This is the thread for nerdy talent chatter.
First instalment from here:
Not sure where the announcement is, but they’ve also made tactical mastery trainable up to 10 rage for warriors (with the talent adding the extra 15).
Hmm, so they’ve backed off the power on the Aff and Destro trees since the first reveal, and now they’re pumping the Demo tree? Nice.
Combat Experience should just be removed, they keep nerfing it too much.
There’s some fun mage changes that’ve been snuck in. Like the +30% damage if the target is under 20% health. Screw execute! NUUUUUUUUUUUKE.
This looks like the third major Endless Rage change. The first one gave you zero-cost abilities for ten seconds – at the initial cost of 30 rage, natch – then it changed to a passive increase of 15% more rage generation from damage dealt and damage received. Now it’s 25% on damage dealt. Those strike me as some pretty wide variations this late in development.
Warlock
Spells
New screenshots for Ritual of Souls, Soulshatter, IncinerateDemonology
Improved Firestone - Renamed “Master Conjuror”. Now “Increases the bonus Fire damage from Firestones and the Firestone effect by 15/30% and increases the spell critical strike rating bonus of your Spellstone by 15/30%.”
Improved Spellstone - Removed, replaced with “Demonic Knowledge”.
(NEW) Demonic Knowledge - 3 ranks. “Increases your spell damage by an amount equal to 5/10/15% of the total of your active demon’s Stamina plus Intellect.”
Demonic Resilience - Now “Reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee and spells by 1/2/3% and reduces all damage your summoned demon takes by 5/10/15%.”
Fel Intellect - Now “Increases the Intellect of your Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter and Felguard by 5/10/15% and increases your maximum mana by 1/2/3%.”
Fel Stamina - Now “Increases the Stamina of your Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter and Felguard by 5/10/15% and increases your maximum health by 1/2/3%.”
Demonic Sacrifice - Added effect for Felguard: “Felguard: Increases your Shadow damage by 10% and restores 2% of total mana every 4 sec.”
Master Demonologist - Added effect for Felguard: “Felguard - Increases all damage caused by 5% and all resistances by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 per level.”
. . .
Priest
Spells
New screenshots for Mass Dispel.
Are they on some campaign to make people abandon their holy priests? I know I’m leveling my warlock first. I guess by nerfing healing spell downranks, they did give me room on my toolbar for the extra buttons I need due to the death of Decursive, so there’s that.
If they want me to stay holy from 60-70 they better put in a “free water” priest spell or some serious Smite nuking power… otherwise it’ll be back to shadow and damn the 5mans along the way.
I’m totally going back to shadow in BC. Even as a shadow priest I found I was really valuable to 5-man instances at level 60 in the current game (before I switched to Holy). You can still heal quite well with only 4 other people to manage, especially if someone else can do a little minor backup healing. And a shadow priest can stuff a couple DOTs on enemies to make them fall faster (thus do less damage for you to heal) without attracting too much aggro. Basically, in 5-man endgame dungeons as a shadow priest, I would just not use shadowform, toss on a DOT or two, and heal as normal. Still surprisingly effective.
But when I level, I mostly go solo, and I’m going back to shadow priest for that.
I’ll be going back to shadow for leveling also.
I think the rogue class is pretty sad now. These other classes are getting some nice buffs and rogues are getting tiny little incremental damage increases it seems like. Rogues have to work so hard to get a PvP kill, blowing through their cooldowns, etc.
Oh well. I have a hunter and warlock to play in BC. I think the rogue is going on the shelf.
I just wish they’d remove the dodge elimination from Surprise Attacks, since, rather counter intuitively, it actually lowers DPS. The buff to 8% is nice though, and the way they moved Blade Twisting up the tree and lowered the number of points it requires, as well as the addition of Combat Potency, makes speccing 41 combat much more attractive than it was initially. The new Cloak of Shadows is awesome too, though I don’t think I’d ever spec that deep in sub.
I already abandoned my Holy priest. I plan on going with the druid to 70 as I am fairly happy with the Resto changes and Feral leveling for me was much faster than Shadow.
