AT World of Warcraft Thread (WotLK, where do you play, General BS and all that)

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Scotteq

Diamond Member
Apr 10, 2008
5,276
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So.... Bitter Balebrew Charm (Brewfest Trinket) vs Black Heart?

I don't have any personal uptime statistics, but on wowhead, someone reported that it only has a ~6% uptime. Given that number, TBH only gives an average of 423.36 armor. On Maintankadin, the idea is that at best, about 11 points of armor is "equivalent" to 1 point of stamina... this is of course in a physical only fight (hence the "at best"). So if I divide that by 11, I get ~38.48 stamina equivalence.

Now, the Brewfest trinket has 44 more stamina than TBH, so the proc would have to be around equivalent to 44 stamina to be equal to... does this all matter? :p I mostly tank Icecrown 10-man anyway.



Use the Brewfest until you can replace it. Corroded Skeleton Key from Emblems, and the Dislodged Foreign Object from Prof. Putricide should be your goals.
 

invidia

Platinum Member
Oct 8, 2006
2,151
1
0
Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or "Life Grip") is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can't seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

This has the potential to screw people over in PvE and PvP.

About to get bum-rushed by 10 horde/allies and your team mates are running away? No worries, target one and pull them to you and die together.

You're about to wipe and see a hunter/rogue trying to get out of combat, life grip him to you as the boss prepares to one shot you.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
Use the Brewfest until you can replace it. Corroded Skeleton Key from Emblems, and the Dislodged Foreign Object from Prof. Putricide should be your goals.

Well, the whole versus talk was because I was figuring which one I was going to replace with the Corroded Skeleton Key :p.

Also, I thought the UO wasn't very good for Paladins?
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
Cataclysm Class Preview: Warrior (Warrior Forum)
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. Here you will get a glimpse into some of the changes we have in store for the warrior. The information you're about to read is not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview for some of the exciting new things to come.

New Warrior Abilities
Inner Rage (Level 81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a passive ability so it won't need to be activated by the player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we also don't want warriors to feel like they're supposed to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we'll be closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and making adjustments as needed.

Gushing Wound (Level 83): This ability will apply a bleed effect to the target. If the target moves, the bleed gains an extra stack and refreshes its duration, up to a maximum of three stacks. The ability is currently planned to have no cooldown, cost 10 Rage, and have a 9-second duration. Gushing Wound is designed to be weaker than Rend with one stack, but better with three stacks, which will be reached when fighting a moving target.

Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
In addition to learning new abilities, you'll see changes to 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 what we intend for each spec.

• Heroic Strike will no longer be an "on next swing" attack, as we are removing this mechanic in Cataclysm. To keep the niche of Heroic Strike as a Rage dump, it will become an instant attack, but will cost between 10 and 30 Rage. This ability will not be usable until you have 10 Rage, but if you have more than 10, it will consume up to 30, adding additional damage for each point of Rage consumed above the base 10. Other abilities, such as Cleave, Execute, and Maul (for druids) will work similarly. The goal is to provide players with an option where if you can't afford the Rage, you don't push the button, but if you have excess Rage, you can push it a lot.

• Battle Shout, Commanding Shout, and possibly Demoralizing Shout will work more like the death knight's Horn of Winter ability. Specifically, these shouts will cost no resources, generate rage in addition to their current effects, and be on a short cooldown.

• Whirlwind will hit an unlimited number of targets, but only for 50% of weapon damage. The intent is for this ability to be used in multi-target scenarios and not on single targets.

• Overall, heals cast by players in Cataclysm will be a lower number relative to players' health than the current game. So to make the Mortal Strike debuff less mandatory but still useful in PvP, Mortal Strike will reduce healing by only 20%. All equivalent debuffs, including the Shadow priest and Frost mage debuffs, will be for 20% less healing. At the moment we aren't considering giving this debuff to anyone else, though we will certainly consider PvP utility for historically under-represented specs that use other mechanics.

• Sunder Armor will be reduced to three stacks instead of five, and still provide only a 4% reduction in armor per stack. We want to make this debuff easier to apply and less of a damage swing when it falls off.

