WotLK beta infos. Options

[Oddies da Nerfed]

Not only am I in WAR beta, but I managed to end up in the WotLK beta as well. With WAR servers down in preparation for 4.1 goodies I have had more time to play with lich king. Most my experiences sofar are with my now 61 death knight. Sofar the DK has been quite fun with each tree being useful and varied from eachother. Hard to pick just one to roll with. I will throw some mroe info in there about DK and northrend as I get time to write stuff up, because play time > write time.

[Oddies da Nerfed]

Screenies!

My DK with some of the army behind me that is involved with the siege on Lights Hope.



Riding a frostwyrm (get to control it) and nuking scarlet crusaders.


Mmm undead archers.


The one true king!

[Scan_Man]

Damn I can't wait. How you get in these betas man lol. I like a lot of the changes made for WoTLK. Though they gave Druids a normal rez spell. Not sure how I feel about that yet. On one hand its cool they making so you don't have to bring specific classes to raids. But I think its a bit over powered for Druid to have both a normal rez and a battle rez. And its funny how they elminated down ranking spells by making all previous ranks cost the same amount of mana and cost more than your highest rank of that spell.

[Oddies da Nerfed]

Blizz is trying out some radical changes with Lich King. Seems WAR did get them motivated a bit finally. Inscriptions isn't bad but its not badass either. Pretty much a 1 per guild kinda deal. The glyphs are nice for some classes, pure ass for others, but more on this later later. They are trying to make all specs useful in all areas of the game, ie arms fury and prot wars all useful in 5 mans, 10 mans, 25 mans, and pvp/arenas. I view this as admirable, but doomed to failure. Its progress can be seen the most with DK who were more or less destroyed over the last 2 patches when they tuned damage downward of up to 50% on basically every ability but boil blood.

Northrend is well done, with some decent story and good quests to drag you about. The final two zones are just going in however so no clue on icecrown and what not. Item scaling looks to be putting tanks at the 35k hp mark high end. They removed crushing blows but the def scale for crits is nuts almost requiring non druids to gem for def. Druids can use talents giving them a massive edge there. DK tanking style is, despite the rather close release date, almost going to need some heavy reworking. lower hp/mitigation than other tanks with higher avoidance is a healers nightmare, on top of that DK is looking to need the most hit and expertise rating of all tanks leading to some massive stat allocation issues.

Class Balance is trash right now. Several classes got nerf bats similar to the DK one, while others got boosts that really didn't need them. Till they finish the number passes and rework (or finally finish talents that aren't even in game yet) figuring out balance is pointless.

Trades. Usual goodies added to each, really haven't paid much attention. Inscriptions is for letting enchanters finally sell their enchants on the ah, as well as glyphs. Rest got some nice toys with engineering getting a motorcycle. Gathering skills are now providing bonus skills, mining offers a + to max health, while herb is a self heal.

Wintergrasp. Got bored pretty fast. This is Blizzards attempt at WAR, and while it is a vast improvement for pvp in wow WAR is better in this regard. No other real changes to any existing pvp aspects sans pve to pvp server transfers.

Glyps n shit.
Glyph of Swiftmend
Major Glyph
Classes: Druid
Requires Level 40
Use: Your Swiftmend ability no longer consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect from the target.

Glyph of Avenger's Shield
Major Glyph
Classes: Paladin
Requires Level 50
Use: Your Avenger's Shield hits 2 fewer targets, but for 100% more damage.

Glyph of Felguard
Major Glyph
Classes: Warlock
Requires Level 50
Use: Increases your Felguard's physical damage by 20%.

Glyph of Healing Wave
Major Glyph
Classes: Shaman
Use: Your Healing Wave also heals you for 20% of the healing effect when you heal someone else.

vs shit like.

Glyph of Blood Boil
Major Glyph
Classes: Death Knight
Requires Level 55
Use: Lowers the damage of your Blood Boil by 20% but causes it to slow affected targets for 5 sec.
(this is a tanking ability, dont need a fucking snare)

Glyph of Dark Command
Major Glyph
Classes: Death Knight
Requires Level 55
Use: Increases the chance for your Dark Command ability to work successfully by 8%.
(woot 8% better chance to taunt the target)

Glyph of Death and Decay
Major Glyph
Classes: Death Knight
Requires Level 55
Use: Your Death and Decay spell deals 10% additional damage but the cooldown is increased by 10 sec.
(instead of 14 dps itll do 15 dps (at lvl 80) with a 30s cooldown, NICE!)


Overall, its not a bad expansion. Blizz is finally realizing they cant just sit on their ass anymore and make little change to evolve the game. However in the end, this expansion is more of the same.

[Oddies da Nerfed]

Upcomfing DK changes. Pretty much what needed to be fixed was, only thing missing is a change to blade barrier.


