Daily Class Discussions for Wrath of the Lich King Beta (Aug. 19th)
Here is your daily dose of Blizzard discussions about all the different, ongoing class changes in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta. Seems like a pretty light day as far as news goes but as always I’ll find something entertaining to help you fine folks pass the time.
Druids - Armor & Bear Tanks
Armor is one of the most important stats a tank can have. We aren’t trying to keep bears from getting it.
The change to itemization was done solely to avoid having so much diversity in the items we could drop. It’s lame when you’re leveling up to keep seeing quest rewards that are itemized for your spec (which TBH is still a problem we haven’t solved for Feral weapons and idols). It’s lame when your raid kills a boss and he drops say elemental mail, healing leather, and a spellpower mace, none of which your group can use. Having bears, cats and rogues all desire the same leather drops isn’t a panacea — it helps some problems, but it creates others. Having bears run around with as much armor as a rogue would be a big, big problem.
Fortunately there are plenty of ways to give bears the armor they need — through talents (like the crit resistance one) or through Dire Bear form itself for example. Even if another tanking class ends up having slightly more armor than a druid, the differences should be so minor that neither of you is at a significant disadvantage on a boss.
I am glad someone mentioned the hunter example. I am really hoping you guys have the same reaction when you see the next pass on druid talents. (src)
Hunters - The new “Kill Command”
Kill Command was initially created as a reactive ability, something you hit when an event happened (a critical strike). The problem was that the event happened too often, and players just stuck it into a macro. Kill Command basically just became a flat damage increase. Players are right to assume their DPS has jumped because of shots not interrupting the auto-shot timer (it has, our tests show a ~140 DPS increase in some trials), so I think it’s fair to say the class’ sustained DPS will be okay. (src)
Growl
Growl sucks. We’ll fix it. (src)
Boars & Charge
We actually debated this issue quite a bit. In the end it came down to a call about whether it was more fitting to boars to keep Charge or whether it was more fitting for the boar to be a tanking pet. The tanking pets were all going to get Intervene instead of Charge, since it let them be more useful as an OT, and we didn’t think it was worth the cost of making changes or exceptions to that design just to preserve boars Charging.
In the end, we decided that boars are feared because they are tough. They have leathery skin, a stubborn disposition and had a reputation for fighting on long after their wounds should have killed them. In short, they felt like a tank. We tried to keep the feeling of the old Charge with the bonus component to Gore.
It was very difficult to come up with a whole new system for pets without losing any aspect of the old system that might be important to players. We are genuinely sorry though if there is a change you don’t like. (src)
Shaman - Downranking and Earth Shock efficiency
We’re working on a rank-1 Earth Shock equivalent spell. Not sure when it will be in, though. (src)
Totem of Wrath stacking
Bug. Probably will also get another re-design too. (src)
Priests - Upcoming Shadow Changes
We’re going to do some further tweaks to Shadow soon. (src)
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Aug 19th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Glad to see you’re still online!
Aug 19th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Yeah storms like Fay or any other hurricane/tropical storm kind of deal wobble a lot. Been born and raised here in Miami so this kind of thing isn’t special.
Tornadoes touch down, winds take shit and toss it around, but for the most part it’s just a lot of rain. At the start it’s always good to be a little more safe then sorry and place your bets on a direct hit. Next thing you know it goes way left and hits central Florida instead of dead on south, we got rain (lots) but that’s about it.
Aug 19th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Yep, glad FL made it!
Was just looking at Feral beta tree and counter to what Blizz is saying right now, you can get every tanking talent AND every cat dps talent easily (usually it’s the same talent that works for dps in cat and tanking in bear). An 0-59-12 build gives ferals all the goodies an OP hybrid could dream of. If Blizz intends for cat dps to be on a par with rogues in particular, but other melee as well, then I’ll be pissed. At that point, why take a rogue (or non-prot Warrior) on a raid ever? Ferals buff their groups already - something rogues don’t. If cat dps is equivalent, then a quick armor change makes them MT tough, back to rockin dps when ready. That’s just stupid, and I don’t think it will stay in for live. That, or there will be lots of rerolls and /wowquits… /shrug
Aug 19th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
And as an aside for that, I dunno, but it seems a little unbalanced that Blizz is ‘trying something new’ in terms of tanking with DKs.
