Blizzard announces WOW faction-class crossovers

[Arnulf]

I sympathize with Blizzard.

And I'm glad they'll do this.

[Urza-DSF]

I sympathize with Blizzard.

And I'm glad they'll do this.

The same, I loathe the fact that the two factions don't have access to all of the same tools (OMG! Theyre different cause of one class!!!11!One) And the fact that there is *no* way to communicate between the factions, even through its stated time and time again that they are not at war.

Kudos to Blizzard, maybe they'll get to work on the second part so we arent forced away from over half the server population.

[Flymo]

There are already undead paladins in the game, the Cursed Paladins on Purgation Isle. Oddly, they can be both shackled (like all undead) and feared by a priest (like no other undead).

[Mavfin]

I don't know, I use EM alot. It's a tool, and it helps in situations. It's certainly no worse then damage meters. Some fights I just use it, some fights I just heal assigned tanks, some fights I configure EM to show only classes/groups I'm interested in.

It was handy for Dr. Weivle tonight.

But, you use it as a focused tool, then, not as a blanket raid FFA healing thing. Yeah, I've used it for fights where, for example, hunters were doing tranq shots, and I wanted to watch them, I've set the list to show hunters only, for a heads-up if I didn't see one of them quick enough. I use it *sometimes* to watch certain classes for certain fights, but I *never* use it on 'all-classes zomg heal this first' basis. That's what MJ/Porcupine are talking about :shuriken:

But, I (and probably you) don't use it as the *primary healing tool*. That's what the idiots do:D

[Drasca]

Personally, I could never understand why the Undead couldn't be Paladins. They were humans once and they recall information from when they were alive, so why not allow them Paladins.

Because they have frosaken the light (or feel they were forsaken by the light). It's part of the reason for the name.

Nah, its mostly because the abilities were shifted around and become WoW classes are postmodern 'patchwork' derivatives of prior classes. Undead Knights --> Paladin circa WCII were Death Knights, the spellcasters of WCII and equivalents of Battlemages then. Caster progresion from WCI-->WCII went from Warlock vs Conjurer to Death Knight (these had death coil, death and decay--like blizzard--, and something else) vs Mage (these had fireball, blizzard and polymorph). WCIII gave arthas the evil paladin personae with death coil (death knights prime ability in WCII), but more warlike.

So what's happened here in WoW Warlocks have been given abilities from WCI locks, (rain of fire and demon summoning), Death coil from Death knights in WCII, doomguards from WCIII. Almost everything you'd associate with undead paladins has been given to locks, so that source has been tapped out. Ner'zhul, once a shaman type, and now a lich, could also be argued as once been a 'lock' type (power hungry caster with affinity towards demons anyone?)--even though wow liches are generally associated with frost mages due to WCIII:FT. Due to events of FT, the paladin champion of the undead, arthas, is now directly given to Ner'zhul... seemingly completing the circle. From warlock power and control, to undead ex-paladin, to warlock again.

In essense, anything that would've been associated with undead knights --> paladins has been given to locks.

[oldmandennis]

But, I (and probably you) don't use it as the *primary healing tool*. That's what the idiots do:D

I don't know... I'd say for a full night of raiding, probably 85% of my healing clicks come from the emergency monitor.

But as you say, it's not just clicking the top one, press lhw key, repeat, unless you are on MC trash. That's idiotic, and leads to healing locks as they are bandagaing.

Another example is Ebonroc. If I am assigned a warrior, I keep his health all the way up. If I have spare time, I then check the emergency monitor, which is configured to show only warriors. Rogues get topped off by the splash from 8/8 EF.

[mistique]

Just my thinking on the quest side of adding these classes to the opposite factions.

I wonder if blizzard are going to introduce new NPC's in all areas to supply quests or just add them to existing quest givers, if the former it's going to be alot of work if the latter then that just taking the easy way out and will feel sloppy.

On a side not, i'd gather all those blacksmithing armour patterns no ones bothered with cause they were "pally" gear will start to get expensive, lol.

:rolleyes:

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

The problem is GG, most people take the stand that you do, that the freed undead are no longer part of the light, but the real reason they took the name Forsaken, as based on the lore, is because everyone initially
wanted to kill them.

This is the correct answer. The "Forsaken" are called that because they are the unwanted remnants of the Scourge. It has nothing to do with being forsaken by the Light, which doesn't even make sense since the Light in WoW isn't a god or conscious entity that forsakes people. And if you think that "evil" races can't use the Light or something, go tell that to The Scarlet Crusade. They're a wing of the Burning Legion, yet they're also mostly Paladins.

As for Undead Paladins, I would have loved that too, but I think you can readily explain that by the simple fact that the Forsaken are more or less dead. Blood Elves are not dead, and I don't see what's unreasonable about letting them be Paladins. If the genocidal recruits of the Scarlet Crusade can learn to manipulate the Light to destroy things, so can Blood Elves.

[Monkey]

Paladins have excellent mana efficiency. Their healing, though, will need to be directed properly to take advantage of their healing abilities. A raid of 16 paladins would not make a good healing team, but having BoL on tanks while paladins spam FoL on them basically mana free will allow them to heal very well while at the same time freeing other classes to heal non-tanks, which they can do better than paladins.

For the record, The Core's raid leaders have tentatively decided on this general purpose healing raid makeup for the expansion:

5 Priests
4 Paladins
4 Shaman
3 druids

And in general, "In the expansion, our ideal raid makeup will probably shift to around 3-4 shm, 3-5 pals, 3-4 druids, and 5-6 priests."

