Interview with Jeff Kaplan.

[Frag]

Curse Gaming interviews 'Tigole'

Discuss.

He needs some NoDoze. -_-

You learn from Warhammer, yes? Yes!

2.3 gives fleshed out sets of gear from badges! Tier sets from badges? Why not!

He looked really happy when the interviewer asked about hairstyles didn't he? :o

Re-tooling the xp curve from 20-60 is good for the longevity of the game.

Heh, everyone's crying about the little idea Jeff mentioned at the end there to give hunter's a boost in arena, but all I heard in my head was... So much for rogues. :lol:

[Quark]

Heh, everyone's crying about the little idea Jeff mentioned at the end there to give hunter's a boost in arena, but all I heard in my head was... So much for rogues. :lol:

*Sigh* 20 bucks says using it will instantly knock off Wound Poison, instead of just having the strongest one be active while both remain, thus making another class I can't use a poison with.

[vor_lord]

Fixing holy priest and prot warrior solo capability with itemization... ???

Does this mean that we'll see talent tree specific gear restrictions? Such as:

Classes: Priest
Requires 31 points in Holy Tree

[Bolty]

Fixing holy priest and prot warrior solo capability with itemization... ???

The rumors are that +heal gear itemization will be changed to include some +dmg. This throws a bone to healers such that the raid gear they win can actually have some use outside of raiding. How they do this without breaking PvP, I'm not sure. Maybe something that adds +dmg to mobs but not vs players?

-Bolty

[Lissa]

The rumors are that +heal gear itemization will be changed to include some +dmg. This throws a bone to healers such that the raid gear they win can actually have some use outside of raiding. How they do this without breaking PvP, I'm not sure. Maybe something that adds +dmg to mobs but not vs players?

-Bolty

I could see this working in both directions for healers/off-spec healers. Make gear that would normally have 100% itemization points spent towards +healing instead split it like a 60%/40% or 65%/35% +healing and +damage/healing thus getting not quite as much +healing as if 100% of the points were spent in just +healing, but still giving healers some +damage in their healing gear.

Normally (this is for simplicity sake) you see that you get about 1.75 Healing to each point of damage/healing. So say an item would normally have had +87 Healing. Now if you use something like the above split, you might see +53 Healing and +20 damage/healing (thus +73 Healing and +20 damage).

[Icebird]

I believe there is a craftable leather set which has both +spell damage/healing and straight +healing. I could see something similar being popular for priests. I think itemization would have to offer a bit more than just more damage though. A bonus like "70% chance to avoid interruption while casting Holy Fire or Smite" would probably be the most useful change they could make.

Chris

[vor_lord]

The rumors are that +heal gear itemization will be changed to include some +dmg. This throws a bone to healers such that the raid gear they win can actually have some use outside of raiding.

Well this would be stupid, really stupid. They're going to gimp my raid healing gear so I can get a little +dmg on it? For soloing or DPSing I'd still be better off wearing real +dmg gear that I can get (blues or raid castoffs) than this.

I could see this working in both directions for healers/off-spec healers. Make gear that would normally have 100% itemization points spent towards +healing instead split it like a 60%/40% or 65%/35% +healing and +damage/healing thus getting not quite as much +healing as if 100% of the points were spent in just +healing, but still giving healers some +damage in their healing gear.

Normally (this is for simplicity sake) you see that you get about 1.75 Healing to each point of damage/healing. So say an item would normally have had +87 Healing. Now if you use something like the above split, you might see +53 Healing and +20 damage/healing (thus +73 Healing and +20 damage).

Dumb, dumb, dumb. All this does is ruin the healing gear. This is the worst idea I've heard yet. I really hope this isn't what they have in mind.

[vor_lord]

I believe there is a craftable leather set which has both +spell damage/healing and straight +healing.
I could see something similar being popular for priests.

I can't see this being anything but a shard, let alone popular.

Such a set is just so marginally useful (at least for PvE) that it leaves me speechless that people think this is a serious idea. On the rare fights where I might want to have a hybrid set of gear, I can mix and match pieces to create my own. And I will already have those pieces in my inventory.

I think itemization would have to offer a bit more than just more damage though. A bonus like "70% chance to avoid interruption while casting Holy Fire or Smite" would probably be the most useful change they could make.

Now that would actually help (at least the Smite part, no one casts holy fire soloing except for the opener). But then you'd be tied to some overpowered set bonus forever, kind of like how 3 pc. transcendence was.

[Warlock]

I can't see this being anything but a shard, let alone popular.

Such a set is just so marginally useful (at least for PvE) that it leaves me speechless that people think this is a serious idea. On the rare fights where I might want to have a hybrid set of gear, I can mix and match pieces to create my own. And I will already have those pieces in my inventory.
Now that would actually help (at least the Smite part, no one casts holy fire soloing except for the opener). But then you'd be tied to some overpowered set bonus forever, kind of like how 3 pc. transcendence was.