New Talents and Talent Changes
• The Furious Sundering talent in the Fury tree will make the Sunder Armor ability cause 25/50% weapon damage and reduce the threat generated by 50/100%.

• The Mace and Poleaxe Specialization talents in the Arms tree will be removed. These provided just passive stats, which are not the kinds of talents we want to design in the future. We will keep the Sword Specialization talent, but it will be changed to a talent that applies to all types of weapons.

• As a Fury talent, Booming Voice will increase the Rage generated by shouts.

• While we like how Titan's Grip plays, we recognize some warriors liked the Fury tree because of the really fast swings that dual-wielding one-handed weapons could provide. Therefore, we're planning to try out a talent called Single-Minded Fury that is parallel to Titan's Grip and will provide a large boost to the damage of a pair of one-handed weapons.

• Several talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed to focus on increased damage for those abilities instead.

• The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear for 5/10 seconds.

• Another new Arms talent called Blitz will make the Charge ability hit for extra damage. The amount will possibly vary depending on the distance travelled.

• Improved Pummel, a Fury talent, will cause a successful interrupt to generate 10/20 Rage.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Arms
• Melee Damage
• Armor Penetration
• Bonus Swing
Bonus Swing: This is similar to the Sword Specialization talent that is currently in the game, but Bonus Swing will work on all attacks and with all weapons. You have a chance to proc a free, instant weapon swing that hits for 50% damage.

Fury
• Melee Damage
• Melee Haste
• Enrage Intensity
Enrage Intensity: Every benefit of being enraged is increased. This includes doing more damage/healing/ etc. from abilities like Bloodrage, Death Wish, Enrage, Berserker Rage, and Enraged Regeneration.

Protection
• Damage Reduction
• Vengeance
• Critical Block Chance
Critical Block Chance: As we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing's damage. Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing's damage instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount blocked even higher.

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 un-buffed 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 Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won't see Arms or Fury warriors 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 their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.
 

Scotteq

Diamond Member
Apr 10, 2008
5,276
5
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This has the potential to screw people over in PvE and PvP.

About to get bum-rushed by 10 horde/allies and your team mates are running away? No worries, target one and pull them to you and die together.

You're about to wipe and see a hunter/rogue trying to get out of combat, life grip him to you as the boss prepares to one shot you.


I just want to be sitting in Ventrilo when a Priest Life~Grips the Main Tank away from the Boss.... o_O o_O :awe: :D :D I see the potential to eclipse "...FIFTY DEE KEY PEE MINUS!!!". Yess.... potential... :twisted:


Also, I thought the UO wasn't very good for Paladins?

Yess.. Precious.. It'sss no good for Paladinssssss.. It Gives Ussss, Yes? :sneaky:

My main is a Warrior so, unless it's otherwise specified, I think in those terms when talking Tank. :) Thinking about it, I don't see why it wouldn't be beneficial for a Paladin - Armor and a stacking STAM buff when you get smacked. Hard to see the downside of that, unless there's something better than I missed seeing in the loot tables. Of course, now I need to convince my partner in crime that it's not good for him. For purely altruistic reasons, naturally! ;)
 

