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5.0.4 Shaman/Druid/PaladinFollow

#1 Aug 29 2012 at 6:21 PM Rating: Excellent
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I've played my Shaman, Druid and Paladin so far and I'm liking the changes.

My Ret Paladin?

I'm missing Holy Wrath and the old Divine Storm. Yes, yes, we still have Divine Storm, but it requires 3 Holy Power. We have Hammer of the Righteous, but that requires a target -- I enjoyed being able to walk up to a group of mobs, press a button and everything near me dies. Now, I have to target something, make sure it is in front of me, and then hit Hammer of the Righteous.

However....

I _love_ instant-cast Exorcism. Every now and then I'd bump the Exorcism key and I'd have to move to stop the casting (which screwed with swing timers), or I'd hit the key just as Art of War wore off. Now, I don't have to worry about it, AND, I have a good opener (it hurts, and hurts bad now. lol.)

I love the new swing animation they gave Templar's Verdict. Finally, my human female has a badass-looking swing, though it seems all races have a similar swing animation now. Still, though, awesome new animation.

Sacred Shield is an awesome little toy, 1k damage absorb per second (well, 5k every 5 seconds, you get the picture)? I'll take it. I'm not greedy.

Healing Light replacing Flash of Light, which is guaranteed Crit after killing blows? I'm healing myself for 45-48k after every KB. This makes solo MUCH easier. Also, it seems Word of Glory heals more too. I'm loving this part, I'm more survivable now. The class doesn't feel anywhere near as clunky or RNG-based now.

Then, I tested my Enhance Shaman...

Not too much to say here; my heal does a lot more and sometimes my spells cast twice (I healed myself for 75k with a crit+double proc once! that was hilarious), and she seems to be killing things a lot quicker (I pasted some hapless mob for a good 40k with a Stormstrike crit, and I'm wearing 377 crafted junk and using the brewfest tankards!).

I easily took out an elite mob who had 250k health like he was nothing (I easily healed through the damage with maelstrom-buffed heals). So, yay for enhance shamans being fun again, though I did notice there appear to be cooldown gaps where there's nothing to press for 1-2 seconds at a time, but meh. I can put up with that, no problem. I'm probably missing something.

Then, this morning, I tested out mom's lowbie druid, Lv70-74.

O-M-G, what did they do to Feral Druids!?

She was doing fairly well as it was, then this morning I took her out and leveled her and the first few fights I was like "holy sh.....".

Good thing she wasn't in the room with me, lol.

Let's see.... Predatory Swiftness now allows you to cast Healing Touch (which heals for more than my total health!!) without leaving cat form. I have Typhoon now, which I can cast while in cat form, and my cat form runs at 144% (that's almost as fast as a level 20 ground mount!) with the Feline Swiftness talent.

But the healing... omg the healing... at Level 70s, my Healing Touch heals for 12k... I only had 11,800 at the time. Now, at 74, I have 12,500 and it is healing for 12,800 or so. I chose the Renewal talent, but I think I'm going to get rid of it and get that Sacred Shield-like Talent instead (Cenarion's something rather); I don't need a 2min (I think?) 30% heal with that crap. I know Healing Touch will lose a lot of power, but even if it still heals at least 20k, that will still be quite nice.

Oh, and they seemed to have *seriously* buffed that HoT spell you first get too... it was healing me for 2-3k a tick at Level 70.

Can't wait to try my other classes!
#2 Aug 29 2012 at 9:50 PM Rating: Excellent
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Glad somebody's talking about this stuff, I came on expecting a flood of threads.

Oh, and as a disclaimer, something's funky on my game and I can't put glyphs in so none of my toons have glyphs now and I have no idea how that affects my opinions.

I have been on most of mine so far I think, although not really run anything with most yet.

Shammy - don't really like. This is my main, Ele/Resto. From what I can tell so far these specs didn't change much at all. Water shield doesn't appear to have or lose charges now which, I guess is nice. I don't get the "normalized mana" thing at all as from what I can tell my gear is completely pointless now. Healed a HoT and yawned my way through - mana bar barely moved, same heals as before really. Hate the new totem system - it's fine that they built buffs into passives I guess but the short duration, single-plop totems are obnoxious.

Warlock
- This is the one I had been waiting to see about since I shelved my previous-main during most of cata as I just didn't like they way they played. I tried Demo first as that's what I happened to be in. Took me a bit to figure out the admittedly interesting mechanic of swapping in and out of Meta whereby it changes Corruption & shadowbolt into Doom and . .whatever that other thing's called. So instead of Meta being a CD sort of thing, it's now more a temporary buff/alteration that you switch in and out of regularly to bounce between the 2 sets of spells and keep things rolling. I find it very weird that Demo now has Shadowbolt & Soul Fire while the other specs do not. I think I'll like this ok once I get it figured out.
- Affliction I toyed around with for a bit and do not like at all so far. Affliction with no shadowbolt just seems weird and I couldn't seem to find a filler spell at all really. To me, it seems kind of clunky but I'll admit I didn't put a ton of time into it.
- Destruction, I loved in Wrath but found utterly worthless in Cata. I really like it here so far. Didn't get an actual run in with it yet but just plinking at dummies I like the way it flowed and plan on trying it out further.

