New CONFIRMED WOTLK Info
Anonymous — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 07:23
Update: It's over, but we'll be
talking about this stuff for a while. Titan's Grip is confirmed --
two-handed dual wielding for Fury Warriors. Hunter pet skill points are
out, and pets are getting their own Talent trees. Shaman CC is
official, Ret Pallys are getting new itemization, and Rogues are going
to be able to sap a lot more. It's all after the break, more analysis
coming up soon.
Death Knight
One
thing they're talking about is that they don't want to leave the Death
Knight in the specific role according to their class -- they don't want
to pigeon hole Death Knights by the spec they choose. The speaker
plainly said that it's problematic for designers that tanks are forced
to either be tank spec or DPS spec -- they want to avoid this restricting dynamic for Death Knights.
He
also spoke about class-defining abilities. Runes, right now, have a 10
second cool down. The Armies of Undead are meant to call masses of undead -- invoke the feeling of how Arthas is the Lich King, and able to pull large groups of undead to attack enemies.
The
speaker definitely seemed concerned about the tank shortage. They want
to avoid pegging a death knight spec as only one spec at a time, so
that each character has as many options in play as possible.
Hunters
Hunter announcement were huge at the dev panel.
- Steady Shot will no longer clip autoshot -- the speaker acknowledged that Hunters hurt their own DPS by using their abilities
- Pets will get "talent trees" - one utility tree, one TANKING tree, one DPS tree
- A specific ability revealed was "cornered" - your pet does an additional 20% damage when they're at 20% health
Mages
Will get a Frostfire bolt to make Elementalists more viable.
Priests
- Divine Hymn - Allows priest to cast a hymn (holy tree)
that heals party members. If an opponent strikes a party member, they
go into a trance. It gives a deep holy priest not only a healing
mechanic, but a pretty interestnig emergency ability to use for control - Dispersion
- Reduce damage 90% regen 6% health/mana per second. 51 point shadow, a
way to turtle against incoming attacks and regen. Can move but not cast
spells - Guardian Spirit - Talent that prevents party
member death. Castable cheat death pet. Follows a party member, if
party member takes a killing blow, the spirit dies instead. All three
are specifically designed to address core priest issues, or solidify
their overall role.
Druids
- Entangling Roots indoors: A lot of druids left out of
heroics due to a lack of CC indoors. Diminishing returns off of Cyclone
a "curse to the class" because Cyclone has such a short duration. No DR
means you'd end up spamming Cyclone every 6 seconds the entire dungeon. - Didn't
change Cyclone because "it takes too long to cast, didn't want to take
Druids out of the action to recast Cyclone over and over, and
chain-Cyclone in PvE" - Flourish (or nourish?) for druid -- short time cast healing spell, 1.5 sec cast, effectiveness depending on what HoTs are up
Shaman
- Suffering from "totem spam" -- too many totems
- Strength of Earth and Grace of Air will be combined
- Totems will affect the entire raid, not just the party. Woot!
- Rockbiter is out. Earthliving is the new weapon enchant, will give +healing
- Flametongue is giving spell damage. Frost more reliably snares
- Shaman will get Hex, a limited, emergency CC -- Hexed players will have movement control, but no casting ability
Rogue
- Fan of Knives, from Warcraft III was a core ability of the Warden, but they thought it fit Rogues more
- It's a short AoE damage burst when needed (1 minute cooldown was mentioned)
- Sap
bigger spread now. Humanoids, beasts, dragonkin, demons. Another CC
help for heroics. "Pretty much anything with a skull and brain inside
of it."
Paladins
- Ret has poor itemization -- trying to move it over to Warrior/DK itemization
- Hand of Purity is a new "reactive healing spell" -- PoM style preemptive "healbomb"
- More
non-exclusive blessings -- Freedom and Protection. They won't
necessarily be called blessings, but they'll be outside of that
category.
Warrior
- Wanted to make the class feel more like Warcraft III -- put the Bladestorm Shockwave in, and tweaked Arms and Protection.
- Shockwave will help with Prot damage problem
- Titan's Grip is confirmed -- dual wielding 2h weapons. Rossi will love that.
Warlock
- Demonic Circle -- scribe a circle on the ground, and then teleport back there when you need to
- 51 point Demonology is a demon form. "Illidan form" is what Blizz is calling it around the office.
- In demonform you can spam some AoE Shadowbolts.
Now moving on to Q&A session...
"Now that every other class has CC, what are you going to do so that Mages are more viable?"
