Beta Roll Call

[K9]

I'm guessing we'll see recoloured T4 and T5 appearing at some point :p

[lamaros]

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!

Wait till the beta ends for this kind of info. Too much stuff in flux at the moment to bother.

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.

Portals, trainers, etc are for Beta. There will be no trainers in northrend last I heard, though they may keep some (but not nearly as many) portals.

[Register]

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.

The healing uberness hurts dps casters, especially mage/moonkin and non afflction locks, because healing's heal-per-mana is grossly more efficient than any dps caster's damage per mana. And a balance/resto and holy/disc can still put out dps as healing gear now adds spell damage too.

The best case is not a draw or escape, but a victory by attrition, by the fact that they can heal and dps you, while you can only dps, means that you will lose if their heals can match your damage while putting out damage on you still. Face it - this is hardly a rare or impossible scenario.

[Lakov_Sanite]

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.

The healing uberness hurts dps casters, especially mage/moonkin and non afflction locks, because healing's heal-per-mana is grossly more efficient than any dps caster's damage per mana. And a balance/resto and holy/disc can still put out dps as healing gear now adds spell damage too.

The best case is not a draw or escape, but a victory by attrition, by the fact that they can heal and dps you, while you can only dps, means that you will lose if their heals can match your damage while putting out damage on you still. Face it - this is hardly a rare or impossible scenario.

That's only in a 1v1 scenario, in duels healers will kill my spriest, in group combat they are like delicious candy to me because you can't heal other and heal yourself at the same time and if they are forced to focus on more than one person friend or foe they are easy targets.

[K9]

The best case is not a draw or escape, but a victory by attrition, by the fact that they can heal and dps you, while you can only dps, means that you will lose if their heals can match your damage while putting out damage on you still. Face it - this is hardly a rare or impossible scenario.

If only Mages and locks could "only dps". Locks of all have the least to complain about. You have substantial healing with Drain Life, Siphon Life and healthstones, your drain mana is more efficient than mana burn. You have an unprecedented amount of control over targets with fear, deathcoil and spell-lock. You also have devour magic.  and spellstones (should you need them). Also, when a DPS caster puts a healer under pressure and is forcing them to heal/dispel, they have no time to DPS you.

If you're not pvping as SL/SL then you're obviously going to have a harder time against players who build exclusively for PvP and survivability. This argument is as invalid as a priest complaining that they're loosing in PvP as deep holy spec.

[Register]

If only Mages and locks could "only dps". Locks of all have the least to complain about. You have substantial healing with Drain Life, Siphon Life and healthstones, your drain mana is more efficient than mana burn. You have an unprecedented amount of control over targets with fear, deathcoil and spell-lock. You also have devour magic.  and spellstones (should you need them). Also, when a DPS caster puts a healer under pressure and is forcing them to heal/dispel, they have no time to DPS you.

If you're not pvping as SL/SL then you're obviously going to have a harder time against players who build exclusively for PvP and survivability. This argument is as invalid as a priest complaining that they're loosing in PvP as deep holy spec.

I think that it speaks volumes of the power of heals in the game now, when healing debuffs like Mortal strike/Wound poison are extremely popular in most arena setups to overcome healing power. Also, drain teams exist because of the understanding that while the healers have mana its very hard to kill anyone - another testament on the state of healing power vs dps right now.

When we talk about heal scaling and efficiency, there has to be a point where it's performance is too great relative to current dps and we need to scale it back down again. My feel is that the current state of healing is almost there - it would have been nerfed already if not of the existence of healing debuffs.

In BGs however, there is no guarantee of a healing debuff on your target, and there is no dedicated drain teams. It is there where dps casters gnaw their nails in frustration emptying their entire mana bars nuking targets that remain at full hp while the enemy healer still have mana to heal for another stretch comfortably.

[K9]

In BGs however, there is no guarantee of a healing debuff on your target, and there is no dedicated drain teams. It is there where dps casters gnaw their nails in frustration emptying their entire mana bars nuking targets that remain at full hp while the enemy healer still have mana to heal for another stretch comfortably.

If you're nuking a target being healed and not switching to CC/couterspell/spelllock/cyclone/feral charge/nuke the healer, you're doing it wrong. All classes bar Paladins have numerous ways to control a healer, and putting the healer under pressure means that they have to heal themselves. The requirement to control healers rather than zimply zerg the first target you see with DPS makes PvP require a little more thought and skill than it did for years. Given the amount of control classes have, and the amount of burst DPS achievable in game these days, healing is fine.

[Merusk]

Once again the answer becomes "Kill the healer first" but people fail to do it.  Really, though, you have to kill the healer AND their companion at the same time because if you're just focusing on the healer, their DPS will tear you up while you do so.   It's worse with druids because their heals are HoTs and so they can keep themselves and a target up pretty well.   Fuck, bgs I've been in recently seem to come down to who has the most druids on their team.

