WotLK Beta Catch All

a kid can dream can't he?

I opted in, but the E-mail address tied to my account is no longer valid, and I can't access any of the emails to it. I tried changing it, but it requires that I confirm it through my old e-mail address.

Bleh, I guess I'll call them and see what they can do for me.

The Burning Crusade beta started about 3 months before release, wonder if that means we'll see Wrath before Thanksgiving.

WoWInsider has some in-depth analysis of the new talent trees.
Protadin - http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/07/19...
Healadin - http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/07/18...
Retadin - http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/07/19...

They also have a lot of other classes analyzed, but I found these explanations and analyses somewhat informative, so here ya go.

So currently in beta ret paladins are completely broken. I'm dishing out easily 2000+ dps is very bad ret gear.

I'm officially confused about the itemisation changes across the classes. I get the impression that they're trying to reduce the numbers of "types" of gear... for example, as I understand Spell Power it means that a priest could use essentially the same gear for healing or dps... which will also be the gear that mages want, and now that warlocks need spirit (??) they'll be wanting the same stuff as well.

I'll be the first to admit I can't theorycraft to save myself, but is this right? And are similar things happening with melee classes? I don't know enough about pallies to follow the changes happening there, but it sounds like their itemisation is getting pretty funky.

I think it is a bit too early to get up in arms over anything, lots of it will probably change before release.

Sonicator wrote:

I'll be the first to admit I can't theorycraft to save myself, but is this right? And are similar things happening with melee classes? I don't know enough about pallies to follow the changes happening there, but it sounds like their itemisation is getting pretty funky.

That's pretty much what's happening to an extent. Prot pallies are planned to use the same gear as Prot Warriors and Tanking Death Knights. Ret Pallies are expected to use the same gear as DPS warriors and DPS Death Knights. However, Holy pallies are still going to have their own gear set. Basically wherever they can universalize the gear sets, they will. So, your tanks in plate all have the same gear, your dps in plate all have the same gear, and your healers in plate (being just holy pallies) all have the same gear. It appears that cloth wearers are being universalized too. So all mages, priests and warlocks are being treated with the same gear with the addition of spirit to what warlocks need and the spellpower change.

This means the only ones left would be Enhance Shammies to have the same gear as Hunters, and that could be a difficult one to create...

Zablocki19 wrote:
Sonicator wrote:

I'll be the first to admit I can't theorycraft to save myself, but is this right? And are similar things happening with melee classes? I don't know enough about pallies to follow the changes happening there, but it sounds like their itemisation is getting pretty funky.

That's pretty much what's happening to an extent. Prot pallies are planned to use the same gear as Prot Warriors and Tanking Death Knights. Ret Pallies are expected to use the same gear as DPS warriors and DPS Death Knights. However, Holy pallies are still going to have their own gear set. Basically wherever they can universalize the gear sets, they will. So, your tanks in plate all have the same gear, your dps in plate all have the same gear, and your healers in plate (being just holy pallies) all have the same gear. It appears that cloth wearers are being universalized too. So all mages, priests and warlocks are being treated with the same gear with the addition of spirit to what warlocks need and the spellpower change.

Thanks! That makes a lot of sense.

Zablocki19 wrote:

This means the only ones left would be Enhance Shammies to have the same gear as Hunters, and that could be a difficult one to create...

Funnily enough, that was actually one of the things that got me thinking about this originally: Apparently shamans will be getting the bulk of their AP from agility now.

Or as wowinsider put it: "Enhancement shamans, now 50% more huntery".

Sonicator wrote:

Funnily enough, that was actually one of the things that got me thinking about this originally: Apparently shamans will be getting the bulk of their AP from agility now.

Or as wowinsider put it: "Enhancement shamans, now 50% more huntery".

I guess it wasn't going to be that hard for Bliz to do afterall

So, now 1/2 of the mail that drops can be usable by hunters and enh shammies, and the other half would be shared between ele and resto shammies

I'm not sure if any of the pallies have caught this yet, but with respect to the judgement/seal system:

1. All seals will deal some minimum damage based on the highest of AP or spelldamage, including JoLight, JoWisdom and JoJustice.

2. SoLight, JoLight, SoWisdom and JoWisdom now restore a % of your total health or mana, no longer the crappy 95/121 BS.

Everyone should be happy with point #2, since that means having a 10,000 mp pool no longer gives you 95 mana restoration, but I expect somewhere in the vacinity of around 300 mana. This will scale with gear instead of a flat rate

Faceless Joe wrote:

I opted in, but the E-mail address tied to my account is no longer valid, and I can't access any of the emails to it. I tried changing it, but it requires that I confirm it through my old e-mail address.

