WotLK
3.1 Release. Your guess?
Fjork — Fri, 02/13/2009 - 11:58
Dual Specs Q&A
saedo — Thu, 02/12/2009 - 11:31
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/dualspec.html
Talent Dual Spec Q&A with Ghostcrawler
With the next content patch, we will be introducing a number of additions and changes to the game. One new feature in the works is the ability to set up two separate sets of talents, or "dual spec". While the complete feature may not be immediately available in the Public Test Realms (PTR) and specifics are still liable to change, we wanted to go over some questions with Senior Game Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street to find out more.
Nethaera: What is dual speccing?
Ghostcrawler: Dual speccing is the ability to save two separate talent specs, glyphs, and action bars.
Nethaera: Why are we allowing players to dual spec after all this time?
Ghostcrawler: We really felt like this was a great way to increase the flexibility available to players and encourage them to take part in more aspects of the game. To use just one example, some players like to participate in both raids and Arenas, which is awesome behavior that we want to promote. But, there are some talents which are more useful in one part of the game than another. Currently, players have to pay respec costs and go through the process of setting up the desired talent spec and action bars whenever they switch.
The new system makes this a much more logical process, saving on time and cost and allowing players to easily move from one aspect of the game to another.
Nethaera: Who will be able to use it?
Ghostcrawler: Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual specs.
Nethaera: Why do players need to be max level in order to do this?
Ghostcrawler: We didn’t want to burden lower-level players with extra complexity as they’re working to level up and learn their class. But if the feature proves popular we might consider expanding it.
Nethaera: How will you be able to set up a dual spec?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to visit their trainer and pay a one-time fee to be able to use it.
Nethaera: How do you switch between specs?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to switch between their talent specs by visiting any Lexicon of Power provided they’ve paid for the ability to have a secondary spec. Lexicons of Power will be available in major cities, and inscribers will also be able to create a new item that summons one. Anyone can purchase this item, but it requires a ritual of several players to summon it for use by the party. It’s similar to a repair bot in that it will exist in the world for a short duration. It’s important to keep in mind that you will not be able to switch specs while in combat or Arenas. While you won’t be able to switch your spec without the Lexicon, you will still be able to look at your secondary spec whenever you want to.
Nethaera: Will solo players have the ability to switch their specs outside of the cities or will they still need to visit a Lexicon of Power?
Ghostcrawler: Solo players will still need to go into the city to visit the Lexicon of Power to switch their talent spec or will need to get together with other players to summon one in.
Nethaera: Is the item that allows you to summon a Lexicon of Power reusable, or is it used up?
Ghostcrawler: We haven’t made a final decision on that yet, and will be evaluating how it works on the PTR.
Nethaera: Can I respec only one of my talent sets, or will I need to respec them both if I reset one?
Ghostcrawler: When you reset your talents, it will look at the spec you currently have in use as the talent set you want to change.
Nethaera: Will you be able to switch gear easily to match your spec?
Ghostcrawler: At the same time we implement dual specs, we will also be setting up a gear system. The feature is called “Gear Manager.” It can also be used to just swap weapons or trinkets or put on that tuxedo to strut around town. It will not automatically switch your gear when you change your talent spec, but it will allow for an easy gear change between them. The feature may not be fully functional immediately in the PTR, but we’ll have more information to share about it before too much longer.
Nethaera: What about hunters? Often their pet talents are set up to match the talents of the hunter. Will they be able to switch their pet specs as well?
Ghostcrawler: We will wipe the pet talents. However we are going to remove the respec cost for pet talents so that players won’t feel like they need to jump through an additional hoop to respec their pet. In addition, we are going to provide hunters a new core ability to let them remotely access their stable on a long cooldown. This way if their exotic pet heads off to the stable, they will be able to get a different pet. We hope to be able to discuss this new spell in more detail when we get a little further along.
Nethaera: Will you be able to change your Glyphs as well?
Ghostcrawler: Glyphs will be tied to each talent spec so that if you switch between them, so too will the Glyphs. You’ll notice the UI will have changed a little bit so that the Glyph panes show up alongside the Talent panes now that they are associated.
Nethaera: What about hotbars? Will players be able to save them for the talent spec they’re running?
Ghostcrawler: Yes, you will be able to save hotbars and use them with your talent specs. It just saves your bars at the same time as it saves the glyphs and talents. If you want to switch to your other action bar, you will need to change specs.
Nethaera: Is there a way for players to choose their talents without them being saved? Currently, once you spend your talent point, it’s spent unless you pay the respec cost again.