They’ve said you can MT in any talent tree. They’ve said any talent tree should produce dps up there with all the other dps classes. Again, like with ferals, if that’s true, we may start seeing a whole bunch of 71-0-0 or 64-5-2 specs, where a person can get BOTH tanking talents AND almost all the dps talents in a tree. A DK could easily then MT at will, switching a few pieces of gear out to match dps whenver. I don’t know if I like that. I can see making all tanks do more dps - that will increase the fun of tanking, but I don’t think tank classes should EVER be able to do the dps of a dps class. That just eliminates the need for a dps class and potentially ruins the game. I think with ferals, DKs, etc it still should largely be either/or - pick what role you will play and spec and itemize for it. You shouldn’t be able to switch back and forth roles at the touch of a button. Either that, or make all classes be able to fill ALL roles (rogue tanks and healers LOL). And that would then make the game utterly boring.
Aug 19th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Back at release Druids were completely laughable. I agree with you Hiro, at this point… the druid needs a hit from the nerf stick and I really dont mean that lightly. Right now, theyre already the ULTIMATE pvp healer. They can MT all 5 and 10 mans (though some people argue on the 25, fine, whatever)… Even though blizz has said we wont let you do it, it (MT and DPS) appears they are. Forcing a gear swap is NOT enough.
Might as well have prot pallys that heal themselves. “Prot pally, lookin for fluff!” Course you’ll never see that happen, its crazy to even think it.
So I realize that druids got the short end of the stick in Vanilla WoW, but comon, enough is enough. 2 years of being on top and OP. Someone, anyone, lets have a nerfstick curb party!
Aug 19th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
What Blizzard is trying to do is to make classes that can tank viable to do so in a 5 man dungeon non heroic, but as for a MT 10/25 man raid you have to spec your toon a certain way to make yourself viable as that Raids MT. I would love to go to 5 mans on my War who is Arms for lvl 70 dungeon on reg mode, but right now it sucks, surviability wise and threat generation, a BM hunter pet could out threat me half way through.. that shouldn’t happen, but as it stands it does.. I like that they’re trying to have tanks fill up, as it stands 95% of trade chat on any server is LF1M tank needed for 5man. So although DK’s and Feral Druids, Ret Pallies are cool to have in Raid, will they ever Main tank it.. not so sure but we shall see. Prior to BC Prot Pallies were a joke almost everyone had MT as Warrior, not so now. My biggest worry is that they make DK’s to good and they try this all 3 specs can tank, and soon the DPS spec’d DK’s start pulling aggro like Fury Warriors did back in the day, and some still do to this date, and end up killing themselves cause healers and the raid aren’t expecting the aggro pull. Omen and other Threatmods asside, I don’t want to see this thing happen in WotLK, otherwise why would you bring DK’s, if there threat is so buggy that they pull aggro when not intending to do so, I would rather have a Rogue, Cat Druid, or Ret Pally cause they would be less likely to pull aggro cause they have threat drops no matter spec, but I didn’t see any for DK’s at least none with a 30 sec cooldown viability
Aug 19th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Personally I like the idea of tanking classes having most if not all of their MUST HAVE threat generating and “tanking” abilities as part of the core. With that said I am a little more than bothered at the idea of the more hybrid classes (paladins and druids) who can actually heal or in the case of a druid be caster DPS, be given such buffs as well.
