Patch notes always manage to annoy me. Of course they do, I am a warlock after all and even though I am now far more in tune with other character classes understanding their soft spots and where they could use some help seeing the stale and uncreative changes to the warlock class never put a huge smile on my face.
But this is not about warlocks... at least not specifically. I make it about warlocks because I happen to be a warlock of the undead variety. So chosen back in the day for the race defining ability 'will of the forsaken'.
Will of the forsaken is an absolute godsent for any warlock especially in the northrend PvP game. Together with the standard PVP trinket undead warlocks can break snares twice and happily port back to their circle of magical 'there will be a warlock here soon' glowiness (you know the little green circle things where rogues like to hang out).
But the PTR patch notes for 3.3 tell us a story of foreboding doom:
"Will of the Forsaken now shares a 45-second cooldown with similar effects, including the Medallion of the Horde, Titan-Forged runes, Insignia of the Horde, etc."
Which in essence means that your race defining ability now shares a cooldown with quite a few silly little pvp trinkets that are available to pretty much anyone with the gumption to cap a few towers in Hellfire peninsula or do any other moderated form of pvp.
So no matter what kind of undead you are, come 3.3. your PVP trinket will be useless. After all it's not like you can exchange racials nor do you get the option to change race after such a modification so the only real thing left to do is hunt for a new trinket.
Perhaps this is the great equalizer, a cheap little trick to snuff out the value of yet another racial to bring it in line with the collection of other marginally useful racials.
But to this here warlock, whom even with a spec that is literally built for survival it's a significant kick in his non-existing nuts (organic stuff does not stay attached post death).
I can stomach the fact that I have to go look for a different trinket, in a way it's a relief not to have to go for the pvp trinket anymore but losing yet another defensive cooldown is hard especially when you know you're reliant on it for your survival.
My warlocks future looks somewhat bleaker for it. Now rather than to trinket out of the rogue stun, port back to my circle and WotF out of the rogue stun from the rogue that's surely there I get to recapture those lovely moments all us warlocks know where we get bursted down from 100% to 0 in the duration of a single stun.
But hey, maybe we can hit the sacrifice button from our otherwise useless voidwalker before the second rogue gets to us. Or perhaps they got bored waiting on that big green glowing blotch on the floor for a warlock to appear. Or maybe we can get that 1000+ resilience we're going to need to just live through the initial stunlock burst sequence so we actually get to cast something. Or maybe I'll just stay in the tree I've been sitting in casting dots at the passing crowds.
On the bright side it may, in the long run, result in a few less undead in the world and we'd all be better of without so many of us trying to develop a new plague to turn us all into forsaken (in which case all of y'all will get our spiffy racial).
WotF much?
Showing posts with label patch notes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label patch notes. Show all posts
Friday, December 4, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
3.2 change summary
Well it looks like the next patch is going to be a whole new ball-game in terms of transportation. Mount requirements and cost are going down accross the board, we're looking at extensions to and for the argent tournament and there's even a new BG in the making.
For those of you that haven't checked up on the patch notes for 3.2 yet and actually read noobding instead (catering to really small audiences here) have a look at my summarized version of all the news out there in regards to 3.2.. As usual in no particular order:
1. The argent tournament colloseum will be completed and will include new 10 / 25 man raid dungeons available through an unlock system
2. Mount requirements are going down across the board. Epic land mounts at 40, normal mounts at 20, travel abilities at 16 and regular flying at 60 and the cost has been slashed for mounts as well (we're talking hundreds of gold less, hold off on collecting mounts for now).
3. A plethora of class changes and profession changes and with a little luck shamans will be the happy owner of a new totem management bar and hopefully a little bit smoother gameplay.
4. New heirlooms a few of which will come with additional xp bonusses that stack with the old one now allowing for up to 20% faster xp generation.
5. An upgraded squire that you can use as a bank/vendor or mail.
6. 2 new quest hubs in icecrown
7. Isle of conquest battleground added supposedly a bit of a spin-off of Arathi Basin's location cap concept.
8. A zeppelin that will go from TB to OGR (horde rejoice)
9. New portals connecting capitol cities to the dark portal and a flight path from there to shattrath
That's the crux of the changes without highlighting particular classes or professions. I am definitely holding off on commenting on those since they're never carved in stone. And since there's no warlock changes announced I really have nothing good to rant about anyway.
