Here comes the next content patch (3.2)

[proudft]

I'm still trying to figure out how a 25-person raid is gonna beat all the Wintergrasp bosses within 60 seconds of each other.

I agree.  I saw that and thought "wow, how are they going to do that, even on 25-man?"

25 teleporting warlocks.   

[Lantien]

Blizzard have done stand-in wrong-numbered achievements before (presumably?) as a knowing wink to dataminers.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=43777.0

Must Deconstruct Faster (Defeat XT-002 Deconstructor in 20.5 seconds on Normal Difficulty.)
# Rubble and Roll (Defeat Kologarn with 6000 Rubble creatures alive on Normal Difficulty.)
They're Coming Out of the Walls (Defeat 200 Guardians of Yogg-Saron within 12 seconds on Normal Difficulty.)

I'm pretty excited about the new patch.  My guild isn't going to be able to do any of the new content out of the gate, but our small casual guild will benefit the most from focused 5 man runs for lots of Emblems of Conquest.  In addition, I've been farming dailies mercilessly to get a shot at some of the more interesting Argent Tournament rewards (A tabard that has a 30 minute cooldown teleport?  Hierloom Chestpieces that stack XP?  Another flying mounts?  Yes please).

Bonus points that Warlocks didn't get crushed in the patch too bad as well! 

[Gobbeldygook]

I'm still trying to figure out how a 25-person raid is gonna beat all the Wintergrasp bosses within 60 seconds of each other.

Something like pull archavon, get him down to 3-4%, pull the new guy, get him down to 3-4%, then do emalon, once he dies kill the other two.

Depending on the range on his stomp, you could just have two tanks and a healer babysit archavon away from the raid.

or the achievement is eventually going to be 60 minutes and it's really just a "did you wipe too much y/n?" achievement.

[K9]

60s would be impossible. You wouldn't be able to beat the enrage on Archavon while sustaining DPS on Emalon's adds and Koralon.

[Draegan]

I got my disc priest to level 60 a few weeks ago and stopped playing.  I couldn't bear it anymore.  I don't think I'll ever come back to this game except maybe to try out an expansion.

If I were still playing some of these changes look nice though.

[chargerrich]

IMO a Warrior Protection Tank should be clearly the "top raid tank". I do not even have a Warrior past 70 so I am not biased, I just do not see why a Death Knight with no shield should be as good of a tank. I personally do not want all the classes blended, the roles should be clearer.

How the tank classes SHOULD work (IMO)

Tanks
Prot War - Best single target raid tank, period / Decent group tank
Frost DK - Average across the board tank but with more utility
Feral Druid - Best group tank / Decent single target

[Gobbeldygook]

Tanks
Prot War - Best single target raid tank, period / Decent group tank
Frost DK - Average across the board tank but with more utility
Feral Druid - Best group tank / Decent single target

You forgot something.

[Draegan]

IMO a Warrior Protection Tank should be clearly the "top raid tank". I do not even have a Warrior past 70 so I am not biased, I just do not see why a Death Knight with no shield should be as good of a tank. I personally do not want all the classes blended, the roles should be clearer.

How the tank classes SHOULD work (IMO)

Tanks
Prot War - Best single target raid tank, period / Decent group tank
Frost DK - Average across the board tank but with more utility
Feral Druid - Best group tank / Decent single target

That's impossible to balance across the spectrum of all content.  Blizzard tried.  Didn't work.

Paladins never count anyway.

[Soulflame]

IMO a Warrior Protection Tank should be clearly the "top raid tank". I do not even have a Warrior past 70 so I am not biased, I just do not see why a Death Knight with no shield should be as good of a tank. I personally do not want all the classes blended, the roles should be clearer.

How the tank classes SHOULD work (IMO)

Tanks
Prot War - Best single target raid tank, period / Decent group tank
Frost DK - Average across the board tank but with more utility
Feral Druid - Best group tank / Decent single target

1.  You forgot paladins.
2.  This makes all tanks other than prot warriors irrelevant, except maybe for trash.  Welcome to BC 2.0!  Please tank our trash, then step out or respec for the boss.

As someone who gets to heal the tank, I don't really give a damn about anything other than the tank being able to survive the fight.  Right now the ranking goes something like:

1.  DK.  Best at everything.  Hooray DKs!  I   them.
2.  Warrior.  Oh.  A warrior.  What, we don't have enough DK tanks?  Well.  Ok.  I guess we can try it.  I mean, it'll probably work, but god, not using DKs is hardmode enough already.
3.  Paladin.  Fuck off and die.  You suck.  I hate you.  Roll a real tank.  Like say, a DK.  Actually, you probably should just not reroll, and go away.  God I hate you.
4.  Druid.  Dunno.  I haven't healed that many bear tanks.  They seem pretty solid, but that's just seeing some ferals throw on their off-spec gear for a fight every so often, or a resto druid going LOLBEAR HAY GUISE IM TANKING THE LAST 30S OF THIS BOSS FIGHT LOL oh shit that worked.

I should note that my dislike of paladin tanks is more due to playing with shitty paladin tanks than an active dislike of the spec.  For some reason, paladin tanking seems to draw a lot of idiots.  I have played with a couple of competent paladin tanks, and I do  them.  It's just the rest of the paladin tanks make me hate the spec so very much.

[Sjofn]

I should note that my dislike of paladin tanks is more due to playing with shitty paladin tanks than an active dislike of the spec.  For some reason, paladin tanking seems to draw a lot of idiots.  I have played with a couple of competent paladin tanks, and I do  them.  It's just the rest of the paladin tanks make me hate the spec so very much.

