For the thousandth time, no. The game is not simplified just because pointless and useless talents were removed from the game and the good talents, the talents everyone love, were left.
Seriously, tell me how much sense it made for me to use 5 talent points for 5% more mana. It was stupid to start with and finally its been fixed.
The only people truly complaining were ones who do not know how to play their class and are mad that now they cannot rule WOW with a two buttoned, macro'ed, button smashing ignorance. Trust me, after doing a few randoms tanks who can manage threat, DPS who can watch their agro and crowd control that knows what to do will become a precious commodity.
EDIT: And Possum is correct. Addons dumb the game down, not the game itself. I raided with healers that could not play if Healbot was broken and Druids who couldn't decurse if Decursive was broken. Play the game minus the addons and we'll chat.
Pointless and useless talents, thats what I keep hearing But for every bad ass player with hybrid builds there is someone out there cursing you for your ignorance. Sub rogues HAD to hybrid because their bottom talents were just not that good, Ghostcrawler was often and repeated critisized for making bad End tree talents, he wants to say he solved a lot of problems with the trees by Forcing everyone to use the same lame end tree talents while at the same time reducing their choices outside the trees.
I can see rogues and Shaman being really agitated right off the bat, this puts a HUGE dent in Shadow priest defensive abilities, because they like the other classes that are DPS trees now forced to be PURE DPS as in no PVP dps builds and that is probably correct for healers as well, pigeon holed into being pure healz not BG hybrid healers or specilzed half and half pvp builds.
What the simple minded and players that dont want to think dont understand is that this removes not only chioces in the trees but the flexibility just so GC can feel good about himself and pat himself on the back. I mentioned the haste hunter and someone said, well whats wrong with Marksmen hunters being forced into haste builds. What you dont understand is that IS the Marks hunter tree now, a Haste DPS build.. period, no choice, no customization within the tree or any divergence outside of it. Where you could onece take Survival Marks or Marks Survival trees, tie them up and make a custom build for your particular situation now you take cookie cutter hunter builds, and believe me when I made a hybrid Marks/BM hunter I didnt have ANY useless talents, there are not many useless talents.. well maybe a few..... but there are DEFINATELY Many useless players.
As an experienced priest, I'd just like to say that when I built my new shadow spec I was really excited to take him into pvp, which was never the case before. As for those hybrid specs you're talking about - they never existed. A hybrid spec previously meant average-at-best pvp and worthless for raid healing. If you wanted to do dps AND heals, or pvp AND raid, you dual spec'ed. I tried to make a hybrid shadow / heals priest and came up with the best possible build for it. All I accomplished was gimping my dps for crap heals. I tried running my pvp Discipline spec in 5 man heroics to see if I could do good dps while healing. Not really. Don't think I ever did better than 1900 dps in a 5 man while healing. On the other hand, I guarantee that I'll be topping that now with my Smite Disc spec. Honestly, though, it still seems that WoW has been designed to accommodate multiple roles through dual spec'ing. It has not been designed to have hybrid roles work successfully since vanilla, and I'm completely fine with that. At least now you have options of HOW you want to go about doing your dps or healing within your primary spec - which really was not the case before.
An experienced priest is not a good priest ,I know that because in my years as a shadow Priest, one maybe two guys that ever came into a BG played their class correctly, most shadows kill two people and die 30 times in AV. I routinely got over 60 kills in BGs in the Whirlwind battle group,so forgive me if I trust my opinion over yours.
I agree just from looking at it that the DPS looks far better, however survivability looks like garbage. Most pvp Shadows had 15+ points in Disc for a REASON, a few interesting souls threw points into holy. All DPS looks higher, but the thought behind class builds is gone, its just cookie cutter dps specs now. The raid content is probably much better but the PVP content, hybrid builds that cant be predicted is all gone. Its just a DPS hit the other guy and hope he dies before you do.. I mean you can do that on Everquest2.. thats why their pvp is terrible.
Also if you believe hybrid Shadow priest specs were bad for pvp before this patch or any priest spec for that matter, that tells me right away you have No idea what you are talking about. Not a clue.
To be honest, your primary complaints that specs are cookie-cutter and Shadow Priest survivability in pvp is garbage don't hold a lot of water.
Looking at survivability, spending 15 points in Disc in the previous tree would have gotten the following:
Unbreakable Will: Stun, Fear, and Silence effects reduced 30%. This talent is gone altogether, which is a huge blow to all priests in pvp but it has nothing to do with the current limitations of talent trees.
Improved Inner Fire: 45% increased Inner Fire effect.
Improved Power Word: Fortitude: 30% increase to Power Word: Fortitude and 4% increase to stamina. Again, this one is completely gone so it again has nothing to do with talent tree limitations. It also may not have changed survivability at all depending on overall class balance.
Improved Power Word: Shield: increases damage absorbed by Shield by 15%.
And that's what you'd get with 15 points. You could go deeper in the tree to get to Soul Warding which would reduce PW:S cooldown by 4 seconds, but you'd have to give up Dispersion to do so.
Looking at survivability now you can get the following:
Improved Power Word: Shield: damage protection reduced to 10% from 15% in 4.0.1
Inner Sanctum (2 points): reduce all spell damage by 4% while active. This is a HUGE buff over Improved Inner Fire when fighting casters, although a nerf if fighting melee dps.
Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield by 2 seconds - AND you don't have to lose Dispersion to get this. Granted, this doesn't do you any good solo, but on a team this is exceedingly helpful.
So in terms of Shadow Priest survivability in pvp you aren't losing anything that the other specs aren't losing, and you have gained some advantages as well.
As for specs suddenly being cookie-cutter I just think you are way off base. There are lots of different ways to legitimately spend the 9 points you get after spending your 31 points in Shadow. But as you said regarding the old trees, "Most pvp Shadows had 15+ points in Disc for a REASON..." If that isn't the definition of cookie-cutter I guess I don't know what is.
Thanks, btw, for assuming that I am not a good priest. I really appreciated that implication in your post.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
As much as I see 1 potential PRO in the changes I see more CONS.. such as:
1) Does Blizzard still support closed end raiding.. Sorry Only 10 or 25 people can join us.. tough shit to everyone else.
2) Will gear still be the primary focus to determine rather a class is invited to raid or not? (aka gear score)
3) Justice Points? This was to replace emblems.. great.. however the vendor ONLY sell's BLUE items, no epics.. NERF??
I think I'll just hold out for GW2 and other games coming around the corner.. Chances of me ever returning to WoW are slim to none and slim just left the building.. I loathe games that are anti social and promote epeen esport..
1.) I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. Raids have changed to where you can do the 10 or 25 each lockout period, however, there is also the flexible raid lockout system that is supposed to let you do "Boss A" on 10-man, "Boss B" on 25, etc. I say "supposed to" just because I haven't tried it out yet. The catch I can see is that this apparently only applies to the most recent raids (ICC/RS) as a trial run through Naxx did not give the option.
2.) It's a gear based game pretty much. With reforging you can get a bit more milage out of your gear I guess so I am not sure how that will affect GS. The community has embraced GS though so I don't think it'll go away anytime soon (though there will likely be some confusion short term due to stat changes, reforging, etc)
3.) Justice Points are for more then blues. All the badge vendors now take Justice Points so you can get iLevel 264 gear with them. I purchased a 251 piece of the priest set today using JP.
Not trying to get you to return, but stating what I've seen since the patch went live as some of it doesn't seem to line up with your points.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers. Do something wrong, no one forgets" -from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
As much as I see 1 potential PRO in the changes I see more CONS.. such as:
1) Does Blizzard still support closed end raiding.. Sorry Only 10 or 25 people can join us.. tough shit to everyone else.
2) Will gear still be the primary focus to determine rather a class is invited to raid or not? (aka gear score)
3) Justice Points? This was to replace emblems.. great.. however the vendor ONLY sell's BLUE items, no epics.. NERF??
I think I'll just hold out for GW2 and other games coming around the corner.. Chances of me ever returning to WoW are slim to none and slim just left the building.. I loathe games that are anti social and promote epeen esport..
1.) I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. Raids have changed to where you can do the 10 or 25 each lockout period, however, there is also the flexible raid lockout system that is supposed to let you do "Boss A" on 10-man, "Boss B" on 25, etc. I say "supposed to" just because I haven't tried it out yet. The catch I can see is that this apparently only applies to the most recent raids (ICC/RS) as a trial run through Naxx did not give the option. Here we are on 2 seperate topics.. I think you're mistaken what I'm saying about cap limits.. I'm refering to any HARD number that restricts who can raid and when.. I believe in social raiding, which means if a boss spawns, ANYONE can join in, rather it be 15, 18, 22, 40 or 50 people.. The more the better.. I mean really.. The logic that a boss can only be attacked by a certain number is just silly..
2.) It's a gear based game pretty much. With reforging you can get a bit more milage out of your gear I guess so I am not sure how that will affect GS. The community has embraced GS though so I don't think it'll go away anytime soon (though there will likely be some confusion short term due to stat changes, reforging, etc) Like I said, I don't like gear driven games.. I play for fun.. Grinding gear to me is just a silly grind..
3.) Justice Points are for more then blues. All the badge vendors now take Justice Points so you can get iLevel 264 gear with them. I purchased a 251 piece of the priest set today using JP. Currently,, I'm refering to Cataclysm gear.. according to Blizzard the Justice Points vendor will only offer BLUE level 364? gear.. NO Epics, even at level 85..
Not trying to get you to return, but stating what I've seen since the patch went live as some of it doesn't seem to line up with your points. ??? I'm confused.. What are you trying to say here? I thought I was clear that there was NOTHING in that patch that makes me even think of coming back to play..
strange to start but enjoying it now, ive only been back a week after 8 months away from a 4 yr addiction.
but reading through here im happy the bitter and twisted swg pre-cu/ nge vets now have some new friends at last........
I have never understood bitterness towards a video game. The Cata expansion brings normal mobs (after the 80-81 starter zones) up to a challenge level that is fun for me. I need to actually play and plan for pulls. I find this a lot more fun than stomping through Northrend like a invincible hero from a tale.
1.) I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. Raids have changed to where you can do the 10 or 25 each lockout period, however, there is also the flexible raid lockout system that is supposed to let you do "Boss A" on 10-man, "Boss B" on 25, etc. I say "supposed to" just because I haven't tried it out yet. The catch I can see is that this apparently only applies to the most recent raids (ICC/RS) as a trial run through Naxx did not give the option. Here we are on 2 seperate topics.. I think you're mistaken what I'm saying about cap limits.. I'm refering to any HARD number that restricts who can raid and when.. I believe in social raiding, which means if a boss spawns, ANYONE can join in, rather it be 15, 18, 22, 40 or 50 people.. The more the better.. I mean really.. The logic that a boss can only be attacked by a certain number is just silly..
