WoW - March to Gnomer

[Greywolf2375]

the new expac....

[Inigima]

Do we really need a separate thread for this?

[Mack Kilimaro]

When the old thread passed the post limit, we do.

Speaking of the march to Gnomeregan, can I just say how awesome this is? Gnomish WW2-esque war propaganda is pretty much awesome. Are we going to hear about war bonds next? "Pepper a leper with war bonds!" or perhaps, "Slog a trogg with war bonds!"

[Rhom]

I loved the poster with the High Tinker on it on the WoW main page. As I said in the other thread, this really makes me want to reinstall WoW and rush my dwarf up to 80 for it.

I have such horrible memories of Gnomer from 5 long years ago (seriously... has it been that long????) and I would welcome the opportunity to wreak vengeance upon those trogs/lepers.

[Inigima]

Ah, didn't realize we were past the post limit. Let me repost this then:

Druid changes:

New Druid Abilities

Thrash (Level 81): Thrash deals damage and causes all targets within 10 yards to bleed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The intent here is to give bears another button to hit while tanking. Talents will affect the bleed, such as causing Swipe to deal more damage to bleeding targets. 5-second cooldown. 25 Rage.

Stampeding Roar (Level 83): The druid roars, increasing the movement of all allies within 10 yards by 40% for 8 seconds. Stampeding Roar can be used in cat or bear form, but bears might have a talent to drop the cooldown. The goal of this ability is to give both bears and cats a little more situational group utility. 3-minute cooldown. No cost.

Wild Mushroom (Level 85): Grows a magical mushroom at the target location. After 4 seconds the mushroom becomes invisible. Enemies who cross the mushroom detonate it, causing it to deal area-of-effect damage, though its damage component will remain very effective against single targets. The druid can also choose to detonate the mushroom ahead of time. This is primarily a tool for the Balance druid, and there will be talents that play off of it. No cooldown. 40-yard range. Instant cast.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to the new abilities listed above, we intend to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics with which you’re already familiar. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of our goals for each spec.

* All heal-over-time spells (HoTs) will benefit from crit and haste innately in Cataclysm. Hasted HoTs do not reduce their duration, but instead add additional HoT ticks. Haste will also benefit Energy generation while in cat form.

* Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation.

* We want to add tools to cat form and depth to bear form. If a Feral cat is going to fill a very similar niche to that of a rogue, warrior or Enhancement shaman, it needs a few more tools -- primarily a reliable interrupt. Bears need to be pushing a few more buttons just so the contrast between tanking and damage-dealing is not so steep.

* Barkskin will be innately undispellable.

* We will be buffing the damage of Mangle (cat) significantly so that when cat druids cannot Shred, they are not at such a damage-dealing loss.

* Druids will lose Abolish Poison with the dispel mechanics change, but Restoration druids will gain Dispel Magic (on friendly targets) as a talent. All druids can still remove poisons with Cure Poison and remove curses with Remove Curse.

New Talents and Talent Changes

* Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well). Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.

* We want to make the Feral cat damage rotation slightly more forgiving. We do not want to remove what druids like about their gameplay, but we do want to make it less punishing to miss, say, a Savage Roar or Rake. The changes here will be on par with increasing the duration of Mangle like we did for patch 3.3.3.

* Balance druids will have a new talent ability called Nature’s Torrent, which strikes for either Nature or Arcane damage depending on which will do the most damage (or possibly both), and moves the Eclipse meter more (details below). The improved version of Nature’s Torrent also reduces the target's movement speed. 10-second cooldown.

* Restoration druids will have a new talent called Efflorescence, which causes a bed of healing flora to sprout beneath targets that are critically healed by Regrowth.

* We plan on giving Feral cats and bears a Kick/Pummel equivalent -- an interrupt that is off the global cooldown and does no damage. We feel like they need this utility to be able to fill the melee role in a dungeon or raid group, and to give them more PvP utility.

* We want to make sure Feral and Balance druids feel like good options for an Arena team. They need the tools to where you might consider a Feral druid over an Arms warrior, or a Balance druid over a mage or warlock. Remember that the PvP landscape will probably look pretty different for Cataclysm with a focus on rated, competitive Battlegrounds.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Balance

* Spell Damage

* Spell Haste

* Eclipse

Eclipse: We are moving Eclipse from a talent into a core mechanic of the class and making it less random. Balance druids will have a new UI element that shows a sun and a moon. Whenever they cast an Arcane spell, it will move the UI closer to the sun, and buff their Nature damage. Whenever they cast a Nature spell, it will move the UI closer to the moon, and buff their Arcane damage. The gameplay intention is to alternate Arcane and Nature spells (largely Starfire and Wrath) to maintain the balance.

