Saturday, April 19, 2014

Alpha Update and Paladin Tier 17 First Look

First off, this post is kind of an excuse to show off the tier 17 Paladin set, which looks like tier 4 all grown up:


Couple things I love: first is that it looks sufficiently intimidating. Paladins in World of Warcraft are almost always in the very far corner of Lawful Good, which is fine, but often this leads to a portrayal of them being softies. But Paladins wear plate armor, and they wield giant war hammers. They aren't there to just preach the good word of the Light (that's a Priest's job.) Paladins are there to stand up to demons, undead, and eldritch horrors and make them flee in terror. (This is part of the reason that I like that Diablo 3 Crusaders get Flails as their weapon of choice. There's something a little crazy and intimidating about a flail.)

I also like that it's very Draenei-themed (my fear for Warlords is that we get overloaded with Orcs, Orcs, Orcs, who have had plenty of representation in-game (including the current raid.) I want to see a wide variety of Draenei-themed gear. And this one has cool floating plates and a modest number of crystals.

And then that belt. Yes, it's clipping right now, but this is literally the first we're seeing of it, so give it time.

Anyway, to move on to the "substance" of the post:

There has been a recent update to the 6.0 Alpha patch notes. Most of it is simply additions - things that had not yet been addressed.

First off, they did a little clarification on how they're going to do the stat-switching. All plate armor will have strength and intellect on it, and all mail and leather will likewise have both agility and intellect. However, depending on your spec, only one of the two stats will be highlighted while the other will be greyed-out. A Prot Paladin (or even a Prot Warrior) will see both Strength and Intellect on her new helmet, but she will only actually get the strength. I imagine we can expect these stats to come in equal values, especially given how Attack Power and Spell Power are being roughly equalized.

Hit, Expertise, Dodge and Parry are being removed entirely from the game. Those stats that are on current gear will be converted to the other, universal stats (haste, crit, mastery, multi strike, readiness.) Likewise, armor pieces and weapons with Spirit and Bonus Armor (not much of the latter these days) will have that replaced with the universal stats, leaving these role-specific stats only on cloaks, necklaces, rings, and trinkets.

Regarding movement speed, there are now two sort of categories for the bonuses:

If it's a passive thing like an enchant, passive ability, or passive talent, these bonus will stack in an additive manor. So for example, a Rogue, with it's 15% speed bonus and a 10% speed enchant on his boots will move 25% faster.

If the bonus speed is the result of a temporary bonus, like the same Rogue's Sprint, it will simply choose the highest bonus and go with that.

Regarding Periodic Effects:

First off, though this isn't super new news, they're altering periodic effects to get rid of the headache of haste breakpoints. DOTs and HOTs will still tick more frequently based on your haste, but when the effect ends, you'll get a partial tick for any remaining damage or healing. So if a DOT ticks once a second without haste and lasts four seconds, but you then get enough haste that it ticks every .75 seconds, you'll then get five full ticks and then a tick for a third of the amount as the effect ends. This should effectively get rid of haste breakpoints.

Second: snapshotting is mostly going away. Mostly? Well, there are a few cases where it will not go away. DOT after-effects like Blackout Kick's DOT and Ignite will still be based on the original attack's damage, as those are kind of considered just part of the original attack, and not a DOT ability. Also, abilities that boost your damage for a specific spell or attack will still work on DOTs. For example, a Shaman using Unleash Flame and then doing a Flame Shock will still get a powered-up Flame Shock for its full duration.

But things like trinkets or damage boosts outside of your control will update your DOTs dynamically. The bad news is that you won't get several minutes of insane, Unerring Vision of Lei Shen-empowered Dooms, but the good news is that if your trinket goes off right after you cast Devouring Plague, the effect will be felt on the spell you already cast.

Regarding Reforging:

Reforging is going away. Everything you've reforged is getting unreforged. But with hit, expertise, dodge and parry going away, along with haste breakpoints, and an overall ambition to balance secondary stats a little better with each other for all specs, it won't be as big of a nerf as you think. (In fact, given that hit and expertise are getting converted to the new five universal secondary stats, it could very well be a buff.)

Regarding Combat Resurrections:

With flex raiding the new normal, the old "1 rez for 10-player raids, 3 for 25-player" system doesn't really work anymore. So instead, all battle rezzes will have charges. Any use of a brez by a raid member that is accepted by the target will use up a charge for everyone in the raid. When a new fight starts, the battle rez charge will be one. But the more people in the raid, the faster more charges are generated. A ten player raid will generate a charge every nine minutes (which in most cases will probably mean pretty much just one per fight) while a twenty-player raid will generate a charge every 4.5, giving them a bit more flexibility.

Outside of raid boss encounters, they work the way they always have.

Beyond this, there's plenty of class stuff. You can read the notes here.

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