One thing I can say I'm somewhat happy to see for Warlocks in particular, but everything overall, is that it has been made very clear what spells go with what specs. Part of what put me off them in Cata was that generally the same pack of spells (plus a few) were "best" for each spec's rotation. Now, a Destrolock doesn't need to worry whether this week corruption/agony were in the rotation . . .they ain't there, don't exist, can't even cast them. (Although for soloing/farming purposes the insta-DoTs were always nice to have.)

-Rogue: seemed pretty much the same for Mut/Combat from my quick testing seem pretty similar to what they were before. Don't quite get the new poison thing but didn't really look into it much. Some of the new/reworked talents/abilities look pretty cool.

-Mage was interesting for me as this is one of my more recent 85's and the one I have probably spent the least amount of time on. Mostly out of boredom rather than not liking it, but still. I tried Fire out because that's the spec I always wanted to play but it never seemed "viable." Wow. I was really digging the way it played, felt fluid and fun, and if my addons are to be believed was doing more dummy damage than any of my other far-more-geared toons. Didn't get around to trying other specs but I may be mage-ing a lot more.

-Pally, holy seemed pretty similar but without actually running stuff it's hard to tell. I have a ret spec on mine; I think i've used it maybe twice ever and loathed it. I popped into it real quick to see what was up and it actually felt pretty good (just dummies of course.) Most of her ret gear is like quested green 31x/333 blues and I have little clue what I'm doing in ret, but the damage seemed ok, to the point I thought "hey I may actually use this spec."

-Hunter is BM/Surv and both specs look pretty much the same as they were before rotation-wise near as I can tell. I LOVE the option of being able to grab a CC or an interrupt as I can't count the number of times I wished I had interrupt capacity in HoTs. Haven't actually run him yet but he's one of my favorites so I likely will. I don't get the pet . . talent/wtf-ever thing that is so I'll be looking that up now as I had no idea what to do with my pets.

I think I popped on a couple others but not much to say. Hated my warrior before; seems pretty similar; still don't like him. My druid, aside from the feral spec separation and loss of pulverize seem fairly similar so far and he's one I was thinking about giving more playtime to so that seems ok.

For overall stuff, I think I like the "You Won [x] item" on the gear rolls as I rarely pay attention otherwise, though I find the new graphics for the rolls/win a bit jarring. I don't like that I can't have NC pets out anymore as that was kind of the point of my collecting 150+ of the things but maybe I'm missing something or it will change when the battle system goes live. One thing I absolutely LOVE that I never heard about was the separate Party/Dungeon Party thing - that. Is. Awesome. My wife and I can run run around questing or whatever, do a run, and still be in party together after it's done. This is great for guildies too who have 2-3 people spamming runs so they don't have to regroup after every queue. One of those minor conveniences that I think will be really handy.

I know there was a lot of complaining about the talent trees basically going away and being replaced by basically a little grid, but honestly anybody who bothered looking up anything about their class or spec was going to end up with what you are simply granted automatically now anyway. And you can only really use what is available to your spec. From what I've seen of the new talent grids, I like most of it so far. There are a few here and there that are "meh" but for the most part, I think it finally brings that touch of personal choice and playstyle around. Granted, a majority of them are more Quality of Life type decisions rather than out-and-out "you will suck if you do/don't pick this."

I like 5.0 for the most part, will be glad when addon authors get caught up, and can only hope content holds up.
#3 Aug 29 2012 at 10:07 PM Rating: Good
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Pantherfern wrote:
Glad somebody's talking about this stuff, I came on expecting a flood of threads.

Oh, and as a disclaimer, something's funky on my game and I can't put glyphs in so none of my toons have glyphs now and I have no idea how that affects my opinions.


I had the same issue myself. I eventually had to disable every single addon that I run in order to glyph, and still need to in order to unlearn a talent for some reason. Give it a try, hope it works for you.

So far I've only really tried out my Resto Shaman in a normal DS10. I have roughly the same output as before with higher burst, but I have to manage mana more carefully. I don't love the new totem system, but using an addon called Flototem plus the minor glyph for inactive totems makes it feel more like pre-patch.

My biggest complaint is the 8 second cleanse cooldown. The other healer(s) in my raid are terrible, terrible dispellers...but it didn't matter before, because I'm really fast. Now I'm pulling my hair out, begging them to at least dispel themselves for the luvva god. (My pally died to the Zon'ozz debuff last night, on normal mode, for example.)