Make
sure their damage is competitive. They are "sidelined" by Warlocks now.
Intended for Mages to be kings of AoE but Seed of Corruption was too
effective. Scale up Mage damage, make sure they can overtake AoE.
Hunter... Plan for New Pets? And new pet slots?
There will definitely be new pets. (No news about new pet slots.)
"You mentioned a Shaman Hex spell which is a .5 second cast time. What is the duration?"
8-10 seconds.
Which races can be Death Knights?
Confirmed all of them. The Lich King doesn't discriminate, he likes them all. You can be a Gnome Death Knight if you want.
Does the Ret focus for Paladins mean you plan to move away from Protection and Holy?
'I
definitely want to express we don't ever plan to move away from core
things like Holy/Protection." We have to work on the specs that haven't
worked well enough. Hand of Purity is one example of trying to enhance
Holy.
(confusion about Hunter question) Will pet skill points disappear with pet talent trees?
It's a total rewrite of the Hunter pet system. No more skill points, only pet talents now.
Will Druids be able to use Windfury and Mongoose in forms?
Yes,
that's one of the changes. The windfury is no longer going to be WEAPON
and going to be BUFF for your PC. Windfury is a buff, not a weapon
enchant. It works with forms and poisons and weapon buffs etc.
Will there be some changes made to priests in terms of damage and healing ot balance them against other classes?
Do
you mean balance them up or down? Shadow Priests are huge in raids, but
they're a big weakness in high-end Arena PvP, we never see them there.
Dispersion is the big ability designed to help this, to help them
escape from melee. Hopefully that'll do the trick.
Three more questions...
Any plans to make it so warriors don't need to waste 5 talent points to get Flurry for raids?
"We'll
see." He acknowledges that the talents pigeonhole warriors, and that
they want to be careful not reinforce that. Try to make it so that
Death Wish Flurry doesn't turn into dominant raid DPS build. Bladestorm
needs to be very attractive for DPS. Titan's grip route is the fury
route for DPS, so BS if you're Arms, Titan's Grip if you're Fury. With
both viable, the five talent points might not be necessary. They're
fine with the flurry points, specifically, though and feels worth it to
them. (Crowd is extremely unhappy with that one)
Q: Will cyclone be changed or improved for Balance?
A: No. End of Q&A.
"All Of This Info Is Right Off Wow Insider, Just in Case You Missed It."
Just a quick thing to keep
Shinso — Mon, 06/30/2008 - 20:20Just a quick thing to keep in mind FF bolt is level 75 our current gear doesnt matter.
Woot to totems is
Gingerbeer (not verified) — Sun, 06/29/2008 - 10:09Woot to totems is all
WWI PVP Game Systems
saedo — Sun, 06/29/2008 - 10:03WWI PVP Game Systems Panel
WWI 2008 Day 2 PVP Game Systems
Wintergrasp
Siege Weapons
Support short and long range attack type and ram attack. Bombard
players and buildings. Houses the driver who fires the weapons. Also
houses 3 exposed players who can fight with their own spells as if they
were standing still.
faster than the Demolisher. More agile than the rest of the siege
weapons. Shorter range, but still longer than player combat range.
Lower damage, flame breath attack at the front. 2 additional passanger.
Costs less supplies at the siege warshop than other siege weapons.
hardest hitting, longest range ground vehicle. Driver controlls the ram
attack, independent gunner in the turret that can turn around fires the
main weapons. Additional passengers are protected.
counter-air unit, long-range ground-to-air rockets against fighters and
bombers. Also works as a personal armor suit, once the vehicle is
destroyed the player can continue fighting on its own. Strong melee
attack with its shredders. Ability to jump high to destroy incoming
rockets and jump over walls. Vulnerable against ground siege weapons
Arenas
Dalaran Arena
Orgrimmar Arena
close starting areas - elevators bring players up to the center of the
arena, only 10 yards away from each others, the spikes drop and the
fight begins
the pillars go up, the spikes come out of the ground so the player has
to decide what to do. Take the damage when moving across the area? Stay
separated from the group?
Battleground
zone has an attack-defend game type: when the event goes active one
side attacks, the other defends. Once the time has run out, the winner
faction gets control of the resources. If the attack fails the offense
gets a resource advantage to help on the next wave.
Q&A
Some players lose battlegrounds on purpose to get marks faster.
They are tuning the winning and losing rewards to solve this, they are also using the Report feature for this.
Spectator mode in Arenas?
