which is very dominant due to superior melee scaling as gear improves. Demo tree gives more hp and more spell damage, when I respecced my lock to affliction I lost around 1.6k+ hp and another 100+ spell damage from the deep demo tree talent that gives you extra spell power.

The trade-off for going deep demo is that you give up alot of talent-based spells that are found in the other 2 trees - to get felguard u cant have siphon life, to get siphon life you can't have shadow burn, to get shadow burn you give up the +range for both dots nukes and fear, you give up deep talent ability like UA to protect your dots against dispel, you cannot get insta AE fear, you cannot get backlash, dark pact etc - basically you give your spell arsenal in return for the slightly stronger pet, some hp and some spell power.

Me, because I was doing BGs, went deep affliction and secondary into destro skipping demo totally. Despite the loss of hp and spell power I did significantly more damage, and insta AE fear helped keep me alive despite being significantly less tough from the skipping of demo talents. Darkpact and a stronger lifedrain enabled me to cast for far longer than demo specced. So basically its about trade offs again - same as most classes have to deal with when choosing their talent trees.

I think that most of the lock hate stems from the fear spell, which takes away control from the victim even as they take damage. The number of counters for fear have been greatly increased since early days of wow though - cloak of shadows, fear ward given to all priest races, fear ward castable in shadow form,  increased range and pulse rate for tremor totem, 2 min trinket, beastial wrath, as well as long existing abilities like warrior fear immunities, will of the forsaken etc. Silence/interrupt effects have also increased - silencing shot, silence in garrote, spell interrupt plus snare from deadly throw etc. Basically, if your class have counters and you know how to use them - fear is really not as uber as it is painted to be. On the flip side as a lock against rogues, wars and hunters with bestial wrath on/ silencing shot + scatter fear interrupt - you basically get eaten unless you significantly out gear / out skill your opponent.

All in all, lock is not quite at the bottom of the food chain, but they are not at the top either - right now its the world of meleecraft, and the top three OP class in my humble opinion would be Rogue, War and Resto Droods with their insane healing and mobility.

[Merusk]

Lock hate is part fear, part gear scaling.  Early on casters own, because melee has shit for weapons.  Yes, they scale into ubergods after a few tiers of gear, but it WAS a minority until badge weaps and t6+ weaps became easy to get.   Now that any shmoe with  a few weeks can run Kara and get some very nice melee weaps, casters are in big pain.

You saw this same progression back prior to BC, and in lower level battlegrounds.  We'll see it again in WOTLK.   It's one of the fundamental flaws of WoW's design, and one not enough folks have examined yet to avoid the mistakes in the next generation of games.

[Koyasha]

Soooo, Deathknights seem pretty powerful currently in Beta, at level 60

It is possible to pull 10-12 mobs and come out with near full health.

 

Don't know the exact details, and I don't really feel like reading that thread to find them if they're stated, but that doesn't sound too unusual on the face of it.  Paladins can do pretty much the same thing.

[Zetor]

Locks are also the only class that was historically much stronger for one faction [horde] than the other, due to at least 1/2 of horde being undead in any given BG, not to mention the old days when WOTF lasted like 20 seconds with a 2min cooldown. Not that I'm bitter or anything after 3.5 years of playing warlock. ;p (to be fair, the reverse sorta-applies to frost mages since gnomes can nullify a root, but that's not as game/strategy-changing due to lack of immunity, failure chance, usage of other mage CCs and slows, etc)

PostBC though, melee classes can [and do] tear locks up unless they're SL/SL (which is sort of a broken/unintended spec), and even SL/SL locks don't have any way of getting melee off them, so they just act as a gigantic mana sponge against melee teams with the complex strategy of "assist train the warlock 100% of the time". I see some initiatives to make warlocks and shadowpriests be able to cast non-instant spells again, though.. deathwish won't have a fear breaker built in after WOTLK, so even warriors will be fearable again (just have to ride out berzerker rage, or catch them in another stance), and shadow priests get their AOE fear turned into an AOE deathcoil.

Personally I'll be playing a resto shaman as my new main for WOTLK (man those new healing talents look smexy), with a prot pally alt (ditto, though I'm still leery about the physical / spelldamage split)... change of pace, and all that.