Druid tier Feral gear already does something similar (they all include caster stats which are of zero value to a tanking Druid and limited value even to Cats; fortunately the caster sets are pure). Hopefully the 'free damage' gear will be more attractive to healers than the Feral sets are to Ferals. Something like 'replace all +healing with +damage; increase coefficients on all healing spells so that +damage is as effective per item point as +healing was' would be optimum.

[Taelas]

Changing healing gear so it grants a percentage of its +healing to +damage won't ruin healing gear... as long as they do not actually reduce the +healing.

I think they are changing how +healing works, similar to how they changed how much stamina is worth.

[Quark]

Well this would be stupid, really stupid. They're going to gimp my raid healing gear so I can get a little +dmg on it? For soloing or DPSing I'd still be better off wearing real +dmg gear that I can get (blues or raid castoffs) than this.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. All this does is ruin the healing gear. This is the worst idea I've heard yet. I really hope this isn't what they have in mind.

No, I'm pretty sure they don't mean to make healing gear worse at healing. It means either one of two things. They abuse the ^(3/2) rule to have gear with the same amount of +healing and some +dmg mixed in (since +dmg adds to healing and the scaling factor of costs means eventually 1 point of +dmg is cheaper than 1 point of +healing). Or, the simply change +healing to give some minor, free, addition to damage as part of its core ability.

[Bolty]

No, I'm pretty sure they don't mean to make healing gear worse at healing. It means either one of two things. They abuse the ^(3/2) rule to have gear with the same amount of +healing and some +dmg mixed in (since +dmg adds to healing and the scaling factor of costs means eventually 1 point of +dmg is cheaper than 1 point of +healing). Or, the simply change +healing to give some minor, free, addition to damage as part of its core ability.

I still don't see how this can be balanced for PvP. Everywhere else in the game, it doesn't matter much; I don't think anyone would consider it unfair to throw healers a bone for soloing gear. A happy healer is a good thing. :) But in PvP, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Cleoboltra now has 436 resilience and ~1300 +heal, making her a defensive PvP monster. If you then give her +600 damage (just a number I popped out of thin air; I have no idea how much +dmg Blizzard is thinking of adding), you're unbalancing things waaaaaaay out of whack. Just the difference in Shadowfiend mana return alone would change up arena PvP significantly. In all +heal gear, my Shadowfiend returns 150-200 mana per hit on an enemy. In my DPS soloing gear set, around +870 damage, that becomes 400-450 mana per hit. That's a difference of thousands of mana. Or for another scenario, you can't let me toss a Flash Heal on someone for 2400 and then turn around and Mind Blast someone for 1000 - that's just broken.

This is all theorycraft, though. Nobody knows exactly what Blizzard will do yet except insiders. I'd always assumed that the reason Blizzard never had +damage on +heal gear was for PvP reasons. I don't see how you can balance it properly.

And as Quark said, the talk from Blizzard wasn't that they'd lower +heal to fit in some +dmg, it was that they'd add some "free" +dmg to healer gear so that healers walking around in T6 don't have to change gear to blues when soloing. Oh, the humanity. :)

-Bolty

[vor_lord]

Changing healing gear so it grants a percentage of its +healing to +damage won't ruin healing gear... as long as they do not actually reduce the +healing.

That's true. I'm not sure how this will work with their itemization formulas. It still doesn't mean anyone will wear it when soloing.

I think they are changing how +healing works, similar to how they changed how much stamina is worth.

This has been needed for a long time -- but I'm not sure how they will fix it.

[Monkey]

Wow, the Death Knight information is crazy:
1. No more Death Knight quest at level 80, you'll just have to hit a level (say, 70 or 72)
2. No limit on how many Death Knights you can create once it's been "unlocked" by one character
3. No limit on where you create your Death Knight

This just confirms that the Death Knight will be the alt of choice. People who want to switch to a PvP server from a PvE server, people who want to play with RL friends on another server, people who want a tank alt, people who want a DPS alt for farming will all roll Death Knights. "4 DK LFG 1 Healer" is going to be a very real problem.

Guess I'll go respec resto;)

[Frag]

A valid concern Monkey, the call & response in the video of "A THOUSAND OK?" "Sir, yes sir it is, sir!". So if HALF of the entire server you're on rerolls DK the development team would be happy? I've already decided to replace my rogue with a DK providing I'm still playing WoW when WLC hits, so your estimation of it being "the alt of choice" rings true to myself.

It's going to be an interesting event to watch, far more interesting than the debacle that was Jedi.

~Frag B)

[oldmandennis]

If you listen closely to what was said about DK's, they are just moving the major commitment part of it to the DK itself. There is still going to be a substantial effort to get DK's into the world.