Still on the list, but some players don't want to be spectated so it's
a complex issue. They are also thinking about spectating raids as well
City raids make servers crash. What's going to happen in Wintergraps?
They are working on the technical side. If there are many players, you
might see less into the distance to help computer and server
performance. The objectives are also spaced apart so players don't
cramp up.
Will BG and Arena rewards be freed from each other?
The PVP loot structure will remain the same. Arena will give 5 slots and the weapons, honor will give the rest.
Some class' CC abilities are better for PVP, others for PVE.
They don't see that as a problem. They are trying to balance them.
Any change for Warlock pet resilience and AOE damage scaling?
They are happy with the pet scaling right now.
Faction imbalance in Battlegrounds?
It's the result of being able to queue for more battlegrounds, and the
starting time is the same as the popup question timeout. They are going
to be changes to fix this.
WWI Dungeons and Raids
saedo — Sun, 06/29/2008 - 10:02WWI Dungeons and Raids panel
WWI 2008 Day 2 Anatomy of Dungeons and Raids
What's new in WotLK?
Shard reward system for every dungeon connected to Wintergrasp. Whoever
controls wintergraps will add all unique items, enchantments to all
dungeon and raid bosses for the controlling faction
- 80 dungeon in Zul'drak. Accumulation of a large questline that
encompasses the entire zone. Feel more connected to the story,
understand why stuff happened
that work for more classes. Remove unnecessary stats from classes that
keep loot seperated. Merge stats so that items work with at least 3
classes
Occulus
fly inside. Players get a drake, mount it and fight with individual
spells. Some drakes heal, some tank, some damage!
Ulduar
Caverns of Time - Culling of Stratholme
Q&A
How will legendary drops work in WotLK?
They prefer like how Atiesh worked, but time restrictions may interfere.
Will there be attunements in WotLK or only gearchecks
No attunements on initial level 80 content (including Naxxramas),
level-up dungeons, or Heroics. They do plan to have an attunement path
on higher end raiding content in the expansion, but it will be easier
to understand what's required, and won't be nearly as overbearing as
initial TBC attunements.
If I was designing the
Amenn — Sun, 06/29/2008 - 00:20If I was designing the Guardian talent, it would have a long cooldown (more than 10 minutes, so it couldn't be used in the arena) and a duration of the same length, or half that length. Basically: you bring a holy priest, you get to pick one fight every 30 minutes where your tank gets a do-over.
And yes, you'd almost certainly need some sort of Forbearence type debuff to prevent it from being spammed.
My point, however, was that given the current WotLK priest talent configuration it's either going to be a talent no one ever sees (because you have to give up returning like 200-300 mp/5 to your group) or one that is only seen for a handful of specific encounters where it is required, and/or makes the encounter easy mode.
Neither of those things are good, in my opinion.
If they un-nerf CoH (which I don't expect to happen, hence my Shammy alt), then they create an interesting situation. You can't have the mana regen talent and Circle of healing, which means healing priests have two distinct, and interesting, roles to play. They can either be a single target healer + mana battery, OR they can be an AE healer.
Leaving aside the fact that resto Shaman do both (albeit not nearly as well on the mana battery front), I think that creates an interesting choice for the priest player, and that's basically what I'd like to see happen.
What I expect to see happen is priests become mana batteries, either Disc or Shadow.
Im excited about demonform
Nellem1 — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 19:32Im excited about demonform to be honest. Im interested in testing it out. I saw some pics, it looks awesome. And an aoe shadowbolt would be good for trash mobs and pvp =D.
what doesnt die right away, will always have my ticking on their mind.
I highly doubt it'd be
saedo — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 16:03I highly doubt it'd be spamable, more likely to cause a forbearance debuff or something so it can't be used twice on the same person.
Well, true, but the
starstalker — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 14:54Well, true, but the guardian talent has the potential to be really, really OP. Suppose it was 1m with no cooldown. You could basically guaruntee that your tank will not die, and have no incentive to bring more than 1 holy priest. Its kind of the same reason why shield wall has such a long cd; if it was set to something "Spammable", it would take out much of the difficulty of almost any fight.
Also, in the pvp realm, imagine this thing on a 30 sec cooldown. In 2's it would be very OP. Spam this on a rogue with cheat death, and you'd have a player that would be mighty hard to kill.
