Coming changes are catacly–no! I won’t do it!!
You can’t make me make the “cataclysmic” pun… I refuse! Damn you Blizz and your siren song of easy jokes.
Having eagerly digested all the information from Blizzcon that I could, I’m happy to report the following game changes. (And, by report, I mean regurgitate everything you’ve already read.)
Block is changing
Block rating and value is being folded into one stat. Now instead of having x chance to block for y, you’ll have x chance to block for a steady percent of damage reduction. What that number is, we don’t know yet. Great chance for raid bosses, but kind of crappy for heroics and outgeared content.
Defense is gone
Gone baby, gone. Now all tanks get a crit reduction talent a la Survival of the Fittest. I’m mostly in favor of this, because it’s a huge pain trying to maximize stamina and avoidance while staying crit capped. But then again, juggling is half the fun of the mini-game we call raid gearing.
New ways to advance our characters
Blizz isn’t adding another tier of talents (no 61 point talents) so all we get are 5 more talent points to spend as we will. SotP I guess would be the obvious choice if we had those extra 5 points with today’s menu of options. However, the trees are probably going to be shifted a little with some things moved to the new mastery system (as I understand it) so talents are less “improve x by y%” and more “when you do x, y might happen”.
Path of the Titans is one new way we’ll be advancing our toons, choosing a Titanic cult (I call the Cult of DiCaprio, /swoon) and researching “ancient glyphs” to plug into spots we research. MMO-Champ has two example glyphs that are tank oriented, one giving a passive 4% damage reduction, and one that makes a new Divine Sacrifice-like spell. Pretty cool shift.
So many questions…
Will there still be tank weapons or will we be sharing weapons with dps? How much will the prot tree change? Will there be a “tanking” Path of the Titan to focus on?
The beta will be interesting.
Armory Feed
Even more so than with Wrath, I am willing to sell my first-born for a beta invite. So many new gameplay/character customization systems to test out and experiment with.
I’m very excited with the new expansion. It’s like blizz made a list with all the QQ they received during the last 4 or 5 years and decided to mend all those little falws… at once!
What this means for tanking? I don’t know yet. But I’m sure of something: They’re priorizing playstyle as a defining factor for choosing talents. I hope this helps people to choose what talents they feel funny or cool for their specs, and as a result we could see more variety in talent selections, rather than the army of clones with cookie cutter specs that you see everywhere.
What cataclysm means for Paladins specifically? Holy Cows. something that I’ve been waiting for since that lonely quest chain they added in 3.2.
Noble Tauren, Welcome to the brotherhood of Paladins.
Still waiting on the AD nerf….and I really had to laugh at the “ARP is too mathy” statement. Regardless of what they change, unless it becomes Hello Kitty, there’s going to be those of us that math out everything. Like you said – it’s the mini game we play.
I think the reforging will really help that mini game out – that way I’m not say, 40 points over expertiese cap while being 50 under the hit….
ArPen is so mathy that the devs had to explain the theorycrafters how it works. Yes, it’s true.
“ArPen is so mathy that the devs had to explain the theorycrafters how it works”
Pure win.
Anyways, I’m wondering if the tanking classes will get the chance of a “DPS” spec withing the very prot tree, very similar to the way Feral druids go with Bear and Cat forms.
I imagine that while weapons wont have Defense on them anymore they will still have dodge / parry at the very least, making those things wasted itemization to the DPSers…
Unless reforging allows them to remove the dodge and replace it will crit or something, if they can do that though we can steal their DPS weapons to the same end.
I think we will lose dodge/ parry on weapons, and see a lot of “multipurposed” weapons with Hit and Expertise to be useable as dps and tanking weapons, and we will get dodge and parry from primary stats like dodge from agi and parry from… ermm I know! SPIRIT!
I would be very surpised to share weapons with DPS when only Frost DPS DKs would steal one-handers with str and stam on. I think we’ll simply see the defense removed and little else changed…
But yeah, going to take a break for a while, considering Colliseum is faceroll and it’s about time I did. But looking forward to Cataclysm and what it’ll bring. Worgen FTW, imo. :_)
Coliseum may be a faceroll but it is going to get you geared for Icecrown… Coming back once IC comes out you’re going to be a tier behind in gear and not get to raid it.
As much as I hate how easy it is, I am finding it a guilty pleasure to enjoy the loot pinata that it is.
Plus I do think it is FUN albeit not very difficult.
considering how much effort is being put into ICC and accompanying 5man dungeons, plus how much work they have put in so far for cataclysm… 3.2 is a filler content patch (mostly).
For sure, the regular 10/25 raids are faceroll but how many people have completed tribute runs worth talking about? how many people have the i272 cloaks? the hard mode achievements?
in its own way, 3.2 is a very good patch with lots of things to do and see, the least of which is the groundwork blizzard is laying down for 4.0
as a lot of people all over have said, 3.2 is a gear reset with the ease of gearing up from heroics and other dungeons. Also, imo, the gear i have seen so far seems to be mostly well itemized regarding stats, none of the stupid +90 stam on the healadin helm from crusade rep or the crafted dps helm which has loads of str/hit and no other stats…. gearing was easy pre 3.2 but the itemization wasnt spectacular.. the current gear is
(I call the Cult of DiCaprio, /swoon)
You frighten me…..
@Rhidach
26 August 2009 at 8:38 am #
Get it, a “Titanic” cult… Titani–eh… my humor is wasted on you.