-- Z.

[Paelos]

Soooo, Deathknights seem pretty powerful currently in Beta, at level 60

It is possible to pull 10-12 mobs and come out with near full health.

 

Don't know the exact details, and I don't really feel like reading that thread to find them if they're stated, but that doesn't sound too unusual on the face of it.  Paladins can do pretty much the same thing.

The details better be that it takes a ton of time to get them all down, but you could survive. Otherwise, that's like one class being able to play in Diablo-mode while the rest of us are running around rubbing two sticks together for warmth in the cold cruel world.

[Montague]

Soooo, Deathknights seem pretty powerful currently in Beta, at level 60

It is possible to pull 10-12 mobs and come out with near full health.

 

Don't know the exact details, and I don't really feel like reading that thread to find them if they're stated, but that doesn't sound too unusual on the face of it.  Paladins can do pretty much the same thing.

The details better be that it takes a ton of time to get them all down, but you could survive. Otherwise, that's like one class being able to play in Diablo-mode while the rest of us are running around rubbing two sticks together for warmth in the cold cruel world.

That's a thread about a 5-man DK party at Hellfire Ramps pulling 10-12 mobs at a time. My guess is that a 5 man party of paladins (with the new talents) might be able to do it as well, but I expect both classes to see at least a bit of a nerf.

[K9]

Lock hate is part fear, part gear scaling.  Early on casters own, because melee has shit for weapons.  Yes, they scale into ubergods after a few tiers of gear, but it WAS a minority until badge weaps and t6+ weaps became easy to get.   Now that any shmoe with  a few weeks can run Kara and get some very nice melee weaps, casters are in big pain.

You saw this same progression back prior to BC, and in lower level battlegrounds.  We'll see it again in WOTLK.   It's one of the fundamental flaws of WoW's design, and one not enough folks have examined yet to avoid the mistakes in the next generation of games.

It's mainly the gear scaling, locks scale far better than any other caster in therms of HP and spell damage at pretty much every tier.

Also 112 Armour Penetration Blue gems make me skittish.

[lamaros]

DKs enter outlands with gear much better than most classes. It's too early to judge.

Looking at how they're going at 70 will be a better guide.

I expect there will be a lot of changes still, the Frost tree is very meh at the moment now that runes cannot be changed.

[apocrypha]

Just occurred to me why I don't like the motorbike: It's too close to the real world. The tanks, the tram, the helicopters, the wooden rockets etc are all totally Hanna Barbera, straight out of the ACME catalogue. The motorcycle is....



I don't mind the mix of steampunk, schlock sci-fi and cartoon medieval at all, as long as it's all cartoony. Actually those 2 guys look vaguely orc-related...

[Calantus]

Interesting to know that there's still quite some warlock hate going around... I do play a lock main currently, and it’s an interesting contrast to the lock forums where the general tone is doom and gloom about how locks are helpless against geared rogues and warriors, and how hunters are chewing up locks too.

While leveling up warlocks are brutal. Once they have deathcoil they just DoT+Coil+Fear and you die in the fear. No chance to fight back. No chance to survive. You just DIE. Until you hit stamina inflation in outlands, get some resilience, and get the PVP trinket warlocks are tiny walking gods.

[lamaros]

Warlocks were walking Gods back when Fear and Seduce didn't have diminishing returns and lasted full length. Of course, those were the days when shards were like conjured food and didn't stack, pets despawned (no shard refund) when you rode too fast (they couldn't keep up), and about 50 other truly annoying issues.

[Simond]

Edit: Never mind, the image host is being weird. 

[Calantus]

Ah no, I'm talking about right now. You get full dotted, death coiled, and die in fear. With no CC breaks you can't win at all. I'm not complaining about it because I don't care what happens in lowbie PVP, but it would definitely add to the general warlock whines.

[lamaros]

Ah no, I'm talking about right now. You get full dotted, death coiled, and die in fear. With no CC breaks you can't win at all. I'm not complaining about it because I don't care what happens in lowbie PVP, but it would definitely add to the general warlock whines.