That all being said, I think the cd is fine, but the duration could have been upped. Again, I think this is to not trivialize boss encounters. if it was to last 30sec, and could stack, why not have all the priests throw it on, hand over tank healing to a druid or pally, and sit outside the 5SR and regen an entire mana pool? Again, the spell has the potential to be really, really OP, so in a way I'm glad for the 3m cd.
I can already see some of its limitations though. I presume it will only be good for the 1 shot that would kill the tank, but it does not indicate whether the tank would stay at the same health, or get some kind of heal from the deceased guardian. While a great defense against something like Kael's fireball, it has a lower usefulness against something that is over time, like shear from illidan.
"All three are specifically
Amenn — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 13:35"All three are specifically designed to address core priest issues, or solidify their overall role."
This was either a lie, or the person who said it has never played a priest in raid content. With the exception of the CoH nerf and the new Disc 'healing mana battery' talent, the priest changes are all basically non-changes.
The CoH nerf destroys the only spec the was at all competitive with shaman raid healing, and really the most fun priest spec.
The healing mana battery talent is, as written, so dominant that only a raid that was overrun with mana regen (resto shaman, shadow priests, now disc priests) would permit a priest to raid without it. If they weren't nerfing CoH it would actually present an interesting choice: you can spec to AOE heal, or you can spec to regen mana for your group. As it stands, everyone will spec to regen mana.
Oh and the top end holy talent is either a joke or a rediculous gimmick to require for specific encounters. 10 seconds on a 3 minute cooldown means that in normal content it's basically a Nature's Swiftness + big heal. The only place where it would be truely useful is in a situation where you know the tank is going to take a truely epic burst of damage at a perdictable point in time (Kael's fireballs, for example).
Ag, I think it will be
starstalker — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 13:24Ag, I think it will be better than you think. I think it could be considered the "ice block" for spriests in raid.
thats a shitty 51 spriest
Agoney — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 11:56thats a shitty 51 spriest talent.. I doubt it will make it.. Esp. since shadow priests arent/wont be pvp viable spec of the 3 trees. (Jeffrey Kaplan (lead designer?) said this himself).
What do you have
starstalker — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 11:47What do you have planned for armor customization in Wrath?
Raiding armor sets will look distinctive from PVP sets.
I likey
Yippie shit i get a PvP
Keisjaa — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 11:46Yippie shit i get a PvP talent added at the end of my tree, big whoop
More Info: The most
saedo — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 11:16More Info:
The most important questions from the 1 hour Q&A grab from WWI:
When is the next content patch coming?
Sunwell was the last content patch for TBC, the next one is WotLK, released when it's ready.
It seems one talent tree for almost every class is a PVP tree. Any comments on that?
The devs try to make every tree viable for every situation, so
advancements can be expected for every class in Wrath of the Lich King.
What will be the primary gathering profession of Inscriptions?
Currently it looks like it will be Herbalism.
Linux client support?
Not planned, but there aren't any obstacles. It was used as compatibility testing earlier, but it's not planned.
Death Knight has good DPS everywhere, while the Warrior needs to choose either tanking or DPS. What are the plans to fix this?
There have plans to increase prot warrior damage, through Heroic Strike, Revenge, and making Shield Slam a base ability.
Is voice chat planned to modify voices to match the voices of the character.
They were thinking about it, but player voice differences would make
it really difficult. DK voice emotes will be modulated though, so a
Gnome DK will have a different voice, but still sound like a Gnome.
Do you think adding new classes will disturb the line up for 25 man raids.
Yes, it is inevitable, but as long as the 25 raider is happy and feels successful after the raid it's all that matters.
How viable will the DKs be?
Tanks will be interchangable in 5man dungeons, but at 25 man, all
tanks have a speciality. DKs will be better against casters, not so far
behind on others.
Will we be able to use flying mounts in Northrend?
Yes, but they will require some sort of attunement, "defrosting".
New mounts will be introduced too, possilby ones that can carry other
players.
Itemization for Ret Paladins?
They will share itemization with Warriors and DKs and they plan to buff their group utilities for melee dps.
What do you have planned for armor customization in Wrath?
Raiding armor sets will look distinctive from PVP sets.
Will feral druids get new skins in WotLK?
They talked about it, but while some players would like it, other wouldn't, like when the Rogue stealth animation was changed.
Will druids get male or female optional forms to choose from?
There is plan for a new dire bear form model and the introduction of the dire cat
What changes will you make in the old world, specifically filling in areas that are blank.
They're adding a harbor to Stormwind, which is a transport location
to Northwind. Plaguelands will be also extended with Northern
Plaguelands for the Death Knights to have a starting area. There is
plan to put a new arena in Orgrimmar where there's an empty arena now.