If there's a particular topic that strikes your fancy let me know and I'll see if I can conjure up some details
For those of you that haven't checked up on the patch notes for 3.2 yet and actually read noobding instead (catering to really small audiences here) have a look at my summarized version of all the news out there in regards to 3.2.. As usual in no particular order:
1. The argent tournament colloseum will be completed and will include new 10 / 25 man raid dungeons available through an unlock system
2. Mount requirements are going down across the board. Epic land mounts at 40, normal mounts at 20, travel abilities at 16 and regular flying at 60 and the cost has been slashed for mounts as well (we're talking hundreds of gold less, hold off on collecting mounts for now).
3. A plethora of class changes and profession changes and with a little luck shamans will be the happy owner of a new totem management bar and hopefully a little bit smoother gameplay.
4. New heirlooms a few of which will come with additional xp bonusses that stack with the old one now allowing for up to 20% faster xp generation.
5. An upgraded squire that you can use as a bank/vendor or mail.
6. 2 new quest hubs in icecrown
7. Isle of conquest battleground added supposedly a bit of a spin-off of Arathi Basin's location cap concept.
8. A zeppelin that will go from TB to OGR (horde rejoice)
9. New portals connecting capitol cities to the dark portal and a flight path from there to shattrath
That's the crux of the changes without highlighting particular classes or professions. I am definitely holding off on commenting on those since they're never carved in stone. And since there's no warlock changes announced I really have nothing good to rant about anyway.
If there's a particular topic that strikes your fancy let me know and I'll see if I can conjure up some details
Monday, March 9, 2009
3.1 patch notes part 2
Warlock changes... and there's a lot of warlock changes in 3.1 to come so lets take a quick look at what I would consider one of the more aggressive changes to the warlock class. A lot of stuff has been removed or seen their talent point cost reduced which should give warlocks a little more room to breathe in terms of point distribution.
Let's dispense with the pleasantries and dive right into the sarcasm (for a full list of changes simply scroll past my endless dribble till you see the word 'warlocks' come by).
Blizzard decided to radically solve out soul shard problem by not allowing us to have more than 32 which is likewise compensated by drain soul now creating shards when fighting non-gray mobs. Considering I reguarly go out to solo instances of the low level variant and I remember burning through shards in pvp like nuts I have a few doubts about this change but this change is undoubtedly easier than making the suckers stack (*caugh*).
Curse of recklessness and siphon life go to the trash bin, one dissapearing alltogether and siphon life being rolled into corruption. The change to siphon life will change how warlock rotations look and should definitely simplify things... that is if 40% of corruption damage is about what siphon life returned in the first place at any rate and our damage doesn't go down the drain over losing siphon life (not likely). Curse of recklessness... well I won't miss it now considering they already removed the ability to control our fear with it.
With the masses of demons in northrend all those lovely changes to enslave demon will undoubtedly pass most warlocks by unnoticed, I'd wager good money that enslaving a demon will never make it past the level of novelty spell in the next 2-600 expansions.
The extra damage for curse of elements is taken out of malediction leaving affliction warlocks not really feeling the difference but now having to decide if malediction is still worth the effort.
Pandemic will make affliction warlocks a bit crit happier and went on a diet now saving us 2 points. Beyond that affliction now seems to benefit shadow more and we will probably see immolate drop out of our rotation due to not getting any benefits from talents anymore.
Demonology also got slimmed down a bit losing demonic empathy and 2 points from mana feed which can be re-invested into a new talent called nemesis reducing cooldowns on some interesting demo talents. Decimation may put soulfire back on the map as useable by reducing it's cast time and removing the reagent cost. Failing that it'll completely invalidate nemesis and soulfire will remain the absolute poorest choice for a warlock to do some damage.
I'll leave destruction to the destruction enthusiasts to comment on but it looks like the tree got tightened a little by bumping bonusses on the less used talents and shaping it to be what I would call a more pvp oriented tree. Lets hope the bump in survivability via molten skin will mean we won't have to scrape our precious warlock off the floor after each arena match... then again he better not use any soul shards anymore or start draining a little soul now and then.
Overall some interesting changes but the cleanup to affliction's rotation will definitely be felt (and if not implemented too poorly) welcomed by what few warlocks haven't switched to dk's yet.
Warlocks
• Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) : Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
• Curse of Recklessness has been removed.
• Curse of Weakness: Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
• Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.
• Enslave Demon: Spell haste penalty reduced by 10%, Melee haste penalty reduced by 10%.
• Warlocks now innately have an increased 10% spell hit chance on the Enslave Demon spell.
• Fire Shield (Imp): You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.
• Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory.
• Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.