DPS changes

-- Death Coil, Frost Strike, Death and Decay damage increased.
-- Strikes that scale with diseases changed so that the weapon damage, not just the flat damage, scales with the disease.
-- Double rune abilities damage increased: Obliterate, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike, Death Strike.
-- Unholy Blight no longer causes Blood Plague, but had its cooldown removed.
-- Several attack power coefficients increased.
-- Bloody Strikes and Scent of Blood swapped places.
-- Bladed Armor now turns armor into Strength (which then is turned into Parry).
-- Master of Ghouls' Ghoul now lasts until killed or similarly dismissed.
-- Ravenous Dead no longer affects Ghoul duration, but grants your rotting little buddy 60% more of your Str and Sta. (Stam goes from 30% of yours to ~50% of yours. Strength goes from 100% to 160%.)

Tanking changes

-- Frost Presence now grants 10% total health in addition to its current bonuses.
-- Blood Gorged, Rage of Rivendare and Tundra Stalker all grant 1/2/3/4/5 expertise.
-- Veteran of the Third War increased to 6/6/6 Str / Sta / Exp to match warriors.
-- Will of the Necropolis no longer grants expertise and now lowers Anti-Magic Shell cooldown.
-- Pestilence has no target limit. (It still has a radius limit.) Pesilence glyph now increases area.
-- Death and Decay no longer has a cower component, but a glyph can add that back.
-- Frigid Dreadplate now has a 100% chance for 2/4/6% miss but only on the DK.

Rewards for the selfless buffer

-- Abom's Might now grants 2% Strength at all times.
-- Improved Icy Talons now grants 2% haste at all times.
-- Ebon Plaguebringer now grants 3% crit at all times.

Runeforge changes

-- Lichbane now does 2% weapon damage as Fire, and double damage to undead.
-- Swordbreaking and Swordshattering add disarm duration reduction.
-- Spellbreaking and Spellshattering add silence duration reduction.
-- Cinderglacier reduced to 2 charges.

No doubt many awesome small tweaks I am forgetting.

[Scan_Man]

Nice info dude!

I read today they added "phasing' to the game. Basically, it makes the world seem more dynamic because the world will change bassed on your progression. You are actually in a seperate copy of the world, kind like a world instance, than others who have not made as far as you. I think this is awesome. Its also one of the best features Lord of the Rings Online (first done somewhat in Guild Wars) has. However:

"If you progress in a story to a new phase, you are removed from the previous one making you unable to see or help players in the earlier version. So far most areas that use phasing technology have 2 or 3 phases, and each of them are sufficiently long (or short) to make sure there is enough players in each phase to allow player interaction."

Seems Blizzard has not fully looked at what Lord of Rings Online did to fix not being able to go back and help players in the earlier version. What Turbine did was allow you to tag along with players if you group (level 1-5 intro being the exception) with them if you have completed a part they have not. Also there is an NPC to allow you to jump to any part of the epic quest line you have completed so you can help friends catch up.

Overall though I really like this feature because if its any like on Lord of the Rings Online it will really give a boost to the level of storyline immersion.

[Oddies da Nerfed]

Only place I have seen it added sofar is the DK starting area. It is possible they will add it to ice crown shall see. The area chats are still linked for questions/talking. It does certainly add a nice flair to the DK starting areas. Now if they just tell us why we have to go to outland beyond the fact we just need 10 more levels for northrend.

[Oddies da Nerfed]

Epic quest: Blizz decided to make the horde story a bit more entertaining in WotLK.

Varimathras and Putress betray and slay saurfang the younger and lord fordragon at the gates to icecrown.
What evolves is a war, and an invasion of undercity. Horde go to slay Varimathras and retake UC. The alliance go to slay Apothacary Putress.

This appears to be the second instance of the new phasing engine. And what looks to be a fucking epic battle, attempting it now on premade DK.

[Ellianna]

man im gonna cry ... i've had my invitiation for the beta for WotLK for prob 3 weeks but due to internet issues havent been able to d/l shit. i killed my dial-up and got a blackberry + tmobile internet, and while that works just fine it seems i cant d/l anything through the blizzard d/l'er and i cant figure out what's causing the problem, and im sick of dealing with the dumb asses in tech support, so right now i'm sitting at the library trying to d/l *crosses fingers*

[Scan_Man]

Epic quest: Blizz decided to make the horde story a bit more entertaining in WotLK.

Varimathras and Putress betray and slay saurfang the younger and lord fordragon at the gates to icecrown.
What evolves is a war, and an invasion of undercity. Horde go to slay Varimathras and retake UC. The alliance go to slay Apothacary Putress.

This appears to be the second instance of the new phasing engine. And what looks to be a fucking epic battle, attempting it now on premade DK.

Wow! That sounds awesome! I would like to know how it all turns out.


Edit: OMG! Looked at some video on it. Looks just like what LOTRO been doing. Having epic battles take place at regular areas or cities that are instanced as part of a quest line is really refreshing. I think having instances be retricted to dungeons is old. But with this new system it could potentially make a new instanced battles any time they want.

This post has been edited by Scan_Man: Sep 22 2008, 07:06 PM