2.) It's a gear based game pretty much. With reforging you can get a bit more milage out of your gear I guess so I am not sure how that will affect GS. The community has embraced GS though so I don't think it'll go away anytime soon (though there will likely be some confusion short term due to stat changes, reforging, etc) Like I said, I don't like gear driven games.. I play for fun.. Grinding gear to me is just a silly grind..
3.) Justice Points are for more then blues. All the badge vendors now take Justice Points so you can get iLevel 264 gear with them. I purchased a 251 piece of the priest set today using JP. Currently,, I'm refering to Cataclysm gear.. according to Blizzard the Justice Points vendor will only offer BLUE level 364? gear.. NO Epics, even at level 85..
Not trying to get you to return, but stating what I've seen since the patch went live as some of it doesn't seem to line up with your points. ??? I'm confused.. What are you trying to say here? I thought I was clear that there was NOTHING in that patch that makes me even think of coming back to play..
See ya in Guild Wars 2.. lol
As for the first point, thanks for clarifying. There was a reason I started with "I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here". I can understand your point on that, but in your response to just1, this isn't a new feature to 4.0.1 so that is why I thought you meant a modification to the pre-existing limits.
The second point was more or less agreeing with you, albeit in an slightly optimistic fashion
As far as 364+ gear, I haven't even looked at that yet, so wasn't aware. Again, reading your comments I thought it referred specifically to 4.0.1 so easy confusion.
Finally, regarding the "???" portion, you went out of your way to state you weren't planning to come back to WoW so, in an effort to avoid this devolving into an argument about whether you should or shouldn't come back, I wanted to be clear that convincing you to do so was not my intention. Only on forums can an attempt at clarity result in confusion so easily .
Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to elaborate your points a bit further. I'll disagree that the points are cons (Aside from GS, that does sorta suck), but to each their own eh?
RE: GW2, looks and sounds interesting, but for the sake of my family time I only sub to two MMOs at a time . I don't plan to give up EvE. Maybe Cata will convince me to go elsewhere, but so far 4.0.1 has been fun so I'm not going to hold my breath.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers. Do something wrong, no one forgets" -from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
As much as I see 1 potential PRO in the changes I see more CONS.. such as:
1) Does Blizzard still support closed end raiding.. Sorry Only 10 or 25 people can join us.. tough shit to everyone else.
2) Will gear still be the primary focus to determine rather a class is invited to raid or not? (aka gear score)
3) Justice Points? This was to replace emblems.. great.. however the vendor ONLY sell's BLUE items, no epics.. NERF??
I think I'll just hold out for GW2 and other games coming around the corner.. Chances of me ever returning to WoW are slim to none and slim just left the building.. I loathe games that are anti social and promote epeen esport..
1.) I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. Raids have changed to where you can do the 10 or 25 each lockout period, however, there is also the flexible raid lockout system that is supposed to let you do "Boss A" on 10-man, "Boss B" on 25, etc. I say "supposed to" just because I haven't tried it out yet. The catch I can see is that this apparently only applies to the most recent raids (ICC/RS) as a trial run through Naxx did not give the option. Here we are on 2 seperate topics.. I think you're mistaken what I'm saying about cap limits.. I'm refering to any HARD number that restricts who can raid and when.. I believe in social raiding, which means if a boss spawns, ANYONE can join in, rather it be 15, 18, 22, 40 or 50 people.. The more the better.. I mean really.. The logic that a boss can only be attacked by a certain number is just silly..
This is one of the things we're just going to have to wait to get from GW2, because their scaling will take care of this problem, and...I agree...it's been a problem in MMOs since EQ1 and UO. After those two games....all games pretty much went to a limited number and instances. It will indeed be fun to play with virtually any number (although I think GW2 said that there was a cap too, although I think it's a bit more generous than 5, 10, or 25).
2.) It's a gear based game pretty much. With reforging you can get a bit more milage out of your gear I guess so I am not sure how that will affect GS. The community has embraced GS though so I don't think it'll go away anytime soon (though there will likely be some confusion short term due to stat changes, reforging, etc) Like I said, I don't like gear driven games.. I play for fun.. Grinding gear to me is just a silly grind..
Heh. You KNOW how I feel about gear grinding. However...as we have considered returning to WoW (and also playing GW2) we have had some discussion about that as a family. All 3 of us play for FUN. None of us give a rat's ass about raiding any more we are completely BURNT OUT. So when I think about returning...gear grind isn't even a consideration for me, just like I never chose to do that in EQ2. I refuse to do that any longer. PERIOD.
If I can get gear that I want in the process of doing things that I find to be FUN....great. If not...too damn bad and fuck peoples damn gear score bullshit. I don't have to have any particular "gear score" to run around with friends and family. My days of worrying with that are O V E R. We will not be going back to our raid guild. I served my time.
3.) Justice Points are for more then blues. All the badge vendors now take Justice Points so you can get iLevel 264 gear with them. I purchased a 251 piece of the priest set today using JP. Currently,, I'm refering to Cataclysm gear.. according to Blizzard the Justice Points vendor will only offer BLUE level 364? gear.. NO Epics, even at level 85..