Scotteq

Diamond Member
Apr 10, 2008
5,276
5
0
Is it just me, or is anyone else less than impressed with the Warrior and Priest announcements?
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
Q: Will the rotation for a Fury Warrior just be Bloodthirst and Slam with Heroic Strike to burn off rage?
A: We think Fury is going to end up needing another attack in there for single-target fights. Furious Sundering was intended more as having to Sunder being less of a penalty, but at only 3 stacks, it may not end up being a big deal and we don’t want Fury to feel like they have to purchase a talent that they may not always use. We don’t want Whirlwind to be a good button against single targets however. It essentially gets “free” damage against groups of targets when it’s effective at using against single targets. It’s okay if warriors still do more damage in fights where they can use Cleave and similar attacks often, but right now it’s too extreme.
Q: Are one-handed Fury warriors going to be competing with rogues for one-handed weapons?
A: This is unlikely. Rogues and shaman will want one-handers with Agility, while warriors and death knights will want them with Strength. I won’t be surprised when one of these classes picks up the other’s weapon as it could be an upgrade simply based on the damage, but it won’t be optimal.
Q: Why are warriors not getting some kind of AoE tanking tool?
A: We think the newly buffed Thunder Clap plus Shockwave are sufficient abilities for AoE tanking. The design of Vengeance should make sure that threat generation doesn’t start to slip behind as the dps characters gear up. It’s not our intention that tanks face a constant struggle to generate enough threat, even in group situations, but we also don’t want threat to be totally irrelevant either. The danger for tanking too many creatures should also be tank death not threat management.
Q: Is only Sunder Armor being changed?
A: Rogue Expose Armor and other abilities that apply a similar debuff are being changed accordingly. They will all provide the same debuff at 12% armor reduction.
Q: What about rage loss when changing stances?
A: We still want the act of changing stances to require more consideration than just clicking two buttons to use the ability you want. One idea we are going to explore is that you don’t lose rage when you change stances, but you won’t gain additional rage for a short period of time after changing. This lets you say swap to do an Execute without losing your rage bar, but still keeps the idea that shifting constantly comes with inherent efficiency risks.
Q: Is the intent of Gushing Wound that warriors constantly ask for targets to be kited around?
A: No, it’s intended to be a bonus when you’re in an encounter where the target either moves around a lot (Ex. BONNNNE STORMMMM-ing Marrowgar) or just has to be moved around a lot (say Lich King). Warriors shouldn’t have the expectation of forcing every PvE opponent to move but it would be entertaining to watch this (from a third party perspective).
 

invidia

Platinum Member
Oct 8, 2006
2,151
1
0
Is it just me, or is anyone else less than impressed with the Warrior and Priest announcements?

Waiting for rogue changes to see if they are remotely worth playing in Cata. Same for Ret pallies. If ret pallies get a slowing ability or interrupt, they'll be more than worth it in PvP.

I am seeing locks being the most survivable and best PvP class in Cata. Near unlimited mana + insane HP scaling + affliction self-healing = TBC arena all over again.
 

dougp

Diamond Member
May 3, 2002
7,909
4
0
Waiting for rogue changes to see if they are remotely worth playing in Cata. Same for Ret pallies. If ret pallies get a slowing ability or interrupt, they'll be more than worth it in PvP.

I am seeing locks being the most survivable and best PvP class in Cata. Near unlimited mana + insane HP scaling + affliction self-healing = TBC arena all over again.

Ret Pallies have great burst damage, a STUN and an incapacitate - giving them a slow would be ridiculous considering they have the 20% run speed and BoF.
 

Moonzi

Senior member
Nov 5, 2009
617
0
76
Any tips for Normal 25 LK tonight? Hoping we can just work on him all night and get him down, think about 20 of us have ten man experience and downing.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
Is it just me, or is anyone else less than impressed with the Warrior and Priest announcements?

I thought that pretty much everyone but Shamans seemed kinda boring... Warlocks were alright. I usually base this on seeing how this stuff will affect me. As a Shadow Priest, the changes are pretty meh since all they got was some new burn spell.

As a healy priest, the whole "life pull" sounds interesting, but I'm not sure how damn useful pulling someone to you will be unless you're talking about PVP. Well, maybe if you play with scrubs on some fight that requires you to move out... if a player won't move, you can have some competent priest run out and then "life pull" the idiot out.

I guess priests now really are healing stupid! :D

its near BIS and IIRC is actually BIS on a per fight basis

I'm basing a lot of my opinions on some stuff I read on MT awhile ago. They ran some model simulations in Matlab and it showed the proc uptime to be kind of poor overall.

I mean, the one I'd like to try and get would be Satrina's from ToC25... but I'm way too lazy to go and tank a ToC. Unfortunately, Putricide has never dropped his trinket for us and I usually end up tanking with a main tank in the raid, which means I automatically lose it to that tank when I'm on my alt pally.