Meanwhile, any melee class that can stun and break fear (which nearly all can with a pvp trinket) can pretty much destroy a warlock, and there is nothing they can do about it.

Warlocks are much much less powerful in PvP than they used to be, they are nowhere near as hard to kill as you make out. And at max level they have gone from being probably the best dueling class to being one of the worst.

[AcidCat]

The new Shaman and Druid talents look awesome. It's going to be tough to decide what spec is most fun. The new Paladin talents, while an improvement, really do nothing to motivate me to continue the struggle with my level 66.

[K9]

Warlocks are much much less powerful in PvP than they used to be, they are nowhere near as hard to kill as you make out. And at max level they have gone from being probably the best dueling class to being one of the worst.

They're not as bad as they used to be, but they still outscale Mages, SPriests, Ele Shamen and Boomkins. They're only really weak against melee, but most melee are enjoying a cloth curbstomping spree at the moment so it's not really. In duels, any healer who beats an equally geared lock is doing impressively.

[kaid]

One issue that I am sure that will be addressed that is allowing for some crazy DK aoeing is that their Death and Decay spell appears to be doing two hits of damage per tick doubling how much damage it is doing. Combine this with some of the blood talents that proc when you kill a mob and it makes for some pretty silly aoe grinding power.

[Rasix]

The new Shaman and Druid talents look awesome. It's going to be tough to decide what spec is most fun. The new Paladin talents, while an improvement, really do nothing to motivate me to continue the struggle with my level 66.

Yah, I have no idea what I'm going to be leveling at the start of the expansion.  Either go with my boomkin (goddamn they added some nice stuff) or swtich my shaman over to enhance and have some fun (currently resto).

[K9]

I'd probably go with the boomkin until people have figured out the changes to totems, since they seem to be intent on completely mixing up what buffs you get from them.

Also, it seems like haste gear will be de-riguer come the expansion, everything from level 68 Northrend quest greens up seems to offer options for stacking quite considerable amounts of haste, and almost every class is getting some form of haste-increasing talent, if not several.

Also:

We’re pleased to announce a convenient upgrade to the way that mounts and vanity pets are handled in Wrath of the Lich King.

Players will be able to “learn” a mount or non-combat pet much like learning a spell, recipe, or new ability, and these creatures will then show up on a new Pet tab within the Character Info section of the interface. Players will be able to access and preview their learned mounts and vanity pets through this tab.

Once learned, the pet icon or mount icon will no longer appear in bag spaces or bank spaces. This inventory space will be made available once again for other adventuring needs. Pets can still be set to hotkeys by dragging them to the hotkey bar, much like any other spell or ability.

It's lots of litte touches like this that I think are a large part of Blizzards success.

[Merusk]

Woo hoo! I just got 20 free bank spaces!

 This also makes whipping-out your vanity pet on a raid a lot easier on your inventory.  Yay.

[K9]

I'm just hoping they'll do it for tabards too. I already have around 10 of those, and I'm on the cusp of getting two or three more.

[Merusk]

Tabards aren't as bad, since most of them you can find on vendors regardless of the year.  But yeah, I've got the same problem with my Scarlet Monestary. , Argent dawn, and rank tabards.

Hey, anyone in beta want to offer that up as a suggestion to Blizz?

[Fabricated]

I'd probably go with the boomkin until people have figured out the changes to totems, since they seem to be intent on completely mixing up what buffs you get from them.

Also, it seems like haste gear will be de-riguer come the expansion, everything from level 68 Northrend quest greens up seems to offer options for stacking quite considerable amounts of haste, and almost every class is getting some form of haste-increasing talent, if not several.

Haste and Armor Penetration seem to be an attempt to avoid keeping itemization from being insanely boring. Without those two all melee gear for warriors may as well be tons of strength, stamina, and either crit or hit with no variation.

I'd like to see spell penetration be changed in a way that it provides something like a % damage increase based on how much (i.e. 10 rating is 1% damage increase. This is just a rough example). As it is I see nearly no use for it, even in PVP.

[Register]

Warlocks are much much less powerful in PvP than they used to be, they are nowhere near as hard to kill as you make out. And at max level they have gone from being probably the best dueling class to being one of the worst.

