Gather your robot unicorns and prepare for a somewhat inebriated adventure through the latest news and developments in World of Warcraft. That’s right, your guides Seven and Brian knock back a few beers, give you more than enough info about Cataclysm, and threaten the lives of those involved with the Twitter Developer Chat. The plushies are in the studio, prepare to fight!
Podcast: iTunes | Play in new window | Download | Torrent | Mevio (Torrent Available 3/12)
NEWS:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/heroic-lich-king-kill-ptr-3-3-3-build-11623/
Celestial Dragon
Blazing Hippogryph
X-53 Touring Rocket
Azure/Crimson Deathcharger
Frosty Flying Carpet
Patch 3.3.3 Quest Datamines
http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/authenticator-accounts-hacked-icc-quests-crimson-deathcharger/
Authenticators Hacked
http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/authenticator-accounts-hacked-icc-quests-crimson-deathcharger/
Lich King 10 Man Heroic World first by Paragon (5% buff)
World First Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25) by Exorsus (no 5%)
http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/world-first-glory-of-the-icecrown-raider-(25)-3-3-3-notes-update/
Cataclysm Stats
http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/icecrown-citadel-zone-buff-blue-posts/
Mastery Bonuses – wearing your gear
Reforging – change stats on gear
Gemming gear – Sockets taken out of top stat in the item budget
Cataclysm Stat and System Changes
http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/cataclysm-stat-system-changes/
Stamina – no real changes, not plate wearers should end up with more stam
Spirit – Healer only, likely to be changed over to hit through a talent, may even change how often regen ticks
Intellect – Will grant spellpower
Haste - Same for casters, different for melee (faster resource recovery)
Parry/Dodge/Block - Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.
Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It’s directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.
Armor - Pretty much the same… not as big of a gap
Resilience - This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.
Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating – No real change, damage done by having too low of a hit rating may be altered
What’s Gone from Items (not completely from game)?
Attack Power – str and agility will convert to this
Spell Power – gone except from caster weapons
Armor Penetration – Will still exist through talents/abilities
Shield Block Value – Gone since Block = 30% block may be increased through talents
What Stat’s Knocked Up Ghostcrawler and Fled to the hills? AKA. Gone for good.
MP5 – Spirit takes over
Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.
Spell Ranks - Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.
Weapon Skill - Gone, even I forgot about this.
Twitter Developer Chat
http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/blizzchat-developer-chat-on-twitter-226/
Intro Song:
“Haters” off the Album: The Jakes Project
by Jakes
Beer Advocate: A
BEER AND BANDWIDTH FUND!!
Enable Evil.
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The removal of spell ranks doesn’t seem so odd to me (nor a bad idea).
Priests, for example, have spells such as ‘lesser heal’ and ‘heal’ which are abandoned down the leveling path as they are replaced by flash heal and greater heal. While both are ‘okay’ spells this change could reintroduce lesser heal and heal which could cover up for our lack of downranking. While I wouldn’t blame it entirely on our lack of downranking, the removal of this mechanic is one of the major reasons holy priests lost so much ground as tankhealers.
Furthermore, while leveling, the whole rank-thing reveals oddities. For example some spells are our “less efficient but faster heal” (ie: flash heal). However the new rank of FHeal you just learned after a ding could outperform the ‘slow but powerfull and effective’ (Greater) Heal. Looking at the different ranks of the spells, they all seem to scale in a more or less comparable way and it is only these jumps in performance as a result from the ranks that gives some less intuitive intermediate behavior.
By making them scale with each level they eliminate this odd behavior which should yield a more intuitive learning system while leveling. Your experience with spell X at lvl 40 is probably going to help you still at lvl 80.
Also, it removes the concept of ranks which could simplify some stuff. No downranking penalty, no ‘rank feature’, no rank bug on dual specs. From personal experience by writing my own spell performance calculator, the rank concept really makes it a lot more complex. Removing this could actually factor out a lot of code that could ease the maintenance.
Sorry for rambling on and on about this, but I thought of another reason this seems to be ‘part of the master plan’. As they brought down the spell costs to a rank-independent % of your base mana, you could end up paying more and more for your spells with each level. On top of that your baseregen lowers as well so you ‘lose’ regen. The only way to compensate is increasing your stats which only new gear or BoA gear can provide.
I would be in favor of this change myself, despite the valid concerns outed during the show.