Ghostcrawler: With the dual spec feature, we are going to allow players who respec to configure all their talents before they get saved. They will be able to allocate the points, then choose if they want to use that as their spec, rather than needing to carefully diagram out their talents ahead of time. This will allow players a little more freedom when deciding on the talents they want to pick and avoid costly mistakes.
Nethaera: Will players be confined to only setting up two specs?
Ghostcrawler: We will be launching the feature with just two specs, but depending on how we feel it works out, we might consider additional specs in the future.
Nethaera: When can players expect to try out dual specs?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to try out the dual spec system on the Public Test Realms when they are made available. This has been a pretty big project with a lot of people working toward making it a reality in the game. We’ll definitely be watching the feedback and looking for ways of making sure the system works the way we all envisioned it to.
This raid is in case GRD does not manage to kill Maly as well on Saturday night. Invite priorities will be given to GRD raid members first. Invites will start at 6:15 Server time and if you are not on by 9:30 we will find replacements for you. As another note I will invite mains first over alts at the time.
T1: Fistycups -
T2: Ananaras - Out - Need DPS to fill in
H1: Primeight -
H3: Ardea
H2/D6: Dragonsword - Confirmed
D1: Zariyah - Confirmed
D2: Grasen - Out - Raiding with KB
D3: Leighann -
D4: Rhoora -
D5: Jayel - Out - Need DPS to fill in
Even if you are a regular, pls sign up telling me you'll be here. If you're unable to make a raid night, just slap a post in the event and we'll get you a replacement. I will be looking for replacements that SIGN UP before I go hunting, so if you're interested in stepping in and you aren't a regular...please sign up!
Invites will start at 5:45 Server and replacements will be hunted at 6:00 Server if we are unaware of your status. If you'll be late, try to let us know.
And with that said here's our line up:
T1: Fistycups -
T2: Ananaras -
H1: Primeight - Out
H3: Ardea - Confirmed
H2/D6: Dragonsword - Confirmed
D1: Zariyah - Confirmed
D2: Grasen -
D3: Leighann - Confirmed
D4: Rhoora - Confirmed
D5: Jayel - Confirmed
Sidenote: Depending on how fast we get done we might go knock out Maly and/or VoA
Another round of old-timey raids. This time it's Gruul, Magtheridon, Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau.
We will be starting FRESH instances of each, so if you do any of these before this raid occurs PLEASE do not accidentally lock us into an instance.
NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE
THIS RAID WILL ONLY OCCUR IF KITTEN BRIGADE HAS CLEARED ALL 25-MAN WRATH CONTENT BY THIS DATE.
Open raid in Naxx-10, permitting gear requirements by standard Lava Crab raiders.
Standard Lava Crabbers, please post what items you still need and what boss drops them.
Me:
[item]Slayer of the Lifeless[/item] - Gothik
[Loatheb's Shadow] - Loatheb
[Circle of Death] - Sapphiron
As the title suggests, this is a Lava Crab raid for Malygos, Sartharion (3 drakes), and Archavon.
3.0.9 Patch Notes
moriella — Mon, 02/09/2009 - 08:41
The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html
The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/
Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
- Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.
Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
- Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
- Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.
Pets
- Lava Breath now reduces the target's casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
- Poison Spit now reduces the target's casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
Mage (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
- Arcane Power now increases damage and mana cost by 10%, cooldown reduced to 1 minute. (Note: The spell is actually different in game and increases damage and mana costs by 20% with a 2 minutes cooldown. However it would probably be better to wait until servers are online to confirm that.)
- Arcane Power and Presence of Mind now share a category cooldown. Arcane Power causes a 15 second cooldown. Presence of Mind, once consumed, causes a 1.5 second cooldown.
- Arcane Flows now reduces the cooldown of Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility by 15/30%.
- Presence of Mind: The cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes, (down from 3.)
- Slow (Arcane): now increases cast time by 30%, down from 60%.
Glyphs
- Glyph of Arcane Missiles -- Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Arcane Missiles by 25%. (Old - Increases the range of Arcane Missiles by 5 yards.)
- Glyph of Mana Gem -- Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 40%. (Up from 10%)
- Glyph of Arcane Blast -- Increases the damage from your Arcane Blast buff by 3%. (Down from 5%)
Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
- The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.
- Divine Plea: The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.
- Sanctified Seals: This talent no longer affects dispel resistance, but continues to affect crit chance.
