Mists of Pandaria

[luckton]

Shadowbane closed up a while ago.  Sounds like you missed the good times.

Lol I didnt miss SB. Was a big steaming pile of sb.exe

I don't understand your gripe then.  It sounds like you want a return of the Tarran Mill/Southshore days of zerg fests and bone piles everywhere.  They stated they want to try and bring that back to the PvP servers by putting the quests hubs in strategic places.  Ultimately it's up to the actual players playing if they want to take a hit on someone else and start something.  You don't need incentive for that, you need crazy-nut players.

[Zetor]

I played on a pvp server in vanilla pre-BGs. All I can say is... rose-colored glasses.

[Dark_MadMax]

I don't understand your gripe then.  It sounds like you want a return of the Tarran Mill/Southshore days of zerg fests and bone piles everywhere.  They stated they want to try and bring that back to the PvP servers by putting the quests hubs in strategic places.  Ultimately it's up to the actual players playing if they want to take a hit on someone else and start something.  You don't need incentive for that, you need crazy-nut players.

Am I  nostalgic about Tarren Mill and Iron Forge raids? - somewhat yes. I think this was the best pvp wow ever had. But like I stated it wont come back magically  -  there are many other things blizzard screwed up some of them I already listed .And "best wow pvp" is not exactly "best possible mmo pvp" - today you need more than pvp enabled flag for it to be interesting.

[luckton]

In other news, it appears that the first Legendary out of MoP will be a morph-able weapon that any class can use.  So, that's new.

Other stuff from the patch includes some DK changes I was looking forward to for DPS stuffs.

For Frost, Frost Pres. now only generates a fraction of the RP it used to (20% instead of 100%).  In exchange, they baked in some CC reduction, and if you go Frost spec, you get Imp. Frost Pres, which reduces Frost Strike cost by almost half RP cost.  As for differentiating between DW and 2H, the 2H talent bonus no longer generates bonus RP, but now makes Obliterate hit harder with a 50% boost.  Obliterate itself was changed to deal 50% less boosted weapon damage (200% from 250%), but the base damage was boosted by 50% itself.

For Unholy, Unholy Pres. no longer reduces the GCD by .5 seconds, so no more Unholy Pres. Frost-spec DK will be running around.  In exchange, Unholy-spec DKs get Imp. Unholy Pres, which gives a 10% boost to attack and rune regen speed.

Both Frost and Unholy spec DKs will get a new group-passive buff, which is the old Imp. Icy Talons renamed to Unholy Aura.

[Merusk]

That GCD change is going to take some getting used to.  It's already murder on me switching from my Unh DK to another character, that .5 sec feels so much longer.

[luckton]

It will slow things down a bit by default, sure, but with all the stacked Haste, the difference DPS-wise should be minimal.  As far as stats go, nothing will change; Frost and Unholy will still stack Haste, Hit-Cap, and Crit before anything else.  I wish they would make the Frost and Unholy Masteries actually worth stacking for.  Maybe that's the next step.

[Merusk]

I'm not concerned about DPS, I figured that would be fine. I'm referring to muscle memory of how fast to push buttons. 

I've accepted UH Mastery won't ever be worthwhile.  They're determined to make them all damage-type increases for all the DPS except rogues it seems.

A mastery that increases DC procs or Reduces HB CD might be nice, but DKs are such a finely tuned balancing act we always seem to teeter between OP and bottom of the deck.

[Zetor]

DK's been an exercise at facerollingheavy buttonmashing ever since the start of wotlk. If anything, the UH change will make it a lot more crucial to time deathcoils so you don't cap on runic power all the time. Will have to wait and see, I guess.

(of course if they keep blood DKs as overpowered as they've been since mid-wrath, that's fine too  )

[Rokal]

Are Challenge mode dungeons going to offer more than just speed runs and a flat ilvl? I love the idea but I hopes it's more than just racing against a clock in an easy dungeon in the gear it's meant to be ran in.
At the Bronze level, you'll do good to just complete the dungeon in a reasonable amount of time, but you'll probably need to take it slow and stop and plan. It isn't just a test of who has the fastest movement speed. At the Gold level, you'll need to up your game even more and play smart as well as quick, taking risks where appropriate. The Bronze level is more like Heroic Arcatraz, Shadow Labyrinth or Shattered Halls when they were new. Gold level is more like a Zul Aman bear run when you didn't overgear the content.

That's the intent anyway. Nobody outside these walls has seen them yet so you'll have to let us know how they feel.

Are they actually tuned harder or is it the ilevel lock on them that is suppose to make them hard?
They are tuned harder. There are even some additional pulls and mechanics when necessary.

[caladein]

Yup, sounds great.

[Paelos]

Challenge modes don't offer gear rewards right? Just achievements and flavor shit?

[luckton]

Challenge modes don't offer gear rewards right? Just achievements and flavor shit?

I don't believe so, but since they're moving to using Valor as a form of 'gear XP', I'd imagine they'd reward a nice chunk of that as well.  Besides, if they did offer gear you'd just have a bunch of scrubs trying to do shit they can't handle. 