Oh and speaking of trinkets.... We were doing ICC10 last night and we were short a tank. One of the warriors is all, "I can tank!" and I look at his HP and it's at 34k. Wondering if that's just his DPS gear, I ask how much HP he has in his tanking gear... "34k unbuffed." "Okay... I'll switch over." So, I went on my Paladin (who only has 10k more HP unbuffed than that :p). Well, I think you know what happened to drop off LDW....

$@%#@$%# I hate this game.
 

Tsavo

Platinum Member
Sep 29, 2009
2,645
37
91
I need a new video card for this. I have a Core i5/750 and a 4850/512MB and Northrend runs 40+ FPS at 1920 with all the goodies (except shadows) turned up. Does this game suppport Crossfire...or would a 5770 be an improvement?
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
With my 5870, I can literally run two WoWs at the same time while in Dalaran and notice absolutely no degradation in each and that's with AA, AF enabled at 1920x1280. I do notice a decent increase if I OC my system though.

EDIT:

I think one of my biggest boons was simply going from a 4870 512MB card to a 5870 1GB card. WoW uses quite a bit of Video RAM and not having to resort to system RAM because you run out of video RAM is a good thing :p.
 

Anubis

No Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
78,712
427
126
tbqhwy.com
Waiting for rogue changes to see if they are remotely worth playing in Cata. Same for Ret pallies. If ret pallies get a slowing ability or interrupt, they'll be more than worth it in PvP.

I am seeing locks being the most survivable and best PvP class in Cata. Near unlimited mana + insane HP scaling + affliction self-healing = TBC arena all over again.

i wont PVP until i get my 40s fear back
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
In a surprising and bold manner, High Tinker Mekkatorque declared today that Operation: Gnomeregan is imminent, going so far as to explain his strategy for victory in a three-pronged offensive against Mekgineer Thermaplugg and his irradiated forces. Exiled Gnomeregan citizens will settle for nothing less than the reclamation of their great city.

We now bring you breaking reports of the impending assaults on Gnomeregan from the field.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/3p9/gnomeregan2.xml
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. In this preview, you'll get a glimpse at some of the new abilities, spells, and talents in store for the death knight class, along with an early look at some improvements we plan to make to the rune resource system.

New Death Knight Abilities

Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.

Rune System Changes

While we're satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we're making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here's the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.


•In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they're unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.
•A death knight's runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn't have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can't grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it's impossible to save resources for when they're most useful.
•Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight's attacks are weak. The death knight's rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player's timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren't able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.
•The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.
•As this is a major change to the death knight's mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class's current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.


Talent Changes

Next we'll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we're planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we're intending each death knight spec to perform.


•One of the biggest changes we're making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it's less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn't as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We'd rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.
•Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.
•Our plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Blood

•Damage reduction
•Vengeance
•Healing Absorption

Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.

Vengeance: This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (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 grant 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 an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.

You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won't see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design 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 their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.

Frost

•Melee damage
•Melee Haste
•Runic Power Generation

Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.

Unholy

•Melee damage
•Melee and spell critical damage
•Disease Damage

Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree's play style.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
As a tank, you don't need to worry about nerfs to Sunder Armor and Demo Shout. We'll still tune the bosses to whatever damage we think they need to do. You don't need to worry about suddenly becoming less survivable or generating less threat.

We changed Sunder Armor because the debuff was too massive, meaning realistically you couldn't raid without it. (Perhaps you still can't, but it's closer.)

We changed Demo Shout because it was confusing. Nobody knows how much attack power a creature has, and we found that many players underestimated what a massive damage reduction Demo Shout actually provided.

I can understand PvP concerns of changing these abilities. I'm less sympathetic if you're worried you'll lose your spot to another class because of them, since we're really trying to design a game where you aren't brought along just for your awesome buff.

As far as other Protection warrior concerns go, you're welcome to bring up issues you think that the talent tree has. Our general feedback from warriors is they really like the Protection tree and playstyle (with a few exceptions, like Heroic Strike and perhaps Vigilance) and it was really the tuning relative to other tanks that bothered them. We try not to offer too many changes just for the sake of change (though a few can be fun, and there will be some in your talent tree).
Ghostcrawler


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q u o t e:
Huh? I don't think you've mentioned anything about Demo Shout anywhere else. What did you change it to?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Oh, uh, I mean "We didn't change Demo Shout at all! Who told you that?"

