Beta Roll Call

[Nonentity]

Since the NDA is up, who all is playing?

I'm Nonentity (warrior) on the Lich King (PVP) realm. I also have Lasagna the hunter, and Non the shaman. I also have a death knight named Spraynard.

If... uh... nobody else is playing, I'll like, answer questions I guess. Or stand here awkwardly.

[Ironwood]

What first attracted you to the name Lasagne ?  Was it a Garfield fetish ?

[Nonentity]

I... don't know!

I'm a big cuddly tauren with my three pets! Kissyface (Scorpid), Spraynard (Ravager), and Burbank (windserpent)!

[Register]

Thanks for volunteering information ~

How's itemization in WOTLK? Have been reading that for casters +healing have been removed in place of +power which apply to both damage and healing - is it true? Is spirit prevalent now for all caster armor - e.g. shaman chain/pally plate/druid leather/cloth?

Hows the feel of the class balance at WOTLK so far? The new hunter pet abilities seems pretty overp... ahem significant. Just take for example the crab "Pin" - 6 second root on 20 second timer. Together with existing kiting tools like frosttrap (entrapment) + scatter/intimidate and TBW/ wyvern sting - is hunter now the counter to warrior/rogue?

[Ironwood]

Serious Questions :

Can you tell me what an Exotic pet is ?

Also, is the Survival tree now actually interesting to play ?

[Dewdrop]

As good a time as any for a first post:

Currently in beta on Northrend (PVE) realm with:

Dieseltankdp Lvl 70.9 Warrior (main)
Vinoveritas Lvl 70 Warlock (alt)
Dromakis Lvl 57 DK (completed the entry questline)

Majority of my time has been on the Howling Fjord side leveling my warrior as Fury. Spent about 90min on my lock as deep destruction doing the first few quests around Vengeance Landing (Howling Fjord starter town). I'll try to answer any questions that I can..

How's itemization in WOTLK? Have been reading that for casters +healing have been removed in place of +power which apply to both damage and healing - is it true?

This is true. All caster items now say +spellpower. Blizz posts have indicated that healers will see an overall reduction in +healing on their paperdoll but the coefficients are changing so they shouldn't see much of a difference in the actual potency and throughput on their heals. My wife has a 70 healy priest in the beta, I'm planning on doing some testing on this when I get the chance. Also, at least on cloth (hadn't payed attention to leather/mail/plate tbh) caster gear spirit seems to have almost gotten the same treatment that stamina did in TBC. Maybe not to the same extreme degree, but there is alot of spirit on cloth. Level 70 quest green items with 45+ spirit on them jumped out at me initially.

[Nonentity]

How's itemization in WOTLK? Have been reading that for casters +healing have been removed in place of +power which apply to both damage and healing - is it true? Is spirit prevalent now for all caster armor - e.g. shaman chain/pally plate/druid leather/cloth?

Hows the feel of the class balance at WOTLK so far? The new hunter pet abilities seems pretty overp... ahem significant. Just take for example the crab "Pin" - 6 second root on 20 second timer. Together with existing kiting tools like frosttrap (entrapment) + scatter/intimidate and TBW/ wyvern sting - is hunter now the counter to warrior/rogue?

Eh, itemization looks fine. My warrior is in full Season 3 gear, my hunter is Tier 5-esque gear with a sprinkling of Tier 6, and my shaman is just Kara/Heroic trash gear.

I haven't really found upgrades for any of them just yet, although my offhander on my warrior (the Gorehowl off of prince in Kara) is going to be replaced by a blue I get in Borean Tundra.

Class balance seems fine so far, to be honest - the only thing right now is pallies are bugged like crazy, and they're running around 2 shotting people, because their new judgements are doing something like 10x the damage they should be.

I'm happy with my Shaman's abilities (extremely pleased with Elemental for PVP, even though it's boring as sin still for PVE), I'm okay with my warrior's abilities (Titan's Grip is really fun for leveling - he's the highest level right now, being about halfway through 70), and my hunter I haven't really messed around with much, other then to check out the pet talent trees, which are amazing.