It might be partly due to the fact that protection paladins were almost as mindless as holy paladins in the "how u werk paladin" sense in TBC.

[Soulflame]

When I say "idiots" I mean flat out "why the fuck are you even in the raid?" style idiots.  The one you need to prod to rebuff every single time.  The one who dies to predictable PBAE damage on Mimiron and Spinny McLightning dwarf.  The one who absolutely cannot take damage anywhere near as well or consistently as a warrior, much less a DK.

God I hate paladin tanks.   

[Ingmar]

IMO a Warrior Protection Tank should be clearly the "top raid tank". I do not even have a Warrior past 70 so I am not biased, I just do not see why a Death Knight with no shield should be as good of a tank. I personally do not want all the classes blended, the roles should be clearer.

How the tank classes SHOULD work (IMO)

Tanks
Prot War - Best single target raid tank, period / Decent group tank
Frost DK - Average across the board tank but with more utility
Feral Druid - Best group tank / Decent single target

How about no. I *do* play a protection tank and I think this is a horrible idea. You just stripped every useful raiding role off of all 5 other tank specs (DKs have 3.)

[Fordel]

It's a stupid idea conceptually AND it's also already been proven stupid from Vanilla and TBC.

But no Bias, so it's cool 




In related news, they seem to have reverted the ShieldBlock change for warriors?

[Ingmar]

Yes, my hate-vibes clearly have been received and they backed it out. 

[ezrast]

Sweet, can you maybe hate on the WSG change next? 

[Ingmar]

Sweet, can you maybe hate on the WSG change next? 

No way, I've wanted a time limit on WSG since about 35 minutes after the first time I queued up for it when it released. 

[Rasix]

Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).

WTF.

[Ingmar]

Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).

WTF.

There's wind shock these days for interrupting, so I guess they wanted to spread the -attack speed debuff around some more? I dunno why though, it isn't exactly rare.

Also that block change has another annoying thing going with it:

Shield Slam: The benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level.

That kicks in pretty early post block change, so really the shield block/slam combo is just nerfed a different way. 

[Lightstalker]

There's wind shock these days for interrupting, so I guess they wanted to spread the -attack speed debuff around some more? I dunno why though, it isn't exactly rare.

Maybe the first step to taking Wind Shock off the shared shock cooldown and giving it a more significant lockout period like other interrupts?  With Earth Shock being an interrupt as well as a decent source of damage it was really doing too much.  Hopefully they'll also remove the silly threat reduction on Wind Shock so it can go to a longer lockout effect.

[Ingmar]

There's wind shock these days for interrupting, so I guess they wanted to spread the -attack speed debuff around some more? I dunno why though, it isn't exactly rare.

Maybe the first step to taking Wind Shock off the shared shock cooldown and giving it a more significant lockout period like other interrupts?  With Earth Shock being an interrupt as well as a decent source of damage it was really doing too much.  Hopefully they'll also remove the silly threat reduction on Wind Shock so it can go to a longer lockout effect.

Taking it off the cooldown is in the notes already (renamed to Wind Shear). I don't think they gave it a longer spell lock though.

[Jayce]

Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).

WTF.

Wind shock or whatever doesn't come at as low a level as Earth Shock. Sort of a leveling-up nerf.  (says the perpetually low-level guy)

[K9]

You get Earth Shock at level 4 and Wind Shock at 16, so it's not too bad really.

[Phunked]

Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).

What is the point of this? Enh. shaman already solo just fine (at least after you get DW). If this is meant to be a PvP buff, they few who are really good already do very well in 2s (resto/enchance is a very strong comp at higher brackets).

I realize that ES did a bunch of stuff (damage, interupt) but enhance shaman were almost certainly not overpowered at any gameplay aspect.

[Gobbeldygook]

Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).

What is the point of this?

It is the most random change in recent memory.

[Fordel]

Clearly heralding the return of the Tank Shaman. 



They wanted to take windshock off the other shock cooldowns, and earthshock was fairly redundant to begin with, so they switched the interrupt portion for something 'safe', while removing redundancy and arguably giving enhance a bit more utility, sorta.

[Nevermore]

Sweet, can you maybe hate on the WSG change next? 

No way, I've wanted a time limit on WSG since about 35 minutes after the first time I queued up for it when it released. 

Now that I've started doing BGs, I have to say I'm not going to like the time limit.  All the best WSG matches I've been in have been longer because the sides have been closely matched.  Short ones just means one side steamrolled the other.

I also won't like the shorter Arathi (even though Alliance on my battlegroup loses that one around 75% of the time), but EotS can DiaF.

[Soulflame]

Anything that reduces the time it takes for me to get tokens is a great change.  Having said that, shorter ABs will make me sad, mostly because it's my favorite BG out of all of them.

[Fordel]

Nothing is happening to AB?

[Ingmar]

Yeah the time limit thing is ONLY being added to WSG. The other BGs all have de facto time limits already and thus don't need anything changed.

[Nevermore]

Except AB and EotS are having the amount of points needed to win reduced from 2000 to 1600.

[Soulflame]

Except AB and EotS are having the amount of points needed to win reduced from 2000 to 1600.

I thought everyone was aware of this already, thus my earlier comment.

It'll be interesting to see if they change achievements.  i.e. the "come from behind by 500 points" in AB achievement might get changed to 400, or something.  Not to mention shorter time limits on "Let's get this done!" achievements as well.

[apocrypha]

Clearly heralding the return of the Tank Shaman. 

If that ever becomes viable I call dibs on the name "Sherman".

[Soulflame]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLHLWVQkufk

[Khaldun]

Yabbut that's Heigan.

[Soulflame]

He tanks Loatheb as well in that video, not to mention whatever he tanks in the other two videos.