WoW 5.0 - Mists of Pandaria

Chabuda wrote:

I'm pretty sure I'm coming back pretty soon...Who's up for more firelands runs?

Chabuda wrote:

I'm pretty sure my new lvl 80 that I get for the resurrection will be a druid. I'm pretty pumped.

Here you go, kid. The first hit's free...

(PM me your email address for your WoW account and I'll hook you up - *filthy enabler*)

I did a PUG Firelands the other day, and it's stupidly easy now when everyone has a 380-390ilvl score. We made it to Rag with hardly any problems, except for a pretty disorganized zerg on MD Fandral - unfortunately the group disbanded after that. A lot of people are also out to do this as they are trying to farm for embers for their legendaries, so you'd have no trouble getting in on one.

An example of the easiness:

You can do Bethilac now without even having to send a tank up. With a pally healer and my shammy only we healed through the firespam the entire fight til she got bored and came down herself. That's how sad it is now.

That's a real bummer. I guess it makes sense though. Kind of reminds me how all the mechanics of MC were seemingly nuts, until you went back in at 70...

Chabuda wrote:

That's a real bummer. I guess it makes sense though. Kind of reminds me how all the mechanics of MC were seemingly nuts, until you went back in at 70...

I never did get around to understanding the medic/elite kill order at Majordomo. The most I was concerned about was not putting a DoT on a sheep, and explaining that not all curses are DoTs.

I was assigned to stand around and resheep when my sheep was broken...I can't really tell you any kind of order.

You know, I really want to be done with WoW, and I did let my subscription lapse last year, but I'm not sure I'll be able to resist the pokemon aspect of MoP... My main has collected 166 pets after all...

Scratched wrote:
Chabuda wrote:

That's a real bummer. I guess it makes sense though. Kind of reminds me how all the mechanics of MC were seemingly nuts, until you went back in at 70...

I never did get around to understanding the medic/elite kill order at Majordomo. The most I was concerned about was not putting a DoT on a sheep, and explaining that not all curses are DoTs.

The way the fight works, you have 8 adds, 4 of which(elites) have to be tanked and couldn't be sheeped. So while there were a couple ways of doing it, my guild sheeped all the priests, killed the elites and then took care of the sheeps one by one.

There's a huge list of spell rebalances and changes up on MMO Champion. Some truly fascinating changes in overall gameplay are obvious from even quick perusal.

A lot of them are really simple quality of life changes, like rezzes cost only a small amount of mana now. So if you have to rez folks, you don't have to immediately go into a long drink cycle. Simple. Others are ... far reaching.

No idea how much of this will reach live, but it's worth looking up your class. A lot has changed.

Tannhausered! Curse you, Zenke! *shakes fist*

Looks like devs that work on rogues played scoundrels/operatives in SWTOR.

Shadow Walk: New. Significantly increases Stealth effectiveness for 6 sec. 1 min cooldown.
Shroud of Concealment: New. Extend a cloak that wraps party and raid members within 20 yards in shadows, concealing them from sight. 5 min cooldown.
Michael Zenke wrote:

There's a huge list of spell rebalances and changes up on MMO Champion. Some truly fascinating changes in overall gameplay are obvious from even quick perusal.

A lot of them are really simple quality of life changes, like rezzes cost only a small amount of mana now. So if you have to rez folks, you don't have to immediately go into a long drink cycle. Simple. Others are ... far reaching.

No idea how much of this will reach live, but it's worth looking up your class. A lot has changed.

Interesting druid changes. A lot of the talents have been moved into spell descriptions...lower cast times and mana costs across the board as well. Like you said, obvious stuff though.

Will the monk healing tree be melee oriented?

Edit: Moonkin seems like it'll be pretty strong too

In Mists of Pandaria, Valor will be used to power a new feature that allows you to increase the item level of your existing epic items. This means that each week, you can become a little more powerful, hopefully allowing you to kill that boss that has eluded you thus far. There will be a bit of a game in trying to decide when to upgrade your gear versus hoping for a new piece to drop from a raid boss, but our plan is that even heroic gear can be upgraded slightly in this way.

wow! This is weird but what an interesting idea!

oilypenguin wrote:
In Mists of Pandaria, Valor will be used to power a new feature that allows you to increase the item level of your existing epic items. This means that each week, you can become a little more powerful, hopefully allowing you to kill that boss that has eluded you thus far. There will be a bit of a game in trying to decide when to upgrade your gear versus hoping for a new piece to drop from a raid boss, but our plan is that even heroic gear can be upgraded slightly in this way.

wow! This is weird but what an interesting idea!

Interesting. This sounds similar to the Legendary Item in LOTRO. If Blizz adopts such a concept, I'm sure they will implement it even better than Turbine did/does.

oilypenguin wrote:
In Mists of Pandaria, Valor will be used to power a new feature that allows you to increase the item level of your existing epic items. This means that each week, you can become a little more powerful, hopefully allowing you to kill that boss that has eluded you thus far. There will be a bit of a game in trying to decide when to upgrade your gear versus hoping for a new piece to drop from a raid boss, but our plan is that even heroic gear can be upgraded slightly in this way.

wow! This is weird but what an interesting idea!

I'm not sure I like this...

Well, let me elaborate. There's a line in that post about how this change will mean there are no longer such a thing as Valor point vendors.
If this happens, then, again, we are regressing back to crossing our fingers and hoping the item that's for our spec drops, before we can even take it to the Sh*tty Wizard(tm) and spend our valor points on it to upgrade it.

Slaves to the RNG again is not a good thing, which is why people love the VP system so much.

Yeah, hopefully they will ultimately go with a hybrid of those ideas. Keep the vendor around so you can fill in all your gear slots, but also give you the ability to increase the power of each slot with extra VP.