I also got a Death Knight through the Death Knight quests and into the real world - they seem pretty good, but in practice, they don't particularly feel overpowered.

[Nonentity]

Serious Questions :

Can you tell me what an Exotic pet is ?

Also, is the Survival tree now actually interesting to play ?

They're still going around implementing exotic pets. I know that a Devilsaur is an Exotic pet, and a Corehound from molten core is NOT an exotic pet (sadly).

I would say that a variety of these - http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/untameables.php - would become tameable.

Survival is definitely viable for PvE now, although such as before, there's no real reason in a raid to have more then one. They were okay before to have one, but now you're not really sacrificing that much DPS, if any, to have one in the raid.

[Merusk]

I can have a Devilsaur?

Fuck.  Maybe I'm not done with the hunter.  Wonder if I can have a Giraffe.

[Ironwood]

Another one :  Is that two talent trees thing a hoax or not ?  Are we going to have switchable specs ?


Heh.  When you said that page may be tameable, all I can think of now is :



SUCK MY DICK, I'M A SHARK !

[K9]

The developers are currently working on the exotic pet talent. Exotic pets are exactly that, exotic and not the average run of the mill pet. But whether this name will stick or not, is uncertain at this point. But these will be a range of new pets with unique abilities, that only those with the talent will be able to tame and train. Where do you get them, well, we've not got news on that right now -- perhaps somewhere, exotic! ;-)

These pets are different from normal pets, but they're not necessarily more "uber" than others. However they will have access to unique abilities not available to the normal pets that every Hunter can train. A Hunter with this talent will get extra power, but from the talent's associated additional pet talent points and not necessarily from the exotic pet.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=5103070472&pageNo=1&sid=1#9

There was a blue quote hinting at Devilsaurs too, but that may have been in jest. Basically it looks like exotic pets will get a 4th talent tree alongside the Damage, Survival and Utility trees that all normal pets get, plus 5 extra talent points.

[Register]

This is true. All caster items now say +spellpower. Blizz posts have indicated that healers will see an overall reduction in +healing on their paperdoll but the coefficients are changing so they shouldn't see much of a difference in the actual potency and throughput on their heals. My wife has a 70 healy priest in the beta, I'm planning on doing some testing on this when I get the chance. Also, at least on cloth (hadn't payed attention to leather/mail/plate tbh) caster gear spirit seems to have almost gotten the same treatment that stamina did in TBC. Maybe not to the same extreme degree, but there is alot of spirit on cloth. Level 70 quest green items with 45+ spirit on them jumped out at me initially.

I think that the current overpowered healing is caused by the objective to allow players to last long enough under dps to actually use their abilites in the arena.

When the same healer, especially the resto druid, is pvping outside the context of the arena, where they are not being focus fired with a healing debuff on them - they are almost unkillable. Healing scale insanely well, so much better than spell damage scaling that it's not even funny.

One of my concerns is how this trend changes in the expansion (if it changes, that is) - does damage catch up sufficiently with healing, such that a dps without mortal strike or stunlock can actually hope to kill a healer of similar gear/skill without needing the help of others whacking on the healer at the same time.

[K9]

I think that the current overpowered healing is caused by the objective to allow players to last long enough under dps to actually use their abilites in the arena.

When the same healer, especially the resto druid, is pvping outside the context of the arena, where they are not being focus fired with a healing debuff on them - they are almost unkillable. Healing scale insanely well, so much better than spell damage scaling that it's not even funny.

One of my concerns is how this trend changes in the expansion (if it changes, that is) - does damage catch up sufficiently with healing, such that a dps without mortal strike or stunlock can actually hope to kill a healer of similar gear/skill without needing the help of others whacking on the healer at the same time.

You mean classes that build themselves entirely for survivability at the cost of everything else are hard to kill? News at 11.