• Talents
- Affliction
• Eradication re-designed: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
• Haunt : Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
• Malediction - No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
• Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
• Shadow Embrace: Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
• Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
• Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.
- Demonology
• Demonic Empathy has been removed.
• Demonic Empowerment: This talent spell now has a unique spell effect and sound.
• Demonic Sacrifice: This talent has been removed.
• Fel Synergy has been moved to tier-1. No longer increases Intellect, Stamina and damage of your summoned demon.
• Improved Enslave Demon talent removed.
• Mana Feed: This talent is now a 1-point talent, down from 3-points. Now is the 21-point talent in Demonology. Now grants 100% mana return to your pet, up from 33/66/100%
• Master Conjuror: Increased from 15/30% up to 150/300%.
• New Talent: Decimation: When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, your next Soulfire cast time is reduced by 30/60% and costs no shard. Lasts 10 sec.
• New Talent: Nemesis: Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.
- Destruction
• Aftermath re-designed: Increases the periodic damage done by your Immolate by 3/6%, and your Conflagrate has a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 5 sec.
• Backlash has been moved up to tier-5, up from tier-7. Now requires Intensity (pre-req).
• Cataclysm: Now reduces the mana cost of Destruction spells by 4/7/10%. No longer increases the chance to hit.
• Conflagrate: Spell now works similar to Swiftmend, consuming an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the target and dealing damage based on the strength of that effect. Reduced to a single rank.
• Improved Immolate: Now increases the damage done by your Immolate by 10/20/30%, rather than just the direct damage.
• Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.
• Improved Soul Leech: Now has a 50/100% chance to proc Replenishment.
• Molten Core: This talent has been moved to Demonology (Tier 8).
• New Talent: Molten Skin: Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
• Pyroclasm re-designed: Now increases your Shadow and Fire spell power by 2/4/6% when you critically hit with Searing Pain or Conflagrate. Lasts 10 sec. Also moved down to tier 7, down from tier-5.
Let's dispense with the pleasantries and dive right into the sarcasm (for a full list of changes simply scroll past my endless dribble till you see the word 'warlocks' come by).
Blizzard decided to radically solve out soul shard problem by not allowing us to have more than 32 which is likewise compensated by drain soul now creating shards when fighting non-gray mobs. Considering I reguarly go out to solo instances of the low level variant and I remember burning through shards in pvp like nuts I have a few doubts about this change but this change is undoubtedly easier than making the suckers stack (*caugh*).
Curse of recklessness and siphon life go to the trash bin, one dissapearing alltogether and siphon life being rolled into corruption. The change to siphon life will change how warlock rotations look and should definitely simplify things... that is if 40% of corruption damage is about what siphon life returned in the first place at any rate and our damage doesn't go down the drain over losing siphon life (not likely). Curse of recklessness... well I won't miss it now considering they already removed the ability to control our fear with it.
With the masses of demons in northrend all those lovely changes to enslave demon will undoubtedly pass most warlocks by unnoticed, I'd wager good money that enslaving a demon will never make it past the level of novelty spell in the next 2-600 expansions.
The extra damage for curse of elements is taken out of malediction leaving affliction warlocks not really feeling the difference but now having to decide if malediction is still worth the effort.
Pandemic will make affliction warlocks a bit crit happier and went on a diet now saving us 2 points. Beyond that affliction now seems to benefit shadow more and we will probably see immolate drop out of our rotation due to not getting any benefits from talents anymore.
Demonology also got slimmed down a bit losing demonic empathy and 2 points from mana feed which can be re-invested into a new talent called nemesis reducing cooldowns on some interesting demo talents. Decimation may put soulfire back on the map as useable by reducing it's cast time and removing the reagent cost. Failing that it'll completely invalidate nemesis and soulfire will remain the absolute poorest choice for a warlock to do some damage.
I'll leave destruction to the destruction enthusiasts to comment on but it looks like the tree got tightened a little by bumping bonusses on the less used talents and shaping it to be what I would call a more pvp oriented tree. Lets hope the bump in survivability via molten skin will mean we won't have to scrape our precious warlock off the floor after each arena match... then again he better not use any soul shards anymore or start draining a little soul now and then.
Overall some interesting changes but the cleanup to affliction's rotation will definitely be felt (and if not implemented too poorly) welcomed by what few warlocks haven't switched to dk's yet.
Warlocks
• Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) : Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
• Curse of Recklessness has been removed.
• Curse of Weakness: Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
• Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.
• Enslave Demon: Spell haste penalty reduced by 10%, Melee haste penalty reduced by 10%.