Feral (Cat)

* Melee Damage

* Melee Critical Damage

* Bleed Damage

Feral (Bear)

* Damage Reduction

* Vengeance

* Savage Defense

Bleed Damage and Savage Defense: Feral druids will receive two sets of passive bonuses depending on whether the druid is in cat or bear form. Bleed Damage will be improved for cats. Savage Defense is the current bear mechanic for converting crits into damage absorption and will be improved for bears.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s unbuffed health. For boss encounters we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Feral tree and the druid is in bear form -- these values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Feral tree and are in bear form, so you won’t see Balance, Restoration, or Feral druids in cat form running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today -- there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so the Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is that all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

Restoration

* Healing

* Meditation

* HoT Scale Healing

HoT Scale Healing: HoTs will do increased healing on more wounded targets. The mechanic is similar to that of the Restoration shaman, but with HoTs instead of direct heals. In Cataclysm, we anticipate druids using a greater variety of their spells so there is a distinction between healing and HoT healing.

I only know resto, this seems fine to me. I don't really like Abolish Poison so keeping Cure Poison and getting (friendly) Dispel Magic sounds good to me.

[Arataniello]

Re Druid changes. At first glance, they are rather uninspiring.

No real 'oh WOW' changes proposed. The change to Eclipse sounds interesting, hopefully making the thing less based on RNG.

I note that they are are squeezing both a DPS and tank Mastery bonus into the feral tree, each of which (I guess) is going to be driven by SPECIFIC talents taken in that tree, rather than TOTAL talent points spent in that tree, as I understand it works for other specs.

[Angeleyes]

Not quite...

More like if you've spent a majority of talents in the feral tree, you will have both sets of feral tree mastery bonuses... BUT they will not be active unless you are in either cat or bear form.

So which of the two sets you have on will be based on what sort of furry animal you're pretending to be at the time...

I was really hoping for some troll druid info, I'm still thinking that there has to be some cool cosmetic differences between druid forms. I.e. Rhino form instead of bear form. Jaguar? form instead of cat form...

Anyone know what trolls would do instead of trees or chickens?

[Arataniello]

Not quite...

More like if you've spent a majority of talents in the feral tree, you will have both sets of feral tree mastery bonuses... BUT they will not be active unless you are in either cat or bear form.

So which of the two sets you have on will be based on what sort of furry animal you're pretending to be at the time...

That also makes sense. Thanks.

[Poobah]

So basically they've given the Mage Bloodlust+1. Thanks blizzard. Oh wait...

Fuck you!

Yes you, Ghost Crawler. And the rest of your chums in the class balance division. Fuck you right in the ear.

[Character Zero]

I don't really see what the complaint is. In terms of 25 man raids, it really doesn't make any difference since you'll always have a shaman somewhere in your raid. In 10 man raids, it'll be nice for groups without a shaman.

In terms of PvP, if I weren't a mage I'd be more concerned with Wall of Fog than the bloodlust, although I think it's a bit early to be complaining about class balance.

[Weak With The Dawn]

Not quite...

More like if you've spent a majority of talents in the feral tree, you will have both sets of feral tree mastery bonuses... BUT they will not be active unless you are in either cat or bear form.

So which of the two sets you have on will be based on what sort of furry animal you're pretending to be at the time...

I was really hoping for some troll druid info, I'm still thinking that there has to be some cool cosmetic differences between druid forms. I.e. Rhino form instead of bear form. Jaguar? form instead of cat form...

Anyone know what trolls would do instead of trees or chickens?

No idea, but flight form had better be a bat.

[Nathanael]

I don't get all the Shaman QQ.

I mean, sure, you're no longer guaranteed a raid spot if there is no other shaman, but they've been pounding that "bring the player not the class" point for over a year now and they've been talking about how bloodlust fits into that for months.

It really shouldn't have come as a surprise. And when *every* other class in the game (except unholy DKs) has had its formerly-exclusive buffs shared around? I'm not going to weep too hard.

[TrueMetis]

Alright I'm stoked on the march to Gnomer. My Gnome is going home, though I should probably get to level cap. Been playing for four years and never once got a character to level cap.

[Shryke]

I don't get all the Shaman QQ.

