New WoW General Discussion Thread 6/8/10

The Game Room
81

Eh, probably not so much, although it does take a few spells to warm up (Beacon, Sacred Shield if there’s a lot of damage, Judgment, and the first Holy Light is 0.5 seconds longer than subsequent ones). Even in HOR, the spawns aren’t going to insta-kill a tank, so I’m probably just putting extra pressure on them. It’s something I’ll keep in mind. (And the tank was a Warrior too, so he has the same threat woes you do.)

And yeah, I did see it. I put in a post to vouch for him, for whatever the word of a new member is worth even if they do seem to like me.

82

But if they remove it as a stat from gear it will be purely a function of your level, making talking about defense skill completely pointless since you have no way of affecting it, much like what happened to weapon skill when they removed it from gear(and they are finally removing the need to level it in Cat), only this time they’re removing the entire Skills-tab not just the stat on gear. Crit immunity through talents works for bears, it will work for plate users too.

83

Have they said where profession progression will be moved to? I suppose it can still easily be viewed in the profession window itself, come to think of it.

84

With mmo-champion’s search function out of order it took some effort to find, but here you go.
Source

85

Aha, excellent. Thank you.

86

I guess I’m just nitpicking here, but my point is that it’s not leaving the game as a mechanic, simply as something that people can gear for. Tanks are still going to need to put Talent points into something that makes them crit immune. They just won’t see the numbers behind it anymore.

ETA: I guess my point is, if they didn’t keep the mechanic in the game in some way, anyone would theoretically be able to tank, regardless of spec. Which I just don’t see happening–the potential to be critically hit is just too important.

87

They said that their goal is to allow some classes to tank normal mode regardless of spec.

88

I feel like we’re not talking about the same thing here? What mechanic exactly? That mobs can crit players? I never suggested that mobs would be unable to crit or that no one would be crit immune.

In Cataclysm(or rather patch 4.0) mob crit chance will be a function of level difference much like Crushing Blows are now, and tanks will able to reduce this with talents.

89

I’d be interested to see the exact verbage on that, if you can recall where you saw it. If not, don’t spend too much time digging–I’m sure it will come up again.

Probably. You said it’s being removed from the game, which to me includes behind the scenes calculations. I very much doubt they’re completely rewriting fight mechanics like that, which is what I was objecting to. Mobs higher than you will still be able to crit you, and you’ll still need to do something (albeit via Talent points rather than a stat on your gear) to push that off the table.

Mob crit chance currently works like this. It doesn’t vary from mob to mob, or tanks would need different levels of +Def for every fight. The only thing that’s changing, as far as I can tell, is that Defense (i.e., a reduction in the chance to be critically hit) is moving from a gear-based stat to a Talent for all classes instead of just Druids.

90

I did say for “at least for all practical purposes”, if it’s behind the scenes where we can’t see it what does it matter if they go through the Defense skill we can’t see or just go directly to (Base Crit + (Player level - Mob level)*0.2) ?

Did I say it did?
The base crit chance doesn’t vary, but the actual crit chance is a function of the difference between the attacker’s Weapon skill(ie level) and the target’s Defense skill, which is why adding defense rating will reduce it in the first place.

91

I say we just declare this nit officially picked, the hair officially split, and let the issue rest. :stuck_out_tongue:

92

“Ideally an Arms warrior should be able to go Defensive Stance and grab a shield to tank a 5-player dungeon (though not a raid). When every dps warrior (though the same is true of all tank classes) needs a full set of tank gear to tank even easy heroic content, it’s harder to fill your Dungeon Finder groups.”

From here: Ghostcrawler and other posts.

93

I think I can agree with that.
Still, I wonder how they’re going to implement crit immunity for the plate tanks. From the recent talent preview it looks like druids are keeping SotF.
But if they want any plate user to be able to tank without tanking talents, can they really make crit immunity depend on talents ?
Personally I wonder if they couldn’t just include it in Defensive stance, Frost Presence, Bear form and, I suppose, Righteous Fury. Only problem that I can see with that is it would make paladins crit immune while still being able to do full damage.

Of course it’s also possible that they will simply balance the easier instances in such a way that crit immunity isn’t a requirement.

94

Entirely probable. After all, I believe heroic bosses are level 82, while raid bosses are ??/83. Just set it so there’s no chance of a crit (while wearing a shield) for enemies up to 2 levels above you, but you need points in crit immunity for enemies higher than that.

95

Yeah, giving shields an inherent crit-blocking ability (and adding same to bear form and Frost Presence, I guess) would seem like the easiest way to do this.

(Yay for enh shaman tanking!)

96

I can’t wait to tank on my holy pally! :stuck_out_tongue:

97

Putting uncritability inherently on shields would break PvP. They’re just going to make content easier, probably by reducing the crit scaling from 2x to 1.5 or 1.33. Whatever keeps it spicy.

98

Eh, they’ve drawn distinctions between what players can do to AI and what they can do to other players in the past. But you’re right, that might be making it too complicated.

99

Ah yes, I recall that post. Not exactly a statement about what they’re actually working on for Cataclysm, and pretty iffy about the mechanics. See the following reply for further discussion.

That’s exactly the mental problem I was coming up with. Warriors and DKs give something up by using Defensive Stance or Frost Presence; Righteous Fury is just another buff. Without moving Paladins to a stance-like system, I can’t see crit immunity working as being built into Defensive Stance/Frost Presence/Righteous Fury. It’s just too overpowered, even if it only works against NPCs and not players.