Healer's aren't overpowered, healing isn't overpowered. The best most healers can hope for is to force a draw or escape. Come back and whine when DPS classes are getting roflstomed in seconds by healing classes like healers have been for most of the last 4 years and we'll listen.

[Dewdrop]

Another one :  Is that two talent trees thing a hoax or not ?  Are we going to have switchable specs ?

So far there has only been one blue post suggesting that they 'may' be looking into doing that. As of now it isn't implemented. I did a couple quests spec'd protection, wore mostly dps gear with a shield and was pleasantly surprised at how effective it was - all the extra str/ap made a big difference. Not as good as fury mind you, but my fury set is pretty good despite being a tank for life. Someone with at or below par fury gear but decent tank gear may be better served by questing with a shield on. Its not as good as being able to change spec's on the fly but it IS a step in the right direction to make prot warriors not want to gouge out their eyes when questing, doing dailies, or what have you.

Also the multiple stuns are very helpful when soloing content. Concuss blow, shockwave, shield bash, (for me) warstomp all mean that it's very possible for me to mitigate quite a bit of dmg and interrupt most spell casts.

[Venkman]

Cool. Anyone playing a Mage? How's it feel?

[Dewdrop]

Haven't played with a mage yet, but i did some group quests with a level 71 Ret Pally. He was in almost 100% Wrath quest reward greens and was sporting a (relatively) crappy 110dps 2h mace (green quality). They are clearly broken. He was dropping 12k+ JOC's and had massive spike dmg, way more than a S3 equipped ret pally could do in BC. I'm sporting an old vanilla fury build with MH/BT level weapons and most armor at the Tier 5 level or better and he was doubling up my dps it seemed.

Also, Bloodthirst has been changed. At least I assume its a change (haven't played fury since leveling from 60-70), but it now heals back 1.5% of your base HP per hit. For me it comes out to 170hp/hit for 6 hits, every six seconds. So, a 170hps hot. Assuming i hit with all 6 attacks before it expires (which i think i nearly always do) I'm healing back ~1000hp every 6 seconds. I haven't had to rest more than maybe once or twice during my travels from 70-71. It almost feels OP, at least for leveling purposes.

[Ingmar]

I'm on the PVE server as Thorgrimm (warrior), Borrt (shaman), and Omarr (druid), alliance side. I made a DK named Ingmar and took him through the starter stuff, but I'm not sure I will play him further as I'm a liiiiittle tired of Outland.

So far my review is, the world server in Northrend crashes a LOT. 

I haven't tried playing anyone but the warrior and the DK so far. My druid went from ~1600 heal on the paper doll to ~800 heal, but I haven't tested the coefficient changes yet so I don't know how much that is going to suck or just be non-noticeable.

With the warrior (protection specced), at least with kara/badge gear, I'm not as much faster at killing things as I'd hoped, but I'm still able to kill without downtime basically. The +2 rage on dodge/parry and block talents are incredibly useful. Without them I'd be rage starved all the time. I'm not sure yet if sword and board (20% chance to proc a recharge/clearcast for shield slam off of shield slams and devastates) is worth 5 points. The cone on shockwave is annoyingly narrow which will I think cause some issues in instances as you drag mobs around to try and get the whole pack into the cone area to use it - my guildmates at least are really dumb sometimes about starting dps before I've got everything positioned, no matter how many times I yell at them.  The change upping the ratio at which we get block value for strength is great.

The first few item rewards seem to be around the same relative level as the first outland ones, maybe slightly worse in the sense that a much bigger chunk of the population is coming into this expansion in epics thanks to Kara making the raid game so much more accessible. The first weapon reward I got was slightly lower dps than my King's Defender. It does appear that I won't be replacing my badge epics, especially the sunwell ones, for a while.

Also, death knights are very fun to play, and their starting area is really quite well done (and should hold up pretty well under launch condition in terms of numbers of mobs, etc, I think) but it is really disappointing to get dumped out in EPL at the end of the intro quests with no real direction and a level shy of just going straight to Outland. Hopefully they will add some more stuff to transition DKs a little better.

