Warcraft Experience

IGN has published a really good article that takes a peek at the upcoming changes. This is a must check out…

Someone at Mythic once said (paraphrased) that you knew an MMO was balanced when all the character classes were complaining at the same volume. Although World of Warcraft doesn’t have nearly as many character classes, its talent system effectively allows for sub-classes. A priest, for example, can specialize in healing or damage, while a warrior can specialize in two-handed weapons, a sword and board, or dual-wielding one-handed weapons. And over the course of WoW’s lifetime, each character class has gotten a periodic “talent review” by the dev team. Sometimes the changes are small. Sometimes, as with the adjustment to the mage talents outlined below, the differences are significant enough to waive the in-game fee for talent point distribution. What follows is directly from Blizzard, minus the notations in italics that highlight the differences between the old and the new versions of the mage talent trees.

In a nutshell: Nine talent points have been freed up, thanks to several talents being changed from five increments to three or four. Arcane Explosion is now instant cast, and the talent that used to reduce its casting time now adds a critical hit boost. Evocation will be buyable from a trainer. A couple abilities have been removed, but those extra nine talent points mean you can max out a few abilities that were previously inaccessible. It may be advisable at this point to let warriors purchase Tactical Mastery at a trainer.

Read the Rest…

Eyonix is always full of good news:

When patch 1.11 releases, Innervate will become a base ability for all Druids, trainable at level 40. Once the patch is live, any Druid who formerly had the Innervate talent will instead have the “Swiftmend” talent, which has been added to the Druid Restoration tree, replacing Innervate as the 31 point talent. This new ability will consume a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect to produce an instant heal.

Drysc from Blizzard is sharing some information about more bag space in 1.11. Have a listen…

I thought I would let you all know that we have recently posted information relating to stack increases in 1.11, a good portion of which affect rogues specifically.

Topics relating to inventory management, such as space limitation and item stacking often present themselves on our boards. Which is why we wanted to take the time to inform you all of some changes that we’re planning for the next content patch; beyond the implementation of key-rings, discussed here:

# Leather (Light, Medium, etc.) will stack to 20
# Hides (Light, Medium, etc.) will stack to 10
# Cured Hides (Light, Medium, etc.) will stack to 20
# Enchanting Shards (Small Brilliant, etc.) will stack to 20
# Enchanting Dusts (Strange, Illusion, etc.) will stack to 20
# Rogue Poisons (Instant, Crippling, etc.) will stack to 20
# Rogue Poison Reagents (Essence of Pain, Deathweed, etc.) will stack to 20
# Flash Powder will stack to 20

Additional improvements in this area are always a possibility, but currently what’s detailed above is the change that was decided upon after careful evaluation.

Eyonix tells us that they are re-evaluating the mechanics of consumable items:

We’re actually in the process of re-evaluating the mechanics of consumable items in the game so that they work in a more intuitive manner. The goal during this evaluation as it applies to most non-equipable items with right-click abilities is to streamline them into an associated category. The outcome should allow an item of a particular category to only trigger the shared cooldown of all other items in the same category.

Specific details of this improvement will follow after we’ve concluded our design efforts.

Drysc from Blizzard wanted to get this out regarding the Rogues. Have a listen….

I wanted to create a post to provide some additional information regarding rogue-specific issues that players have reported since the release of 1.10. I want to thank Bluur for his bug thread, it has provided a place for many players to view common issues, as well as report their own. I do want to reiterate that the Bug Report forum is the proper avenue for bug reporting; however the thread being placed here has gone a different direction, to help other players see that they are not alone on an issue they may be experiencing. I do appreciate the work being put into such a thread, not only from Bluur, but from everyone reporting the issues they are seeing.

Let’s get down to brass tacks.

The issue many of you are discussing, Seal Fate and the lack of an additional combo point during specific critical strikes, is being fixed in an upcoming patch. We are aware of the urgency this issue has for many players and we are doing our best to ensure it is resolved as soon as possible.

In addition to the above issue, the delay in combo point addition from talents is also seeing some attention in an upcoming patch.

We are investigating multiple issues with Vanish that have been reported, one such issue with Vanish that is also being resolved in an upcoming patch, immediately after using Vanish an in-process melee attack should no longer continue to strike, leaving the rogue in stealth.

Read more… »

Eyonix from Blizzard wanted to get this statement out regarding the Warrior class…

Our Quality Assurance department has extensively tested and verified that the Warrior talent, Unbridled Wrath is in-fact functioning properly, generating rage as per its design. It is not however, displaying in the combat log. The combat display issue associated with this talent will be fixed in an upcoming patch. For now, please rest assured that this ability is working exactly as it’s intended to work.

This is a very insightful article on how they review the class talents and why they change what they do. Personally the only paragraph that really jumped out at me over my morning coffee was this one, but I could be a wee bit biased:

Can you tell us which class will receive the next talent update and maybe also add a little bit about what your plans are?

Well, right now we’re in the process of working on the talent review for the mage. Some of the aspects we’re looking to improve include easing a mage’s downtime between fights a bit and making a Fire/Frost build a more viable combination than it is right now. (Currently most magi feel that having anywhere between 11 to 21 points in the Arcane is a “must”).
To accomplish this, it’s likely that we’ll take a few of the “must have” abilities from Arcane, and make them available to all magi. (Some likely candidates are the talents Evocation and Improved Arcane Explosion.) From there, we’ll also look at ways for players to be able to create interesting combos between the Fire and Frost trees. Hopefully, these changes will further polish the general play experience of magi while also opening some new, interesting talent builds.

In issue 6 of “World of Warcraft Insider”, an interview was conducted with the lead designer of Blizzard, Tom “Kalgan” Chilton. The insider team interviewed him about the class talent review process and why there are changes and improvements to the various class trees, especially on what happened between patches that made the paladin and priest talent trees change drastically. It is good to see the perspective of an important person in WoW to get an idea on why they are changing and balancing these talent skill trees. Read the rest of the article!

Did you ever want to see what each race’s dances looked like but never had the time to check them all out? All aficionados of traditional Azerothian folk dance are in luck: they’ve created a spectacular new dancing page where you can watch the dances for each playable race and gender in the game. They have also made these animated images available for download
so you can use* them on your own web pages and forums. Check out the dancing page now.

*Before doing so, please make sure you read the second question in their Legal FAQ