[caladein]

Challenge modes don't offer gear rewards right? Just achievements and flavor shit?

Yes.  Cosmetic armor, mounts, titles, that sort of thing.

[Paelos]

More power to them then. I like the idea.

[Rendakor]

Not really my cup of tea, but at least it doesn't offer anything mechanically important.

[Simond]

I'm looking forward to them, purely so I can see most of the "elite player" poopsockers spending time bashing their heads against the wall before crawling back to Blizzard and begging for nerfs.

[Fabricated]

The big ticket stuff they've advertised for challenge modes are mounts and a full set of transmog gear for each class. The gear will have no stats but it'll basically look like its own tier set.

[luckton]

That GCD change is going to take some getting used to.  It's already murder on me switching from my Unh DK to another character, that .5 sec feels so much longer.

Oh, update on this.  Turns out they baked the .5 sec GCD into all DK abilities.  MMO-Champ and WowHead just didn't highlight the difference.

Por ejemplo:
Blood Strike Live: Blood Strike MoP
Icy Touch Live: Icy Touch MoP

Note the GCD cooldown stat 

[Rokal]

I'm looking forward to them, purely so I can see most of the "elite player" poopsockers spending time bashing their heads against the wall before crawling back to Blizzard and begging for nerfs.

It sounds unlikely that they'll be harder than Cata heroics. The difference is that they are timed. I didn't really see a ton of complaining about how hard the timer on the bear run was to do but then I wasn't really looking either.

People complain more when they are unable to finish a dungeon, not when they are unable to finish it in X time.

[Lakov_Sanite]

These gold runs are going to be very popular with the hardcore. Of all the guilds I did original za runs with, there was never any complaining that things were "too hard" though a couple guilds broke up over who got to get invited to the runs and who didnt.  They really are elitest paradises.

[luckton]

Blizzard Talks About Class Balance and Theorycrafting in MoP

We want to provide everyone with a quick update regarding the status of beta class design and balance, as well as start collecting more detailed analytics from you. Since you’ve probably seen us say many times in the past that we’re not yet in a place to start dissecting the numbers, it’s worth calling out that we now want you to bring it on!

For the purposes of keeping this thread as valuable to the developers as possible -- they will be actively reading and likely replying to posts here -- these are some things to know before posting:

First and foremost, as a ground rule let’s keep this one thread free of pleas about ability feedback, DPS being too low or other subjective declarations. This thread should be about information sharing. If you aren’t a theorycrafter, this thread may not be for you.

We feel the numbers are in a pretty good place right now. If you’re a theorycrafter who has been waiting for things to stabilize before submitting your class balance analysis, this is your cue to have at it.

Make no mistake, we’re confident in our ability to balance the game. On the other hand, we greatly value player feedback. And reconciling our numbers with yours is part of that.

Don’t consider this thread to be evidence that we feel class design for Mists of Pandaria is pretty much done. It also shouldn’t be a sign that X issue you may have been posting about for the last month is going to be ignored, or that we just don’t agree with you.

The primary goal is to maintain a relatively stable class system for a healthy period of time in the beta, so the number crunchers among you can really start to get into the nitty-gritty details without worrying that everything will change in the next beta build.

If there are any mechanics that are proving particularly hard to understand, feel free to ask in this thread. We understand there is a narrow line between squelching and fostering the theorycrafting community, and we’re not trying to solve everything for you. On the other hand, we don’t want you to burn too much of your time trying to figure out how potentially confusing mechanics work under the hood (e.g. monk weapon normalization). That said, we won’t just dump the coefficient for every spell -- you should be able to figure that out. However, if you just can’t figure out how a spell is designed, don’t hesitate to ask. We appreciate honest questions.

From there, we get GC doing several replies about issues from every which way for all classes.  Too many to report...just hit the link.

[luckton]

Progress is being made.  New beta patch is up, and they've announced that raid testing will be starting soon.

And here's a Daily Blink for the lulz.

[Rokal]

Fortunately dailies will still be most of the things on that check list.

Unrelated:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVoIf0f6B0M&feature=player_embedded

That it all.

[luckton]

Fortunately dailies will still be most of the things on that check list.

Unrelated:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVoIf0f6B0M&feature=player_embedded

That it all.

Fucking day 1 purchase right there 

[Trippy]

Does everybody see that animation or just your character?

[Paelos]

I like it!

[apocrypha]

Haha awesome.


Bet they nerf it.

[Lakov_Sanite]

How every game of monopoly ends.

[Malakili]

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[SurfD]

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/227951-way-to-make-account-wide-mounts-worthless/

Someone rages that all the awesome "Expensive" mounts are not Account wide, Blue responds with "They Are Now".  Guess I should go buy that Ice Mammoth for my collection.

[Merusk]

Goddamnit.. just when I'd talked myself out of buying any of those.

[luckton]

The new Jewelcrafting mounts



 

[SurfD]

The black one looks pretty awesome.  Not terribly overawed by the others.

[Setanta]

LoL - the only profession I don't have (why I don't know, I have 10 85s). Time to level up JCing.

[Merusk]

Yeah, guess I'll dust-off the Warrior and get it up to 85 now.