Kind of feel bad for them.
No more R1 frostbolts, Blizzards, Earth Shocks, Frost Shocks, Flame Shocks, Magma Totems or Consecrates either. No more topping people off.
Why are they doing this? Taeldian fucked around with this message on 08-14-2008 at 08:33 PM.
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Taeldian needs to learn to type:
Downranking is just huge.No more R1 frostbolts, Blizzards, Earth Shocks, Frost Shocks, Flame Shocks, Magma Totems or Consecrates either. No more topping people off.
Why are they doing this?
Because they can balance skills around mana cost instead of effect. One reason for sure that Earth shock, frost shock, and flame shock are on different cooldowns is because if you could use all three against the same opponent, you could interupt a spell, snare, and apply a dot for a minimal cost (at rank one). If you are forced to use the max rank, then it's not quite the same winning scenario. They can start to make the trick skills spammable and count on their expense keeping them from being overutilized, rather than heavy handed cooldowns.
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Maradon!'s unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
Tanks generate a buttload of threat in WotLK.In nexus I was nuking balls out and never pulled threat even though I was topping the damage meters. We had a pally tank earlier and later switched to a warrior.
Any Info on how Aggro is being reworked?
I've been stuck out in Greater Northwestern Bumfuck for the last few months. Last I was able to read about for Warriors in the expansion Was the apparent removal of crushing blows, that it looked like a lot of the current protection tree was going to be available to all warriors, that gear was gonna focus a lot more on attack power and strength to go with some vauge notion that aggro generation is being linked to attack power.
I wish Blizzard would just make a movie already.
Sigpic shamelessly stolen from Kate Beaton.
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Blindy. attempted to be funny by writing:
Because they can balance skills around mana cost instead of effect. One reason for sure that Earth shock, frost shock, and flame shock are on different cooldowns is because if you could use all three against the same opponent, you could interupt a spell, snare, and apply a dot for a minimal cost (at rank one). If you are forced to use the max rank, then it's not quite the same winning scenario. They can start to make the trick skills spammable and count on their expense keeping them from being overutilized, rather than heavy handed cooldowns.
I'd rather have a "heavy-handed" cooldown of six seconds than not be able to use the ability at all. As a resto shaman, I cannot afford the mana cost of max rank shocks, and they're essentially taking the ability for a healing shaman to interrupt outside of the most clutch situations.
It's easy to claim rank 1 Earth Shock is overpowered, but if you try comparing it to every other interrupt in the game it's basically right in line with everything else. Forcing Shamans to use only max rank shocks makes their interrupts several times more expensive than everything else available to other classes. The extra damage isn't a substantial benefit because the interrupts rarely go on burn targets; if I could only have either max rank or rank 1 Earth Shock on my bars, I would choose rank 1 in a heartbeat.
Shocks are a huge part of the draw of Shamans as PvP healers, and they aren't exactly the most popular healing class around as it stands. Taking away the ability to shock efficiently is a huge blow to a class that really wasn't that powerful to begin with.
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Kegwen had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
I seriously don't know where people get the idea that shaman healers aren't well liked or wanted
I'm speaking strictly from a PvP perspective.
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How.... Taeldian.... uughhhhhh:
I'm speaking strictly from a PvP perspective.
Oh welp
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Everyone wondered WTF when Dr. Gee wrote:
I seem to remember a blue post on mmo-champion saying they're working a replacement to rank 1 Earth Shock that is just the interrupt at a reduced mana cost. I could be cracking out though!
Any plans for replacing R1 Frostbolt, Consecrate, Arcane Explosion, Blizzard, Flame Shock, Frost Shock, Fear, Polymorph, or Entangling Roots? How about low HPS high HPM heals? How about R1 Purge and Dispel for single buffs/debuffs?
Removing downranking is a huge deal, and there's a lot of stuff that a lot of classes rely on that they're going to take out with it. Not all (or even most) of the stuff mentioned above is vital, but it's important to the people who know how to make use of it to get the most out of their characters.
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Everyone wondered WTF when Taeldian wrote:
How about R1 Purge
Uh
Rank 1 Purge and Rank 2 Purge cost the same amount of base mana %. I'm almost positive Dispel operates the same way. Skaw fucked around with this message on 08-22-2008 at 08:34 PM.
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Skaw was listening to Cher while typing:
UhRank 1 Purge and Rank 2 Purge cost the same amount of base mana %. I'm almost positive Dispel operates the same way.
Has this always been the case? I know for a fact that when I was playing my Priest way back when, R1 and R2 had different costs.
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Verily, Taeldian doth proclaim:
Has this always been the case? I know for a fact that when I was playing my Priest way back when, R1 and R2 had different costs.
Nope, they changed it a ways back. Same with Cure Disease and Abolish Disease, same mana cost. Rezzes too for that matter.