Currently, our raids are typically 6-7 priests, 6 shaman, and 3-4 druids.

So they're expecting around 14-19 "healer" slots in a 40-man raid? If The Core reflects general raiding guild sentiment (and I realize there's a hefty chance that's not the case), this change could end up increasing the raiding gameplay options for classes with healing abilities. I.e., more druids could go cat for a few fights out of the instance. It would be a nice result but in some guilds it could create stress as to who "gets" to DPS and who "has" to heal. Ah, Drama, Azeroth's #1 Export.

Although, if Blizzard bumps the expansion raid size to 45 (which seems quite possible), all bets are off.

[Xanthix]

Although, if Blizzard bumps the expansion raid size to 45 (which seems quite possible), all bets are off.

A blue posted that they have no intention of increasing the size of raid groups above 40. They said that in fact, they are looking to add more expansion content focusing on 10-to-20-man-groups than on 40.

[Arnulf]

[...] They said that in fact, they are looking to add more expansion content focusing on 10-to-20-man-groups than on 40.

Shrewd decision. I hope they're going to follow through with this one. Actually I wouldn't mind at all if Naxxramas was the last 40-man raid instance of WOW.

And I have even a suggestion for the lower level instances: Cap the level of characters entering them!

For instance: When I as a level 60 paladin enter the Deadmines my level would be reduced to 25. Meaning that I can only wear equipment for characters <= level 25 and can only use paladin skills of that level. Hitpoints, mana, talents, and stats adjusted accordingly.

By the way that is not new. I have seen this done successfully in another MMORPG.

Ah--- I'm feeling inventive today! Let's replace the random drop system of class-specific set armour pieces with quest items. Example: Drakkisath drops one quest item that everyone can roll on who hasn't finished that quest and the reward of the quest is, you guessed it, the breast set piece of your respective class.

Neat, eh?;)

[WildFire]

Ah--- I'm feeling inventive today! Let's replace the random drop system of class-specific set armour pieces with quest items. Example: Drakkisath drops one quest item that everyone can roll on who hasn't finished that quest and the reward of the quest is, you guessed it, the breast set piece of your respective class.

Done! Say hi to the Desecrated items in Naxx.

[Zarathustra]

How's this for a scary thought...

What if Paladins were given a mana drain, additional spell interrupt, and a silence?

Say hello to the new PvP class of choice on the Horde side.

[oldmandennis]

Done! Say hi to the Desecrated items in Naxx.

Or Primal items from ZG.

Which MMORPG capped characters like that? The way banks work right now, it's a bit impractical. Am I supposed to save gear for every level range? I got enough junk in my bank.

It also hurts people rerolling to tailoring or enchanting.

[Chesspiece_face]

Which MMORPG capped characters like that? The way banks work right now, it's a bit impractical. Am I supposed to save gear for every level range? I got enough junk in my bank.

This is done in EQ2 when you are mentoring lower lvl characters. Your lvl is set to their level and your abilities are limited to those of that level character. Items weren't an issue because when you were in this state of mentoring your items scaled down with your character. armor, attribute bonuses, damage, etc. were all lowered so that they were level appropriate.

[Xanthix]

This is done in EQ2 when you are mentoring lower lvl characters. Your lvl is set to their level and your abilities are limited to those of that level character. Items weren't an issue because when you were in this state of mentoring your items scaled down with your character. armor, attribute bonuses, damage, etc. were all lowered so that they were level appropriate.

City of Heroes had the opposite system, where a high-level character could temporarily designate a low-level sidekick. The sidekick was buffed to be almost as strong as a character of the higher level. They didn't get new abilities/powers, but their HP and powers were scaled up as long as they stayed nearby their mentor.

It was easier to make it work in CoH though, because there were no items, and in general scaling of powers and abilities worked differently.

[Arnulf]

Which MMORPG capped characters like that?

I have experienced level caps in Final Fantasy XI. While FFXI back then had no instances per se, there were arena fights. A party of players would go through a portal and fight a very strong monster or a group of monsters. These fights were hard and challenging. Instanced boss-fights so to speak. Levels were capped at 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 (highest char level = 75).

There were also zones with level caps.

About the storage problem. You could store armour sets with special NPCs. You got a token and retrieved that armour set by returning that token. And you had a personal room in your home town. Furnishing, tables, cabinets, cupboards, and even mannequins to hold extra stuff.

[Medicine Man]

Well Neriad,

It looks like Porcupine really put you in your place.:P

I've never personally liked the emergency monitor, for the same reason that I didn't much like the autocancel on heals. Both are inventions that make the whole process of healing in raids more mechanical and tedious. I find I have much more fun honing my situational awareness in new encounters, working on the damage mitigation strategies and dividing up the healing duties.

[Fangar]

hmm 4 shamans on a raid is going to hurt... I'm not familiar with paladins, but couldn't you get away with as low as 2 on a raid and still get most of the buff benefit?

[Delc]

hmm 4 shamans on a raid is going to hurt... I'm not familiar with paladins, but couldn't you get away with as low as 2 on a raid and still get most of the buff benefit?

I think 3 is the 'ideal' number of pallies. BoS for all except tanks, BoM for physical dmg dealers, BoW for casters, and BoK for all. 2-3 shaman is enough really. WF for tanks and a couple rogues. Maybe a mana tide for some priests.