A Whole Lot of Nothing
9:37 AM
Posted by Reygahnci on Monday, August 25, 2008
That's what's been going on in the WoW world. Actually, that's not entirely true. Technically, what's been going on in the live WoW world is nothing, but on the beta servers, amazing buffs have befallen the warrior class. The arms tree got quite a bit of love, and they will definitely be a force to be reckoned with if you are a melee with high dodge (ferals or rogues) because of overpower having a 1 second cooldown fully talented now (yes... this is ridiculous and true). Although, I will admit that mace spec is probably going to have gone the way of the dodo by WotLK because the stun portion was removed from both the warrior and rogue versions of the talent. In my opinion, this is a good thing; arena matches were simply taking too long because of the requirement to stun an opponent at amazingly lucky times (yes, I am a hypocrit, my warrior has a s3 mace and we need that to stun the opposing druid at 50% in caster form so we can ms-execute ftw... but only because our opposition also needs that to win... it's difficult really). However, in addition to the arms love, the fury tree has gotten some amazing buffs in the last push.
Titan's Grip has been moved to the 51 tier, and it no longer has the swing speed reduction. That's right... you will essentially have a warrior and his less-geared-warrior-friend beating on you if your opponent is a fury warrior. Also, they moved down Heroic Leap to a lower tier, but it is still on a long cooldown. Additionally, there is now a two point talent deep in fury that causes your white swings to apply a 25% healing debuff to your target, stacking twice, 100% of the time. Holy moly, insane damage, good mobility (as I hear that heroic leap can do the Shadow Step bridge fake-out in Blade's Edge arena), and a healing debuff that doesn't cost rage?! Has Kalgan gained 100% control on the class developers and just buffed his class out to ridiculous levels?
/magic8
*All signs point to 'yes'*
I'm still shuddering at the thought of getting hit with whirlwind by a fury warrior... it'll be like having 2 mutilate rogues on you...
Developers said they were going to continue looking into Shadow Priest's damage output (hopefully in a PvP setting), and ferals are "far from done." Only time will tell if that's true, but here's hoping. Also, no one has quite caught up with the notion that 1) resto druids will be stacking spirit on PvP gear, 2) resto druids will be on par with shamangs for armor, 3) resto druids will still be the most mobile healer, 4) resto druids are getting the best single-target heal in the game, and 5) coupled with all the spirit on gear, ToL is getting buffed ridiculous, and the spec that I mentioned a while back (The ONE Spec) is still looking like it might fly under the radar collecting all those facts into one awesome spec. Dreamstate+swiftmend+ToL+2/3ImpToL. Essentially, making the resto druid who specs that nigh-impossible for melee to take down, and giving the druid nigh-infinite mana with good burst heals and good heals over time.
I still like the destruction build, as long as Chaos Bolt is the final 51-point talent. Also, backdraft (each casting of conflag makes your next three spells cast 30% faster) is still up in its current form... the OP form, and Shadowfury has been buffed to be a singularly reliant spell now, as it can be cast on the run and stuns for 3 seconds instead of 2 now. It is still unclear as to whether Pyroclasm and Shadowfury share diminishing returns, but if they do not, then destruction will be quite the formidable spec indeed. Also, thankfully the sl/sl builds are getting nerfed in terms of damage absorption, but buffed in terms of damage output, so it seems like it will be less of a mana-drain theme and more of an outlast/outdps theme, which is fine with me because it means that we'll be able to kill them that much easier. The other thing is that the sl/sl build looks like it will be turning into an SM/FS build (shadow mastery, fel synergy). However, with the added damage, it seems they they will definitely be taking a hit on survivability (15% damage reduction from soul link instead of 20% and no more +5% damage done by you and your pet, but shadow mastery instead, so it's a slight increase to dps). The one thing that is going to be true is that druid+warlock mirror matches are going to be terrible, because the felhunters will 1) never die and 2) never oom... and neither will the druids if they use my ONE spec.
Also, I see dagger rogues coming back into the fray, but I think they will be a lot squishier (as they should be) in this expansion. The term "glass cannon" comes to mind, but right now they are merely "cannons" at worst, and "cannons made of IMPENETRABLE TITANIUM" at best (okay, maybe that was prior to the Cheat Death nerf, but they still survive a little bit better than they should with that talent... or maybe their damage just isn't proportionate to their survivability... I don't know).
So we played a few 5s matches over the weekend, and we also did some 3s (which started very poorly as hunter+warrior+druid and ended rather well as mutilate+warrior+druid). I doubt that our other 3s team will ever get above 1700, but if we ever get a string of warrior+healer+anything, then who knows. We fought a couple and just mopped the floor with them, which seems like it is working as intended, right? Warriors are supposed to be susceptible to magical attacks, but resilient against other melee. It seems like that should be the case, but sometimes warriors just eat up casters because they cannot get a cast off with the overwhelming melee up in their grills. Oh, I have been recording those matches to include the wins in the destro video... there are some funny ones where we time everything just right: warrior charges guntir, warrior dies. Okay, so there was a shadowbolt+shadowfury and a starfire+moonfire crit in there, and MAYBE guntir used sw:d at the same time... it's really hard to tell from my perspective as they just hit the warrior, numbers appear, and he dies. Admittedly, the opposition usually looks just as confused as we do.
The number one thing about making a video is the music. You need NEED NEED to have good music, or your video is a failure. The next thing that is needed is the editing. If you don't have smooth transitions, effects that compliment without detracting from the action, and fun effects as well, then no one will enjoy your video. So, I'm looking at a lot of videos as reference right now. Menismyforte is a shadow priest whose video is a lot of fun to watch, and he has this one 3s match segment in which he gets chain-feared while his resto shamang and warlock take down a druid on their own. He put in some text on the screen that says something like "I'm being helpful -_-" which I thought was a funny touch. So, we had a match where it came down to all of us versus a shamang (or druid... or something fast) who couldn't believe he was going to lose to a triple dps team of moonkin+shadow+destro, so he refused to give in at the end.
Oh man... good thing that blogs don't reflect time, this is has been unended for a good 5 hours. Anyway, I was just looking at the boomkin talents, and our 3s team is going to be hilarious (if not good). Improved Moonkin Aura will give 20% spell haste when I critically hit with a spell for 8 seconds. Essentially, if I crit with conflag as a destro lock within the moonkin aura, I will have 56% faster spells, which means that I can get out shadow bolts in 1.4 seconds... jebus.