Bleh, I guess I'll call them and see what they can do for me.

Call them, and it's be easy to change. I had to do that a couple of weeks ago when I tried changing my PW and realized I didn't get a confirmation email.

You'll have to provide some account info(secret question, etc.), but it's fairly quick and painless.

Zablocki19 wrote:

This means the only ones left would be Enhance Shammies to have the same gear as Hunters, and that could be a difficult one to create...

True. On a side note, notice 3% hit was taken from the Enhancement Restoration Tree (Nature's Guidance). Most enhancement shaman are using a good percentage of rouge leather anyways, but now it will be even more likely seeing as it is always stacked with +hit.

If I remember correctly 1% hit = about 15 points of +hit. So 45 +hit isn't horribly hard to obtain.

Here's a low quality ret video I made in beta. I plan on making a better quality one today at lunch and I'll post it after work today.

You can also see me dueling a warrior with titan grip in the first to parts of this video

Also if you want to see huge screen shot dumps, check out my beta blog at www.mordiceius.com

I really don't quite understand how the new judgements work in WotLK for pallies...

Farscry wrote:

I really don't quite understand how the new judgements work in WotLK for pallies...

From what I've read from those with Beta access, it's one of two ways.

First, it's either exactly the same as the old system, but now there's damage addtions to the more passive "meant to be judged" seals such as Wisdom, Light and Justice.

Or Second, they basically gave us an icon for every seal (as it is now) and every judgement (new), with no standard judge key. Meaning, you can judge something that you currently do not have sealed.

The second would be awesome since that would remove a HUGE amount of the GCD problems with meleeing right now.

For Example, Krindle would normally seal SoR before battle, run in, judge it, then reseal it, but would switch to SoW and judge to put the effect on without losing a step in aggro building.

Same example in WotLK, Krindle would seal SoR before battle, run in, Judge JoW, and keep hammering away. No need to reseal or rejudge.
EDIT: This would allow me to get Consecrate, HS, AV, HoW, SHoR, and HoR off without needing to worry about resealing every 8 seconds, as it would now be the full duration (30seconds) and just hitting a judgement every 8 seconds. The drawback is finding more room on my bars, since I use the max amount currently available and will need...6 more for the new changes (5 new judgement keys, less the base one, less SotCrusader key, plus new keys for HoR, SHoR and SS)...oi vay!

Zablocki19 wrote:

The drawback is finding more room on my bars, since I use the max amount currently available and will need...6 more for the new changes (5 new judgement keys, less the base one, less SotCrusader key, plus new keys for HoR, SHoR and SS)...oi vay!

That was always the biggest problem I had with my Pally, figuring out where to put all of the different abilities that only get used 1% of the time, but if that 1% comes up, I really need it.

Here is another ret pally video for you.

A friend of mine in a heavy raiding guild said that ret pally uber dps is nothing new. He is the top rogue on his server and has been for a while.

He said that on the first killing of Kiljadeen a ret pally was 3rd on the dps list.

edit: I didn't want to take away anything from those awesome videos... They got me to resub my WoW account =P

fangblackbone wrote:

A friend of mine in a heavy raiding guild said that ret pally uber dps is nothing new. He is the top rogue on his server and has been for a while.

He said that on the first killing of Kiljadeen a ret pally was 3rd on the dps list.

Uber ret pally DPS is nothing new but this is a bug. I'm doing 10x the damage I should be doing in this gear. 5k crit on plate and I'm only in blues/greens. My highest crit sofar is 12k. Some ret pallies have gotten to over 21k in the same gear they wear in BC.

EDIT: Here is a higher quality video link.

Okay, I've got the lowdown on the new pally seal/judgement system:

The original Judgement spell has been removed.

In it's place, there are now 3 different Judgements:
Judgement of Light
Judgement of Wisdom
Judgement of Justice

All these when judged will do what their current judgements intent, however, JoL and JoW have been changed to restore a percentage of the attacker's health or mana instead of fixed rates.

In addition to this effect, judging any of these three will also add damage based on your active seal.

Seal of Light now provides base damage as well.

Judging the above no longer removes the active seal.

So, if you have Seal of Light active, and judge wisdom:

JoW debuff on the target, SoL direct damage applied to the target, your weapon swings give you chance to restore health from SoL, and all attackers gain JoW chance to restore mana.

So, if you have Seal of Vengeance active, and judge justice:

JoJ snare and prevents fleeing applied, DoT effect from SoV applied. Damage on target is based on ticks of SoV currently on target at time of judgement.