The old system:
Level to 80 on your original toon
Do a long questline on your original toon
Level DK from 55->80

New system:
Do a long questline on your DK
Level DK from 55->80

Moving the questline from the original toon to the DK is a good idea. It naturally is the place to put L2P quests in for a class where you skipped all the learning you would normally do from 1->55. Removing the requirement for leveling to 80 on a different toon is a good idea. Kaplan is right, leveling a toon in a big hurry to 80 only to abandon it makes little sense. To the extent removing that roadblock reduces the difficulty of obtaining a DK, you can always pump up the difficulty of the gateway quest.

I'd want to look at the actual abilities of the DK before committing to one. I mean I'm pretty sure I'll get through the intro quests just to see what the hubub is about, but I would guess that most people who are serious about maintaining multiple toons already have at least 2 at 70. For example, many people are going saying it will be the easy mode farming character. What if the rune system has a bunch of downtime?

"4 DK LFG 1 Healer" - probably going to be a problem, if for no other reason then they are new and everybody will want one. I wouldn't spec resto for this phenomenon - if you want to go bear or boomkin you will have 15 levels, + a years worth of gear, + a lengthy questline head start on the DK's.

[mandydax]

This is all theorycraft, though. Nobody knows exactly what Blizzard will do yet except insiders. I'd always assumed that the reason Blizzard never had +damage on +heal gear was for PvP reasons. I don't see how you can balance it properly.

Also, they're really just in the preliminary stages of developing the new expansion. They'll have a ton of Beta Testing like they did for TBC, and there will be people like Faxmonkey showing exactly how easily abused things can be. Like for the mage's Spellsteal, they didn't originally limit it to prevent stacking of buffs and they didn't put a maximum time limit on the buffs, so he'd get 5 or 6 stacks of the Astromages Solarburn (AoE periodic fire damage ~750/3 sec each), then go into AV, blink into the middle of a bunch of Alliance, Frost Nova, and Ice Block. He's immune to them, but he does about 1500 DPS to anyone near him. Everyone seemed really unsure about a lot of the spells that were announced for TBC, but we all take them for granted now.

[oldmandennis]

<stuff>

Heh. I thought you were talking about the death knights, until I looked at the quote, but it applies to that too. <Exception> If they rush the raid game again, it is fairly unlikely that they come out balanced. Either Nilhium will cheese all the early raid content with a legion of DK's, or there will be a massive QQ storm as all the early adopters who rushed their DK to 80 get turned away from 25 man raids that are already overfull.

[Monkey]

"4 DK LFG 1 Healer" - probably going to be a problem, if for no other reason then they are new and everybody will want one. I wouldn't spec resto for this phenomenon - if you want to go bear or boomkin you will have 15 levels, + a years worth of gear, + a lengthy questline head start on the DK's.

hehe--I was just joshin' about the resto bit!

Though, DKs will be less behind than you think:
1. Anyone with a level 55 character will be able to create a Death Knight on any server on day 1 of WotLK.
2. Death Knights start at level 55.
3. Blizzard is resetting the gear curve (again) in WotLK

And I would be surprised if that lengthy questline didn't give experience.

In my mind, the only drawbacks to rolling a Death Knight are:
1. You have to reach 55 with a character before WotLK
2. You'll be 25 levels from the cap instead of 10
3. You can't heal or res

It's so crazy imbalanced that I keep thinking there's got to be another Hero Class coming in WotLK that they haven't told us about yet. But they're acting like the DK is the only party in town, so... I, for one, welcome our new Death Knight overlords?

[oldmandennis]

Though, DKs will be less behind than you think:
1. Anyone with a level 55 character will be able to create a Death Knight on any server on day 1 of WotLK.
2. Death Knights start at level 55.
3. Blizzard is resetting the gear curve (again) in WotLK

55 is still a ways from 70. I found the gear reset thing to be overblown in my experience. My druid, which had pretty trashy feral gear (I decided to switch mains at the last minute) replaced everything almost instantaneously. But my shaman, who had a wide range of raid gear up to 2.5 and several PvP epics kept most of the good pieces until he hit 70. It definitely made 60-65 much easier and faster when a SS->ES takes off 1/2 of an even con mob's health. Things got a lot slower in the 68 range, when the mobs had leveled up but I was using the same weapons as before.

Also, the gear change will be less pronounced this time I think. I don't forsee a change like the stamina one. For druids in particular, the introduction of feralsticks was a huge change, and the introduction of agi/ap items was big for rogues. I'm not sure there will be any categorical changes like those 3.

Also, you can start working on your PvP items now. Even if you are terrible at arena's, you have pleanty of time to get a couple of items. Those can be a pretty big advantage - reset or no, I think its unlikely a level 71 green will outclass an Illadin level item.