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4.0.1

A Few More Random Thoughts About 4.0.1

November 3, 2010

This actually was going to be used for something else a week or so ago, but it didn’t end up going that way and I wanted the article to be read.

On the whole, it feels like Deathwing has already brought a personal cataclysm and world-changing chaos to each of my characters. I don’t mean to say that this change is all bad. Like the revamping that will hit each zone of Azeroth come Cataclysm; many talents, abilities, interfaces and more have been added, improved or plain removed from the game.

The Good:

310% flying is now in reach of everyone with 5,000 gold (4,000 rep discount). A lot of people, myself included, haven’t been lucky in getting a group to finish hard mode runs to get their 310 drake before patch.
100 Gold for dual spec. Been wanting to try healing but haven’t wanted to cough up 1,000 gold or lose that DPS main spec? At 100 gold, dual spec is now available to most players who want to diversify their characters.
No more spell ranks! Finally we have reached a point where that one alt with an off spec will no longer get spammed with RankWatch every time it joins a group. Once you learn a spell or ability it will scale as you level so you don’t have to remember to make sure the most recent version is sitting on your bars.

The Bad:

Shorter talent trees just feel a little bit empty. Not getting a point every level is a bit disappointing while leveling. Also, due to the shorter trees, characters under level 69 cannot get their “31” point talent. This leaves several classes and spec’s somewhat gimped of spells they used to have while leveling. My 64 warlock greatly misses haunt. As of 4.0.1 and before cataclysm, as level 80’s we’re unable to reach very helpful talents in other trees.
The time for healers getting dungeon queues is higher than before. The time it takes to replace a tank is also delayed as tanks are hesitant to join instances with threat being somewhat inconsistent still and a general unfamiliarity with new abilities. Although not as bad as the 40+ minute que times to get into a battle ground the first couple weeks of the patch, most times I’m trying it’s still 25-50% longer than it was before. Maybe people are just unconcerned about PVP until rated bgs?
Bugs, glitches and lag. All this is normal with large or content patches, but a couple of weeks or so after patch and I’m still experiencing random bugs. My warrior’s +5% crit buff has not displayed since patch and the inability to load dungeons at random, for examples.

(more…)

Daily

Daily Thoughts: More Paladin Changes Incoming

November 1, 2010

Here’s some changes from one of the latest beta builds. Playing around with my holy spells a little bit and checking the tool-tips, these seem to be in place on the live servers as well. So what does this mean to you Holy Paladins? 30% increased base healing from all of your main heals. Read the changes and I’ll get to some explanations after.

Holy Radiance‘s effectiveness now diminish on targets farther than X yards away.
Divine Light base healing has been increased by 30 percent, from 8,538-9,512 to 11,100-12,366.
Holy Wrath now scales from 61 percent of spellpower, up from 30 percent. Base damage is reduced by 22 percent, from 3,122 to 2,435.
Exorcism now scales from 34.4 percent of spellpower or AP, up from 15 percent. Base damage increased by 15 percent from 2,343 to 2,741.
Flash of Light base healing has been increased by 30 percent, from 5,313-5,961 to 6,907-7,750.
Lay on Hands no longer restores mana.
Holy Light base healing has been increased by 30 percent.
Beacon of Light now lasts 5 minutes, up from 1 minute.
Mastery: Illuminated Healing now absorbs 10 percent of the amount healed, up from 8 percent. Now lasts 8 seconds, up from 6 seconds. Each point of mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.25 percent, up from 1 percent.
Holy Shock base healing has been increased by 30 percent, from 3,033-3,285 to 3,943-4,271.

Outside of large base healing buffs to FoL, HL, DL, and HS, there’s a handful of other small nerfs and important buffs. Small nerf to the range on Holy Radiance, though who really cares? We want big tank heals, not weakish AoE heals on CD. We also lose the mana return from Lay on Hands. While this is technically a nerf to the spell, the new glyph allows for the spell pretty much puts it right back in, so we’re sitting good still. The biggest news here is the buff to our mastery. Not only does it absorb more than before up to 10% of the healing done from 8, it lasts two seconds longer. Each point of mastery is 25% more effective as well, potentially making it pretty worthwhile to stack some mastery through reforging.

Although Holy gets some use out of the buff to exorcism should help rets dps out pretty well with about a large increase to its scaling and base stats. Hopefully I can take these and test them out, but I’ve been a little more focused on gearing my new resto shaman. Having a lot more fun there than his other spec, enhancement. Probably some updates on that tomorrow!

Daily

4.0.1 – A New Beginning

October 13, 2010

After my first full day to dive into the latest massive content patch of World of Warcraft, I must admit, I’m finding myself a bit underwhelmed. Admittedly, a fair portion of my general disposition to the patch is a result of the abundance of glitches, bugs, and other (hopefully) soon to be fixed issues.

My main toon, a Ret/Holy Paladin is lagging so bad I can’t get a legitimate test of his new skills and damage capabilities. On the other hand, the 7 frames per second cannot be the only culprit in dropping 70% of my damage. My ungodly lag seems to be character based, as without any different addons, my Paladin on the Thrall server and my Warrior on Vek’Nilash both lag horribly, yet my Druid and Shaman on Vek both play just fine. Of my 6 level 80 toons, my opinions of how the patch affected each is as follows:

Paladin:

Significant damage and minor overall healing nerf. Holy’s new abilities and talents look fun, while so far, Retribution’s talents and new abilities feel more clunky – possibly just from the lag though. Not impressed.

Death Knight:

It’s pretty hard for me to judge my Death Knight’s new talent trees and such because of the massive change. I was blood spec dps and frost spec tank, now I’m unable to play either since blood is tanking only and frost can no longer tank. Purely from a dummy test, 2-handed frost pretty fun and probably similar dps to what I could produce as blood. Probably alright.

Warrior:

The only spec I’ve played my warrior is fury. Fury has taken a decent damage nerf that I anticipate seeing fixed either soon or at cataclysm launch. The new abilities and procs are a little more engaging though. I’m looking forward to seeing him perform better. One of my good friends has gotten a chance to play test Arms spec and the dps is competitive now, which is nice for warriors to have another PVE option. A little excited.

Druid:

Balance druids hit HARD. All-in-all, I’d guess a 15-20% damage increase from what I was previously doing. The new eclipse system is a little easier to understand and plan out which could possibly make it more useful while questing or in dungeons. Feral cat damage plummeted comparatively and feral bear form lost armor. Although I haven’t tried tanking on bear yet, I’m hearing good things. Suspicious.

Shaman:

I must confess, I don’t like my enhancement shaman much. It doesn’t feel like it changed much from before 4.0.1, so if you liked the way they played, you’ll probably still enjoy them. As for me, I see myself switching to Elemental or Resto pretty soon. Damage output has stayed about the same as far as I can tell. Unenthusiastic.

Hunter:

I’m pretty nervous about taking my hunter into an instance. The new focus system isn’t as rogue-ish feeling as I had worried it might be but, it’s going to take a lot of getting used to. Damage looks good and many of the new abilities, such as the new call pet/stable, seem like pretty good quality of life buffs. Hopeful.

Well, that’s my 15 minutes for today. Tomorrow my alliance rogue will hit 70 and I’ll talk a little about PVP on him and how I’m making a killing on selling glyphs.

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