[Wrathblood]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/

There's still months to go and many more Beta builds to be deployed before Cata, but it might be time to start paying attention to the news from MMO (and others) now. Blizz has always said that they aren't bothering with balancing the numbers on specific abilities until they've mostly got the mechanics and rotations in place. This isn't a "real" build, but its the first new build that's come out in this process that feels like a numbers balancing build rather than a mechanics tweaking build. Certainly there will be mechanics changes (if prot pallies are still looking at 40% dead GCD's when it goes live, I'll be sad) but theorycrafting on the new changes might start being of some actual use relatively soon as mechanics changes will likely be slowing down.

This also suggests that my prediction of a November release might not be hopelessly overoptimistic after all.

Edit - It apparently has now become a real build and was deployed.

[Guinthel]

Wrathblood, on 31 August 2010 - 04:14 PM, said:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/

There's still months to go and many more Beta builds to be deployed before Cata, but it might be time to start paying attention to the news from MMO (and others) now. Blizz has always said that they aren't bothering with balancing the numbers on specific abilities until they've mostly got the mechanics and rotations in place. This isn't a "real" build, but its the first new build that's come out in this process that feels like a numbers balancing build rather than a mechanics tweaking build. Certainly there will be mechanics changes (if prot pallies are still looking at 40% dead GCD's when it goes live, I'll be sad) but theorycrafting on the new changes might start being of some actual use relatively soon as mechanics changes will likely be slowing down.

This also suggests that my prediction of a November release might not be hopelessly overoptimistic after all.

I am hoping for a early to mid December release. It would be sweet to be done exams before I put in outrageous hours in front of my computer, and Canadian winter break is super long (all the browns and asians have to have a month and a half to fly home to family to celebrate )

[Wrathblood]

So, Boub of MMO-champion(who I know many dislike for various reasons, but I personally think has a tremendous track record) is now saying "it looks like Patch 4.0.1 will hit the live servers very soon." I thought his prediction of an 11/2 Cata release was overly optimistic, but if 4.0.1 manages to come out during the last week of September or first week of October, then 11/2 is totally doable, barring some big technical mishap.

It seems like 4.0.1 hitting live that soon is beyond perplexing as, imo, the only classes to have had a serious damage pass done (all classes have started having some damage balancing done, but only a few have gotten through more detailed tweaking) are mages, hunters, priests, and maybe locks. Shamans and dks I'm not sure about (dks seem all up in arms about how bad they are, but they seem pretty set to me), and rogues, ret paladins, warriors and cats still need a damage pass and possibly (in the case of cats and rogues) even mechanics work. Basically ranged, most healers and most tanks are done, but melee dps still needs a good bit of work. Unless there's a massive problem with mob armor that can be fixed to suddenly vastly improve their dps, then melee still needs some help, and I'm skeptical if it can be done in a week or two.

[Bearforceone]

Wrathblood, on 25 September 2010 - 09:05 PM, said:

So, Boub of MMO-champion(who I know many dislike for various reasons, but I personally think has a tremendous track record) is now saying "it looks like Patch 4.0.1 will hit the live servers very soon." I thought his prediction of an 11/2 Cata release was overly optimistic, but if 4.0.1 manages to come out during the last week of September or first week of October, then 11/2 is totally doable, barring some big technical mishap.

It seems like 4.0.1 hitting live that soon is beyond perplexing as, imo, the only classes to have had a serious damage pass done (all classes have started having some damage balancing done, but only a few have gotten through more detailed tweaking) are mages, hunters, priests, and maybe locks. Shamans and dks I'm not sure about (dks seem all up in arms about how bad they are, but they seem pretty set to me), and rogues, ret paladins, warriors and cats still need a damage pass and possibly (in the case of cats and rogues) even mechanics work. Basically ranged, most healers and most tanks are done, but melee dps still needs a good bit of work. Unless there's a massive problem with mob armor that can be fixed to suddenly vastly improve their dps, then melee still needs some help, and I'm skeptical if it can be done in a week or two.

I see a lot of quick fixes in the next few weeks like the starfall bandaid that Moonkins got then lots and lots of nerfs as we go through the expansion.

[Wrathblood]

Apparently tanks aren't as balanced as I had thought. I had kinda been thinking the prot pallies (and warriors to a lesser extent) were just whiny, but GC confirmed that they were taking significantly more damage than dks and bears in heroics even counting that prot pally Sanctuary was broken and warriors were good at shutting down mobs.

Also, as an fyi, when 4.0.1 goes live, I will start chain running heroics to build justice points, get my mechanics and muscle memory set and fiddle with addons.

[Hecatus]

Quote

Shadow

* Sin and Punishment now reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend by 3/10 sec when Mind Flay critically hits, down from 10/20 sec.

Sadface

[Wrathblood]

Count your blessings. Melee are still getting things like "Ret paladins: auto-attack chance to proc "stop sucking" reduced from 0.01% per swing to 0.0001%.

[Hecatus]

Ok, so after looking over the new talent trees, despite my inability to go shadow and get power infusion - I'm fairly happy with the changes made.

[Wrathblood]

Yeah, Blizz has actually made some nice changes to the mechanics and specs of quite a few classes. I've mostly been following tanks, but dks have nice talent trees (and with the change to unholy presence their mechanics might finally be good as well), bears have nice mechanics (and their tree isn't bad), warriors in general have much better mechanics (still need a damage pass), and the paladin and hunter changes, imo, are pretty cool when looking from a 10,000 foot view (hunters are closer to being done than paladins, imo). Some classes/specs (rogues, cats) are grouchy, but for most classes/specs the changes have been in a good direction.