I mean, sure, you're no longer guaranteed a raid spot if there is no other shaman, but they've been pounding that "bring the player not the class" point for over a year now and they've been talking about how bloodlust fits into that for months.

It really shouldn't have come as a surprise. And when *every* other class in the game (except unholy DKs) has had its formerly-exclusive buffs shared around? I'm not going to weep too hard.

Most people don't even know/remember what Unholy DK's exclusive buff is. Shit, I've been Unholy DPS since WOTLK launch and I had to think about it for a minute to remember.

Also, I liked GC's point on this:

The more we hear “now there will be no reason to take me over X class / spec” the happier we will be. The reason should be that you’re a good player, not that your mere presence makes everyone else perform better.

[Poobah]

The problem is this : now there's a reason NOT to take a shaman. Resto is alright, but blizzard seems to hate enh and ele with a fucking passion. And every time we complain they swing out "oh hybrid tax" which makes no fucking sense. I can be a great player but theres no way I'm going to do as much damage as a Frost DK, or an Arcane Mage. And right now a frost DK is basically an enhancement shaman (+str/agi, 20% melee haste) minus bloodlust. Except they have plate and about 10K more health than us. And they do more damage. See the problem? And they're more mobile. And they have an easier rotation. Yeah they don't have trueshot aura, but your Marks hunter can bring that and do upwards of 10-15% more damage top end than an enhancement shaman.

The only unique buff a shaman can bring is Spell Haste, but I'm sure that wont be there soon. And that's brought best by a resto shaman 'cause Ele still has a whole raft of issues, not least of which is that Blizz don't seem to want to give them any loot with the correct itemisation.

Class balance : we have it?

Let me turn Ghost Crawler's post around : I would LOVE to think that I'm being brought solely because I'm a good player but my class sucks ass right now. Fix me. Fuck hybrid tax, it's bullshit. Make it so that when my guild brings me playing the spec I enjoy playing it is solely because I'm a good player and I will thank you my bended knees. Or make an official announcement outlining the fact that deep down you think shamans should only really be healers and I'll stop giving you money.

[Shryke]

You realise DKs are a hybrid too right?

Also, you are doing exactly what GC was talking about: "Oh no, I don't' have a unique buff anymore, now no one will bring me!!".

So the only reason they are bringing you is for your unique buff.

Which just means either you suck or your class sucks. And THOSE are the things that need fixing, not a unique-buff-bandaid.

[Poobah]

You realise DKs are a hybrid too right?

Also, you are doing exactly what GC was talking about: "Oh no, I don't' have a unique buff anymore, now no one will bring me!!".

So the only reason they are bringing you is for your unique buff.

Which just means either you suck or your class sucks. And THOSE are the things that need fixing, not a unique-buff-bandaid.

My class sucks. And if a DK counts as being a Hybrid they sure as hell aren't being taxed for it.

[Shryke]

My class sucks. And if a DK counts as being a Hybrid they sure as hell aren't being taxed for it.

The only non-Hybrids are Mage, Warlock, Rogue, Hunter.

All other classes can respec to fill another role (either tank or healer or both).

And why do you keep acting like DKs are miles above everyone else? They aren't even top DPS.

[Character Zero]

Class balance : we have it?

Seeing as the expansion isn't out yet, we really have no clue what the class balance will be like.

[Poobah]

The only non-Hybrids are Mage, Warlock, Rogue, Hunter.

All other classes can respec to fill another role (either tank or healer or both).

And why do you keep acting like DKs are miles above everyone else? They aren't even top DPS.

I didn't say they were miles above everyone. I said that :

-Top end DK damage is more than top end shaman damage.

-DKs have a lot more armour and a lot more health -> far more survivability than shamans.

-Frost DKs in paticular bring many of the same buffs as enhancement shamans.

And I also noted that MM Hunters do an insanely big amount, top end, more damage than enhancement shamans. To be exact the bis list at EJ for a MM Hunter lists 15054dps, while the bis list for enhancement lists 12652dps. That's 18.9% more. That's a big number. I see pugs do way less than the difference (2.4K) between those too numbers. Now I can't find a flat out number on EJ for theoretical DK DPS, but I'm positive that the number is higher than 12652. That 12652 number includes the mild buff to flurry that hasn't yet come into play too, by the way.

GK is saying that he wants the best player to 'win' as it were. I'm saying that the best class is 'winning' at the moment.

Your counter-whine is the biggest problem in outlining any complaint. I make a legitimate complaint about my class's dps and usefulness and immediately a load of trolls show up and whine about how I'm obviously whining.