That whole thing about Surprise Attacks reducing dps only applies to backstab, also it’s not that big a reduction and is really a reduction in energy efficiency than actual dps. It also assumes a whole lot about how the combat system works under the hood which is widely believed to be the case (it’s on wowwiki for example) but has yet to be confirmed or fully proven to work as it’s explained. The 8% damage buff probably more than makes up for it’s shortfall on BS though.
Blade Twisting is still mostly pointless, crippling poison is FAR better. Combat Potency is nice but you’d get much better use out of Seal Fate making it less useful, only handy if you want to go all the way to Surprise Attacks, for some reason.
Yeah, for PvP you almost have to have crippling poison. It’s the only way to keep someone close enough to melee other than stunlocking, which is always a bit dicey due to misses and resists.
I don’t think rogues are really underpowered, but too much of their potency relies on that frontloaded attack out of stealth, so they don’t get as many knockout punches as other classes as a result.
And it really is sort of pathetic how many rogues attack me and burn through their cooldowns to get a kill. I get kills with my warlock and hunter without ever touching cooldowns.
A lot of players love the rogue class and love that invisibility, but invisibility is a real design headache for PvP I think. It seems so unfair to be on the receiving end of it. Developers have to really try to manage that issue.
No matter how you frame it it’s still a reduction in DPS.
The 8% damage buff probably more than makes up for it’s shortfall on BS though.
So you’re ok with a 41 point talent having a component that lowers DPS? The benefits of the talent now outweigh the downsides, yes, but it’s still absolutely stupid.
Blade Twisting is still mostly pointless, crippling poison is FAR better.
As a snare Blade Twisting is terrible, yes. But there’s going to quite a few daze synergies in BC so it could be a worthwhile talent, it’s hard to say at this point. Could be totally worthless too. At any rate it’s much better for 2 points higher up the tree than 5 lower down.
Combat Potency is nice but you’d get much better use out of Seal Fate making it less useful, only handy if you want to go all the way to Surprise Attacks, for some reason.
Without more context (e.g. total build layout, swords/fists or daggers, etc.) I can’t really comment on this except to say I think SF is highly overrated as a DPS tool. But in an effort not litter QT3 with WoW theorycraft, please PM me if you want to discuss it further.
IF (huge if here) the assumed combat system is actually the combat system that’s in place. I’ve never thought that the whole one roll system as explained on wowwiki was accurate, it simply doesn’t handle certain types of situations properly (it assumes all the variables add up to 100% or less and that’s not always the case).
So you’re ok with a 41 point talent having a component that lowers DPS? The benefits of the talent now outweigh the downsides, yes, but it’s still absolutely stupid.
never said anything of the sort, Mutilate seems to be the only 41 point talent worth getting.
As a snare Blade Twisting is terrible, yes. But there’s going to quite a few daze synergies in BC so it could be a worthwhile talent, it’s hard to say at this point. Could be totally worthless too. At any rate it’s much better for 2 points higher up the tree than 5 lower down.
Yes, it’s better than before, but is it ultimately worth it… I’m not so sure
Without more context (e.g. total build layout, swords/fists or daggers, etc.) I can’t really comment on this except to say I think SF is highly overrated as a DPS tool. But in an effort not litter QT3 with WoW theorycraft, please PM me if you want to discuss it further.
A 30 Assassination 31 Combat spec with swords/mace/fist (fist would be the best for the extra crit but itemization sucks for them, might be better in BC though). The extra combo point is more valuable and, even with modest crit chance, more frequent (unless you can find an insanely fast weapon) than two procs of from Combat Potency (30 energy vs 40 energy saved on a SS for the combo point). I also feel the extra points in Assassination are better spent than in Combat which seems a little lackluster beyond AR. Seal Fate also scales up in damage output with your crit chance which can go up significantly with buffs and better gear. Combat Potency depends on your off hand weapon speed, so scaling is non-existent, it can actually go down if you change to a slower off hand weapon.