• Warlocks now innately have an increased 10% spell hit chance on the Enslave Demon spell.
• Fire Shield (Imp): You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.
• Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory.
• Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.
• Talents
- Affliction
• Eradication re-designed: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
• Haunt : Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
• Malediction - No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
• Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
• Shadow Embrace: Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
• Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
• Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.
- Demonology
• Demonic Empathy has been removed.
• Demonic Empowerment: This talent spell now has a unique spell effect and sound.
• Demonic Sacrifice: This talent has been removed.
• Fel Synergy has been moved to tier-1. No longer increases Intellect, Stamina and damage of your summoned demon.
• Improved Enslave Demon talent removed.
• Mana Feed: This talent is now a 1-point talent, down from 3-points. Now is the 21-point talent in Demonology. Now grants 100% mana return to your pet, up from 33/66/100%
• Master Conjuror: Increased from 15/30% up to 150/300%.
• New Talent: Decimation: When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, your next Soulfire cast time is reduced by 30/60% and costs no shard. Lasts 10 sec.
• New Talent: Nemesis: Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.
- Destruction
• Aftermath re-designed: Increases the periodic damage done by your Immolate by 3/6%, and your Conflagrate has a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 5 sec.
• Backlash has been moved up to tier-5, up from tier-7. Now requires Intensity (pre-req).
• Cataclysm: Now reduces the mana cost of Destruction spells by 4/7/10%. No longer increases the chance to hit.
• Conflagrate: Spell now works similar to Swiftmend, consuming an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the target and dealing damage based on the strength of that effect. Reduced to a single rank.
• Improved Immolate: Now increases the damage done by your Immolate by 10/20/30%, rather than just the direct damage.
• Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.
• Improved Soul Leech: Now has a 50/100% chance to proc Replenishment.
• Molten Core: This talent has been moved to Demonology (Tier 8).
• New Talent: Molten Skin: Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
• Pyroclasm re-designed: Now increases your Shadow and Fire spell power by 2/4/6% when you critically hit with Searing Pain or Conflagrate. Lasts 10 sec. Also moved down to tier 7, down from tier-5.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
3.1 patch notes part 1
There's been much said about the infamous 3.1 ulduar patch but it seemed to take forever for anything substantial to roll in.
I bided my time a little trying to hold off on saying anything about it without substantial information in hand and outwaited myself a little since there's now more to report than will fit in a single post.
Or at least that's what I decided.
I will get into my typical routine of highlighting the warlock changes in the next post (and there's a lot of them) and maybe grab some other interesting notes as well.
Today however I devote to the curious, the strange and the vaguely documented additions. If you want some more details on the patch you can check out mmo-champion of course or take a look at what wowinsider had to say here
Let's start with a few general ones. A notable entry here is a 'gear manager' addition to the game that will allow you to save and apply armor sets meaning you'll be able to swap out your gear for another set in an instant. Spectacular? By no means, but a hopeful candidate to replace addons like outfitter and the like meaning the end of the update season for yet another addon.
There's also a new set of high-res textures coming in. This really doesn't do much considering we're already playing on an outdated graphics engine but it's nice to have another option to turn on to decrease overall game performance ;) which is nicely coupled with a video mode ultra to show that even wow still has enough oompf in it to bring a decent fx card to it's knees.
Apparantly we're also getting some new quest tracking options. Who knows what that means, but we'll have to remember to turn that one on before we go through our alternative of updating the questhelper addon and see what this shiny new gem will do for us.
The final noteworthy entry from the general section is the fact that you will no longer be dismounted while swimming... I have a feeling it's going to look curious but if the speed increase from mounts persists then most of us will enjoy the change while druids will lament their now profoundly less impressive water form.
The glyph section and profession sections are always interesting but I think I'll check if we can't make some money out of it in a later post, what I do however want to give you is the stats for the elusive titansteel spellblade to be added to the game. Take them with a grain of salt, it didn't make it into any official databases yet it seems:
Titansteel Spellblade [440] MH Dagger, (99-316) 82.9 dps, Speed 2.5, +40 Spirit, +33 Stamina, +408 Spell Power, +37 Critical Strike Rating, +27 Haste Rating, Level 80 (Epic, BoE)(Unique-Equipped)
Materials: 6 Saronite Bars, 6 Titansteel Bars, 2 Frozen Orbs
Last but not least from the noteworthy section is: dual specs
They have been announced, I made my analysis on who would win/lose on that feature a while back and the exact functionality is still a bit sketchy beyond the fact that: you will be able to dual spec at level 80 for a price.