Bah...like I said...I really don't give a shit about "epics" any more. Epics ceased being epic about what...exactly 3 expansions ago...when vanilla WoW passed away. I'm not playing for epics...I'm playing for FUN. I played for epics when they really WERE epic and unfortunately...on into WotLK. I don't hate myself enough to continue doing that.
My new motto for ANY GAME is this:
If I'm not having FUN....I'm not fucking playing.
Not trying to get you to return, but stating what I've seen since the patch went live as some of it doesn't seem to line up with your points. ??? I'm confused.. What are you trying to say here? I thought I was clear that there was NOTHING in that patch that makes me even think of coming back to play..
And, my dear friend....I will see YOU in Guild Wars 2...DEFINITELY. =D And I expect a spot in the guild too...and so does Sharon. lol :P
Originally posted by Elidien For the thousandth time, no. The game is not simplified just because pointless and useless talents were removed from the game and the good talents, the talents everyone love, were left. Seriously, tell me how much sense it made for me to use 5 talent points for 5% more mana. It was stupid to start with and finally its been fixed. The only people truly complaining were ones who do not know how to play their class and are mad that now they cannot rule WOW with a two buttoned, macro'ed, button smashing ignorance. Trust me, after doing a few randoms tanks who can manage threat, DPS who can watch their agro and crowd control that knows what to do will become a precious commodity. EDIT: And Possum is correct. Addons dumb the game down, not the game itself. I raided with healers that could not play if Healbot was broken and Druids who couldn't decurse if Decursive was broken. Play the game minus the addons and we'll chat.
Ah yes, the old 'lurn 2 pla' argument combined with the 'only pros will survive' gambit.
Are cracks appearing in the Blizzard-WoW juggernaut ?
Patch 4.0.1 is a massive patch and it appears to have been let on the live servers full of bugs. This is a major first. Are Vivendi/Activision pushing for release at expense of previous quality.
The in game changes are also quite severe. Talent trees reduced giving players less choice. I play/played a Resto Shaman and the look of that talent tree is somewhat underwhelming. I took a break until the Cata and im not really feeling motivated to go back.
Is this the begining of the end?
No its by far not a major first. Take Wotlk the first expansion under Activision and Ghostcrawler helm despite the easymode it didn't have the level of polish BC and Vanilla used to have. Just look at the tiny updates compared to the previous expansions and even then they somehow couldn't release enough content to keep raiders happy, hell Wotlk has been cleared after what 4 days?
Telling people to try the same boss over and over just with different mechanics is Activision at its best.
I'm sure Blizzard would love to release in January, Februrary but their new boss who doesn't have a say according to Morhaime AND Vivendi are pushing for the christmas release. Now Morhaime can shove his BS about "activision hasn't changed us" whereever he wants to.
Facts are Blizzards ignorance and hostile usermanagement began after the merger! Just look at how much cool features they've removed features, I would have been willing to test such as the path of titans, or CUSTOM guild talents.
Theres also a clear line in every expansion ->small (25), smaller (25, 10), smallest (10 - soon).
There is no more its done when its done more its done, when Kotick needs another Ferrari.
People claiming that removing arrows would be a good thing have no clue what they are talking about. Arrows used to be a way to specialize and maximize your rotation, back in BC they also were great faction rewards and not just a moneysink as some of you claimed.
Its nice that they are trying to bring back difficulty but in fact dumbed down mechanics such as streamlined talent trees, less stats and 10 men raids equal rewarding are not turning up the challenge, its dumbing down the game even further. Believe me, once people are getting used to the new rotations the difficulty won't last long, because either they outgear the content or constantly crying for nerfs and finally Blizzard will give in to the easymode crowd again.
The old "quality first and from gamers for gamers" Blizzard is long gone, I bet you everything you will see lots of dumbing down in their upcoming games esp. D3 (just read Bashioks idiotic comments).
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Yeah I always had that opinion, so I can't wait to play WoW Cata.
Anyway, I think blizz sent this patch out too soon, people were screaming throughout the beta and ptr on how classes seem clunky, etc... I guess I was lucky, my mains a Hunter, and so everything seems like a positive in this patch.
I have to laugh at these ppl saying " this is a challange" "wow has only been made better" LMFAO !!
What I see is ppl sooo hooked on the game they can't think clearly. Really, in real life if someone came in your house and took half of your tv stations would this be a "challenge" to you or would you say "HEY, WTF? NOOO you are not taking HALF my choices.
Yet you'll sit here and make a total a out of yourself to try and keep ppl here so you won't be alone lol
Get used to it, wow is now REALLY a ten yr old game with little or NO choices in Charactor growth and those wishing it will pan out will see in time they too will be looking for a REAL game.
I heard someone say, "soon there'll be an add-on to play for you as you go do something else", but you'll still have to pay 15 a month. I'm thinking that day has come
Care to elaborate or in your world do insults double for discussion?
The general consensus is that the game takes far more concentration now and awareness of your class and what you can and cannot do. Not a question of being a pro but a question of knowledge and not ignorance.
Oh that's just because people aren't use to it yet. Once they get use to watching for procced skills/spells, it'll be same ol same ol.