[K9]

As a healer it depresses me no end to see half of WSG chasing after some tauren warrior with a sword and board while another priest sits 10 feet away and keeps him topped off with no problems. Druids are the toughest healers mainly because they have the best mobility, but they still go down quick under coordinated pressure.

[Register]

As a healer it depresses me no end to see half of WSG chasing after some tauren warrior with a sword and board while another priest sits 10 feet away and keeps him topped off with no problems. Druids are the toughest healers mainly because they have the best mobility, but they still go down quick under coordinated pressure.

I have played plenty of pvp, and I do target healers first - fearing druids and COT on priests and pallies are my top priority in small/medium skirmishes (in large clashes like AV I stick to seeding and setting it off)... and I tell you good, decent geared resto druids are so hard to kill its not even funny.

Fear *trinket* fear, fear and its on immunity. A druid with decent resilience\STA will still be alive, then it will be bash + heal, feral charge + heal or cyclone + heal and in seconds the druid can stack enough hots to heal up most of the damage done at a tiny fraction of the mana it costs the attacker. And we still have not gone on the scenario where its TWO druids healing each other - you simply can't kill them unless you got serious firepower with stacking CC.

All classes have scaled up at 70 with epic gears, and it is a fact that some classes scale up far greater than others. Melee dps have outscaled caster dps, and healing have outscaled both dps unless there's healing debuffs to significantly lower the healing.

[Dren]

As a healer it depresses me no end to see half of WSG chasing after some tauren warrior with a sword and board while another priest sits 10 feet away and keeps him topped off with no problems. Druids are the toughest healers mainly because they have the best mobility, but they still go down quick under coordinated pressure.

I have played plenty of pvp, and I do target healers first - fearing druids and COT on priests and pallies are my top priority in small/medium skirmishes (in large clashes like AV I stick to seeding and setting it off)... and I tell you good, decent geared resto druids are so hard to kill its not even funny.

Fear *trinket* fear, fear and its on immunity. A druid with decent resilience\STA will still be alive, then it will be bash + heal, feral charge + heal or cyclone + heal and in seconds the druid can stack enough hots to heal up most of the damage done at a tiny fraction of the mana it costs the attacker. And we still have not gone on the scenario where its TWO druids healing each other - you simply can't kill them unless you got serious firepower with stacking CC.

All classes have scaled up at 70 with epic gears, and it is a fact that some classes scale up far greater than others. Melee dps have outscaled caster dps, and healing have outscaled both dps unless there's healing debuffs to significantly lower the healing.

I will serve as witness to this as well.  It is ridiculous the pain it is to get just one resto druid down, let alone 2, which is nearly impossible without a group larger than 8 (which is not typical in a BG.)

They may not be killing anyone, but the wasted effort it takes to try and take them down is more than enough to get a win in a BG.  It may not be an immediate win in Arenas, but eventually you will run out of mana well before they do, so if your DPS isn't at its peak, you're done.

There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to take down a resto druid carrying the flag in WSG either.  That is THE flag carrying class of the game, hands down.

If they implement this 2-spec system with the expansion, I'll be using one for resto on my druid just for this reason.

[Dewdrop]

Played the new beta build last night on my lock. My warrior is almost 72 and the new patch changed nothing so I figured now was a good time to try out the lock a bit more.

Destro locks got un-nerfed. I tried an empowered imp fire based build. It was fun, imp basically spams fireballs and regens mana unbelievably fast. I'm wearing mostly frozen shadoweave so after toying with this for a bit I ran back and re-spec'd for a traditional SB Spam Demo/Ruin build. Couple of things:

Master Demonologist: With Succubus out you get 5% crit and 5% increased shadow dmg.
Demonic Sacrifice: 10% increased shadow dmg.

So, you have some choices there now. You can sac the succy for pure dmg, or keep her out (and attacking, her dps is pretty decent) if you need the extra crit. Myself, i gemmed for hit and I'm sporting kind of lackluster gear but where initially in beta my dmg was wayyy down now its actually up slightly. On a longer fight where my crit would actually start to matter I expect that my overall dps is up a fair bit. I really think that in the long run the extra crit from that (puts me at ~27% crit) and the 3% hit you get from the destro tree will allow you to really stack more haste/dmg. In the long run, unless they make further changes, i think warlocks will come out ahead. Also my shadow dmg was up to 1350 or so with the succubus out since her stats got buffed and thus buffed my dmg.

Also my regen was up. I'm still only running 200 spi or something really sad, but overall regen was up quite a bit. I expect once I begin to replace my BC gear with new, spirit heavy, LK gear that my regen will really be up. All this seems to be why they nerfed pots. That and raid wide mana tide/mana spring stacking and some other mana battery functions seems to indicate that mana shortages may not be as big a deal as they once were.. We'll see..

I did log on my warrior briefly. Now has a passive buff to alchemy, supposedly increases the stats from, at least right now, elixirs. Allegedly pots/flasks are broken, but at least its a step in the right direction. Freebie stats via a passive buff that I don't have to put in any effort to get? OK, ill take 2, please.

