Update: This little picture on the left is Titan’s Grip from WoW: Trading Card Game. Hint hint?

I was wondering for a while if I should write this post since it’s not official info, but considering that this information flows all around the internet, I think I’m cool with it. I’m not going to post source of that information, but it’s not hard to find :P. I used to be quite skeptic about so-called leaks, until some time ago when we had some leaked information about patch 2.4 (I think it was) that turned out to be, partially, real. So yeah, all of that is pretty early stage of development and will probably change few times, but overall the ideas are here.

Before I start talking about 51 pointers and other new talents, I’d like to cover what is apparently changed, and there is quite a lot of changes. First of all - holy jeebus protection! I remember posting after patch 2.0 and before TBC about protection being offspec unfriendly and how everyone and his dog will be arms/fury as it used to be on 60. Well, it looks like it finally got to the devs, protection 0-21 looks really really sexy. I’m not going to copy-paste the notes from the leak (again, if you want the source, it’s not hard to find at all *cough* wikidot *cough* ok… where were I…), but I’ll instead try to list them in a more compiled way to fit them all here. So the changes to prot as far as I embrace them are:

• Bloodrage changed: now gives 25/50% more rage on bloodrage.
• Defiance changed to Incite, now gives 5/10/15% increased critical chance on heroic strike, cleave and thunderclap, swapped places to tier 2 instead of toughness, the extra 15% threat is now built into def stance without any talents.
• Anticipation changed to 1/2/3/4/5% extra dodge, swapped to tier 2 instead of shield specialization.
• Last Stand cooldown reduced to 2 minutes (!!!)
• Improved Shield Block now two-pointer reducing cooldown of shield block by 5/10 seconds, there are more Shield Block changes, but that’s not something I want to talk about (PvE lawl!)
• Improved Disarm - reduce the cooldown of disarm by 5/10/15 seconds and increase damage done on disarmed target by 4/7/10%!
• Concussion Blow - cooldown reduced to 30 seconds, now also deals 25% attack power as damage and generates ‘high threat’.

What’s also worth to highlight is that Shield Bash is supposed to deal 20% attack power as damage and Shield Slam is now a trainable ability (replaced with some boring PvE ability - ding! - we just got a trainable offensive dispell)! Overall those changes makes me feel happy in the pants, even if I won’t get as high as 21 in prot, I might pump 18 points into it, having on-demand 10% damage boost against nuked target for your whole team on arena can redefine the way warriors work in 5v5, add last stand on 2 minutes cooldown as a counter to flash nukes and we are home. Trainable Shield Slam and Shield Bash dealing damage can be a good counter for disarms while not having weapon mastery, got disarmed when finishing someone? Shield Slam fucker while screaming THIS IS SPAR… well, you get the idea.

Next on the list - Fury changes… Read the rest of this entry »

Terhix

There are three titles coming for every fantasy-mmo fanboy is focused atm, these are the second WoW expansion pack, Warhammer Online and Age of Conan. I’m doing some research about each of them as I’m not really decided what to play in the future. Granted I’ve a pretty clear view on what WAR brings to the table as I’m in beta, and I’m hopefully going to get my opinion about AoC, as I got an invite to the tech test not so long ago (yay!).

Both AoC and WAR attempts to lure PvP to their worlds, both in two different ways, where AoC is heading free-for-all sandbox style PvP, WAR is doing the RvR style of PvP which, while being similar to WoW, has quite a lot of unique mechanics already in place to occupy any PvPer, and that’s the problem WoW can have, as all you can do is:

- World PvP with Halaa and stuff, yeah right, who does that?
- Battlegrounds, sounds like fun, after doing WSG/AB/EotS/AV for 432423th time with people who don’t even care about winning or loosing. They just want to get honor for epix. It’s not really challenging or fun to play and I think it’s safe to say that battlegrounds these days are just grinding spots.
- Arenas, that’s pretty cool, but is it really enough to keep you occupied 24/7? It sure isn’t for me.