The community did this already. Players would inspect other players and tell them to leave groups or raids if they didn't have the correct talents. Under the old talent trees, choice was an illusion and everyone will tell you that. Sure some classes had a few points to take here or there but most people used the same build. Every elemental SHaman I know used the same build as I did because it was all datamined off of Elitist jerks.
Is this really how people in WOW are? You don't do things a certain way and your booted regardless of your player skill? If so thankfully I don't play it. Because that is frankly, the stupidest thing I've heard. I can see in a hardcore raiding guild that requires certain talents to progress easier, but in a group? Get real. Thats just plain absurd. If you can't conquer an instance with a few skilled players regardless of talents(unless they are required, like AoC's God Slayer instance mode requiring certain feasts to be gotten) then the lack of skill in players most be really bad.
You want complicated, load up a holy priest, get into PVP and work your Chakra states while trying to heal a group. You'll have to make some fun, on-your-feet decisions.
Yeah I always had that opinion, so I can't wait to play WoW Cata.
Anyway, I think blizz sent this patch out too soon, people were screaming throughout the beta and ptr on how classes seem clunky, etc... I guess I was lucky, my mains a Hunter, and so everything seems like a positive in this patch.
My paladin plays very well also. I dont know what classes they "messed up" but my guild seems pretty positive all around. There are a couple having a tough time adjusting but all in all seems to be a good patch.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
The requiring an exact setup in order to play coupled with the fact of that GS addon is the reason i left and never will go back to the game. Once an add-on determines group viability over an actual person skill is the day i leave that game. That and it was boring as anything to me. I got to 45 then i was like, yeah okay. what else is there.
Glad people are enjoying it. I'll still be waiting for ToR. Currently playing UWO and will be picking up fable 3. So my time between then and now is pretty packed.
(those curious why i'm posting on boards instead of playing. I'm traveling to another island with another player and they are driving, so i can do both at once.)
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
The community did this already. Players would inspect other players and tell them to leave groups or raids if they didn't have the correct talents. Under the old talent trees, choice was an illusion and everyone will tell you that. Sure some classes had a few points to take here or there but most people used the same build. Every elemental SHaman I know used the same build as I did because it was all datamined off of Elitist jerks.
Is this really how people in WOW are? You don't do things a certain way and your booted regardless of your player skill? If so thankfully I don't play it. Because that is frankly, the stupidest thing I've heard. I can see in a hardcore raiding guild that requires certain talents to progress easier, but in a group? Get real. Thats just plain absurd. If you can't conquer an instance with a few skilled players regardless of talents(unless they are required, like AoC's God Slayer instance mode requiring certain feasts to be gotten) then the lack of skill in players most be really bad.
The GearScore whores are really like that.
LF <X> pst GS/Stats./Achievement
They all want the "geared and carried" players to make their runs smooth and be "carried" themselves. I personally hate it but I feel their pain when tanking cross-server instances with under-geared players. Instead of having to do a 45min instance, people who insist they're skilled just ends up dying and most of the time wiping the group because their stats are too low. People think that their skills are enough. Sorry but in WoW, that's not enough. Dedicate yourself in actually learning the veryyyyy simple stats of WoW and you won't be denied a spot.
WoW is less about skill and more about numbers. You only need a few "skills" to be considered good in PvE. If you know when and where to move, know what should be used in your rotation, and know how to read your alerts, congratulations you now know the basic and advanced skills needed in WoW PvE. But if your hp, mana, mitigations, spell/attack power, regeneration, and haste are below the dps/heal numbers cap, your "skills" can only save you until the boss enrages and send you corpse-running.
Sticky-target combat is all about numbers. Skill? Find a reticle-combat game and we can talk about skills.
Originally posted by Philby Originally posted by Teala I can tell you straight up from personal experience - this is not BC, nor is it WotLK. Gone is the day of AOE'ing everything down. DPS'ers will have to learn to control their threat again or die. CC's are very necessary. Healers will have to make choices on who to keep healed if things go bad. This is not the same WoW we had - it is no longer faceroll through dungeons and instances....Blizzard turned the heat up and we're seeing who is a good player and who isn't now. The game is actually challenging once again.
This is spot on. Those saying its "being dumbed down even more" either do not play the game or cannot handlte the challenges the changes bring. I find the game better than its been since vanilla.
I agree. How effing hard is it to relearn a new rotation for clicking on buttons? I guess some people are just dumb in a "I can't adapt" sort of way.
Oh and comparing this patch with Lucas Art's directed NGE is ridicules. The NGE change the entire way SWG played as a skill based game to a level tread mill. For this patch to be even remotely like the NGE patch it would of required Blizzard to of completely change the game in fashion that would of made it 100% foreign to all established players. That did not happen at all in this case. What this patch did do was to refine the game play mechanics so as to remove the clutter in talent trees and refine and smooth out player combat even further.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
For the thousandth time, no. The game is not simplified just because pointless and useless talents were removed from the game and the good talents, the talents everyone love, were left.
Seriously, tell me how much sense it made for me to use 5 talent points for 5% more mana. It was stupid to start with and finally its been fixed.
The only people truly complaining were ones who do not know how to play their class and are mad that now they cannot rule WOW with a two buttoned, macro'ed, button smashing ignorance. Trust me, after doing a few randoms tanks who can manage threat, DPS who can watch their agro and crowd control that knows what to do will become a precious commodity.