Edited, Aug 30th 2012 12:21am by Vladrael
#4 Aug 30 2012 at 6:28 AM Rating: Good
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Not sure how I feel about the new character creation. Seems like my Night Elf only has ten different shades of pinkish gray to choose from. What happened to the iconic purple color? Other than that, it's pretty nifty, I guess.

Also, having been away from the game for over six months... wow. This game looks so old. Even on Ultra settings, edges are jagged and everything is way too Creon. Speaking of graphics, something that left me baffled was that my GFX card runs up to 80ºC on Ultra settings in Northshire. How the hell is that even possible? I don't even get that high temperatures when I play Crysis or any of the other MMOs out there. They need to update the engine one of these days. Brings back memories of when I disabled v-sync and reached 90ºC on the login screen.

Loading up the trial version now. Time to see what they did to the Druid class before I reactive my subscription.
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#5 Aug 30 2012 at 11:50 AM Rating: Good
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Yeah I kind of figured out the addon issue I think, if accidentally. I had disabled GupPet because it kept throwing error messages and managed to glyph a couple toons, but re-enabled it because . .I can't figure out how to use a mount without finding and browsing through menus. I have had my "auto-random mount" bound to my tilde key pretty much since I started playing. One of those simple things that I feel lost without, so as an aside, does anybody know of an addon that will do this that actually works now?

As for the game looking old . .I can't really say I guess as I don't play any other MMOs but ya, flying through the weird, flat "trees" doing archaeology or farming stuff always makes me go "gyuh . .wth?" Character models and hair and such, as well as gear could all use some love too for sure. Even just retextures would be nice at this point and add no extra (or even lower) system requirements. I know from doing and looking into texturing from Elder Scrolls and Sims stuff that a lot can be done efficiently to make things look better - if hundreds or thousands of amateurs on community boards can do this stuff I don't see why Blizz hasn't bothered with something relatively simple like this. Even if it's a call out to donated work from players, I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to submit gear/body textures to be included in game.

On another note, I ran my lock in Destruction a bit last night. No lifetap! so weird but with the mana-return mechanic you don't really miss it (though my reflexes do.) I will say so far that I like the Ember gain/expenditure idea but I think they need to adjust the rate at which you gain them. I found myself doing a lot of Immolate > Incin >Incin >Incin . . .pack dead . . .Immolate > Incin > Incin >Oooo a Chaos bolt. Could be just me doing something horribly wrong (don't doubt this for a minute) but Destro basically now has Immolate, Incinerate, Conflagrate, and Chaos Bolt. Conflag seems to have 2 charges that get refilled . . .somehow, haven't exactly figured that out yet, and Chaos Bolt needs a full Ember to use. That Ember seems to take a long damn time to fill up though. There are a bunch of really neat looking abilities that come with the spec too (a 30% heal, tri-casting next spell, insta-rezzing your demon, etc) but they all cost an Ember too. I'll play with it some more, I'm probably missing something important here. Oh, and Rain of Fire is really weird now - either that or it's an addon thing but it doesn't show as being channeled while being channeled so I'm finding it really hard to gauge when to re-cast or start single-targeting.
#6 Aug 30 2012 at 12:04 PM Rating: Excellent
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Only played my feral for one trip through Molten Front but I'm liking the changes too. Combat feels pretty much the same - and the new launcher doesn't break my Logitech mouse's scroll-wheel-right and scroll-wheel-left key mappings, so I don't have to click Tiger's Fury anymore, which makes things a lot smoother. However, that means I can't compare damage numbers straight up against what I had been doing, but it seems a bit higher, if anything. Have to find ways to integrate the new cooldowns into my keybindings - which from what I hear will be even worse for my SV hunter.

A couple of things I noticed:
- Wild Charge in caster form (if you take it instead of Feral Swiftness) works on friendly NPCs, such as auctioneers and guards, which makes getting around SW more fun
- Questgivers with multiple/followon quests don't break off the conversation every time you accept/turn in one!
#7 Aug 30 2012 at 12:37 PM Rating: Excellent
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I've only played my Ret Paladin so far, but I have no complaints (well one...I miss Holy Wrath too). It is a little more awkward to aoe now, but once I get used to it I think it will be fine. I haven't done any current content since Tuesday because most of my guild is still on hiatus. We have a tentative DS10 scheduled for tonight and while I'd like to see how my numbers have changed (if they have), I'm not sure I feel like running Dragon Soul for the umpteenth time.

Instant cast Exorcism is pretty neat and I can't wait to get the Mass Exorcism glyph for aoeing. I'm using the Glyph of Harsh Words right now but really only use it for a ranged pull if I have 3 holy power and Exorcism is on cooldown. Not sure if that will end up being a part of the rotation or not, but it's fun to play around with right now. I prefer Selfless Healer over Sacred Shield right now while I'm playing solo. I've always used Word of Glory to top up my health, now I can use Flash of Light and use Word of Glory on mobs. I can definitely see Sacred Shield being worth it in certain situations though. And does it scale with spell power or something? Mine's reading 8374 damage absorbed every 5.8 seconds.