Glyphs
- Glyph of Holy Light -- Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 8 yards of the initial target. (Down from 20 yards, Tooltip text fix, was already hotfixed to 8 yards in game)
- Glyph of Seal of Righteousness -- Increases the damage done by Seal of Righteousness by 10%. (Old - Reduces the cost of your Judgement spells by 10% while Seal of Righteousness is active.)
Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
- Inner Fire duration has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.
Rogue (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
- Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)
- Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.
- Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.
- Slice and Dice: This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.
Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Glyphs
- Glyph of Windfury Weapon -- Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%. (Down from 5%)
Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
- Curse of Tongues: Now increases the casting time of all spells by 25% (Rank 1) and 30% (Rank 2), down from 50% and 60%.
Dungeons and Raids
The Obsidian Sanctum
Changed the color of the fissure in the Obsidian Sanctum to be more visually distinct.
User Interface
- The “GM wishes to speak with you” alert/button, at the top of the screen, has been changed so that addons do not obscure it.
- A clickable chat message has been added that duplicates the GM alert/button.
- When a GM wishes to speak with you the Help Request minibar button will glow.
- For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum .
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where players using nVidia 3D glasses were unable to see spell cooldowns.
- Fixed a software mouse cursor bug that was causing the mouse curser to disappear from view when over certain UI elements.
- Fixed a player movement error in which other players were appearing to move erratically when traveling beside them.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910422788&sid=1&...
There's still plenty of room for some items to be pretty hard to get without causing most players to be left out of good gear. As I mentioned earlier, with the start of the next season we expect new teams and personal ratings to start much lower than they have before (not 1500). That way, everyone's experience is to climb toward the rating they're successfully playing at. So, knowing that, here's what our current thinking is on rating requirements for season 6.
Disclaimer: all of this is subject to change!
Other notes/caveats:
- items with no rating listed would have no rating requirement
- it won't be quite as easy to get deadly items via emblems of conquest as hateful items currently are via emblems of valor
- the new Archavon boss (a new boss located in another wing of the Vault of Archavon), will have slightly different drops than the current Archavon (he can drop Furious Gloves/Legs, or any possible random honor item in addition to tier 8 pve set items similar to Archavon's t7 pve set drops, but cannot drop the Furious Chest piece)
- honor/arena costs aren't listed but Hateful costs would be similar to current Savage, Deadly costs similar to current Hateful, and Furious costs would be similar to current Deadly
- you might note that the Furious weapon is still at a high requirement, 2k, the thinking being that most players are encouraged to get their weapon upgrade through pve, although hardcore arena competitors have an outlet to get an equivalent weapon through arenas (if you're hardcore enough for 2k, you can forego raiding for a weapon)
- additional note, "deadly trinket" refers to the current battlemaster's trinkets, "furious trinket" refers to an upgraded medallion of the alliance/horde
Hateful Gloves
Hateful Legs
Hateful Chest
Hateful Helm
Hateful Shoulders
Hateful Ring
Hateful Trinket
Deadly Bracer
Deadly Belt
Deadly Boots
Deadly Neck
Deadly Ring
Deadly Cape
Deadly Trinket
1300+: Deadly Relics/Idols/Librams
1350+: Deadly Gloves
1400+: Deadly Legs
1450+: Deadly Chest
1500+: Deadly Helm
1550+: Deadly Shoulders
1400+: Furious Bracer (honor)
1450+: Furious Belt (honor)
1500+: Furious Boots (honor)
1550+: Furious Neck (honor)
1600+: Furious Gloves
1650+: Furious Ring (honor)
1700+: Furious Legs
1750+: Furious Chest
1800+: Furious Trinket (honor)
1850+: Furious Helm
1900+: Furious Cape (honor)
1950+: Furious Wands/Relics/etc
2000+: Furious Weapon
2100+: Furious Shoulders
2300+: Furious Tabard (purely cosmetic and awesome looking)
3.1 Mana Regeneration Changes
saedo — Thu, 02/05/2009 - 13:52
Well Mori I think predicted a couple of these things here: /node/5486
But here's the Mana Regeneration changes they have in store: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910422908&sid=1
As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don’t want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a very real risk for sloppy playing or attempting content that you aren’t yet ready for. When mana regeneration is trivial then certain parts of the game break down – classes that offer Replenishment are devalued, stats that offer mana regeneration are devalued, and spells that are efficient are neglected in preference to spells with high throughput.
Here are a list of changes you are likely to see in 3.1. They will be available to try out on the PTR. Mana regeneration is somewhat technical, so please bear with us.
- Regenera
tion while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods. - To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
- The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory”
talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible. - Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
- In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.
- We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
- We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
- These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren’t necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam.




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