Actually we changed it to a percent physical damage reduction instead of attack power reduction. I thought that had made the preview and was the source of some of the QQ. :)
 

Chimley

Senior member
Jan 28, 2008
383
0
0
I thought that pretty much everyone but Shamans seemed kinda boring... Warlocks were alright. I usually base this on seeing how this stuff will affect me. As a Shadow Priest, the changes are pretty meh since all they got was some new burn spell.

As a healy priest, the whole "life pull" sounds interesting, but I'm not sure how damn useful pulling someone to you will be unless you're talking about PVP. Well, maybe if you play with scrubs on some fight that requires you to move out... if a player won't move, you can have some competent priest run out and then "life pull" the idiot out.

I guess priests now really are healing stupid! :D



I'm basing a lot of my opinions on some stuff I read on MT awhile ago. They ran some model simulations in Matlab and it showed the proc uptime to be kind of poor overall.

I mean, the one I'd like to try and get would be Satrina's from ToC25... but I'm way too lazy to go and tank a ToC. Unfortunately, Putricide has never dropped his trinket for us and I usually end up tanking with a main tank in the raid, which means I automatically lose it to that tank when I'm on my alt pally.

Oh and speaking of trinkets.... We were doing ICC10 last night and we were short a tank. One of the warriors is all, "I can tank!" and I look at his HP and it's at 34k. Wondering if that's just his DPS gear, I ask how much HP he has in his tanking gear... "34k unbuffed." "Okay... I'll switch over." So, I went on my Paladin (who only has 10k more HP unbuffed than that :p). Well, I think you know what happened to drop off LDW....

$@%#@$%# I hate this game.

Your best bet is to get off your lazy ass and get a Satrina's. It's still BiS (and the 258 version def is) when combined with the Skeleton Key.

I have the UO and tanked a few fights with it. The uptime seemed a little low to me. When it did get the stacks up, yeah, it seemed like an awesome trinket. But I'd rather take the passive stam from Satrinas and the mini-last stand 2 min cooldown.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
I think the Rogue's Smoke Bomb ability looks rather interesting...

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we'll be making several changes to class talents and abilities across the board. Here, you'll get a glimpse at what's in store for the rogue class, including a look the new high-level abilities and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the rogue's different talent specs.

New Rogue Abilities

Redirect (available at level 81): Rogues will be getting a new ability to help them deal with changing targets. Redirect will transfer any active combo points to the rogue's current target, helping to ensure combo points aren't wasted when swapping targets or when targets die. In addition, self-buff abilities like Slice and Dice will no longer require a target, so rogues can spend extra combo points on those types of abilities (more on this below). Redirect will have a 1-minute cooldown and no other costs.

Combat Readiness (level 83): Combat Readiness is a new ability that we intend rogues to trigger defensively. While this ability is active, whenever the rogue is struck by a melee or ranged attack, he or she will gain a stacking buff called Combat Insight that results in a 10% reduction in damage taken. Combat Insight will stack up to 5 times and the timer will be refreshed whenever a new stack is applied. Our goal is to make rogues better equipped to go toe-to-toe with other melee classes when Evasion or stuns are not in play. This ability lasts 6 seconds and has a 2-minute cooldown.

Smoke Bomb (level 85): The rogue drops a Smoke Bomb, creating a cloud that interferes with enemy targeting. Enemies who are outside the cloud will find themselves unable to target units inside the cloud with single-target abilities. Enemies can move inside the cloud to attack, or they can use area-of-effect (AoE) abilities at any time to attack opponents in a cloud. In PvP, this will open up new dimensions of tactical positional gameplay, as the ability offers a variety of offensive and defensive uses. In PvE, Smoke Cloud can serve to shield your group from hostile ranged attacks, while also drawing enemies closer without the need to rely on conventional line-of-sight obstructions. Smoke Cloud lasts 10 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