I had a tough time choosing between Long Arm of the Law and Pursuit of Justice. I ended up going with Long Arm for soloing, but will probably switch to PoJ when I begin raiding again. I just like being able to judge a far away mob and sprint towards it.
#8 Aug 30 2012 at 1:06 PM Rating: Excellent
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I went PoJ all the way; all of those long walks through caves and indoor areas, that extra speed is nice, especially when in solo combat, you routinely finish combat with some Holy Power left over anyways.

And I love holy power generation now too... I took Divine Purpose and I love running up to a mob, throwing Exo and Judgment, use Crusader, use Templar's... sometimes DP procs and I use another Templar's... every now and then I'll get _another_ proc, that means Another Templar's... then Exo+Judgment+Crusader's again that means Another Templar's... lol.

I'll eventually get used to the clunky AoE, here's hoping that they change Hammer of the Righteous to not require a target... why not "Slams your hammer into the ground to release a shockwave"? That would work much better IMO.
#9 Aug 30 2012 at 2:04 PM Rating: Excellent
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At the moment I'm just working on Argent Tournament stuff (got sick of it before and never got all the mounts or the pony bridle) and farming old raids once a week (Kara for the mount, MC for the right binding and the rest of my Lawbringer set) so I'm not doing a lot of walking. But now that you mentioned caves and stuff, it's reminded me that switching to PoJ to do my Molten Core run would be a very good idea. I took Divine Purpose too and love it. I don't think it's any different than it was before, but it does seem to proc a lot. I always target a mob out of habit anyway, so HotR requiring a target isn't a huge issue, but needing to face the target? That's where I fail. I would always use Holy Wrath while running into a group, and now I need to make sure I'm facing what I'm targetting (or target something in front of me). I think Mass Exorcism will help with the clunkiness of aoe too. It has a cooldown, but generates holy power so at least it helps Divine Storm become usable sooner.

And Pantherfern, I'm not sure what you meant by not being able to have non-combat pets out anymore? I have my Fox Kit out right now in game. Are you using an addon to manage your pets? It might need to be updated. Livestock worked for me, and so did going into the pet journal (shift-p) and clicking "summon".
#10 Aug 30 2012 at 3:35 PM Rating: Good
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Caved and bought 60 days for my account.

Was unsurprisingly underwhelmed by the Druid changes. I don't feel that they've added anything to the class in this expansion, but rather chopped one of the specs in half and made some lame changes that didn't really do anything. Guardians still has sh*tty utility compared to Warriors and Paladins. Ferals still have sh*tty positional requirements for their main attack and rely entirely too much on applying a million debuffs before being able to churn out damage.

Feral/Guardian literally feels like they ripped it right out of the old Feral tree and made a new build out of it. Not a fan of that. I have 23k armor rating in Bear Form in my Feral spec. I have 60k armor rating in my Bear Form in my Guardian spec. Yeah, it was fun being a hybrid while it lasted (you know, the last six years). Now I'm one spec split in half.

And the talents are, for the most part, stupid. Thank you for letting me spend a talent point on a this. It enhances the gameplay so much that my Mangle now gives me an extra 2 rage. The rest are just bland as hell. Choose a stun here, a charge there, some other ability you used to have way over there. Ooh, an AOE snare, root or knockback. How exciting.

Meanwhile, in the Warlock camp... MOTHER@#%^ING GRIMOIRE OF SUPREMACY, BABY! You've got a Felguard? Well, I've got a Wraithguard dual-wielding giant axes from my backpack! Also... DEMON FORM with Demon Hunting glyph, allowing me to tank sh*t. @#%^ yeah!

I'm just not seeing how any Feral Druid could enjoy the new changes. I mean, sure, Swiftmend is pretty neat, but come on... we lost one half of a talent tree and they STILL decided to limit core abilities (like Thrash and Rip) to a specific spec. I'm sitting here, looking at my Feral Druid, thinking about the giant flaming Abyssal my Warlock could conjure... and I'm just not feeling it.

Also, it's going to annoy me to no end that I now have to refer to Ferals as Ferals and Guardians. @#%^in' hell, man. Why? WHY?!

Edited, Aug 30th 2012 11:46pm by Mazra
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#11 Aug 30 2012 at 7:01 PM Rating: Excellent
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Quote:
I'm just not seeing how any Feral Druid could enjoy the new changes. I mean, sure, Swiftmend is pretty neat, but come on... we lost one half of a talent tree and they STILL decided to limit core abilities (like Thrash and Rip) to a specific spec. I'm sitting here, looking at my Feral Druid, thinking about the giant flaming Abyssal my Warlock could conjure... and I'm just not feeling it.