The mentioned old honor system kept anyone who wanted to achieve anything occupied for a long LONG time, now it’s different. As WoW is evolving and PvP is changing something needs to be done, and it needs to be done outside arenas and battlegrounds.

Now the perfect ground for that, and I bet that Blizzard does realize that, is the open world pvp. Lake Wintergraps in WotLK can be either a huge step forward, or another ‘SANDLOL!’. I hope that all of the pre TBC and TBC world pvp fail Blizzard has committed is enough for them to learn a lesson. PvP can be so much more, and I guess that anyone who played any korean MMO that has siege wars knows what I’m talking about - no, it’s not about destroying buildings, it’s about the community, drama, politics and all that social aspects.

When talking about that on our guild vent recently some folks said they actually doubt that WoW can make a good siege-war type of game with all the mechanics that are currently in. Well, they are right, but 4 years ago WoW didn’t really appeal to anyone as an e-sport kind of game, and now they got the arena tournament server, that’s a huge step forward. The bad news for us is that ranged classes usually win in large scale open world pvp, but keeping in mind how it worked out for many other games I wouldn’t be so scared.

Another thing that might be a problem is the amount of abilities (both base skills and talents) that players will have access to. Warhammer Devs already said they are planning for 20 clickable abilities per class and no more, and that’s IMO a really good number, I’ve half of my keyboard and 5 mouse buttons bound to something (be it an ability, ‘oh shit’ macro or trinket) in WoW. With each expansion giving more and more buttons to play with the game can become a bit overwhelming to say the least. We will most likely see more skills that are not something totally new, but is rather a replacement for something we already have, like another attack with cooldown shared with MS, another shout that doesn’t stack with BS/CS, another aspect for hunters, another poison for rogues, another armor-spell for warlocks, that kind of stuff. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m really thinking about buying myself a G15 to make my gaming experience easier.

Terhix

Between playing ET: Quake Wars and WAR beta I started browsing US wotlk forums. Personally, if there were no new talents, I’d go for 41/30. Well, before TBC I said I’d go with 31/30 (as pretty much every warrior, that was during the times tactical mastery was in arms tree), and ended at 33/28, so I guess it will be similar case with WotLK (IF I’ll come back to WoW that is - I still have to choose between WAR and WoW, and I’ve to say that WoW is starting to appeal to me again). But to the point, I found those talents on forums.

They are obviously fake, some stuff is ‘a bit’ overpowered, but there is some really cool stuff. Unstoppable and Frenzied Regeneration in arms is orgasmic, another form of HP regen stacking with second wind and blood craze? Yes please. Unstoppable doesn’t need a comment. Guy did some changes in lower tiers of talent trees, some of them caused ‘WTF’ on my face. Dual Wield Mastery as a requirement for Flurry? HELLO!? Some people want flurry with two handed weapons. I really hate the fact that Blizz want to give us another 2 talents tiers per tree, one thing is that it will bring more and more imbalance to the game, and it will, again, take them 3 months to semi rebalance the game. I’d rather like 1 tier per tree, so if someone was 31/20 at 60, he would be 36/25 at 70 and 41/30 at 80, the higher the trees are, the more you have to invest into one tree, because, technically, ‘the best talents are down there’, which is basically killing any offspeccing. Rise a hand if u didn’t have 41 points in arms at level 60 before TBC and after patch 2.0.

I’m also wondering if Blizzard will finally notice what’s wrong with warriors when 75% of them will reroll death knights (they are basically the same thing - dps/tanking hybrid - but a badass version). Endurance I say you, endurance and escape abilities!

BTW: Anyone wants some Viagra? Just deleted 13 comments with spam links from my moderation.
BTW2: Just to brag, my quake wars profile, if you want to pwn me I’m mostly playing on 4netplayers.de servers.

Terhix