World Of Warcraft

I'm thinking that owlcat is just going to be some sort of creature in the druid-themed leveling zone, dungeons, or Emerald Nightmare raid.

It's better that they have fully defined roles in a group mechanics wise, getting rid of say mass dispel for S priests and interrupt for shammies makes things an even playing field.

They are aiming for the fact that certain classes have been looked down on for missing certain things thus being shut out of groups as well as higher skill celling for certain ones. Now a healer heals and dispels, and does damage during healing downtime and DPS does damage and interrupts.

As someone who has been kicked from challenge modes because my class can't interrupt It's about damn fucking time!

The one thing that worries me though is Druid will have to pick between '10% reduced damage 15% movement speed or good damage'. That kind of thing might be way too unnecessary restrictive on the class vs other healers. Even though I like it as a concept, the others will need to be bound to something like it too for it to work. I wonder if Boomkin form will be like Cleric Stance in FFXIV.

On buffs Blizz said that Mark of the Wild was becoming a single target buff that is casted on other players like Power Infusion, other party buffs are probably being made unique cooldowns like it.

edited 21st Nov '15 2:32:06 PM by Memers

Well guess what, now you'll be getting shut out of challenge modes for not having a cooldown to throw on the top DPS!

Psh I don't see anyone taking Bear or Cat spec as heals unless they outright need the passive, which is what worries me because it's not really a choice.

Wouldn't it be better to give each spec something to offer in dungeons, instead of having the same utility based on role? It would mean some juggling about for the right composition for challenge and mythic modes, but organising a group is also part of the skill.

(You're underperforming as a rogue in dungeons if you're not staggering Kick, Kidney Shot and Gouge to interrupt everything in sight.)

The thing about dispels, though: if each class still dispels different types of the three non-magic debuffs, encounters can't be balanced around having someone dispel any one debuff, and if they can all dispel them, they might as well be one type. Whatever they do I hope they make dispels meaningful in PvP, where some classes automatically apply debuffs.

edited 21st Nov '15 4:29:44 PM by Reymma

Having serious group requirements also locks out people from challenge modes or harder content, if you can never get a group period of you are not the top of the line class then there is a serious balance problem.

Any healer should be able to fulfill any healer role no matter what, as well as dps should be able do their dps role. The second you give a class insane utility that gives an advantage over other classes then class balance is fucked, bloodlust is also a huge problem that will probably end up DPS exclusive, That is a completely different thing from healing styles though. Also now DPS can not be lazy and count on the healer to interrupt, healers do your job, dps do their job.

And at this point poisons and curses probably should go away, just a dispellable debuff category and a non-dispellable debuff category. Blizz already has in place a major and minor dispellable debuff mechanic already existing in the UI. If you have done the trash going to Socrethar you know to dispel the major debuff and leave the minor ones alone.

edited 21st Nov '15 5:17:01 PM by Memers

Beta Talent Calculator

PvP Talents

Artifact weapons

No Artifact talents yet.

Shirts are moggable cause they are giving us tattoos as shirts.

edited 22nd Nov '15 4:40:36 AM by tclittle

Looking at the new Balance talents, there is going to be a ton of theorycrafting to figure out which of those is best...

Oh boy, lets see what's neat.

• Arcane Mage: wow, Static is some sick burst.
• Fire: Controlled Burn seems a little wonky in working with infernoblasting habits
• Frost: Ray of Frost looks funky, basically spending 1/3rd of time (if no movement problems) channeling one single spell? Balancing seems problematic - it must equal your regular damage over the channel, plus extra for standing still/early interruptions. Curious to see how it'll work with Icy Floes because that may work into O Pness of a mandatory combo.
• Ele Shaman: oooh, more often elementals! ...Hold on, actual description of Fire Elemental says "lasts until cancelled"? Oh, Lava Burst charges are now in the talents. Lightning Rod seems very powerful on bosses, especially if it's as durationless as it seems atm. On the other hand, Liquid Magma is on the same tier and that melts faces off of big crowds just wonderfully. Ascendance is on 10 minute cooldown wtf.
• Enh Shaman: "Whenever you attack with your weapons enhanced, you have a chance to enhance up to 2 allies or yourself, causing attacks and spellcasts to deal additional Nature damage." what the hell. Wow that's a lot of different strikes in the ability list. Enhancement Ascendance is indefinite duration, huh. Still 10m cooldown, so if there are two ranged phases, still hosed on all except for one.
• Resto Shaman: Ascendance is double healing spreadaround, CD 2 minutes and indefinite duration. This is a new level of what the hell. Bottomless Depths seem like the awesomest talent.