[Hecatus]

The only thing I don't approve of is the massive focus on crit proc abilities in the shadow tree... and the fact they're nurfing crit so hard.

[Wrathblood]

No harder than anything else. And for pvp, resilience no longer reduces crit%, just overall damage.

[Wrathblood]

Sigh. New update. Cata has been pushed back to early December. Disappointing to all but Guinthel, though with the amount of work left to do I'm not surprised.

Some interesting notes on gear rewards for badges/pvp/etc.

http://www.mmo-champ...lysm-Epic-Stats

[Hecatus]

Sad not all the tier models are there yet... esp priest.

Set bonus is meh... its ok. Why they're buffing the spell that's most effective while moving for our t4 gives me mixed feelings. Amping our movement dps and making us well known for that while robbing us of the uber leet stuff most people get...

Edit: Not sure how I feel about the current spec I've made atm. There's two extra points left if I ignore every mana talent and go for straight dps (besides dispersion)... how's mana in the game atm?

There's an S priest talent that takes two points for 8% of my mana every time I SW:D... but that sounds like overkill unless mana gets really bad.

[Wrathblood]

If you mean mana for raiding, no one knows at this point. Mana for healers will generally be tight, but I've read that at 85 dps isn't on the same model as healers in terms of mana management. Leveling is apparently another story and unless mobs are nerfed, grinding your way through levels won't be fun.

[Guinthel]

Wrathblood, on 27 September 2010 - 04:34 PM, said:

If you mean mana for raiding, no one knows at this point. Mana for healers will generally be tight, but I've read that at 85 dps isn't on the same model as healers in terms of mana management. Leveling is apparently another story and unless mobs are nerfed, grinding your way through levels won't be fun.

Healer mana is the new enrage timer. How well your healers use their mana will dictate how shitty your dps can be. (and vise-versa of course)

Hecatus, on 27 September 2010 - 02:28 PM, said:

Sad not all the tier models are there yet... esp priest.

Set bonus is meh... its ok. Why they're buffing the spell that's most effective while moving for our t4 gives me mixed feelings. Amping our movement dps and making us well known for that while robbing us of the uber leet stuff most people get...

Edit: Not sure how I feel about the current spec I've made atm. There's two extra points left if I ignore every mana talent and go for straight dps (besides dispersion)... how's mana in the game atm?

There's an S priest talent that takes two points for 8% of my mana every time I SW:D... but that sounds like overkill unless mana gets really bad.

Well you arent going to find many fights, at least in the heroics from what i have scene, that will have you standing still for long periods of time. Blizz is really upping the anti on movement demanding fights, no more aoe heal spamming so dps can just chill. Check out the stonecore heroic final boss, lots 'o movement there.

Im not sure how well SWD will fit into the new rotation, if at all. Infact because of the new movement design philosophy, i doubt there will be many times in pve where a specific stand still max dps rotation can exist.
Initial claims on mana regn for Spriests seem fine for leveling, and I am yet to see a video where a Spri is running out of mana on heroics.

[Sobeyet]

Guinthel, on 27 September 2010 - 05:25 PM, said:

Well you arent going to find many fights, at least in the heroics from what i have scene, that will have you standing still for long periods of time. Blizz is really upping the anti on movement demanding fights, no more aoe heal spamming so dps can just chill. Check out the stonecore heroic final boss, lots 'o movement there.

Im not sure how well SWD will fit into the new rotation, if at all. Infact because of the new movement design philosophy, i doubt there will be many times in pve where a specific stand still max dps rotation can exist.
Initial claims on mana regn for Spriests seem fine for leveling, and I am yet to see a video where a Spri is running out of mana on heroics.

I haven't been paying attention to the changes, but constant movement would be an interesting direction - no pun intended. I remember reading about abolishing GCD-heavy rotations a few months back so I was worried the pacing of combat would slow down too much, but having you move say, 75% of the fight would be pretty fun. I seriously doubt it'll be that severe though, the average wow player would turn to mush with all that multi-tasking - people fail at the heigan dance when they get phase transitions and all they have to do is move, can you imagine if they had to dance for 6 straight minutes and dps/heal while doing it?

[Hecatus]

See what this talent does is with two points, it restores 8% of your total mana every time you use SW:D. Aren't many ways to spin it, but if you're oom just spam SW:D off CD and voila - mana. I'll need to check out that vid though.

[Wrathblood]

I'm very curious to see what the raid fights are like. As it stands now, healing and tanking both appear to be more demanding in heroics than they were in Wrath, and rotations have been made more interesting for multiple dps specs. I think broad content nerfs are still decently likely, but I have to say this overall looks fun. Running heroics with a server full of newly dinged 80s was a boatload of fun in WotLK and I'm looking forward to it here. I was looking forward to it MORE when it was scheduled for early Nov, since I've got family and in-laws visiting for the second half of December. It'll be nice to see everyone, but its seriously going to crimp my plans if Cata comes out the day before people start arriving. Sigh, WoW likes messing with me on these. My grandmother passed away the day WotLK came out, though I guess I can't blame Blizz for that.

Edited for remarkably poor spelling.

[Hecatus]

Rofl, I'm with Guinthel man. Release WoW during winter break so I can play the whole month and stuff.

Sorry mate xD

[Wrathblood]

New conversion ratio of Triumph/Frost badges to Justice points. Instead of a 2.75 multiplier its now an 11.58 multiplier (with enough pondering, one could probably figure out something meaningful from their choice of 11.58, but I'm too tired to take a swing at it). So, instead of requiring ~1450 badges to hit cap, you now need ~345, a substantially more reachable number. The exchange rate of gold/badge is still the same, which means gold/justice point has shrunk substantially.