EDIT: And Possum is correct. Addons dumb the game down, not the game itself. I raided with healers that could not play if Healbot was broken and Druids who couldn't decurse if Decursive was broken. Play the game minus the addons and we'll chat.
You don't consider the fact that you have to spend 31 points in a single tree before you can open another to be dumbed down? It completely removes any customization and tree dabbling that people did before and creates essentially 3 specs.
Removing talents isn't the issue, removing choice is.
I agree with both of you. They coulda replace the stupid talents with more potent ones, allowed specialization bonuses according to every 10 points put in a certain tree, yet still add more talent points to keep complexity in the game.
I didn't like some of the changes at first. Being lock to a certain tree ruined any chance of a hybrid pvp spec. But soon I got over it and did the best I could to get used to the new changes.
Respecing and reglyphing 7 80s is a big headache though and there are bugs that cause some annoyances. Hopefully those will be fixed and every thing will be normalized again over the coarse of the next week. New players probably won't notice though.
The game seem's to have been dumbed down, simplied, can Blizzard pull off what SOE could not with SWG it's not quite as drastic as what SOE done but damn it seems to have changed to core of the game. Wonder if it will have the same effect on it's player base as the NGE did on SWG.
You know, you can be mad because the game you're used to is going to undergo expansion changes (again), but calling it a NGE is way too extreme, comparing 4.0.1 to the NGE would be like comparing an ant with the whole Mount Everest.
And if you think you had freedom with talents, either you were never involved in "serious" raiding/PvPing, or you were in the top of the food chain, the one that was making the role model everyone of your class would follow for that role.
Aren't they adding a new system to replace the simplification of the talents?
You know, you can be mad because the game you're used to is going to undergo expansion changes (again), but calling it a NGE is way too extreme, comparing 4.0.1 to the NGE would be like comparing an ant with the whole Mount Everest.
Agreed, this is nothing compared to NGE (but the ant isn't right, more like a hill).
For the thousandth time, no. The game is not simplified just because pointless and useless talents were removed from the game and the good talents, the talents everyone love, were left.
Seriously, tell me how much sense it made for me to use 5 talent points for 5% more mana. It was stupid to start with and finally its been fixed.
The only people truly complaining were ones who do not know how to play their class and are mad that now they cannot rule WOW with a two buttoned, macro'ed, button smashing ignorance. Trust me, after doing a few randoms tanks who can manage threat, DPS who can watch their agro and crowd control that knows what to do will become a precious commodity.
EDIT: And Possum is correct. Addons dumb the game down, not the game itself. I raided with healers that could not play if Healbot was broken and Druids who couldn't decurse if Decursive was broken. Play the game minus the addons and we'll chat.
I can see what you are saying , I agree that there were too many useless talents and skills. However, cutting out a bunch of talents then giving me no choice and pigeon holing me into a certain spec gives me no choice. They may as well have just had you pick 1 spec and automatically grant you certain talents ... that's about the level of choice I have at this point, at least it is with my arcane mage. It is clear that Blizzard did indeed dumb it down, not to get rid of useless points but rather to insure players can't make one of those specs that make you link them in guild chat just for a good laugh.
That being said, I still like the changes made so far. But I do believe they have a little work to do on certain classes to make certain talents more appealing and give a little more option. And I'm sure they will, can't wait to actually have to work as a team to progress through a dungeon again , I was tired of aoe spam the first month WOTLK was out.
Comments
To be honest, your primary complaints that specs are cookie-cutter and Shadow Priest survivability in pvp is garbage don't hold a lot of water.
Looking at survivability, spending 15 points in Disc in the previous tree would have gotten the following:
Unbreakable Will: Stun, Fear, and Silence effects reduced 30%. This talent is gone altogether, which is a huge blow to all priests in pvp but it has nothing to do with the current limitations of talent trees.
Improved Inner Fire: 45% increased Inner Fire effect.
Improved Power Word: Fortitude: 30% increase to Power Word: Fortitude and 4% increase to stamina. Again, this one is completely gone so it again has nothing to do with talent tree limitations. It also may not have changed survivability at all depending on overall class balance.
Improved Power Word: Shield: increases damage absorbed by Shield by 15%.
And that's what you'd get with 15 points. You could go deeper in the tree to get to Soul Warding which would reduce PW:S cooldown by 4 seconds, but you'd have to give up Dispersion to do so.
Looking at survivability now you can get the following:
Improved Power Word: Shield: damage protection reduced to 10% from 15% in 4.0.1
Inner Sanctum (2 points): reduce all spell damage by 4% while active. This is a HUGE buff over Improved Inner Fire when fighting casters, although a nerf if fighting melee dps.
Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield by 2 seconds - AND you don't have to lose Dispersion to get this. Granted, this doesn't do you any good solo, but on a team this is exceedingly helpful.
So in terms of Shadow Priest survivability in pvp you aren't losing anything that the other specs aren't losing, and you have gained some advantages as well.
As for specs suddenly being cookie-cutter I just think you are way off base. There are lots of different ways to legitimately spend the 9 points you get after spending your 31 points in Shadow. But as you said regarding the old trees, "Most pvp Shadows had 15+ points in Disc for a REASON..." If that isn't the definition of cookie-cutter I guess I don't know what is.
