Tankero
1901
I just logged back in after a lengthy absence, just to see the state of things, and I came to a few realizations that I didn’t expect:
- Too many goddamn buttons
Now there’s simply way too many situational abilities that are dependent on a series of conditions for me to map every last thing within keyboard reach. That is, at least for PvP-focused feral druids. I’ve got bear and cat charge, with bear charge as a cast interrupting ability, and the other now acting as a DPS booster by making ravage (cat-form equivalent of rogue’s ambush) not require stealth or energy for a short period of time. I’ve also got skull bash for either form, which, combined with the Furor talent, becomes an spellcasting interrupt I have to have access to while in caster form. There’s also the new thorns, which is now a very short-lived buff that reflects a tremendous amount of damage, barkskin, nature’s grasp, entangling roots, etc., all of which I have to be able to reach for while in animal forms as well. That is not to mention my healing spells…
Way, way too many buttons to map.
I just started today to try to figure out macros for all this stuff, such as making ravage the next spell cast after doing cat’s feral charge, but not after bear, while having the ability to bear-charge my focused target (to interrupt heals in an arena), and so forth. They might’ve reduced cat’s rotational complexity for DPS (while they also apparently nerfed the hell out of it), but PvP’s own curve has been made that much steeper.
- Muscle-memory is a hell of a thing
I haven’t played for months. All my macros are broken, half the stuff on my bars has disappeared. I have new abilities to learn and apply, and yet in the middle of combat I’m reaching for everything that I used to exactly where it was supposed to be, even if I’ve half-forgotten what that stuff was. Things like rocket-boots, trinkets, interrupts, etc., it’s all subconsciously coded into my fingers, but I now have to find the damn abilities they’re trying to cast and slot them back where they used to be. For now, I’m asking myself what the hell I’m trying to do when I’m spamming the empty button, just to be struck a moment later with realization of what it was (Oh! Focused cyclone! Bash! Lifebloom/regrowth/nourish!). It’s like trying to ride a bike that’s only half assembled.
Sigh, what a clusterfuck yesterday was. Forever and a half to patch, and broken mods up the ass. Then when things finally started to get stabilized, I had to figure out what buttons were on my action bars. I lost a good 60% of them.
Really not happy with the DK tank changes. Runes seem to recharge slower, and the 30s cooldown on Death and Decay is a real bitch. Takes all the fun out of running an instance. AE threat is already a big enough problem without having to engage a group with DaD down, and waiting for DaD to refresh sucks.
I haven’t had a chance to play my mage. Seems good, though.
JM1
1903
Adam, I felt that way when I levelled my rogue as Sub ages ago. Ambush is just evil for PVE. I don’t think they’ll care.
Athryn
1904
It’s funny how having just one mod not working (Mounted, in my case,) can screw up your experience. I am so used to just hitting the ` key to mount, and the mod was just not working, that it made things 10 times more difficult.
Thankfully it’s been fixed as of this morning!
Lorini
1905
For Auctioneer users, the development version that was posted this morning
http://zip.norganna.org/auctioneer/ALL/ seems to be working OK. The only problem I saw is that mouse wheel scrolling gives an error. Keep in mind that you’ll need a hardware event to batch post each different item now, instead of being able to post tons of different stuff by clicking on batch post.
DK dps rotations are wack. I have no idea wtf I’m doing as unholy.
Tanking isn’t too bad. The blood boil buff is amazing.
Also: Begone, phantom page 64!
So, is dual-spec now 100g, or is it still 1k?
Your runes -do- refresh slower. That’s a big part of the DK rebalance. Used to be every rune was on an individual ten second timer, now it’s by type. If you have two exhausted blood runes, one recharges, then the second one. On the other hand everyone automatically gets death runes off certain attacks depending on spec, and a few things (death coil is one, iirc) can proc an immediate rune refresh. And haste affects refresh speed.
Iirc they said it was partly to make runic power a more significant element of combat for DKs.
Athryn
1910
An undocumented change that I discovered on accident today: The “slow” ground mounts (the ones you buy at level 20) go epic speed now, I assume when you get epic riding.
All mounts go the speed of your best riding skill. I don’t think that was undocumented?
That’s actually pretty awesome, since I prefer some of the basic mount models to the more dressed up ones introduced in 1.4. The one thing I wish I had in WoW that I never will is a Black Ram.
On the other hand, will there ever be occasion to use ground mounts in Cataclysm once you get a flyer (other than just for fun, of course)? I seem to remember reading that they were removing no-flying zones. Battlegrounds would be it, I guess.
Athryn
1913
It was implied that it was only flying mounts.
Maaaan, I was so close to finishing Operation Gnomeregan for the feat of strength last night before the EU servers went down.
The whole reinstall and patching process had taken me three hours, and then I had to do some of the simple, prerequisite quests, followed by going to outer Gnomeregan and waiting forever for Mekkatorque to appear, followed by him waiting 6 minutes to prepare, and then the battle bugged out and it took ages for the turrets to unshield, one by one, so that I could attack them.
I was so close to finishing the quest when the servers were shut down. sigh
Lorini
1915
Knew it was too good to last.
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
2) We think mage dps is too high, especially Fire, and will be nerfing it.
I don’t understand though why it took going live to see this.
Ouch. Only 6 out of my 10 toons on Doomhammer are showing in my character list. Yet in the realm list screen it shows I have 10. I can’t access my main guild bank toon. Anyone else having this issue? :(
my boomkin damage just seems broken-high. Like, something is not right. I did a wintergrasp and I was able to kill every player I ran into just by casting moonfire and insect swarm once on them. The damage over time was that insane. I ran a 5-man and was getting 20k crits on the new spellsurge nuke thingy. as an instant when it would proc, even.
Gedd
1918
Bah, I was one holiday (Hallows End which starts in two weeks) away from finishing Long, Strange Trip (the holiday meta achievement) and getting the 310% protodrake on my wife’s character. They removed the ability to get 310% flying from mounts in the patch, so there goes almost a year’s worth of work…
Yes. My warlock doesn’t show up. I’ve heard Blizzard is working on it.
Andrew
1920
My only guess is that level 80 PTR raiding is not really popular enough to get a good sample. If you want to be generous, perhaps they thought it was going to be a problem, and started working on fixes, but wanted to see how things really shook out on live first. That said, the differences are really absurd (DPS halved for a bunch of melee classes, and increased by 50% or more for many caster classes).