I'm interested in Shadow Priest, I wonder how Insanity will turn out. Druid feels gutted. All the fun stuff I picked up is now divided into affinities or removed, Claws of Shirvallah is my favourite part of Feral. On the bright side, Balance looks interesting now.

At first I was totally meh about Melee!Survival,

but that the talents also empathize the mechanics part of Survival makes it the closest thing we will get to a Tinker class, which is fitting for my hunter who was an engineer since Classic.

I enjoy feeling OP when I have perfected my Balance rotation and other people flail with it. That is not necessarily good for the game as a whole, though. Making the spec more accessible is a laudable goal. I'm going to miss the Eclipse concept, which has existed in some form or another since patch 3.0.

edited 22nd Nov '15 1:21:23 PM by Fighteer

Btw, what are the chances of Blizz making Engineer Beast Masters to be able to tame mechs?

I'm not sure that any of us could answer that question... it's certainly a thing that they might do, if it could be balanced appropriately. It's more likely that they would let Engineers create pets for BM hunters.

edited 22nd Nov '15 1:22:20 PM by Fighteer

While it would be hella neat (and easy to balance as that's just the looks of the beasties that would still fit into same categories) it's kinda too limited if it's specifically 1spec and 1prof.

Mechanical pets made by engineers but usable by all hunters (hell, maybe a fel reaver for warlocks too) sound more possible.

edited 22nd Nov '15 1:31:32 PM by Adannor

It's pretty obvious that the numbers are screwed up by the datamining, or simply not added yet, so I'm not sure why you would infer anything about duration.

Stuff like "increase duration of your hot by 4000 seconds" is random placeholder, "lasts until cancelled" is slightly different.

Of course it's all up in the air now, but they actually wrote that which means there was some kind of idea and that's a little weird. I do not seriously expect it to stay that way.

edited 22nd Nov '15 1:40:55 PM by Adannor

Well, considering that Gnome!Hunters get a robot chicken as a starter, we might get additional mech skins.

edited 22nd Nov '15 2:24:14 PM by Kiefen

its already a thing in the beta. Why Nanomachines, son◊

Anyway even though they are removing all aura buffs altogether I think it would be nice if they could add like a damage mitigation buff for those grouped with tanks or healers, like a party wide HP aura that anyone with the spec gives.

I see they have taken the opportunity to update the icons for the rogue specs. Combat has always had the Backstab icon, yet since Cata they have not used that attack.

Outlaw is becoming very tempting with genuinely new mechanics and Bribe. It's a pity that I have always thought of my rogue as Subtelty. Subtelty meanwhile will need something to replace Slice and Dice, and that first tier is lacking, just three passives that increase your damage. But it's certainly an improvement over the current. (Rotational stealth means the second tier will actually be relevant in raids.)

Looking at priest talents... Good ideas, but I'm hesitant on a talent that kills you. I have a feeling many of these won't survive beta.

It's clearly a suggestions board that should not be relied upon (there are still major and minor glyphs after all) but I like the new gameplay they are aiming for. Where Draenor tried to be an RTS with resource management, Legion will focus on the classes, which is the game's real strength.

Updated Dwarf hunter starting bear model (looks like an actual grizzly) and a closer look at the Gnome hunter starting pet (it's a rabbit).

Ah man wish I could hear stuff here...

Cue the Monty Python jokes. ;)

Eh, I think we already got that with the Darkmoon Rabbit.

DK Mythic T19 set with Unholy artifact variation.◊

Artifact Bear forms.

Artifact Cat forms.

All of the datamined Champions. Spoilers!

Based on Li Li's icon, she is looking much more grown up.

Legendary item list.

edited 23rd Nov '15 11:42:12 AM by tclittle