Being able to take on elites and multiple mobs (I'm talking 5+ at a time) while in cat form (something I could never do before very well) is farking awesome.

Oh, that druid of mom's is now 78 and she's still healing more than her maximum health with Healing Touch.

Instant-Cast Typhoon in Cat Form? lololol. Nice. If I am losing health too quickly to get Pred. Swiftness up, I can Typhoon something and immediately start casting healing touch and be back in cat form before the thing can melee me again, so it is an extra heal. Typhoon also interrupts un-interruptable spells, as long as the mob isn't immune to knockback, too! And then, in PvP... knocking players off the edge of a cliff while in cat form (you can STEALTH, sneak up on some unsuspecting player and.... WHOOOSH, he goes flying off the cliff) sounds like pure fun too.

Edited, Aug 30th 2012 9:08pm by Lyrailis
#12 Aug 31 2012 at 5:33 AM Rating: Good
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I had no trouble taking on 5+ mobs at a time before the patch. The key was to use your shapeshifting, not just try to tank five mobs in Cat Form. Now we rely almost entirely on using our heals whenever possible instead of our versatility. I feel like a Retribution Paladin.

As for healing more than your total health, that changes once you hit level cap. I'm at 85 wearing ilvl 380ish gear and my Healing Touch heals for 45k with Swiftmend. Without the Cat Form glyph, mind you (which is, what, 20% extra?). I have 135k health. Sure, 45k every minute is nice, but not really needed for anything except PvP and leveling.

Basically, they sacrificed our versatility for better healing. I'm not fond of that. I'm not going to save our PUG from a wipe because I can toss a 45k heal every minute. I used to save wipes by being able to switch to Bear Form, pop cooldowns and tank the boss while the main tank was down. All I can do now is switch to Bear Form, pop cooldowns and pray the boss doesn't get in a critical hit, because then I'm dead.

Meh.

I'd trade every gimmicky ability they gave us, plus our new and improved healing, for the old two-in-one Feral spec. Tanking heroics is going to be so ******* boring now that you can't go Cat Form. I mean, you can still switch to Cat Form, but you'll be missing so many abilities that it's not really worth it.
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#13 Aug 31 2012 at 6:10 AM Rating: Excellent
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The problem I saw was that the min/max crowd insisted that you have your talents divided just as the current (sigh, current for you) set up is. You *would* be whatever various sources said was the perfect cat or bear. Blizz had to change things this way or evolution (or the action of a just deity/pantheon) would have eventually given us the ability to reach through the Internet and smack the fewmets out of people. I just went through this on my druid -- the new raid leader read that Kitty would be more DPS than Boomkin (the old guild wanted ranged for DS) and asked me to spec/gem/enchant according to that set of min/maxing. Never mind that meant I'd eat about a 20 point loss in iLevel and become melee DPS. Smiley: disappointed

You're probably right Maz, for those who were able to do it the old hybrid play style had its attractions. Unfortunately, part of the whole cookie cutter schtick was that it had gotten hard to do it as anything but a solo player. Many of the changes, to Druid and otherwise, seem to be directed to downplaying the effectiveness of doing a copy pasta of whatever EJ has anointed. [Not a swipe at EJ or those who want to min/max -- the desire exists and was met -- but now the devs are making their attempt at a riposte.]

Sadly, I suspect that what is initially intended a flexibility will give us a whole bunch of on the fly micromanaging and the struggle will continue.
#14 Aug 31 2012 at 11:37 AM Rating: Excellent
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I think that it's more that Blizzard has changed their conception of hybrids from "someone who can take on another role mid-fight" to "someone who has aspects of another role and can use them at any time". So instead of switching from being a 100% cat to an 80% bear, we're now cats that can do a few bear things at 30% without switching, or switch to being a 50% bear.

I understand that it's difficult to balance around two or three classes that don't just have different toolsets but a different guiding philosophy. And that if that balance turns out to be to tune kitties and retadins to have less peak DPS in exchange for utility - the 1000 or so guilds that are seriously pushing the envelope and the 10000 behind them that act as if they are will sacrifice hybrids at the altar of theorycraft, causing the players to be frozen out. And also that it's even tougher to balance PvP if you allow for a true catbear spec, or the OP self-healing ret spec that was around for a (little) while, or a shockadin/discipline spec that has actual teeth when doing dps.

What I wish they'd done - and maybe it wasn't technically possible, but the current druid class suggests it was - is balance it out by giving /every/ class a utility/PvP spec, using the "fourth" spec slot that guardians use as of now. Rogues could have an evasion tank slot. Paladins could shield via damage like discipline priests with spirit shell shield via healing. Something like that - those particular ideas may be lousy, but Blizzard is supposed to have some pretty bright guys/gals. It would be OK to have the utility specs below the worst "pure" dps (it's only a 5% range these days), so encounter designers wouldn't have to worry about them being OP (since no one who enforces EJ theology would ever bring one). But it would be an option.