Thanks, btw, for assuming that I am not a good priest. I really appreciated that implication in your post.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
1.) I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. Raids have changed to where you can do the 10 or 25 each lockout period, however, there is also the flexible raid lockout system that is supposed to let you do "Boss A" on 10-man, "Boss B" on 25, etc. I say "supposed to" just because I haven't tried it out yet. The catch I can see is that this apparently only applies to the most recent raids (ICC/RS) as a trial run through Naxx did not give the option.
2.) It's a gear based game pretty much. With reforging you can get a bit more milage out of your gear I guess so I am not sure how that will affect GS. The community has embraced GS though so I don't think it'll go away anytime soon (though there will likely be some confusion short term due to stat changes, reforging, etc)
3.) Justice Points are for more then blues. All the badge vendors now take Justice Points so you can get iLevel 264 gear with them. I purchased a 251 piece of the priest set today using JP.
Not trying to get you to return, but stating what I've seen since the patch went live as some of it doesn't seem to line up with your points.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
See ya in Guild Wars 2.. lol
Thanks but I play and live now. Not in a paper hyped future.
No matter how many lol posts you make: be prepared for another 4 years of frustration.
People will stay en mass in Azeroth 2. After seeing this patch and compared it with earlier transistions to TBC and Wotlk.
Unless you can find another development team that has the same (unlimited) resources of course.
strange to start but enjoying it now, ive only been back a week after 8 months away from a 4 yr addiction.
but reading through here im happy the bitter and twisted swg pre-cu/ nge vets now have some new friends at last........
Playing: FFXIV
Future: wishing for SWG 2, World of Warcraft Classic
Played: Most current and extinct MMO's - 18 Years in....
Interesting Fact - I own 27 Tarantula's
I have never understood bitterness towards a video game. The Cata expansion brings normal mobs (after the 80-81 starter zones) up to a challenge level that is fun for me. I need to actually play and plan for pulls. I find this a lot more fun than stomping through Northrend like a invincible hero from a tale.
As for the first point, thanks for clarifying. There was a reason I started with "I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here". I can understand your point on that, but in your response to just1, this isn't a new feature to 4.0.1 so that is why I thought you meant a modification to the pre-existing limits.
The second point was more or less agreeing with you, albeit in an slightly optimistic fashion
As far as 364+ gear, I haven't even looked at that yet, so wasn't aware. Again, reading your comments I thought it referred specifically to 4.0.1 so easy confusion.
Finally, regarding the "???" portion, you went out of your way to state you weren't planning to come back to WoW so, in an effort to avoid this devolving into an argument about whether you should or shouldn't come back, I wanted to be clear that convincing you to do so was not my intention. Only on forums can an attempt at clarity result in confusion so easily
.
Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to elaborate your points a bit further. I'll disagree that the points are cons (Aside from GS, that does sorta suck), but to each their own eh?
RE: GW2, looks and sounds interesting, but for the sake of my family time I only sub to two MMOs at a time
. I don't plan to give up EvE. Maybe Cata will convince me to go elsewhere, but so far 4.0.1 has been fun so I'm not going to hold my breath.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Ah yes, the old 'lurn 2 pla' argument combined with the 'only pros will survive' gambit.
A new low in idiocy.
No its by far not a major first. Take Wotlk the first expansion under Activision and Ghostcrawler helm despite the easymode it didn't have the level of polish BC and Vanilla used to have. Just look at the tiny updates compared to the previous expansions and even then they somehow couldn't release enough content to keep raiders happy, hell Wotlk has been cleared after what 4 days?
Telling people to try the same boss over and over just with different mechanics is Activision at its best.
I'm sure Blizzard would love to release in January, Februrary but their new boss who doesn't have a say according to Morhaime AND Vivendi are pushing for the christmas release. Now Morhaime can shove his BS about "activision hasn't changed us" whereever he wants to.
Facts are Blizzards ignorance and hostile usermanagement began after the merger! Just look at how much cool features they've removed features, I would have been willing to test such as the path of titans, or CUSTOM guild talents.
Theres also a clear line in every expansion ->small (25), smaller (25, 10), smallest (10 - soon).
There is no more its done when its done more its done, when Kotick needs another Ferrari.
People claiming that removing arrows would be a good thing have no clue what they are talking about. Arrows used to be a way to specialize and maximize your rotation, back in BC they also were great faction rewards and not just a moneysink as some of you claimed.
Its nice that they are trying to bring back difficulty but in fact dumbed down mechanics such as streamlined talent trees, less stats and 10 men raids equal rewarding are not turning up the challenge, its dumbing down the game even further. Believe me, once people are getting used to the new rotations the difficulty won't last long, because either they outgear the content or constantly crying for nerfs and finally Blizzard will give in to the easymode crowd again.
The old "quality first and from gamers for gamers" Blizzard is long gone, I bet you everything you will see lots of dumbing down in their upcoming games esp. D3 (just read Bashioks idiotic comments).
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Yeah I always had that opinion, so I can't wait to play WoW Cata.
Anyway, I think blizz sent this patch out too soon, people were screaming throughout the beta and ptr on how classes seem clunky, etc... I guess I was lucky, my mains a Hunter, and so everything seems like a positive in this patch.
-I want a Platformer MMO
I have to laugh at these ppl saying " this is a challange" "wow has only been made better" LMFAO !!
What I see is ppl sooo hooked on the game they can't think clearly. Really, in real life if someone came in your house and took half of your tv stations would this be a "challenge" to you or would you say "HEY, WTF? NOOO you are not taking HALF my choices.
