2.0.3

[Ironwood]

Time to sell those righteous orbs I've been buying in anticipation of everyone wanting crusader.

I got 3 seperate whispers in 10 minutes from poor schmucks trying to unload these.

Giggle.

[DevilsAdvocate]

Not to bitch too heavily, but unless I missed it they still didn't fix "Pets rez dead" in BG's, which is my number one complaint about Hunter's right now. On the other hand, changing multishot back is nice (although I'm a bit surprised they did it -- I wonder if the post-steady shot levels of MS are going to jump in mana?).

And refunding Rogue talents is bonus, because I screwed up my respec and was still trying to decide whether to pay for it or just suck it up and wait a few levels.

On the plus side, they fixed the pets not rezzing, but didn't put it in the patch notes.

On the negative side, the pet speed nerf got patched in. All pets are now attack speed 2.0. Not in the patch notes either.

My 3 pets were Spiteflayer (1.2 attack speed bird), Ravage (1.4 attack speed hyena), and Deathflayer (1.6 attack speed scorpid). All 3 rare silver elites. All 3 nerfed.

No reason to try to find silver elite pets any more. Talk about reducing pet diversity by a huge amount. Wasn't the cat/wolf tradeoff attack speed/dps for armor and health?

[Merusk]

Cats still have better DPS.  (And thus, better Kill command hits when you hit 66.)  They kept animals DPS the same, and changed the attack speed.    This means anything with a high DPS now has a higher damage range, just like it works for Weapon Speed.   

Also, it's not diversity if everyone is camping the same elites to get the 'fast attack' speeds.  It's just a cockblock until you can camp it for your own, like running BWL 37 times for your X-bow.   Now you're forced to pick a pet based on its abilities and what you're using it for at that moment, not because it wtfpwns on interrupts.

[Righ]

Why'd they change the AH to sort by buyout price.  I'm always bidding on cheap greens to DE now I'm going to have to go through every item on every page to see the cheap bids instead of just sorting :(

Just get BottomScanner, an addon FTMO Auctioneer.

[Xanthippe]

I wonder, does anyone know, how long people will want Crusader?  I bought the orbs whenever they dropped under 25g - weekends they've been at 35g+.  I'll hang onto them and sell a few at a time, I guess.

[Merusk]

I wonder, does anyone know, how long people will want Crusader?  I bought the orbs whenever they dropped under 25g - weekends they've been at 35g+.  I'll hang onto them and sell a few at a time, I guess.

Crusader will still be the enchant of choice for L60 melee BG twinks.  There's no new weapon enchants that surpass it, which is why it sucks that it's been nerfed.  I imagine price will ge up eventually.   Just depends on how long you want to hold on to those orbs.

[Lantyssa]

How much are the enchants reduced at 70?  There is a big difference between losing 10%, 50% and 99%.

[Zephyr]

It also seems like there is a new bug allowing people to cap the AV flags from quite some distance.  In two different games I watched SP gy get capped without someone even aggroing the guards.  At the moment it seems to be a Horde-only exploit dealing with Far Sight, but it could just be that the Alliance water heads haven't figured it out yet. 

If it works with Far Sight, I'd imagine it works with Eagle Eye as well.  Easy enough to check.

Yeah, it doesn't seem to be confined to one class now as I saw a rogue try it.  I was just going off the fact that one particular shaman had over 20 gy caps within 10 minutes of AV starting.  SP gy kept changing hands till we found him hiding behind a tree.

[Morat20]

I don't think it involves Far Sight. I think it's just that suddenly cap ranges can be 10+ yards. Depending on geometry, even farther. I saw a post on the WoW forums indicating Blizzard was aware of it, had reproduced it, and was working to fix it.

Mostly I saw was horde saying "Yeah, well, it's okay 'cause you win AV all the time so why are you being babies about it"? Idiots. I happily agree the AV map favors Alliance by more than a bit, but I can tell you right now three quick fixes for it.

1) Fence off the IB GY, so that rezzers had to run past the IB flag.
2) Change the slopes of the hills in the FW base to make incoming players fight the NPCs, instead of bypassing them. (Frankly, this isn't a big deal. There's never any Horde defense, and it'd only take a few minutes to fight through the NPCs. The Horde rarely loses thinking "Just give me a few more minutes").
3) Fix the ramp between the towers so that there's better line of sight "downhill". (I'd leave the backdoor through the fence. I've seen Horde staging in similiar areas in Dun Baldur).

The reason Horde looses is they don't have defense. Hell, most games we give the horde SH so they're not rezzing at IB -- not that it matters, as most rezzers simply run down the back without going near the flag, much less hit the Alliance offense. We give them SH so they don't rez at frostwolf..