And options are what we're losing as time goes by.
#15 Sep 01 2012 at 7:51 PM Rating: Good
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Ran some dungeons on my Druid.

Feral (Kitty) is pretty much the same, except you've got some crazy healing that you don't really need now that healers have been buffed well into the next century. It does have its advantages, though. Our healer disconnected during a Shadowfang Keep run, but with my healing (from Cat Form) and with the tank's self-healing, we didn't even need a dedicated healer.

Guardian (Bear) is crap. No, really, it is. Every single ability has a goddamn cooldown now and they took away our AOE taunt, so if the initial Thrash + Swipe doesn't hold aggro, you've got to spam Maul, which prevents you from using Savage Defense (60 rage cost, really?), which again means you'll be taking a lot of damage. I don't know what idiot came up with the idea that Bears had to choose between AOE aggro and survivability, but it sucks.

Good thing I got that talent which gives me an additional two rage points every time I use Mangle, right? Smiley: rolleyes

I was depressed, so I logged on my Shaman and noticed that they totally messed up totems as well. Good god, man. It's like they piled all their creativity and care into the Warlock revamp and everything else just got some half-*** changes that either completely mess up the playstyle (reminds me of something... oh yeah, Cataclysm) or just make the class boring.

And I hope to god they're not done working on the glyphs. I had to choose between six awesome major glyphs for my Feral while my Guardian only has one major glyph equipped (Maul). There aren't any useful major glyphs for Bears. All I can get are glyphs for Innervate and Rebirth. Whoop-dee-doo, Basil. I hear Boomkins have the same problem.

I am not impressed.

Edit: Also, the BM Hunter in Shadowfang Keep was doing 50k DPS on every boss in DS gear. Everyone else were in the 20's/30's. Did they beta test this patch at all?

Edited, Sep 2nd 2012 3:56am by Mazra
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#16 Sep 01 2012 at 8:32 PM Rating: Good
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Relax, Maz. You're getting to see less than half the picture right now. Things have changed, but you don't have most of the tools or environment that are supposed to go along with the changes. You know the drill, we go through it every expansion. You go from being level capped and geared to walking into the new expansion's opening zones and (if you were well enough geared for the last expansion) being a decent average. What you see in early levels does not necessarily reflect the way things will play once you get to the new level cap and start your gear grind. Pre expansion patches don't do much except start to get you used to different tool sets so that you don't hit new content while spamming old rotations.

Personally, I wish that they'd just ditch numbered levels and give characters something like the XP bar -- as you progress through content your bar fills up and at set stages of progress new stuff unlocks. Numbered levels are an unnecessary holdover from PNP gaming. Having to adjust stuff in five level slices (particularly since the five slice model hasn't been consistent and also has to somehow fit a block of 60 and a couple of ten) has to be awkward. Instead, they are stuck with "we balanced for 90". While it is true that players are going to race to level cap, that's hardly helpful at the moment.

Addendum: Also note that things are still being tweaked. In 5.05, Druids are getting a buff to AoE damage.

Edited, Sep 1st 2012 10:42pm by Rhodekylle
#17 Sep 01 2012 at 9:02 PM Rating: Good
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That, and it also depends on your Point of View.

What I posted in my PoV was from a solo PvE point of view; all of that extra healing makes for MUCH smoother leveling, while I don't notice the Guardian changes (I never use Bear Form in PvE, except on Problim and with the HUGE healing bonuses, I probably won't have to; I could probably solo him as Cat now, without raid gear). I always thought the heals Cat had pre-5.0.4 were far too weak where I was praying for the next Pred. Swiftness to come soon otherwise I'd have to start casting spells without it.

Also, every time I got Pred. Swiftness, I'd have to just Rejuv _AND_ Healing Touch, and also sometimes throw in Lifebloom ontop of that just to keep my HP meter at 90%+ in solo PvE fights. Otherwise, I had to stop and cast Healing Touches between battles which was annoying enough to have to do on my Paladins after the infamous WoG nerfs, where you had to cast Holy Light after battles with Crusade to actually heal anything. No Melee enjoys casting 3sec spells after each fight (especially Cat Druid, popping out of Cat Form just to heal felt like bad design as it was). It feels incredibly clunky to have to do so. Thank God they changed Holy Light to Flash of Light for Ret Paladins.

Now, granted, from group PvE, all of these viewpoints might be different.

I suppose I should have included my PoV as being "Solo PvE" if I did not already. I always forget that.

Edited, Sep 1st 2012 11:05pm by Lyrailis
#18 Sep 04 2012 at 5:51 PM Rating: Good
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Starting to enjoy Bear tanking again, but being locked into a role still sucks.