They're also increasing drops and, specifically, useful drops from dungeons/bosses. And giving you items that you can use to actually force drops for you.

So take that and consider that you can buff that crafted item you have to get you through until you get a drop and I think you have a very successful system on your hands if done the right way.

Now watch as they start to charge real money to buy extra Charms of Good Fortune.

I'm calling it here, folks.

Looks like the Beta is live. People who have signed up for the year contract will soon receive an email telling them where to download the client. Apparently the first thing they're testing is the Pandaren starting area. I can't wait!

kilanash wrote:

Now watch as they start to charge real money to buy extra Charms of Good Fortune.

I'm calling it here, folks.

That's why he's our GM folks. He's the leading voice in pessimism.

(I fear you're right, btw)

oilypenguin wrote:
kilanash wrote:

Now watch as they start to charge real money to buy extra Charms of Good Fortune.

I'm calling it here, folks.

That's why he's our GM folks. He's the leading voice in pessimism.

(I fear you're right, btw)

Even though Blizzard has remained staunchly opposed to selling things like this for money? I don't know that there's another company out there more opposed to an ingame item store, regardless of what's being sold.

oilypenguin wrote:

They're also increasing drops and, specifically, useful drops from dungeons/bosses. And giving you items that you can use to actually force drops for you.

So take that and consider that you can buff that crafted item you have to get you through until you get a drop and I think you have a very successful system on your hands if done the right way.

This is something to really keep in mind. Yes, Blizzard may be axing off the valor gear vendor, but if the loot system that GC propsed the other day works and goes in, then it won't matter, because you'll kill the boss roll to see who gets something from it, and then the game gives you a class/spec specific item from the loot table.

Yes, Blizzard may be axing off the valor gear vendor, but if the loot system that GC propsed the other day works and goes in, then it won't matter, because you'll kill the boss roll to see who gets something from it, and then the game gives you a class/spec specific item from the loot table.

In LFR. Still the normal loot system in regular raids though.

zeroKFE wrote:
Yes, Blizzard may be axing off the valor gear vendor, but if the loot system that GC propsed the other day works and goes in, then it won't matter, because you'll kill the boss roll to see who gets something from it, and then the game gives you a class/spec specific item from the loot table.

In LFR. Still the normal loot system in regular raids though.

Aye, but if you can upgrade LFR gear to the near-equal of raid gear, how big a deal is it, honestly?

AnimeJ wrote:

Even though Blizzard has remained staunchly opposed to selling things like this for money? I don't know that there's another company out there more opposed to an ingame item store, regardless of what's being sold.

They already sell vanity digital items on their online store. And one of the more recent additions (The Guardian Cub) is not soulbound, so it's essentially buying gold. It's not a far leap at all to wonder if they won't take a trick out of social gaming's bag and add this as a 'time saver'.

And yes, I'm a natural curmudgeon. Don't you love me?

AnimeJ wrote:
zeroKFE wrote:
Yes, Blizzard may be axing off the valor gear vendor, but if the loot system that GC propsed the other day works and goes in, then it won't matter, because you'll kill the boss roll to see who gets something from it, and then the game gives you a class/spec specific item from the loot table.

In LFR. Still the normal loot system in regular raids though.

Aye, but if you can upgrade LFR gear to the near-equal of raid gear, how big a deal is it, honestly?

Maybe they are waiting to see how the real money issue works in D3 before trying something like that in WoW?

At the risk of having this discussion delve into the old RMT arguments, I guess we'll see what happens. I will say that because of the guardian cub and because of the RMT AH for Diablo III, I have less faith that blizzard will keep RMTs out of WoW than you do.

That said, adding them might be the first step in going F2P so maybe it would be logical?

Anyway, we'll see how these things shake out. It may all work out for the best. Honestly, as long as the content is interesting and I'm not still paying more than $12.50 a month or whatever for my 6 month subscriptions to have access to everything, I'm happy.

Sorry to derail.

Just seemed like, hey, if I was Blizzard, this would be the perfect opportunity to add that stuff.

I hope they won't, though. Fingers crossed.

So.... how about them shammy changes?

kilanash wrote:

Sorry to derail.

Just seemed like, hey, if I was Blizzard, this would be the perfect opportunity to add that stuff.

I hope they won't, though. Fingers crossed.

So.... how about them shammy changes?

I dunno. I didn't watch the videos. We'll deal with whatever they throw at us, as always. As long as I can keep stacking INT, I'm cool.

I'm seeing a little love for ret paladins so far. Crusader Strike and TV are getting big fat buffs. So is the censure DOT from Seal of Truth as well as Judgement. Holy Power is generated faster. WoG's cooldown will just about vanish.

About the only real red flag is that Exorcism will get a huge cooldown. (boo)

Digging down into the weeds, though, is this: Sword of Light: Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 25%. No longer increases spell power by an amount equal to 30% of your attack power and no longer increases your chance to hit with spells by 8%.

I don't know the mechanics well enough to know if this change is the result of the CS and TV buffs. Only time will tell, etc. etc.

Interesting - it seems that they are moving a lot of the spec choices into glyphs now. That seems pretty neat to me. Makes sense since their mission is to make people choose talents based on their preferred utility.
That's kind of what glyphs were meant to do, originally.
I wonder if we will get a new glyph slot...

MoP Beta Changes Thread for Shaman.

Will add more after I look more closely at this. Right now I don't have an opinion on spec changes that address Enh or Resto.

Honestly, I just had a musing that I would pay $10 for 3 sets of say green level heirloom gear or maybe somewhere between green and blue level. It would include a chain, leather and cloth set of say chest, legs and gloves with a two handed and one handed weapon. They could sell each set for $4-5 or all three for $10.