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Everyone wondered WTF when Taeldian wrote:
Any plans for replacing R1 Fear
Uh, the upper ranks of fear actually last longer (Or have a chance to) now AND still all cost the same % of base mana.
You're getting fucking HEX. Stop fucking complaining.
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Delphi Aegis had this to say about Punky Brewster:
Uh, the upper ranks of fear actually last longer (Or have a chance to) now AND still all cost the same % of base mana.You're getting fucking HEX. Stop fucking complaining.
Lower ranks of Fear last the same duration in PvP as higher ranks. Same for Polymorph.
We'll see how things shape up with Hex. I'm willing to accept the possibility that Shamans will end up as powerful (or more) as they are currently even without R1 Earth Shock. With the amount of focus Shocking I do, however, it seems pretty unlikely to me.
I haven't touched the beta, and I honestly don't know how things are working out in practice.
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Naimah stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
Also keep in mind that removing down ranking isn't the only thing that they are changing. Not having downranking now probably would beak the game just as having burning crusade hp would have broken vanilla. Complaining about every mechanics change during a beta is pretty hilarious. But keep on keeping on I guess.
You're probably right. Complaining about stuff in beta is pretty useless, especially when I haven't played with any of the changes.
I'm pretty sure I just happen to like the way downranking works, and I don't want it to go away.
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Maradon! was listening to Cher while typing:
Doesn't seem like a great time to completely redesign and rebalance every class is all.
An expansion doesn't seem like the right time? Really?
If they don't redesign and refresh shit every once in a while then it's going to get stale even faster
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Kegwen booooze lime pole over bench lick:
An expansion doesn't seem like the right time? Really?
An expansion is the worst time imaginable. Overhauling all the classes is practically an expansion in and of itself, doing that plus adding a shitload of new content? Stuff is going to be buggy and badly balanced as all hell.
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If they don't redesign and refresh shit every once in a while then it's going to get stale even faster
There's a subtle difference between "refreshing" and completely changing the way everybody plays the game from level 1 on up. That's called "reinventing the wheel" and it's usually pretty pointless because it doesn't make the game feel any different, it just pisses everybody off.
well that doesn't affect "from level 1" but everything before max level is training wheels anyway Kegwen fucked around with this message on 08-24-2008 at 06:17 PM.
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Maradon! had this to say about John Romero:
An expansion is the worst time imaginable. Overhauling all the classes is practically an expansion in and of itself, doing that plus adding a shitload of new content? Stuff is going to be buggy and badly balanced as all hell.
But they did it with Burning Crusade?
I don't remember anything being a problem in BC until the whinefest over a few classes when the expansion was finally released. Making these kinds of changes now is fine, though I wish they'd do some of them over the course of normal patches, but whatever.
If the game becomes horrible because of it, well, at least Warhammer is coming out and it surprisingly doesn't suck. Willias fucked around with this message on 08-24-2008 at 07:59 PM.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Willias booooze lime pole over bench lick:
They did it with Burning Crusade?I don't remember anything being a problem until the whinefest over a few classes when the expansion was finally released.
They didn't do anything even close to this invasive with BC.
BC stacked more abilities on top of old ones, a few of which were tweaked. LK is more or less completely rearranging spell lines and class roles.
I think their view is that if they don't do dramatic, sweeping changes every once in a while they will begin to slowly leak subscribers Kegwen fucked around with this message on 08-24-2008 at 08:13 PM.
What class roles have changed?
I mean, I guess paladins, survival hunters, and shadow priests are now mana batteries, but I can't think of any others. Or maybe you're talking about the raid buff changes? I don't know.
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Willias wrote this stupid crap:
and shadow priests are now mana batteries
what? They've always been mana batteries. Even our best geared T6 shadow priests are outdpsed by ZA geared mages/warlocks
edit: also survival hunters are still raid utility and paladins are basically the same except (with neat improvements, of course) ret is viable
I don't think any class roles have fundamentally changed, but the way a lot of them are played has definitely been, er, adjusted Kegwen fucked around with this message on 08-24-2008 at 11:43 PM.
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A thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters couldn't ever match Kegwen:
what? They've always been mana batteries. Even our best geared T6 shadow priests are outdpsed by ZA geared mages/warlocksedit: also survival hunters are still raid utility and paladins are basically the same except (with neat improvements, of course) ret is viable
I don't think any class roles have fundamentally changed, but the way a lot of them are played has definitely been, er, adjusted
Shadow priests should now do significantly more DPS. Shadow word pain gets a 10% boost, spirit -> spell damage is happening all over the place and crits are going to increase spirit, and now that Vampiric Touch only returns 2% mana they don't have to hobble shadow priests to keep the mana coming in to a reasonable level. Blindy. fucked around with this message on 08-25-2008 at 09:48 AM.