Managing Savage Defense is a pain in the ***, though. I really hope they change that ability. As it is right now, with our nerfed dodge chance and our inability to block and parry, if we don't keep Savage Defense up, we get smacked. Hard. And with Savage Defense now providing avoidance instead of absorption, when stuff does hit us, it hits full force.

It wouldn't be so bad if we had unlimited resources, like, say, the Paladin... but we don't, which, coupled with Savage Defense's ridiculously short duration, means we have to choose between avoidance and healing. Sounds pretty good on paper, but the healing is pathetic and the avoidance is so good that it needs to be kept up all the time, except when fighting a pure spell caster.

They need to either reduce the cost on Savage Defense and Frenzied Regeneration, or increase the duration (SD) and healing (FR). 60% of our resource pool for six seconds of +45% dodge or ~25k healing... not cool, man. Not cool.

But at least I can still pop Berserk and push out 30k on a boss. (Edit: If I don't die) Smiley: rolleyes

Edited, Sep 5th 2012 1:53am by Mazra
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#19 Sep 05 2012 at 3:48 PM Rating: Excellent
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Paladin tanks don't have unlimited resources, either. Everything they actually use runs on Holy Power; the blue bar might as well be there for decoration. Shield of the Righteous takes 3 HoP, which should happen roughly every 8-10 seconds. Same with WoG, which for Prot seems to have lost the 15 sec CD. Everything has a cooldown for Bears because nothing offensive has a rage cost, now, except Swipe for some reason. I do hate that +45% dodge is our main defense button, but I haven't tanked on my bear in a while. I got tired of Paladins being better at pretty much every aspect of tanking, so I leveled one.
#20 Sep 05 2012 at 5:18 PM Rating: Good
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WoL wrote:
22.08.12 Paragon Morchok 25HC 
 
Damage taken 
Prot paladin       Fraggoji        1.829.895	 12978.1 DPS(e) 
Feral druid        Sejta           1.774.168     12582.8 DPS(e) 
 
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/aenertmsk56wnlb6/analyze/dt/target/?s=380&e=520 
--- 
29.08.12 Paragon Morchok 25HC 
 
Damage taken 
Prot paladin	   Fraggoji        1.489.804	 12843.2 DPS(e) 
Guardian druid	   Sejta           3.215.368	 27718.9 DPS(e) 
 
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/ofbb6r0zwceh3fbk/analyze/dt/target/?s=553&e=668


The problem is, Bears are taking so much damage now, we are forced to spend all our secondary resources on one single ability. It's a proactive ability, so it's better to be safe than sorry, which unfortunately doesn't leave a lot of Rage for Maul and Frenzied Regeneration, the latter of which is vastly inferior to the Paladin's heal, anyway. My Frenzied Regen usually heals me for 26k health. My WoG heals me for 50-60k and if Divine Purpose procs line up, I can cast three of those in a row, effectively healing myself for 100% of my health in three globals.

They need to have a look at the Guardian spec. It's crap.
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#21 Sep 05 2012 at 6:20 PM Rating: Excellent
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Whoops, I misread the chart.

It is messed up.

Glad I never tanked as a druid... yeeeeeesh.

Hopefully, the devs see this and can fix it.

Edited, Sep 5th 2012 8:23pm by Lyrailis
#22 Sep 05 2012 at 9:49 PM Rating: Decent
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Pantherfern wrote:
-Rogue: seemed pretty much the same for Mut/Combat from my quick testing seem pretty similar to what they were before. Don't quite get the new poison thing but didn't really look into it much. Some of the new/reworked talents/abilities look pretty cool.

Basically, poisons are spells that you self-buff. You get one lethal (Deadly/Wound, instant is a part of deadly now) and one non-lethal (Crip, MN, etc). They can both apply on both weapon swings.

The rogue changes are kind of underwhelming, to be honest. There's some nice utility added, but they nerfed rogues hard in PvP (which wasn't needed). Sub now has a hell of a lot less survivability or a hell of a lot less mobility; you basically get to choose how you get raped in the Prep/ShS/BoS tier of talents.

Pantherfern wrote:
-Hunter is BM/Surv and both specs look pretty much the same as they were before rotation-wise near as I can tell. I LOVE the option of being able to grab a CC or an interrupt as I can't count the number of times I wished I had interrupt capacity in HoTs. Haven't actually run him yet but he's one of my favorites so I likely will. I don't get the pet . . talent/wtf-ever thing that is so I'll be looking that up now as I had no idea what to do with my pets.

Neither spec are anything close, actually, with the additions of Dire Beast, Lynx Rush, et al. Your normal rotations outside of cooldowns is the same, but the addition of Readiness basically means you're popping all of your cooldowns ASAP against a boss. For BM, that means popping BW, then going into Rapid Fire, Dire Beast, Lynx Rush, etc, then hitting Readiness to start your cooldowns over.