[kaid]

I think people are not going to see quite the sharp gear transition in wotlk that they saw in TBC. My characters are WAY better geared now due to arena and BG stuff than I even dreamed of being before TBC came out where I was sporting a full set of the dungeon .5 set gear. Some of my guild had some molten core things and I had the pvp weapon and shield.

The pvp weapon and shield lasted me a good while in the expansion but everything else I ditched very quickly. In WOTLK I would not be shocked if a good chunk of my gear lasts till 74 or so before I start seeing more serious upgrades.

At least this time we are not seeing insane changes such as the stamina revaluing god my warrior pretty much doubled hp from 60 vanilla wow gear to 62 greens with a blue TBC gear.

[Dewdrop]

Yea the gear inflation isn't anything like the TBC transition. Blizz openly acknowledged that they screwed up itemization and stat allocation with original wow, most notably with stamina. I was replacing Tier 2 raid gear with quest reward greens at level 60 and 61, and Tier 3 not long after. Based on what I'm seeing from the higher level dungeons that have been released and level 75-77 blue items I expect all of my tanking gear will last at least until 78, if not longer, and my T6 quality dps pieces will last as long, with lower tier-equivalent pieces being replaced sooner. I have enough def rating and other stats that I'm not worried about rating decay getting the better of me for quite some time.

My only concern right now, as it pertains to tanking gear, is that some skills now scale with AP. Tier 6 quality tanking gear is generally devoid of str/AP. The biggest issue has been with shockwave. With all my tanking gear on, shockwave seems like a slightly more powerful TC with a narrow cone that is aggravating. But I put on dps gear with a shield which about doubles my AP and all of a sudden shockwave is hitting really hard. And for questing as prot, where getting critted isnt a big deal and thus def is barely relevant, wearing full dps plate with a good MH (Brutalizer in this case) and shield proved to be pretty decent.

[kaid]

Ya that AP scaling thing may be the one thing that gets me to flip armor sooner than the defensive stats would indicate. Given how everything the prot warrior has now scales more with attack power my gear right now is probably fine for tanking well into my 70s defense wise but I will probably need to start grabbing some of the new type of itemized tank gear to boost my AP up.

For most classes thats moot but for a prot warrior it is a potential issue.

[Dewdrop]

Slight non-sequiter, but one thing that I have REALLY enjoyed this time around have been the polish in the zones. Sure there are PH models around but its nice that zone lines aren't clearly drawn lines, such as the HFP -> ZM and ZM -> Nagrand zone transitions. Those aways struck me as too abrupt and are the opposite of immersive to me. These new zones tend to segue much better and make more sense. Keep in mind I've really only explored Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills, and Dragonblight, but my experience thus far has been better than expected.

[Nonentity]

Ironwood - No talk on the two talent trees just yet. They said they're experimenting with it, and nothing more after that.

I'm almost 71 - I haven't had time to play that much.

The murloc quest lines in Borean Tundra are fun. Killing orcas is odd. Shadowbolt crit for 3.7k (FUCK YOUUU)

[Fordel]

I haven't tried playing anyone but the warrior and the DK so far. My druid went from ~1600 heal on the paper doll to ~800 heal, but I haven't tested the coefficient changes yet so I don't know how much that is going to suck or just be non-noticeable.

There shouldn't be any noticeable difference.


Also, learn to consecrate already. 

[Hartsman]

Serious Questions :

Can you tell me what an Exotic pet is ?

Also, is the Survival tree now actually interesting to play ?

Until the BM tree is finished (51pt talent/exotics not in, pet talent window buggy, constant aggro pull off pets with autoplinking), I've been playing around with a Survival build for the last level and a half.   

This is the first time I've played Surv for more than 5 minutes.  Couldn't stand it before.  I was MM for launch and BM through BC.

So far: Exploding shot is ridiculously fun, especially in an instance group with a good tank.  It's an enormous mana suck in dungeons, but for that kind of fun I just deal with all the drinking.  For soloing, with viper, it's still close to zero downtime. 