And there we have it, a quick glance at the patch notes from a neutral perspective. There's a lot of class changes in there though so I suggest you put on your QQ resistant outfits and wander over into the patch notes section and see what fresh hell/blessing awaits your class.
I bided my time a little trying to hold off on saying anything about it without substantial information in hand and outwaited myself a little since there's now more to report than will fit in a single post.
Or at least that's what I decided.
I will get into my typical routine of highlighting the warlock changes in the next post (and there's a lot of them) and maybe grab some other interesting notes as well.
Today however I devote to the curious, the strange and the vaguely documented additions. If you want some more details on the patch you can check out mmo-champion of course or take a look at what wowinsider had to say here
Let's start with a few general ones. A notable entry here is a 'gear manager' addition to the game that will allow you to save and apply armor sets meaning you'll be able to swap out your gear for another set in an instant. Spectacular? By no means, but a hopeful candidate to replace addons like outfitter and the like meaning the end of the update season for yet another addon.
There's also a new set of high-res textures coming in. This really doesn't do much considering we're already playing on an outdated graphics engine but it's nice to have another option to turn on to decrease overall game performance ;) which is nicely coupled with a video mode ultra to show that even wow still has enough oompf in it to bring a decent fx card to it's knees.
Apparantly we're also getting some new quest tracking options. Who knows what that means, but we'll have to remember to turn that one on before we go through our alternative of updating the questhelper addon and see what this shiny new gem will do for us.
The final noteworthy entry from the general section is the fact that you will no longer be dismounted while swimming... I have a feeling it's going to look curious but if the speed increase from mounts persists then most of us will enjoy the change while druids will lament their now profoundly less impressive water form.
The glyph section and profession sections are always interesting but I think I'll check if we can't make some money out of it in a later post, what I do however want to give you is the stats for the elusive titansteel spellblade to be added to the game. Take them with a grain of salt, it didn't make it into any official databases yet it seems:
Titansteel Spellblade [440] MH Dagger, (99-316) 82.9 dps, Speed 2.5, +40 Spirit, +33 Stamina, +408 Spell Power, +37 Critical Strike Rating, +27 Haste Rating, Level 80 (Epic, BoE)(Unique-Equipped)
Materials: 6 Saronite Bars, 6 Titansteel Bars, 2 Frozen Orbs
Last but not least from the noteworthy section is: dual specs
They have been announced, I made my analysis on who would win/lose on that feature a while back and the exact functionality is still a bit sketchy beyond the fact that: you will be able to dual spec at level 80 for a price.
And there we have it, a quick glance at the patch notes from a neutral perspective. There's a lot of class changes in there though so I suggest you put on your QQ resistant outfits and wander over into the patch notes section and see what fresh hell/blessing awaits your class.
Friday, December 12, 2008
patch 3.0.8 goodness
Don't ask what happened to numbers 3.0.4 to 3.0.7... they were eaten by the blizzard monster. Either way 3.0.8 is on the PTR and I decided to take a quick look at the patch notes and there's a few interesting things in there.
I won't bore you with going through the entire list of class changes and similar but there's a few gems in there that you will likely miss if you just skim across right to the changes specific to your class.
I'll go into the 'massive' amount of warlock changes too since after all... I am a warlock.
Generall stuff
* Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You’re not seeing things.
Complete freedom in riding whichever mount you want should calm down some that always wanted to ride something weird but will probably cause a minor ripple with those that appreciated the racial mounts.
Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.
Warlocks rejoice, no longer will you have to open with seering pain or wand to tap your kills... now even we can participate in the age old sport of kill stealing.
We have added over 60 new graveyards to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
This one is pretty weird, I know azeroth is dead but come on, don't lay it on too thick. I suppose it'll help once I pick up my lowbies again
The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at 75% speed.
Definitely a change for the better. Corpse runs always take way too much time. Carebears rejoice.
Very interesting changes and from what I can see all for the better.
Now on to some warlocky goodness and honestly I scrolled by the changes quite a few time before finally deciding to search for 'warlock' in the patch notes.
Here's what it came up with:
Warlocks
Drain Mana: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
Emberstorm: Now works with Conflagrate.
Ritual of Summoning: Will now create a summoning portal object which can be re-used for multiple summons for 5 minutes.
That's it... 3 changes... only the rogues have less this time around. No increase in pvp viability, no fixes for the glaringly obvious impossible affliction spell rotation. No clean up to make demo a more viable spec beyond levelling... nothing... warlocks are fine and I need to learn to play or wait a few patches more.
