Archive for October, 2008


Blizz, please lay off the elves  

One thing I’ve noticed in WotLK is that there are an over abundance of elves. Everywhere you turn you’re running into elf NPCs. It’s like Blizz created the blood elf models and now elves have taken over Azeroth. It’s getting annoying. I rarely see draenei NPCs and yeah, it makes a little sense, but outside of the Argent Dawn group in Zul’Drak draenei don’t populate the Alliance army nor do they have any influence in current events. Considering that the elves were basically wiped out (at least that was always how it was presented), then why are they all of a sudden populating every corner of Azeroth? Horde are definitely getting more blood elf action than the Alliance are getting draenei action. Why did the draenei join the Alliance anyway?

 

I go to the Dragon temple in Dragonblight and all the NPCs there are what? You guessed it, elves. I do understand that there are people who really like the way bloodelves look, and there’s nothing wrong with this, but please tone down their usage.

 

-EDarkness

Ret paladin fix anytime soon Blizzard?

I’m sure the ret paladins hitting for 10k+ every 2 seconds are enjoying the beta, but everyone else sure as hell isn’t when it is time to run away from every ret paladin (which happens to be half of the alliance faction, btw). It also doesn’t help that you’re helpless even if you are wearing PvP gear (450+ resil on my shaman, still got 1-3 shotted in 4 seconds). Since when does everyone have a paladin with tier 6 and apolyon?

 

Fix inc?

 

They need to be toned down so it doesn’t take 3 people to kill one of them =)

 

I’d suggest toning down the 6 second stun back to 4 seconds for starters, fixing the judgement proc so it doesn’t hit for 8k, and removing the massive healing they are able to do as a hybrid in dps gear without ruining their spec like druids and shamans.

 

Leveling

However unlikely their claim is I agree with them. Leveling now takes more time yes. However, I would be half way through 71 right now if the exp was not changed. I have hardly had time to play with work the way it is right now and raiding. I think that tomorrow when I can play more I can evaluate it better but I am looking at being almost 72 or 72 at the end of the first zone with this new EXP needed. 2 levels in one zone is about what we saw in TBC and I think that with as many zones as we have this sounds like a good pace.

 

Yes, you have to do more quests and kill more mobs. You get more money, more loot, more time to work up professions, etc. I know we all want to be 77 right now but don’t worry it doesn’t take that long. Have fun and give feed back on EVERY quest. Track how long it takes you to do each level too. do a /played at 99% of the level then ding and then you can post on the forums data that can be used by Blizzard to make a better decision at how the exp needs to be adjusted.

 

If you want change don’t just say it is a problem but try to give more constructive feedback that can be used to better evaluate the problem.

 

VE nerf, DPS buff for shadow priests in beta

In the wake of sweeping alterations to shadow priests going live tonight, the inimitable Ghostcrawler has posted about a few more changes that will be making their way into the Wrath of the Lich King beta.

·         Vampiric Embrace is getting nerfed to bits. Fully talented, it currently heals group (not raid) members for 25%. It’s being changed to 5% to the group and 25% to the caster, again fully talented. A bit confused about this given GC’s statement that “we don’t want it to be terrible for priests in small groups” – 5% is pretty terrible.

·         Vampiric Touch’s coefficient is getting doubled, from 20% to 40%. Cool, though I don’t expect this makes up a huge part of your damage at 80.

·         Big DPS change: “Your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch do an additional percentage damage equal to your critical strike chance.” This is crittable DoTs, basically, with the randomness taken out. Instead of critting (say) 25% of the time for double damage, you just hit for 125% damage all the time. And of course our other damage spells (Mind Flay, Mind Blast, SW:D) can already crit normally.

I can’t say I’m pleased by the massive VE nerf, but it’s nice to see them picking up on promises of grade-A DPS for us now that we have less utility. Going from a state where two of our damage spells benefit from crit rating to a state where all of them do will be interesting.

 

Breakfast Topic: The revival of the non-standard group

 

The other night I told my guildies about a Hunter who used his Gorilladin to tank a Heroic instance. So they were determined to try it themselves in Heroic Mechanar. The group was three hunters and me as feral cat. Monkeyboy tank lasted two shots. Downgrading to Normal Mech we had a little more success when we added a healing Paladin. Not quite the Heroic run we were hoping for, but still good fun and I didn’t have to go bear.

With all the new specs and players experimenting with new builds, have you found any non-traditional roles or group compositions since Patch 3.0.2?

Blizzcon 08: In-game item  

I loved blizzcon last year but was really dissapointed that I couldn’t claim my reward on more than one character.

 

WoW has a play style that lends itself to creating new characters (and sometimes deleting old character to make way for new ones) all the time and for me and others having a server (or account) full of regularly played Level capped characters is normal.

 

Please keep this in mind when creating this years blizzcon rewards. i’m sure I speak for everyone when I express great interest in displaying proudly that I attended blizzcon on all of my characters and not just “The one I have the most interest in at that time”.

 

Thanks a ton and I look forward to attending as many forums on WoW and Diablo 3 (and maybe a little more infor on that movie coming) in the up coming blizzcon as possible!!