Combat questions

[acidjax]

Hi all.

I'm very excited about WoW and am greatly anticipating its release. There are a number of questions I have regarding the ways certain items/skills affect combat. I thought to post here since I remember what a great forum LL was for Diablo II technical info when I was playing it.


1. Do healing potions used in combat generate hate for the user? If so, this could allow for some interesting variations of combat strategy.

2. Do stealth/invisibility cause monsters to stop chasing a player? Let's say monster A will keep chasing the player until the player is more then 30 yards away and that the player is currently 15 yards away. The player then stealths or uses the mage talent for instant cast spell with invisibility. Would that cause the monster to stop the pursuit? How about casting fear and then using an invisibility potion?

3. What is the general accuracy rate for offensive spells and melee attacks against same leveled monsters? Do any stats increase melee accuracy or lower resist chances?

4. While soloing, does every class have (or will have) a way to deal with retreating mobs?

5. Can a hotkey macro be made to swap various pieces of equipment during combat?

6. Do monsters regenerate health/mana while they are being attacked?

7. Are there different items with manually activated special effects that share the same cooldown timer? Some examples are health and mana potions or the couple chain armors that replenish rage.

8. As characters progress in levels, how do monsters scale in comparison as far as their amount of life and damage dealt go?


It seems like quite a few people here have made the beta (congratulations!). Hopefully some of you can offer answers or insights to these questions. Thanks in advance.

-Edit: Typos

[Tal]

1. Do healing potions used in combat generate hate for the user?   If so, this could allow for some interesting variations of combat strategy.

Not really. By the time you need a healing potion in the fight they're already pretty pissed off at you. ;)

2. Do stealth/invisibility cause monsters to stop chasing a player?   Let's say monster A will keep chasing the player until the player is more then 30 yards away and that the player is currently 15 yards away.  The player then stealths or uses the mage talent for instant cast spell with invisibility.  Would that cause the monster to stop the pursuit?  How about casting fear and then using an invisibility potion?

You can't stealth/invisible while in combat and you remain in combat while being chased.

3. What is the general accuracy rate for offensive spells and melee attacks against same leveled monsters?  Do any stats increase melee accuracy or lower resist chances?

From what I understand resistances aren't still fully implemented. Right now its above 95% from what I've seen for spells. Melee attacks hit most of the time. Some attacks like the Paladin's Holy Strike have a much higher chance of being dodged, parried or blocked. IIRC intelligence affects how quickly you skill up with a weapon. You may want to look at this information:

Strength (STR) - Adds to your Attack Power, Damage-Per-Second (DPS). Strength does not affect Critical Hit chances at all. Strength does not improve your chance to block, but rather the amount blocked when you succeed. This amount is determined in part by Strength (and the other part by your shield).
Agility (AGI) - Increases all characters’ chance to Critical Hit. The amount of the bonus is higher per point on Rogues than other classes. Agility affects dodge. Rogues get more Dodge per point of Agility than other classes. Agility adds directly to Armor Class.
Stamina (STA) - Increases Health points.
Intellect (INT) - Increases Mana points as well as chance to Critical Hit with magic spells. Intellect also grants a higher chance to increase melee skills. (It does not affect trade skills though.)
Spirit (SPT) - Increases Health and Mana regeneration. Spirit affects all characters' Mana and Hit Point regeneration rates in and out of combat. Spirit also increases your chance to ‘proc’ with weapons.

Attack (AR) - Attack Rating.
Power (AP) - Attack Power.

Damage (DMG) - Weapon Damage.
Defense (AC) - Defense Rating.
Armor - Physical Damage Reduction.

4. While soloing, does every class have (or will have) a way to deal with retreating mobs?

Some have more effective ones than others.

5. Can a hotkey macro be made to swap various pieces of equipment during combat?

I don't know truthfully. I poked around a little but could see no mention of being able to do this with a combat. I'm interested to know because it would really help me switch to a two hander to get aggro back when a mage has uncorked a pyro. ;)

6. Do monsters regenerate health/mana while they are being attacked?

They do but not very quickly. After you have run away they really regen fast.

7. Are there different items with manually activated special effects that share the same cooldown timer?  Some examples are health and mana potions or the couple chain armors that replenish rage.

Yes

8. As characters progress in levels, how do monsters scale in comparison as far as their amount of life and damage dealt go?

Its pretty equal until you get to the 40s to 50s where it hasn't scaled as equally. Blizzard is going to be fixing this in the next patch iirc.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Tal has answered most of your questions about as well as they can be answered at this stage of the beta. The one he ducked was:

5. Can a hotkey macro be made to swap various pieces of equipment during combat?

Basically, yes. This post on the WoW official UI Customization forum. discusses some of what can be done. There is more on other threads, but since I've yet to find a real reason to do gear swapping in combat, I haven't looked into it. The only useful swap I have found is between ranged and melee weapons, and that is built into the basic interface (you can equip items into your right and left hands and into a 'ranged' slot. The 'ranged' item equipped simply becomes an attack type, with the graphics changing as necessary. It works quite well, IMO.)

--Pete

[Crusader]

on #2: there's a rogue skill named vanish which allows you to.. well.. stealth in combat. long cooldown, but it gets you out unless you lose a stealth check against the mob.

[acidjax]

Thanks for the replies and links.

Not really. By the time you need a healing potion in the fight they're already pretty pissed off at you. -Tal

Sorry, let me clarify. I was wondering on the usefulness of healing potions while grouped. This would be with the objective of potential burst AoE hate generation. Let's say a paladin in a group watches the primary tank warrior die or get disconnected and there are still multiple monsters facing the group. The paladin attempts to assume the role of primary tank for the rest of the fight. Would it make much difference in hate generation if the paladin were to use a healing potion on himself? This would assume the paladin already has the attention of at least one mob.

There is more on other threads, but since I've yet to find a real reason to do gear swapping in combat, I haven't looked into it.-Pete

How about a macro that equips a trinket from inventory, uses a long cooldown special ability, then switches back to the original trinket? Perhaps the same could be done with something like the scarlet belt or wolfshead helm. However, having looked at various screenshots, it seems that players may be strapped for hotkey spots.

-Edit: couldn't get /quote to work :lol:

[--Pete]

Hi,

How about a macro that equips a trinket from inventory, uses a long cooldown special ability, then switches back to the original trinket?

From my highly limited understanding of how the whole thing works, I think this could be "easily" done. You would need to keep the items to be swapped in a constant location in your bags, but if that's done, a simple "swap what's in slot X to Trinket Slot 1" would do the trick. For the actual code, the lua reference manual, combined with Blizzard's command list and some time spent following the UI forum is probably a good place to start -- and 'start' is about as far as I've gotten.

. . . seems that players may be strapped for hotkey spots.

Actually, you would bind these actions to a macro. Again, someone who has spent more time looking at all this would be able to explain -- I've just looked enough to get an idea of what *can* be done but not really of how to do it.

--Pete