Well it doesn't say that... but it's in stark contrast with what ghostcrawler has been putting on the forums which is somewhere along the lines of this:
Make sure locks do rogue / hunter / mage level dps at 80.
Make sure locks have enough survivability in PvP (since we nerfed a lot of it).
Fix some of those deep Demo talents that really aren't worth the investment.
Make shards more interesting and less of a hassle.
Get the Voidwalker (and possibly Succubus?) back out.
Look at the dps spells that cost shards.
Try and make more of the dots a consistent length, so that Affliction's rotation doesn't require such a big brain.
Get dots to either scale with crit or just crit.
Which would actually help, yes, yes it would. Either way I am dreading the PVP season. I want some pvp gear because if it still works as it did the time investment is minimal for some decent gear... but I am no fan of being first target and burnt down in the first 15 seconds of a match... or in the time of a stun in case of rogue presence.
Interesting changes overall... euh... the general ones I mean. And if you're still bored you can always read the other post I put up today... it has a similarly incoherent structure.
I won't bore you with going through the entire list of class changes and similar but there's a few gems in there that you will likely miss if you just skim across right to the changes specific to your class.
I'll go into the 'massive' amount of warlock changes too since after all... I am a warlock.
Generall stuff
* Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You’re not seeing things.
Complete freedom in riding whichever mount you want should calm down some that always wanted to ride something weird but will probably cause a minor ripple with those that appreciated the racial mounts.
Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.
Warlocks rejoice, no longer will you have to open with seering pain or wand to tap your kills... now even we can participate in the age old sport of kill stealing.
We have added over 60 new graveyards to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
This one is pretty weird, I know azeroth is dead but come on, don't lay it on too thick. I suppose it'll help once I pick up my lowbies again
The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at 75% speed.
Definitely a change for the better. Corpse runs always take way too much time. Carebears rejoice.
Very interesting changes and from what I can see all for the better.
Now on to some warlocky goodness and honestly I scrolled by the changes quite a few time before finally deciding to search for 'warlock' in the patch notes.
Here's what it came up with:
Warlocks
Drain Mana: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
Emberstorm: Now works with Conflagrate.
Ritual of Summoning: Will now create a summoning portal object which can be re-used for multiple summons for 5 minutes.
That's it... 3 changes... only the rogues have less this time around. No increase in pvp viability, no fixes for the glaringly obvious impossible affliction spell rotation. No clean up to make demo a more viable spec beyond levelling... nothing... warlocks are fine and I need to learn to play or wait a few patches more.
Well it doesn't say that... but it's in stark contrast with what ghostcrawler has been putting on the forums which is somewhere along the lines of this:
Make sure locks do rogue / hunter / mage level dps at 80.
Make sure locks have enough survivability in PvP (since we nerfed a lot of it).
Fix some of those deep Demo talents that really aren't worth the investment.
Make shards more interesting and less of a hassle.
Get the Voidwalker (and possibly Succubus?) back out.
Look at the dps spells that cost shards.
Try and make more of the dots a consistent length, so that Affliction's rotation doesn't require such a big brain.
Get dots to either scale with crit or just crit.
Which would actually help, yes, yes it would. Either way I am dreading the PVP season. I want some pvp gear because if it still works as it did the time investment is minimal for some decent gear... but I am no fan of being first target and burnt down in the first 15 seconds of a match... or in the time of a stun in case of rogue presence.
Interesting changes overall... euh... the general ones I mean. And if you're still bored you can always read the other post I put up today... it has a similarly incoherent structure.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
2.4.3 patch notes
I wouldn't be a good blogger if I didn't regurgitate everything everyone else has already said so...
Behold the patch notes for 2.4.3 with some very very interesting changes.
I'd repeat them all here but instead I refer you to mmo-champion for a pre-formatted list:
Patch Notes 2.4.3
I'll let you draw your own conclusions from the patch notes as usual. If you're not in the habit of reading patch notes then take from me the knowledge that your standard mount will be available at level 30 when the patch goes live.
An interesting read I'd say.
Behold the patch notes for 2.4.3 with some very very interesting changes.
I'd repeat them all here but instead I refer you to mmo-champion for a pre-formatted list:
Patch Notes 2.4.3
I'll let you draw your own conclusions from the patch notes as usual. If you're not in the habit of reading patch notes then take from me the knowledge that your standard mount will be available at level 30 when the patch goes live.
An interesting read I'd say.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)