Wrath of the Lich King Beta Review

I will do my best to explore this today and tomorrow. Due to some issues I'm going to be spending part of the day re-setting up my laptop so that's going to cut into my play time a bit, sadly.

Sure you want to stick with being the spider lady, Willimeena?

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/07/29/devilsaurs-tamable-on-wrath-servers-chimeras-may-be-next/

The link says it all really.

Agrivain, a blue post on warrior tanking http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557366167&postId=85562823672&sid=1#46 doesn't mention Vigilance, though.

Quote :

I know it can seem like a useful strategy to act outraged or insulted in order to get changes made. But please try and be civil while we're in the beta forums. It tends to attract more blue posts.

AE tanking is hard for warriors. This tends to mean that pugs in particular would rather have a paladin tank just for the consistency. I agree this feels broken. We think we can make it easier for warriors to AE tank, especially in 5-player instances, without displacing the paladin as the best AE tank. At the moment we are considering increasing Thunder Clap to 5 targets. We'll see how that feels.

The old Shield Block wasn't fun. We think we can make the new one fun. Numbers are the easiest thing to tweak if that's all that's called for. So we tend to focus on mechanics at this stage in development. Once we like the mechanics, we can massage the numbers.

Hit is a good stat, but it' a tough one to itemize since you can hit the cap at which point more becomes useless. While more defense is almost always better, it isn't as good once you have removed crits and maxed out block (though this will be harder now). Strength and stamina are almost always beneficial no matter how high you get. We can always put them on an item (or talent for that matter) and know they'll be valuable for warriors. You'll get some hit, expertise, defense and all your old friends too. But strength and stamina will be everywhere.

It's almost impossible at this stage to talk about which class can generate the most threat or has the most survivability at level 80. There are no level 80 characters in beta, and we haven't done our own testing yet. We want to come up with mechanics we like, then we get the numbers in good shape. I'm not saying don't talk about it -- it's very useful when someone can point out a potential problem, particularly if it's one we hadn't thought of. Yes, that happens--a shock, I know. Just don't slip down the slope from there by declaring the class dead or breaking out the slaps to the face.

There are 4 tanks in WoW. They all are intended to tank 5-player, 10-player and 25-player instances. They all have their specialties, and the warrior specialty will probably remain as the best tank for single, hard-hitting bosses. But if you only have a death knight for that encounter, or you bring a warrior to a fight with a bunch of adds, you'll still be able to get purps. This is a slight change in philosophy for us, but one we feel is necessary in a world with 10 classes and several specs getting a boost to raid viability.

In an earlier post, the same dev responded to the OP point-by-point, but notably skipped over addressing Vigilance or Sword and Board. This leads me to believe that these talents may be getting work internally that they're not yet ready to present.

The sooner Vigilance is gone, the sooner I can relax. ;D I think it's pretty ridiculous how much whining is coming from the Warrior community lately. Aside from my concern for Shield Slam's successor, I think we're looking pretty solid in terms of fun. The numbers can't be expected to look right just yet - it's a freaking Beta, and it's level capped at 77 atm. Anyone who's played WoW for awhile should realize that, for better or worse, Blizzard doesn't generally do class design based on numbers and statistical data. They do random shit and leave it to the players to see how it works out.

The Mage and Warlock classes have been the most notable victims / beneficiaries in TBC.

Agrivain wrote:

In an earlier post, the same dev responded to the OP point-by-point, but notably skipped over addressing Vigilance or Sword and Board. This leads me to believe that these talents may be getting work internally that they're not yet ready to present.

The sooner Vigilance is gone, the sooner I can relax. ;D I think it's pretty ridiculous how much whining is coming from the Warrior community lately. Aside from my concern for Shield Slam's successor, I think we're looking pretty solid in terms of fun. The numbers can't be expected to look right just yet - it's a freaking Beta, and it's level capped at 77 atm. Anyone who's played WoW for awhile should realize that, for better or worse, Blizzard doesn't generally do class design based on numbers and statistical data. They do random shit and leave it to the players to see how it works out.

The Mage class and Warlock class have been the most notable victims / beneficiaries in TBC.

Welcome to the Paladin, Mage, and (on occasion) Warlock Communitities, Ag

Edit: victims, no. Go do some searching in the Druid/Paladin/Shaman threads and tell me what sort of victim syndrome you'll see.

While Paladins have their grievances (I started TBC with a Paladin main and raided with him for six months, remember?), I think the class that got shafted the worst in TBC is the Mage. There's no logical reason that they shouldn't be the Rogues of ranged DPS, as they were pre-TBC. They lack the versatility and survivability of a Warlock or Hunter; they are the "most pure" ranged DPS, just like Rogues are the "most pure" melee.

It's ridiculous how much better Warlocks and Hunters are than Mages. And I say this as someone who was a serious and competitive raiding Warlock for most of his time in WoW. Right now, Mages are in the position Warlocks were in pre-TBC: skilled and competitive Mages can do very well, but a skilled and competitive Warlock or Hunter, assuming even gear, will do better. The difference is that when Warlocks and Hunters were in this position, it was fair. We had other advantages. It's bullshit that Mages have to put up with it while remaining as narrowly focused as they've always been.

Now that's some pain. And I has a mage...