So, if you have Seal of Righteous active, and judge light:

JoL debuff applied, giving all attackers chance to restore health, along with direct damage effect newly added to JoL. Damage also applied based on SoR damage. SoR still remains, allowing your melee attacks to continue causing direct damage.

Neat huh?

Basically, we have 3 judgement keys, and a whole lot of combinations. The GCD gets in the way a whole lot less, and threat built by Prot and Damage by Ret has overall increased. SoV at 18second duration also means you can continuous judge light for the direct damage while building a 5-stack of SoV, and each time you judge, the damage will increase more and more. Very good threat builder, also less mana spent judging and resealing.

This is big in a small way: Mounts and small pets will no longer take bag space.

For me, that's a net gain of three bag slots (epic flyer, ram and cat) and way too many bank slots. Pack rats FTW!

The level 30 mounts help a lot for Warlocks, Pallys and Warriors so far. (I'd bet that extends to Rogues, Priests and Mages too)

All us other tanks like to whine about 'paladin ez-mode tanking', but it doesn't sound so easy when you actually talk about it.

Enhancement shamans are getting so many buffs I'm assuming it'll only be a couple hours after WotLK is released before the rogue QQ starts. Assuming it hasn't already. Look:

1) Shamans get a 1:1 agi --> AP conversion now
2) Enhancement shamans get a 1:1 int --> AP conversion
3) windfury imbue stacks with windfury totem (20% haste + old windfury ability)
4) strength of earth and old grace of air totems are 1 big totem (and agi = AP)
5) hex > sap in all typical applications

These are insanely huge buffs. No more gemming +str into sockets, I'm very suspicious shamans will now take on a feral druid-like "I only gem agility ever" concept for dps. Also it means I have to DE less mail stuff while raiding. =)

Now, rogue dps has gotten some fun tricks, too, but nowhere near the basic mechanic-level overhaul that enhancement got. Hopefully the buffs to sap, the AOE, and that crazy weird shadow dance will be enough.

Also, I saw some people complaining here as well as several other places -- I am personally ECSTATIC about the spirit-for-casters change and the spellpower unification. Anything that reduces the amount of shards in an instance, I am good with.

Enix wrote:

This is big in a small way: Mounts and small pets will no longer take bag space.

For me, that's a net gain of three bag slots (epic flyer, ram and cat) and way too many bank slots. Pack rats FTW!

Whoa, that's AWESOME! color me very, very happy with this update!

Malor wrote:

All us other tanks like to whine about 'paladin ez-mode tanking', but it doesn't sound so easy when you actually talk about it.

Yeah, just like our mount was "free", yet when you did the math, it was actually more expensive AND a lot more time-consuming. I wish I'd just bought a normal mount back in the day. That's a painful way to save an inventory slot.

Malor wrote:

All us other tanks like to whine about 'paladin ez-mode tanking', but it doesn't sound so easy when you actually talk about it.

The reason it's considered easy is because all the tough stuff is done at the beginning. I'm sure every prot pally can tell you what they went through to gear up for raids, but once they got there, they didn't have to worry about getting more avoidance or health or anything else, since they just gained every step of the way. T5 is when warriors and druid typically have the tougher part gearing, going through similar strides that pallies already did.

This change is going to be pretty huge. First off, Prot Pallies now will have to focus on Stamina above all, since it gets the 16% boost, but then also provides us with 30% spellpower. On top of that, there is the Strength -> BV change (2:1 last I heard), which will be huge for single and up to three target threat, along with the 15% boost from Divine Strength talent that's now in the Prot tree, along with SHoR and HotR that are now our two new threat gaining abilities (off of white damage and block value).

Then you add in the new judgement system and Oh My God! It's a different class altogether. I now have several different rotations based on what I'm fighting:

Gruul would have continous JoW with SoV, while using SHoR, HotR and AS. Jan'Alai adds would have my standard Consecrate, JoL and SoL. Mana regen appears to be far easier now for our Blue Rage Bar, and the costs of my AoE abilities will be reduced significantly with the high Tier talents.

The biggest significant change is that building single target threat will no longer require Consecrate, which is a HUGE mana cost, and doesn't do great against single mobs, but deals okay threat that's needed. Now, we have several other spells to build threat so that we become more "Rage" efficient. You also no longer need to use Consecrate on 3 or less mobs, as HotR and AS can be used alot more frequently in combat, and deal just as much if not more threat to those targets.

And considering now that the mounts are at level 30 and only require 85 silver to purchase from your trainer...

God, the new judgement systems makes pallys look so fun!

I made some new posts and did a huge screenshot dump onto my webpage of beta events for anyone who wants to spoil themself.