Unless we see some serious armor ignoring type attacks from end game bosses there’s going to be more ferals than there are now (and that’s saying a lot when I can spit in any direction and hit 12)
Aug 20th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Yes but as evidence of Fury Warrior, remember Pre BC they sucked in Raids cause they would pull aggro, Blizzard fixed that and put Threat reduction into there talent tree so they could be a viable DPS spec, same with Ret Pallies, same with Cat Druids, but if DK’s in Blood don’t have a threat reduction because blizzard decides that all specs are viable tanks then it will be stupid, it should be Blood is direct DPS, Unholy is AoE, and Frost is tank spec, but now with DK’s there abilities are up in the air, I have no Idea what spec is designed for what because blizzard is trying to blend the specs with the new class in there attempt to make all classes viable. I am all for certain classes getting a buff, although I do hate how now Hybrids seem to out do the mains abilities to do what that class is supposed to be best at, blizzard is attempting to fill the voids of what is needed, until people wise up and start rolling more Warriors and Priests, the need for hybrids to be viable healers or tanks will be necessary. Problem is there are 10 classes, 4 viable tanks, 4 viable healers and 10 viable DPS if you want to go specs there are 3-6 viable tanks (DK up in the air) 5 viable healing specs, (throwing in Disc priest but that is up in the air 2) and 21 specs that can DPS.. note the imbalance, and Blizzard is doing there best to balance this out to have the standard of 3-4 tanks 6-8 healers and the rest DPS for a viable raid.
Aug 20th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Well in the blood tree there are talents that reduce the amount of threat generated when in unholy presence and blood presence. See that’s the thing, same with warriors.
There are talents that allow you to have less threat generated when in berserker or combat stance but it doesn’t affect defensive stance. So that way any spec of warrior can “DPS” but they can all 3 tank well enough but they MUST do it in defensive stance. Same with Death knights.
All three type of death knight can tank as there are tanking talents in each tree (blood has +parry, frost +armor and magic defense, unholy has +dodge and great aoe tanking stuff) but if you’re not in frost presence then you won’t be tanking very well. Frost presence in itself gives you bonus armor, resistance to magic, and threat generation bonuses.
My problem is with druids. Even paladins don’t have a “stance” or tanking “aura” so a paladin that wants to tank would HAVE to be somewhere in the protection tree, whereas a holy paladin can DPS, a prot paladin can DPS (though not as well) and a ret paladin … well you get the idea.
Druids right now are pretty niche’. A balance druid is locked into MAINLY ranged spell DPS, and they do it well. Resto druids can solo still and quest via all the new spell power stats and such but ultimately they are MEANT to heal.
A feral druid very early in the tree can get expertise bonuses, tanking bonuses, DPS bonuses, nothing that maybe you can consistently main tank 10-25 man raiding but there’s no catch 22. In the same tree they can harness really strong PVP talents, PVE DPS talents, and PVE tanking talents, and then it WOULD be nothing more than a mere gear change to stack more armor, HP, and avoidance and then poof, tank in a can.
Warriors still need work but they are retaining some of the feel where you have to go protection if you want to MT. Death Knights are great across the board but HAVE to take certain early blood, early unholy, and deep frost talents if they want to MT as well as stay in frost presence and stack high parry, armor, and HP. Paladins are still walking the line, and druids need to be reigned in a little bit.
With this many hybrids now bringing a tanking issue (a positive one but still an issue) I’m waiting for them to suddenly announce a healing hero class. IMO (maybe because I come from PVP servers) healers are by FAR harder to find than tanks.
Aug 20th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Spooner said: “Warriors still need work but they are retaining some of the feel where you have to go protection if you want to MT. Death Knights are great across the board but HAVE to take certain early blood, early unholy, and deep frost talents if they want to MT as well as stay in frost presence and stack high parry, armor, and HP. Paladins are still walking the line, and druids need to be reigned in a little bit.”
This I’d agree with. I wasn’t aware of some of the DK skills that make being ‘top dps’ and MT (perhaps) mutually exclusive. My concern is mostly with druids where they can switch gear to equal or outdo rogues for dps, then switch back to MT, something no one else can do. Blizz wants to make all tanks do more dps - as long as they don’t equal the dps of a dps class I remain fine with that. It’s when you can switch gear and perform as well in multiple roles as a ‘main class’ (that can’t switch gear and ‘poof’ tank) that I have a problem. It seems to me with the beta talent tree for ferals that you CAN get ALL the dps AND tanking talents….