We're also planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're already familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we want for each spec.
  • In PvP, we want to reduce the rogue's dependency on binary cooldowns and "stun-locks," and give them more passive survivability in return. One major change is that we'll put Cheap Shot on the same diminishing return as other stuns. The increase to Armor and Stamina on cloth, leather, and mail gear will help with this goal as well.
  • In PvE, even accounting for active modifiers like Slice and Dice and Envenom, a very large portion of the rogue's damage is attributable to passive sources of damage. Yes, they are using abilities for the entire duration of a fight, but we want to reduce the percentage of rogue damage that comes from auto-attacks and poisons. More of their damage will be coming from active abilities and special attacks.
  • We would like to improve the rogue leveling experience. Positional attacks and DoT-ramping mechanics will be de-emphasized at low levels and then re-introduced at higher levels for group gameplay. We are also providing rogues with a new low-level ability, Recuperate, to convert combo points into a small heal-over-time (HoT).
  • To complement the change to combo points, non-damage abilities such as Recuperate and Slice and Dice will no longer have target requirements and can be used with any of the rogue's existing combo points, including combo points remaining on recently killed targets. This will not affect damage abilities, which will still require combo points to be present on the specific target you want to damage. To coincide with this, the UI will be updated so that rogues know how many combo points they have active.
  • Ambush will now work with all weapons, but will have a reduced coefficient when not using a dagger. When opening from Stealth, all rogues will be able to choose from burst damage, DoT abilities, or a stun.
  • As we've done recently with some of the Subtlety abilities, we want to make sure more rogue abilities aren't overly penalized by weapon choice. With a few exceptions (like Backstab), you should be able to use a dagger, axe, mace, sword, or fist weapon without being penalized for most attacks.
  • Deadly Throw and Fan of Knives will now use the weapon in the ranged slot. In addition, we hope to allow rogues to apply poisons to their throwing weapons.
  • We are very happy with Tricks of the Trade as a general mechanic and as a way to give rogues more group utility, but we don't want it to account for as much threat transfer as it does now.

New Talents and Talent Changes

In Cataclysm, the overall feel of each of the rogue's talent trees will change, as we would like each tree to have a clearly defined niche and purpose. The talent details below are meant to give you an idea of what we're going for.

  • Assassination will be more about daggers, poisons, and burst damage.
  • Combat will be all about swords, maces, fist weapons, axes, and being engaged toe-to-toe with your enemies. A Combat rogue will be able to survive longer without needing to rely on Stealth and evasion mechanics.
  • The Subtlety tree will primarily be based around utilizing Stealth, openers, finishers, and survivability. It'll be about daggers, too, but less so than Assassination.
  • In general, Subtlety rogues needs to do more damage than they do today, and the other trees need to have more tools.
  • Weapon-specialization talents (for all classes, not just rogues) are going away. We do not want you to have to respec when you get a different weapon. Interesting talents, such as Hack and Slash, will work with all weapons. Boring talents, such as Mace Specialization and Close Quarters Combat, will be going away.
  • The Assassination and Combat talent trees currently have a lot of passive bonuses. We plan to dial back the amount of Critical Strike Rating provided by these trees so that rogues still want it on their gear.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Assassination

  • Melee damage
  • Melee critical damage
  • Poison damage


Combat

  • Melee damage
  • Melee Haste
  • Harder-hitting combo-point generators

Subtlety

  • Melee damage
  • Armor Penetration
  • Harder-hitting finishers

The initial tier of rogue Mastery bonuses will be very similar between the trees. However, the deeper that a player goes into any tree, the more specialized and beneficial the Masteries will be to the play style for that spec. Assassination will have better poisons than the other two specs. Combat will have very steady and consistent overall damage. Subtlety will have strong finishers.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your initial thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

Your best bet is to get off your lazy ass and get a Satrina's. It's still BiS (and the 258 version def is) when combined with the Skeleton Key.

Ugh, I don't even play WoW right now other than to do organized raids :p. I have found better things to do with my life... like play other games instead :awe:!
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
I love the smoke bombs. It is totally fair for classes such as hunter who have to have a minimum distance to attack targets. At least I can see a "use" for the life grip crap now. The best part is Blizzard trying to reduce the dependancy on rogues stun locking, so they are making it harder for them to...
 
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