If it stays like this, I may switch to Surv for levelling after release. :)

[Merusk]

Until the BM tree is finished (51pt talent/exotics not in, pet talent window buggy, constant aggro pull off pets with autoplinking),

This is what i was most worried about.  Since they're changing the aggro mechanic for tanking, I figured the same would hold true for pets.  They'd have to do more damage  with their abilities to hold aggro off the hunter.  Even with the 'new' growl on the live servers my pet has a hard time holding aggro off my autoshots.  Sounds like, once again, that wasn't thought of.  .

[lamaros]

The havn't done threat passes for any of the classes yet. For a number of obvious reasons.

It's still a beta, after all.

[Hartsman]

The havn't done threat passes for any of the classes yet. For a number of obvious reasons.

It's still a beta, after all.

Yeah - Agreeing with this.  That was my question on the beta boards, and I'm glad that was the answer. 

With the core changes to the basics of "how stats function," it's really not a surprise that threat in general isn't finished yet.  Pet aggro wonkiness is a symptom of that. 

The logical order to get things done would be: Balance out damage first, Figure out where the +threat buffs need to land to make the experience what they're aiming for, Make +threat buffs do that.

Since damage is also not entirely balanced yet (e.g. ret pally 1-2 crit kills), it makes sense they're still getting toward the end of step #1 there.

[Chimpy]

Pets wont be able to hold aggro off a decent geared hunter even after they do "fix" it. I will bet my socks on it.

I haven't noticed any increase in pet aggro since the growl scaling patch, but then again, I have 2k AP 30% crit unbuffed as BM so I probably am not the best indicator of how it is supposed to work. 

I am interested to see how the tree balances play out. I have gotten used to playing BM over the last year since I came back....but I still miss my 2.5 years (minus the 3 weeks I levelled my second hunter to 60 as BM) of marksmanship. I still think moving hawk eye to survival was the dumbest thing ever.

[K9]

I'm hearing that Ret Paladins are horribly broken in beta, any infos on this?

[lamaros]

I'm hearing that Ret Paladins are horribly broken in beta, any infos on this?

15k+ Judgement Crits.

[Dewdrop]

I'm hearing that Ret Paladins are horribly broken in beta, any infos on this?

Yea ret dmg is totally broken. A totally crappily geared ret pally I quested with was one shotting non elites in the level 71 range. Its very hard to tank in a group with one since they pull aggro. SOC crits are off the wall overpowered right now.

Finally made it to Dalaran. Its in crystalsong forest, which isn't done, no mobs or anything. The city itself seems unfinished as well. There is a horde and alliance sections and then a general area with trainers and stuff. There are portals to every city and even one that ports you to... Dalaran? Weird, can't see as how that would be useful. The bg queue's are crystals, they are cool looking but aren't functioning. More to come later.

[apocrypha]

Anyone know if there's a separate EU beta or if it's the same servers?

Also, how's the look of the quest reward gear and drops? Really annoyed me that I went from looking fairly pimp at 60 to looking like I'd got my outfits from a jumble sale after a few upgrades in TBC.

[Merusk]

Anyone know if there's a separate EU beta or if it's the same servers?

Also, how's the look of the quest reward gear and drops? Really annoyed me that I went from looking fairly pimp at 60 to looking like I'd got my outfits from a jumble sale after a few upgrades in TBC.

You will be back to the jumble sale, ,simply because that's the way green items work.  (Although they DID make a 'set' out of the plate quest items in Nagrand. All of it was purple and of the same armor style.)

[apocrypha]

Ah well, I still hold out hope that some of the greens won't look identical to things I was wearing at level 10 :)

[Tarami]

This is what i was most worried about.  Since they're changing the aggro mechanic for tanking, I figured the same would hold true for pets.

Could someone explain/point me to somewhere to read up on how aggro changes? Haven't played in a year, I'm out of the loop; but call it curiousity. Thanks!