I guess we’ll see.
Aug 20th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Yeah, I am leveling a Druid right now, but I do agree that they are overpowered because I have seen druids eclipse the classes they were supposed to support in what ever role they were doing. Boomkin out DPS’in mages. Feral druids topping Rogues, Bear tanks doing better that Warriors, or Healing Druids out healing with HoT’s. This is a result of druids whinning that they couldn’t do great at there roles they picked. News flash, you were never supposed to be great, only good. Reason being you can do everything. A mage can stop DPS and tank for 2 mins, or drop heals out when the healer dies.. that was great about the druid. He was the ulitmate 5th man, you could have a tank, healer, melee DPS, range DPS, and a Druid.. there ulitmate party cause the druid could do everything that all the others could. Now druids are type casted by there talents, and it feels like they out do the class they were supposidly supporting.. I do agree the Druid is a bit OP, but in feral there are 2 forms, so unless they split the feral tree in 2, ya logistically they can do both because there are 70 points in the tree, and just trust me it is better that the tank/DPS roll is tied together.. imagine if Druid could split pts down the middle in Feral tree so they only had to spend half the points, you could have 41/30 druids that could do range dps or melee dps, or tank druids that could heal really well.. just because of the divide in the feral tree itself. I would prefer them type cast to this fluid DPS/tank role. At least it would put them in there nicely shaped box they have cornered them selves into instead of what they were designed for.. the everyman, good at everything, great at nothing.
Aug 25th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I have no problem being second best at something, but there was a time where druids were not second best, they were dead last. Before BC, if you even thought about trying to go into a raid as feral or ranged dps, you were laughed at with responses like, “LOL Noobcakes! Droodz 4 healz!” “WTF is MOOkin?” “No thanks, we got a warrior” “Go respec NOOOB!!!” “If you wanted to range DPS you should have rolled a mage” “I don’t really DIS-like you, but we’d really rather have CC”
I could go on forever on some of the comments i’ve received. I can understand where everyone is coming from with saying feral is over-powered. It really is not that fair for a feral to do nothing but change gear and be able to dps and MT. There should be some divide in the feral tree that forces them to choose tanking or melee dps IMO.
That being said, a moonkin MIGHT be able to out dps a mage in raw dps, but with NO aggro drop, it’s not going to happen with an equally geared mage. I’ve had plenty of mages wipe the floor with me on the dps meters. I’ve had plenty of every class wipe the floors with me on the dps meters. It’s not all about the way the class was designed. It always comes down to gear and play-style. Very rarely did I ever beat an equally geared fire mage in DPS. A moonkin can pack the punch of a mage, but no reliable CC and no aggro drop has had me laughed out of more than one group.
I have been resto a few times and gone through raids healing and destroyed other, better geared healers on the healing meter, but that was totally due to play-style. The mentality and competence of those others was pretty much non-existent. I think resto is pretty good where it’s at aside from the lack of an ooc rez. The nature of their HOT’s is a powerful and much needed aspect in the game for many reason. Granted, in PVP things are unbalanced in 2v2, but thats mostly due to problems in the feral tree.
Yes, a druid was originally meant to be the support of the other classes, but when the support was no longer needed and you just need the raw power of healing/dpsing or w/e, where did that leave the druids? Who is going to take half a dpser or half a healer when they have plenty of full ones? Druids were once the ultimate 5th wheel, but with gear improvments, talent differences, boss encounters, and such they MUST evolve the druids and all hybrids away from the pre-BC format. Pre-BC, a feral or balance druid in enough healing gear would be almost no different from a healing druid on the charts. Now, this is not the case. The wolf in sheep’s clothing smells too much like a wolf to get by.
Oct 14th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Well, i am worried about druid tanking, i have a druid and love tanking. I dont want to see a nerf that could make us unable to tank, if we loose armor and are crusable, then our need to be used will be gone, and we will be completely worthless.