Yet you'll sit here and make a total a out of yourself to try and keep ppl here so you won't be alone lol
Get used to it, wow is now REALLY a ten yr old game with little or NO choices in Charactor growth and those wishing it will pan out will see in time they too will be looking for a REAL game.
I heard someone say, "soon there'll be an add-on to play for you as you go do something else", but you'll still have to pay 15 a month. I'm thinking that day has come
1001 Laws, only one matters.
Oh that's just because people aren't use to it yet. Once they get use to watching for procced skills/spells, it'll be same ol same ol.
Is this really how people in WOW are? You don't do things a certain way and your booted regardless of your player skill? If so thankfully I don't play it. Because that is frankly, the stupidest thing I've heard. I can see in a hardcore raiding guild that requires certain talents to progress easier, but in a group? Get real. Thats just plain absurd. If you can't conquer an instance with a few skilled players regardless of talents(unless they are required, like AoC's God Slayer instance mode requiring certain feasts to be gotten) then the lack of skill in players most be really bad.
You want complicated, load up a holy priest, get into PVP and work your Chakra states while trying to heal a group. You'll have to make some fun, on-your-feet decisions.
My paladin plays very well also. I dont know what classes they "messed up" but my guild seems pretty positive all around. There are a couple having a tough time adjusting but all in all seems to be a good patch.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
The requiring an exact setup in order to play coupled with the fact of that GS addon is the reason i left and never will go back to the game. Once an add-on determines group viability over an actual person skill is the day i leave that game. That and it was boring as anything to me. I got to 45 then i was like, yeah okay. what else is there.
Glad people are enjoying it. I'll still be waiting for ToR. Currently playing UWO and will be picking up fable 3. So my time between then and now is pretty packed.
(those curious why i'm posting on boards instead of playing. I'm traveling to another island with another player and they are driving, so i can do both at once.)
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
The GearScore whores are really like that.
LF <X> pst GS/Stats./Achievement
They all want the "geared and carried" players to make their runs smooth and be "carried" themselves. I personally hate it but I feel their pain when tanking cross-server instances with under-geared players. Instead of having to do a 45min instance, people who insist they're skilled just ends up dying and most of the time wiping the group because their stats are too low. People think that their skills are enough. Sorry but in WoW, that's not enough. Dedicate yourself in actually learning the veryyyyy simple stats of WoW and you won't be denied a spot.
WoW is less about skill and more about numbers. You only need a few "skills" to be considered good in PvE. If you know when and where to move, know what should be used in your rotation, and know how to read your alerts, congratulations you now know the basic and advanced skills needed in WoW PvE. But if your hp, mana, mitigations, spell/attack power, regeneration, and haste are below the dps/heal numbers cap, your "skills" can only save you until the boss enrages and send you corpse-running.
Sticky-target combat is all about numbers. Skill? Find a reticle-combat game and we can talk about skills.
I agree. How effing hard is it to relearn a new rotation for clicking on buttons? I guess some people are just dumb in a "I can't adapt" sort of way.
Oh and comparing this patch with Lucas Art's directed NGE is ridicules. The NGE change the entire way SWG played as a skill based game to a level tread mill. For this patch to be even remotely like the NGE patch it would of required Blizzard to of completely change the game in fashion that would of made it 100% foreign to all established players. That did not happen at all in this case. What this patch did do was to refine the game play mechanics so as to remove the clutter in talent trees and refine and smooth out player combat even further.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
I simply don't like the changes. enough said.
I agree with both of you. They coulda replace the stupid talents with more potent ones, allowed specialization bonuses according to every 10 points put in a certain tree, yet still add more talent points to keep complexity in the game.
I didn't like some of the changes at first. Being lock to a certain tree ruined any chance of a hybrid pvp spec. But soon I got over it and did the best I could to get used to the new changes.
Respecing and reglyphing 7 80s is a big headache though and there are bugs that cause some annoyances. Hopefully those will be fixed and every thing will be normalized again over the coarse of the next week. New players probably won't notice though.
All and all, the water is pretty at least.
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
You know, you can be mad because the game you're used to is going to undergo expansion changes (again), but calling it a NGE is way too extreme, comparing 4.0.1 to the NGE would be like comparing an ant with the whole Mount Everest.
And if you think you had freedom with talents, either you were never involved in "serious" raiding/PvPing, or you were in the top of the food chain, the one that was making the role model everyone of your class would follow for that role.
Aren't they adding a new system to replace the simplification of the talents?
Agreed, this is nothing compared to NGE (but the ant isn't right, more like a hill).
I can see what you are saying , I agree that there were too many useless talents and skills. However, cutting out a bunch of talents then giving me no choice and pigeon holing me into a certain spec gives me no choice. They may as well have just had you pick 1 spec and automatically grant you certain talents ... that's about the level of choice I have at this point, at least it is with my arcane mage. It is clear that Blizzard did indeed dumb it down, not to get rid of useless points but rather to insure players can't make one of those specs that make you link them in guild chat just for a good laugh.
That being said, I still like the changes made so far. But I do believe they have a little work to do on certain classes to make certain talents more appealing and give a little more option. And I'm sure they will, can't wait to actually have to work as a team to progress through a dungeon again , I was tired of aoe spam the first month WOTLK was out.