[Lt.Dan]

Just get BottomScanner, an addon FTMO Auctioneer.

Auctioneer got borked in the update - hangs the AH screen and you have to relog and disable auctioneer to bid and search.

[Tale]

I wonder, does anyone know, how long people will want Crusader?  I bought the orbs whenever they dropped under 25g - weekends they've been at 35g+.  I'll hang onto them and sell a few at a time, I guess.

I think materials for high-end enchants are a good investment for the first couple of weeks of Burning Crusade.

There will be thousands of people looking for enchants for their new gear and most will go straight for tried and true enchants like Crusader.

[Ratama]

How much are the enchants reduced at 70?  There is a big difference between losing 10%, 50% and 99%.

4% less/level above 60.

So at lvl 70, Crusader gives 60 Str, instead of 100 (and supposedly heals 60% of normal as well, but that's hardly significant).

Artificially nerfing non-scaling enchants to make the new, crappy enchants seem more appealing reeks of shitty game management, imo.

[caladein]

(and supposedly heals 60% of normal as well, but that's hardly significant).

Artificially nerfing non-scaling enchants to make the new, crappy enchants seem more appealing reeks of shitty game management, imo.

I think that's what they're intending to nerf though (the heal), the Strength proc doesn't scale so that would already get worse as you level. Lifestealing is the same way, along with Icy (snare). The enchants that provide fixed damage/stats (Fiery, Slaying, Weapon Damage, Stats) aren't being changed, just the three with unique procs. It's important to add that those don't scale either, but being unique: a heal, a lifesteal, and a snare, they'll still be popular.

I don't think its (primarily) to make the new enchants more appealing, but instead it's for balance reasons (although it is nice to not have to run Live Strath for the millionth time).

"These enchants are still good at 70, and we don't want to provide better versions of them... nerf 'em, " is what my money's on.

[Ratama]

I think that's what they're intending to nerf though (the heal), the Strength proc doesn't scale so that would already get worse as you level. Lifestealing is the same way, along with Icy (snare). The enchants that provide fixed damage/stats (Fiery, Slaying, Weapon Damage, Stats) aren't being changed, just the three with unique procs. It's important to add that those don't scale either, but being unique: a heal, a lifesteal, and a snare, they'll still be popular.

... What are you trying to say, here?

Icy scales.  Nerfing it makes sense in that the slow % is the same (or would have been pre-nerf, rather), and is just as effective at lvl 70 as 60.

Lifestealing and Crusader are static effects that do NOT scale; they were already weaker at 70 than they were at 60.

I don't think its (primarily) to make the new enchants more appealing, but instead it's for balance reasons (although it is nice to not have to run Live Strath for the millionth time).

Again, that doesn't make any sense; if a static effect isn't overpowered at 60, how is it overpowered at 70?

"These enchants are still good at 70, and we don't want to provide better versions of them... nerf 'em, " is what my money's on.

That's just it; they won't be good enchants at 70 anymore with this artificial nerf... and if they didn't want to make better versions of them available, they should have let people use the old ones.

It seems rather obvious to me that it IS a case of making the new enchants artificially attractive by nerfing the shit outta the old ones: "You WILL use the New Shinies we've provided, even if they're really just shiny turds".

I'm not trying to be contrary or insulting, here... I'm really curious as to how anyone could read the situation any other way, given the static nature of those enchants.

[MournelitheCalix]

Druid threat generation got burned down HARD. Confirming once again that Blizz has only the barest inkling on how their numbers really work. Expect that to be buffed again in two months.

As a player who has played warrior for tanking, I am really glad that the numbers were burned down.  I must admit I am glad for selfish reasons only.  I think your right that this isn't the permanet fix, this is the quick one.  I really wish that blizz would consider taking a road less traveled.  That being buffing up other classes instead of tearing other classes down to achieve equal patheticness and increased frustration among two classes. 

Some changes that I have suggested for warrior was:

Changing Thunderclap so its also used in defensive stance.
Changing Improved Thunderclap so that the threat generated increases as talent point investment increases.
Changing Improved Demoralizing Shout so that the threat generated increases as talent point investment increases.


The numbers would have to be worked out, but if done properly it could assure that protection spec tanks do the best all around threat thusly making them the most coveted tanks and it would keep dire bears as a viable option.  I think everyone would win if they did this, sadly I think the reason they went to the nerf was that it was the quickest solution to the fact that the state of the warrior is horrid and that the players of the BC beta knew this.  They knew it and their opinion was reflected in the post on the beta forums where 75% prefered the dire bear tank, 15% preferred the paladin, and 10% preferred the warrior.