In season 4 how do you plan on improving class balance?
There are only minor adjustments in Patch 2.4.3 that favor casters a bit.
What did you learn about Arenas so far?
They learned a lot about line of sight and how that affects classes.
The first Arena tests had no LOS obstacles and it wasn't as
interesting. WotLK will introduce dynamic LOS, possibly a pillar moving
up and down or movable items. It's going to add randomness to player
skill in Arenas. Tomorrow's arena panel will have more about this.
Nihilum couldn't kill Kil'jaeden. Will you nerf Sunwell Plateau before Wrath launches?
Kil'jaeden is designed to be the final raid boss of the expansion,
there are no plans to nerf him. Progression is being monitored and if
there is need changes will be made.
PvP players have to do more PvP to be better for PvE. Are there plans to better separate the two?
They don't want one to feel like they have to do the other, but they
want players to feel like if they participate in one type of gameplay,
there is still something there for them in the other and that the two
playstyles aren't exlusive to each other. There are planned itemization
changes planned for WotLK to smooth things out between the two.
Don't you think with all the patches, the game is getting easier and easier, and it's increasing the number of newbs?
One of the things Blizzard values very much the ability for the game
to be easy to learn but hard to master. Since the system requirements
are low, there are more and more newcomers playing, so it's the
audience that turns more and more casual.
Which party buffs will become raid buffs in WotLK?
Most of the Shaman totems, Unleashed Rage and Battle Shout for example.
Will there be management tools at the character screen to reorder how characters are displayed?
Good idea, but they would have to prioritize it and get it in.
Any plans to increase viability of Swords specs for raiding Rogues?
There are plans to make improvements and daggers will be very strong in Lich King for Rogues.
Will druids have an epic ground form?
No plans.
Will players every be able to transfer characters from US servers to European servers or vice versa?
There are unique technical challenges to do it. There is no timeline and no plans for it.
Uldum in Tanaris, is that going to be later content or a patch for WotLK?
Uldum is a dungeon that a lot of players want to see and it was on
the list for Northrend. There's still a lot in the old world that they
have plans for, but they don't want them all to be launched in one
expansion.
Will Soul Shard farming being addressed? All other classes can
buy their reagents at vendors. And what's up with the Missing Diplomat?
No answer to the Diplomat, they'll talk to the quest guys about
that. About the Soul Shards they have plans to make an emergency sould
shard ability, but no plans to change the mechanic significantly, since
it's a class defining ability.
Any plans to be able to switch between talent specs easier?
They are working on giving players access to two talent specs, there will be more details about this in the future.
Why does the spider boss in lower Karazhan drop such crappy loot?
That boss was planned for 8 people, so if you had 8 players online
you could get some faction and some loot, that's why it's lower quality.
But aren't they merging all
saedo — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 11:11But aren't they merging all spell damage and healing into one thing in expansion? And you'd need talents to convert that unified spell damage into the spell damage/healing of your choice.
What I've seen suggests that
Dufe — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 12:06What I've seen suggests that items with +"Spell Damage" or "+Healing" will now just have "Spell Power" and that talents will be used to shift it more to either the dmg or heal side. I don't know how/if that will affect items/enchants that add spell damage to a specific school of magic.
"Mages: Will get a Frostfire
Dufe — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 10:33"Mages:
Will get a Frostfire bolt to make Elementalists more viable."
Do they realize that they've itemized specifically against that exact spec? IE spellfire enchants/gear are arcane fire? Soulfrost, shadoweave, etc are retarded as there is NO class that has both frost and shadow? There really aren't any notable itemizations I'm aware of that boost frost/fire simultaneously. Hopefully they're going to add that and a whole lot more if they think they can make this spec "more viable" enough to be good. It's 400% lolterrible right now. WTB a real upgrade.
Here's hoping they
starstalker — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 09:36Here's hoping they implement more "on ranged attack" procs. Don't leave hunters off the mongoose goodness!
"Will Druids be able to use
Pettingzoo — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 09:11"Will Druids be able to use Windfury and Mongoose in forms?
Yes,"
I COULD CRY TEARS OF JOY! Also, GoA being available will be hot.
The sad thing is the only
saedo — Sat, 06/28/2008 - 07:31The sad thing is the only "rogue" changes I'm excited for is the Shaman changes. lol
Yay for WF as a buff and GoA merged with SoE and they work raid wide!