Spell Damage gear changes in WotLK & World PVP as explained by J. Allen Brack.
Tom Chilton (Kalgan) had an interview with PC Gamer where, get this, he revealed that spell-damage only type gear will get replaced by a new system in WotLK.
PC Gamer: What else is changing?
Kalgan: We’re also going to be doing away with spell-damage only type gear. We’ll be moving to a system that, as part of your talents, will let players convert healing into spell-damage and vice-versa as part of their talents. That way they can use the exact same gear, but their talents just adapt what it does.” (src)
On top of that they had a little interview with J. Allen Brack who is the lead designer for Wrath of the Lich King. In other words, if you’re pissed at what’s going to happen with the expansion pack then this would be the guy you hunt down. Check out the full article here. But there’s much more under the break.
The one sole thing I dislike is that they are planning on making Lake Wintergrasp similar to the Terrokar forest Spirit Towers PVP objective only in I guess destroying the enemy base you get a faction continent wide buff. Honestly, that means the place will be pretty desolate except for when the time has come to fight for the buff. I REALLY don’t like that idea, they have to come up with better because that doesn’t solve world PVP for me. Here’s the quote:
JAB: That’s true. Why was Auchindoun successful? One of the biggest reasons is that it was timed. The spirit towers unlocked at a certain interval that everyone knew, then once the interval was over, there was a time when the winning faction reaped the reward. That’s the model we’re going to follow with Lake Wintergrasp. It won’t be “hey, I want to PvP, I’m going to Lake Wintergrasp”. It will be locked for a certain amount of time, there will be an interval where players will enjoy the reward, and the reward will be significant. But there will be a forced ‘come together’, when the fight begins for everyone.
We’re getting aerial combat and siege weapons and yet we’ll get to use them once every few hours, that defeats the purpose. Hell it’d be nice if there was a node/base in each zone of Northrend where you had to capture and control and defend it until all they were all taken by the same faction for the buff to hit. Now THAT would be an epic world PVP event. Kick the buff to only last maybe an hour or two instead of 6 hours and we’re in business. What do you think?
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Jun 9th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I like the changes to Spell Damage. The present split seemed a little too forced to me…the changes in 2.3 were a step in the right direction. Having the gear be identical will simplify things and the option to customize will be a big help — though hopefully not at the expense of other functionality.
We’ll see.
As to the PVP stuff I can’t say it is something I really thought about much since I’m 99.9999997% sure that there is no way I’ll be doing it. That said, your objections seem sound to me, very valid concerns. Limiting your options that harshly seems self-defeating, like showing a starving man a feast…a feat under an impregnable force field that none the less allows the rich scents of the repast out to torture the man with.
Jun 9th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
MARK! You’ve been under the radar for a while. But yeah the spell damage gear change seems like it’s really good because if theorycraft serves me correctly it means that most respecing won’t be such a big deal for many.
Yeah the PVP stuff is as always, pretty heated for me. I just don’t want to see Blizzard continue to make Warcraft revolve 100% around arenas as the only finish line for PVP players to strive for.
Jun 9th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
But what about classes that’s pvp healing gear has no spell crit on it and you need spell crit as the caster dps spec?
Jun 10th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Most of the stuff you’ve been posting about has been related to PVP — which as you know I don’t participate in (unless I get flagged by accident!), so I haven’t been commenting. ^__^
No worries though, I keep reading! Your site is my main source for what’s up with WoW. I’d say it is one of the best sites around, I especially like it when you get passionate about something like the people leaking Alpha info.
Jun 10th, 2008 at 9:35 am
@Pyro: not enough information has been released or spoken through interviews and stuff I reckon that Blizzard is still at the table with the spell damage/crit gear issue. It would make sense though that spell dmg gear started to have some form of crit on it, I may be wrong but doesn’t INT also add to your chance to crit with spells?
@Mark: Ahh thanks for the kind words man. Right now though (this week) it’s been kind of crappy around here so far since my time’s been eaten up a lot and the constant AIM and email bombardment from a few readers is probably going to cause me to open the flood gates on all the wotlk stuff I have saved here.
Jun 10th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Seriously — you do a great job, but I urge you to stick to your guns about the alpha info.
It is definitely going to change, probably a lot, it will certainly be changing through beta too.
People need to just cope, and stop pestering you. I mean…if I really wanted to I’m sure I could find the info. It isn’t like it is tucked away in MilSpec servers at NORAD, right?
I’m curious too, but geez, so many people are so damn impatient! This from a person that is into instant (or faster!) gratification as a rule.
This sort of thing is why I avoided Quel’Danas as much as possible until it had been opened a while. The mad rush mentality turns the player base (already composed mostly of twits and asshats) into subhuman wastes of air.
Jun 10th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Yes that may be true, but there’s not enough int to cope with the loss of spell crit completely. I’m not sure on the numbers but i believe that its like 40-50 something int to make 1% spell crit so they can’t put too much int or you’ll never go oom
Jun 10th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
@pyro: I get what you’re saying now. I would have faith though that Blizzard has kind of a grand scheme thing going on. Like when resilience first came out that was a massive change and even today people hate it and bash it, truth of the matter is that glass cannon classes like mages and to a certain degree warriors and rogues, could pretty much 1 or 2 shot anybody and everybody in their path with massive crits that one could get with deep raiding gear. Now if you PVP and have PVP gear then the odds are you won’t be crit into oblivion by somebody with Sunwell loot. So I gotta believe that Blizzard has something similar setup for this new spell dmg thing.
@Mark:I see where you’re coming from. The voting is still going on and will be until the end of next week so it’s pretty much out of my hands right now. I’m not being harassed per say because most of the emails are just people asking for links and images and videos etc, while others (like the IMs) are just people wanting to discuss stuff or offer writing services. I’d LOVE to have some help but I can’t afford to pay anybody and I’m trying to find a happy median.
Far as the impatience, I’d think it’s more of the competitive feel. For example.
When Burning Crusade came out I shelved my Lv. 60 Epic geared warrior for a long long time so I could bring a brand new alliance shaman from Lv. 1 to 70, and so I missed the initial wave of players, a bunch of guildmates left me behind etc. I’ve been there at the forefront when new content comes out and a lot of the lore/immersion/quests/gear and such gets forgotten as people are playing something that feels like mario kart where you have to get to the finish line and kill anybody that tries to slow you down. That can be a little harrowing.
Jun 10th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Also, what are they doing about classes that have a melee talent tree as well, make a healing to strength/agility talent?
Jun 10th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
“Also, what are they doing about classes that have a melee talent tree as well, make a healing to strength/agility talent?” That actually would be pretty damn cool. Shaman got something (half assed) like that where you can have a % of your attack power converted into dmg/healing.
Jun 10th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Still waiting for that talent for my ret pally.
Jun 10th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Yeah I have a Lv. 42 ret pally and now working up my 31 prot pally horde side. Never played as prot before but aoe grinding is a new level of freaking badass I didn’t know existed. I’m sure at the end game I’m going to be fighting alongside other paladins for some love since ret is still considered a joke to a lot of players.
This is a good way to pass time until DK though