Edit: And a metric crapton of new people got invites. Vengeance landing was packing with new 70's wandering around looking for stuff.. It's a good thing though, the world looked vastly underpopulated for the most part, you could go for quite some time without seeing another person.

[Register]

Played the new beta build last night on my lock. My warrior is almost 72 and the new patch changed nothing so I figured now was a good time to try out the lock a bit more.

Yup, noticed that Bliz have made a significant about turn on the issue of the spirit stat for locks by encouraging spirit in their gear with talents changes. The Imp already regens mana very quickly currently - with a larger mana regen boost, dark pact builds looks like they can skip lifetap totally as long as the imp is up.

Am personally rather curious about the effectiveness of the end-point talents - Haunt, and Chaos bolt. How's their coefficient like? And although news have indicate that demon form gets AE shadowbolt, AE fear etc on top of high armor, what’s the cast time and recast timers on the demon form abilities?

Lastly, the major survival tool granted to locks in WOTLK is supposed to be the demonic circle/teleport. Have you tried it? What are the specific bonuses of being in the circle?

[K9]

Chaos bolt was removed in the last beta push.

[Merusk]

Chaos bolt was removed in the last beta push.

That figures, it seemed too overpowered to remain in as it was.  A high-damage ability that pierces all absorption effects on a 12s cooldown? Heh.

[Register]

Chaos bolt was removed in the last beta push.

Any good webby to recommend to read the latest beta patch notes? 

[Dewdrop]

http://www.worldofraids.com   

Alot of good info in regards to documented and undocumented beta patch changes.

Chaos Bolt was actually kind of weak. The coefficient was really bad (1.5 cast) and it had no place in the PVE realm. Its only use would be to blow up a pally who bubbled at 1% since it was good for just the one shot. And it was really THAT high dmg. It hit about as strong as incinerate. I think it came in 100 dmg higher than that for me.

I'm still only level 70 on my lock and really just playing around with different builds. My main is my warrior and that is who I'm spending the majority of my time with, as such I haven't seen the new warlock teleport ability yet. I'm 71.9 on my warrior, I need to find more time to get in there and just get to 72 and see if I get any new toys.

[jpark]

Are badges still usable in the expansion for new higher level gear?  Or have they been replaced?

[Ironwood]

Replaced.

[K9]

Can anyone confirm if the old level 60 Naxx is gone?

[Nonentity]

Can anyone confirm if the old level 60 Naxx is gone?

That's a good question - I'll have to run over there on my DK and check, but I'm fairly sure it is.

[K9]

I'm assuming the Naxx hanging over EPL will have been removed, I was more referring to the actual instance. You could roughly check it by running into the portal and seeing if you get the "must be in a raid group" message. Better would be to try this with someone who's attuned, thanks.

[Register]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557248684&pageNo=1&sid=2000#17

Blue stating that Lifebloom IS currently more overpowered than intended - nerf hammer poised to strike.

[Koyasha]

I'm assuming the Naxx hanging over EPL will have been removed, I was more referring to the actual instance. You could roughly check it by running into the portal and seeing if you get the "must be in a raid group" message. Better would be to try this with someone who's attuned, thanks.

On the very slight off-chance that it isn't gone, I'd also wonder whether it's still possible to GET attuned.  As in, are all the Scarlet Crusade and Argent Dawn NPC's still at Light's Hope?

[caladein]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557248684&pageNo=1&sid=2000#17

Blue stating that Lifebloom IS currently more overpowered than intended - nerf hammer poised to strike.

I don't imagine we'll see a change to LB before a 3.0 patch or similar that brings in the Wrath talents and preps for the proper expansion launch.

[Dewdrop]

I think what Register meant is that in the beta LB is OP, something they will most certainly fix with a beta patch well before any 3.0.. Also, I could be wrong, but I recall reading something that said they will not be rolling out talents before the xpac this time, as they did prior to TBC. Of course that all will end up depending on how much of a delay there is with the launch, if it gets pushed back quite a bit, as the last one did, then they may throw those talents out there as a bit of a carrot to keep people interested while waiting.

[Koyasha]

As I read that, they feel Lifebloom is overpowered now, but won't be doing anything about it.  It will be balanced in Lich King, because nerfing it now would leave druids with deficiencies they can't fix without the new stuff they're still working on.

[Ingmar]

I'm assuming the Naxx hanging over EPL will have been removed, I was more referring to the actual instance. You could roughly check it by running into the portal and seeing if you get the "must be in a raid group" message. Better would be to try this with someone who's attuned, thanks.

On the very slight off-chance that it isn't gone, I'd also wonder whether it's still possible to GET attuned.  As in, are all the Scarlet Crusade and Argent Dawn NPC's still at Light's Hope?

They are but I think the quests are gone. I'll try to remember to double check.

[Nonentity]

Naxxramas 40-Man, gone forever?
The original iteration of Naxxramas will be gone. The floating citadel has moved to Northrend and its inhabitants await some fresh visitations.

[K9]

bummer

I guess I should fish around for an experienced PuG on my server :s