They're not as bad as they used to be, but they still outscale Mages, SPriests, Ele Shamen and Boomkins. They're only really weak against melee, but most melee are enjoying a cloth curbstomping spree at the moment so it's not really. In duels, any healer who beats an equally geared lock is doing impressively.

I don't find it easy to deal with resto druids on my lock - they can outheal my dots easily, and mana drain is slowly channeled, reduced by resilience and useless vs bear/cat forms.

With affliction I am using up all my mana plus my pets with dark pact to fight a resto druid. I can imagine that without dark pact I will be running into serious mana problems with the insane mana efficiency of druid lifeblooms. A smart druid will constantly exploit their superior mobility to escape and heal up when I get them low on hp with a fear/dot combo - in a battle of attrition I am not quite sure the lock will have the advantage.

[SurfD]

DKs enter outlands with gear much better than most classes. It's too early to judge.

Looking at how they're going at 70 will be a better guide.

I expect there will be a lot of changes still, the Frost tree is very meh at the moment now that runes cannot be changed.

Here is a video clip a guildie made of a DK in action in Alpha, including an exploit he discovered that allowed you to punch out NINE DIGIT damage numbers due to some bizzare quirks with the diseases you generate / spread.

http://files.filefront.com/dk+exploit+hqwmv/;11134403;/fileinfo.html

Edit: cause i somehow managed to post that without actually linking anything the first time

[Koyasha]

It's lots of litte touches like this that I think are a large part of Blizzards success.

That's convenient, at least they do get around to this stuff eventually but it's astonishing to me how long they take to bother with it.  Blizzard constantly befuddles me as to how they improve some things tremendously and make them very convenient, while other things I'm left scratching my head in confusion as to why the hell they're so ass-backwards (see: Chat channels, LFG system.)  Basic EQ chat channels were better than the WoW ones ever have been, allowing real channel security (they save themselves so you don't lose control of them as soon as you log out) and so on.

[slog]

I'm guessing (hoping) that it's the two-person engineering mount, but judging from the fact that there's an alliance version as well it's probably BG- or quest-related.

I think it's related to the destructible PVP zone. I seem to recall reading about the two person vehicles in one of the previews for that zone, but I can't remember where.

Do people think blizz will be able to design this correctly?  I have my doubts, espcially when you look at their only other complex instance, Alterac Valley.  AV has become little more than an honor farm where both sides AVOID PvP in a race to complete PvE objectives.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'm guessing (hoping) that it's the two-person engineering mount, but judging from the fact that there's an alliance version as well it's probably BG- or quest-related.

I think it's related to the destructible PVP zone. I seem to recall reading about the two person vehicles in one of the previews for that zone, but I can't remember where.

Do people think blizz will be able to design this correctly?  I have my doubts, espcially when you look at their only other complex instance, Alterac Valley.  AV has become little more than an honor farm where both sides AVOID PvP in a race to complete PvE objectives.

I think people forget how old AV is in comparison, they created it over two years ago now. True it doesn't inspire confidence but afaik npc's aren't going to play any sort of combative role in wintergrasp

[Merusk]

AV is also a bad example because of all the fucking changes that have been made to it over the years.  It was intended to be an open zone like this new one, but they dropped it in an instance to provide some PvP content and fairness on the wildly population-imbalanced servers. 

Originally there WAS a lot of PvP in the zone, when games could last 12-24 hours.  You'd see wolf riders and towers go back and forth, and the giant tree or icelord.  It was a fun time. However, games lasted 12-24 fucking hours!  So they started peeling back stuff bit by bit... until you have the PvE zerg race we now see.

Equally stupid that it also gives so much honor for the amount of time a game takes, which is WHY people avoid PvP.  Slowing down to pvp means less honor/ hour. The reinforcements still don't fix this because of the "Kill the General" win mechanic. Remove those and you'd see some real pvp In AV.

The new PvP zone is supposed to be much more like oldschool AV..with multiple areas to win/ lose and quests that pop up as each one is won or lost that give honor (like the hala & BG daily).   I think there's a good chance of it working out fairly well, so long as that fucking "kill the general and ignore everything else" mechanic is gone.