Pet talents are extremely simple. You pick what you want your pet for (tank, DPS, or utility), spec it (you can change it at any time OOC), and you're done. Change a couple of the abilities to not activate automatically (i.e. Thunderstomp), and you're done. Every single pet can be any spec; the only thing that's different is their abilities.

Every spec had an interrupt in Cata, BTW, unless you didn't take Wyvern Sting as SV. Intimidate for BM, Silencing Shot for MM, and Wyvern Sting for SV. But yes, it's handy to be able to switch over to Silencing Shot if necessary, or Wyvern Sting if you need another CC.
#23 Sep 06 2012 at 4:48 AM Rating: Good
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Furor + Readiness was pretty luls when I ran my SV Hunter through some heroics. Basically, on boss fights, I never had to use Cobra Shot. Double Rapid Fire + Furor, with Lock 'n' Load no longer consuming Arcane Shots, reduced my rotation to just Explosive and Arcane Shots (after applying DoTs) due to massive Focus regen.

30k DPS by only using instant cast abilities (and I'm a total Huntard, so I messed up a couple of times). My Feral managed to push 40k because I had Fingers of Fury and executed my JFM rotation like a total baws. May have had some kind of power-up as well. The Fury Warrior I was running with did 70k (not exaggerating) on the same boss. Kind of made me sad, but he was wearing superior gear, so meh.

This patch has overall been a pretty big case of lolwut?! for me.
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#24 Sep 06 2012 at 1:01 PM Rating: Decent
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Mazra wrote:
Furor + Readiness was pretty luls when I ran my SV Hunter through some heroics. Basically, on boss fights, I never had to use Cobra Shot. Double Rapid Fire + Furor, with Lock 'n' Load no longer consuming Arcane Shots, reduced my rotation to just Explosive and Arcane Shots (after applying DoTs) due to massive Focus regen.

30k DPS by only using instant cast abilities (and I'm a total Huntard, so I messed up a couple of times). My Feral managed to push 40k because I had Fingers of Fury and executed my JFM rotation like a total baws. May have had some kind of power-up as well. The Fury Warrior I was running with did 70k (not exaggerating) on the same boss. Kind of made me sad, but he was wearing superior gear, so meh.

This patch has overall been a pretty big case of lolwut?! for me.

I assume you mean Fervor? If that's the case, it's actually a DPS loss for BM, so I've never taken it (plus Dire Beast is amazing). Still not 100% sure whether I should be using Exhilaration or Iron Hawk for PvE, but I like the spot-healing that I can do with Exhilaration, so that's what I'm mostly using.
#25 Sep 06 2012 at 1:22 PM Rating: Good
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Yeah, Fervor... too many abilities, not enough days. Furor was the old Druid talent.
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#26 Sep 06 2012 at 2:15 PM Rating: Excellent
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Mazra wrote:
WoL wrote:
22.08.12 Paragon Morchok 25HC 
 
Damage taken 
Prot paladin       Fraggoji        1.829.895	 12978.1 DPS(e) 
Feral druid        Sejta           1.774.168     12582.8 DPS(e) 
 
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/aenertmsk56wnlb6/analyze/dt/target/?s=380&e=520 
--- 
29.08.12 Paragon Morchok 25HC 
 
Damage taken 
Prot paladin	   Fraggoji        1.489.804	 12843.2 DPS(e) 
Guardian druid	   Sejta           3.215.368	 27718.9 DPS(e) 
 
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/ofbb6r0zwceh3fbk/analyze/dt/target/?s=553&e=668


The problem is, Bears are taking so much damage now, we are forced to spend all our secondary resources on one single ability. It's a proactive ability, so it's better to be safe than sorry, which unfortunately doesn't leave a lot of Rage for Maul and Frenzied Regeneration, the latter of which is vastly inferior to the Paladin's heal, anyway. My Frenzied Regen usually heals me for 26k health. My WoG heals me for 50-60k and if Divine Purpose procs line up, I can cast three of those in a row, effectively healing myself for 100% of my health in three globals.

They need to have a look at the Guardian spec. It's crap.

Part of it seems to be RNG, because their bear only dodged 8 out of 40 attacks, while the paladin dodged or parried twice that. It seems odd that their bear was taking 75k damage per melee hit compared to about 50k on the paladin. That seems odd, since my paladin has 60% damage reduction from gear compared to 70% for my druid. In other words, everything else being equal, if the druid is hit for 48k the paladin should be getting hit for 64k without Shield, and 45k with the proc up. The damage seems like a bug, or something not showing up in WoL.

My pally has better gear than my druid, and WoG without a full stack of Bastion of Glory heals for 20k, which matches what Frenzied Regen almost exactly. Both abilities are supposed to scale roughly evenly with AP, so Vengeance stacks shouldn't matter.
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