I see GC’s point more about being able to tank in DPS gear + a shield with a tanking offspec. His concern seems to be more about the *gear check *involved–and putting uncrittability into Talents seems to be in line with everything else we’ve heard as far as Cata specifics go. Because anybody can pick up an offspec for a modest gold investment and the five minutes it takes to enter the new Talent points and Glyphs; building a set with (currently) 535 Defense takes a bit more time and money. Tanks are the only role with an “absolute failure” cap–if you are under the Defense crit cap (either because of gear or Talents), you will die. Period. So they’re trying to get rid of the massive hassle for Plate tanks of having to gear up to that point to even be able to step into a Heroic as a tank. (Compare to switching from a DPS to a healing role as a caster–many of your stats will carry over. You won’t heal as well in, say, Boomkin gear as you would in Resto gear, but you can still do the job.)

100

Ever since my mage became eligible for heroic FoS, I seem to be getting it in the RDF over and over and over, and between my mage and my paladin I’ve gotten pretty good at it. So I was pretty disappointed to end up in there yesterday with the most utterly fail group I’ve ever been a part of (in any dungeon).

I zoned into the dungeon and found myself all alone just inside the portal. “Oh,” I thought, “I’ve joined an in-progress run and the rest of the group is somewhere up ahead of me.” So I checked my map to see where they were, and there were no dots. Hmm. Then everybody else started popping in through the portal, all at 1/2 HPs and mana. Ah, okay, I’m joining after a wipe.

The druid healer immediately said, “Gearing tank and healer - be patient!” Okay, no problem. I moused over the tank’s and healer’s portraits … the tank had a gearscore of 4800-something, and the healer’s GS was 4700-something :confused: Both should have been adequate for H:FoS. (My mage’s GS is a bit over 4400, and hasn’t had any major trouble in there). OTOH, the other two DPS, a warlock and a rogue, had gearscores of something like 3800 and 3300, respectively, so I’m not sure how they even got in there - H:FoS never popped for my mage until she passed 4000 GS). But the healer’s comment should have been a warning - she was already blaming the wipe on gear, even though she and the tank were adequately geared (per GS, that is - I didn’t inspect to see what they were actually wearing. They may have been wearing completely inappropriate gear).

So anyway, we got everybody healed up and buffed, and off we went. And the first mobs we engaged were right around the corner from the entrance. That’s right, before I joined the group, they had just wiped on the first group of trash. That should have been my second clue, but I was willing to assume that perhaps the person I replaced had done something stupid like pulled extra mobs and caused the wipe. We made our way successfully through all the trash, albeit slowly, and now we were ready to face Bronjahm.

About two hours later, Bronjahm finally fell over dead, the rogue rolled Need on Papa’s Brand New bag while everybody else rolled Greed, and we moved on. We slowly but surely ground our way through more trash, and eventually we made it to that corridor that leads to the Devourer of Souls. I was a bit perplexed while fighting those two spectral mobs in the corridor, because I was repeatedly blasted with some purple spell that did huge damage - something I hadn’t seen before. After the second one finally went down, the healer said to the tank, “You should probably turn those guys away from the DPS.” “Oh, yeah. I’ll remember that next time.” :smack:

At last it was time to face the Devourer of Souls. It took a very long time, during which I kept getting hit with something (I couldn’t even see what it was) that was clobbering me for more than 11,000 damage. Meanwhile the healer was mostly completely failing to notice that I was nearly dead, and I spent a large portion of the fight simply running for my life with 200-300 HPs and no way to heal myself (had already used a potion earlier and the CD wasn’t up, and my herbalism Lifebloom heal thingy requires standing in one place, which wasn’t really feasible at the time), trying to avoid the purple ghosties and hoping the healer would eventually notice that I need some help over here. During one of these mad scrambles I ran past the warlock, who appeared to be just standing there doing absolutely nothing, but I didn’t have time to stop and ask. But eventually we whittled the boss down to something like 5%, at which point it went nuts and killed everybody.

Sigh.

We all flew back, and while flying back the warlock said, “I apologize for going afk. Urgent thing at home.” :dubious: So yeah, she really was standing there doing nothing when I ran past her. So we healed up again and rebuffed, and made our way back to the boss. Standing there considering our prospects, the healer came up with a brilliant plan. “Hey,” she said to the pally tank, “Why don’t I tank and you heal? My GS is 5300 in my tank gear.” Paladin said, “Okay.” I said nothing, figuring it couldn’t get any worse. I was wrong. Druid switched to bear form (though, strangely, her GS remained at 4700-something; did she forget to actually switch her gear set when she switched specs? Did she actually switch specs, or just drop into bear form? Who knows?) and pally went Holy. Then we stood there, and stood there, the pally apparently preferring to let his mana regenerate on its own rather than sit down and drink. WTF, dude? I gave everybody mana strudel when I joined the group! Eat! Drink! Enjoy! After a bit I glanced up at my buff icons, and then reminded the pally, “Don’t forget to turn your aura back on after switching specs.”

Sigh.

In we went. Thankfully, this time it only took us about two minutes to wipe, and I could finally say, “That’s enough for me” and drop group. And dammit, all I wanted was my 2 Frosts, which would get me to 50 and a new iLvl 264 cloak.

Thank Og I got Utgarde Pinnacle when I requeued. Cakewalk.