[PC] World of Warcraft

Is a release date confirmed?

If it's out by the end of the year I'mma be pissed.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Oh, and they also released some Enhancement changes for 2.3:

-Shamanistic Rage now has -30% damage taken for the duration (woo PVP viability!)

-Focused Mind now gives 30% of your AP in spell damage (woo non-windfury Enhancement scaling!)

-2H weapons replaced with a talent that reduces the cost of your next shock by 40% after a melee crit.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Actually, people are speculating that it'll be a trainable skill.

40/0/21 shamans with Stormherald. ;_;

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

So, I hit 70 on my warrior recently =o

Here's his armory at the moment. I think I logged in my usual DPS gear: The Armory

...ack, okay, so I didn't log. Replace a green plate helmet with the X-52 Rocket Helmet. >.>;

Anyway, in my tanking gear I have 462 defense, 10K hp, and around 15-20% avoidance unbuffed (as a guesstimate). Here's my gear list for tanking:

Felsteel Gloves - Items - World of Warcraft (Felsteel Gloves)
Felsteel Helm - Items - World of Warcraft (Felsteel Helm)
Shield of the Void - Items - World of Warcraft (Shield of the Void)
Junior Technician 3rd Grade Bracers - Items - World of Warcraft (Junior Tech. 3rd Grade Bracers)
Breastplate of the Warbringer - Items - World of Warcraft (Breastplate of the Warbringer)
Mag'hari Warlord's Legplates - Items - World of Warcraft (Mag'hari Warlord's Legplates)
Burnoose of Shifting Ages - Items - World of Warcraft (Burnoose of Shifting Ages)
Slayer's Waistguard - Items - World of Warcraft (Slayer's Waistguard) <---REALLY need to replace this
Band of the Victor - Items - World of Warcraft (Band of the Victor) <---REALLY need to replace this too
Pauldrons of Brute Force - Items - World of Warcraft (Pauldrons of Brute Force)
Iron Band of the Unbreakable - Items - World of Warcraft (Iron Band of the Unbreakable)
Regal Protectorate - Items - World of Warcraft (Regal Protectorate)
Charm of Alacrity - Items - World of Warcraft (Charm of Alacrity) <---REALLY need to replace this
Mark of the Ravenguard - Items - World of Warcraft (Mark of the Ravenguard)
Sethekk Feather-Darts - Items - World of Warcraft (Sethekk Feather-Darts) <---REALLY need to replace this
Crystalblade of the Draenei - Items - World of Warcraft (Crystalblade of the Draenei)
Bloodguard's Greaves - Items - World of Warcraft (Bloodguard's Greaves)

So, any good suggestions for upgrades?

Funny story about that tanking sword. I was 69, just finished the fucking Access Shaft Zeon quests (NEVER FUCKING GO THERE EVER TRUST ME), and my gear was pretty beat up, so I figured I'd do this questline and repair, then hit 70 (which was like half a bar away). Well, the questline didn't let me repair, so I figured "Eh, it'll last me until I ding." So, I went down to the ridge with all the netherdrakes by Manaforge Ultris, and I was in the middle of fighting this drake when OH SHIT MY SPEAR BROKE. So, I whipped out this sword, put it in the offhand, put some green 2.6 axe of agility in my mainhand, and as an MS 2-hander spec, I dinged 70 dual-wielding a tanking sword and a green axe.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

OH SNAP

Make that 462 defense. ><;

I was speaking idiomatically.

lol, I love the mage forums.

"WE GOT NERFED"

"You got the damage tax removed."

"THAT'S AN UN-NERF"

"Ice Barrier and your wards scale."

"TERRIBLY"

"You have a ritual to make water for EVERYBODY in the raid."

"Evocation isn't dependant on your Spirit anymore AND your in-casting regen got buffed to 30% before armors."

"IT DOESN'T RESTORE MY WHOLE MANA BAR WITH A SPIRIT STAFF ANYMORE"

"So use a freaking intellect staff with an intellect enchant!"

"HYPOTHERMIA GOT NERFED BY 15 SECONDS"

"...So?"

"IT COSTS 20 SILVER"

"...YOU MAKE FUCKING 12 GOLD FROM ONE DAILY!"

I mean jesus christ, they're acting as if it's the end of the freaking world. Their PVE damage got buffed majorly, and their PVP survivability went down slightly... for one spec of one class that already shuts down anything without a 41 DPS caster weapon and some with one.

But eh, shaman buffs in pretty much every way, shape, and form. Mana regen is going to be insane (50 MP/5 from Mana Spring, and 600 mana every minute with NO COST from Water Shield, that goes off even if it's dispelled from what I've heard), elemental shaman damage got buffed (since the half-damage on the new Lightning Overload is before spell damage is applied~), enhancement shaman damage got MAJORLY buffed (AP gives +damage to let our shocks scale, 30% threat reduction, etc.), and Resto... well, they get a 2.5 second lightning bolt so that they can put out some half-decent damage.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Pallies are still QQ'ing about threat reduction though.

Valid point, yes, but still.

Blizzard's said though that 2.3 PTRs are gonna be up for a while and that a lot of changes are still to come.

FELIPE NO

My opinion?

Try a different spec. Combat Swords is always good (or at least better than combat daggers IIRC), and I've heard a lot of good things about AR/Prep/Hemo builds and even Shadowstep (although I think it's more of a PVP build than PVE, not sure).

If you want to stick to daggers, though, I'd say save up badges and grab a Searing Sunblade to put in the OH, and grab a Blade of the Unrequited when it drops from the opera event.

Most amazing jew boots

Gold buying? Don't do it, imo. It's risky (you can get your account banned for it), and it's easy enough to make gold on your own.

Take up gathering professions. Herbalism/mining/skinning are GREAT money-makers. Be diligent about collecting gather points. Keep your bags empty when possible (except for hearthstone, spare gear, quest items, etc.), and pick up every gray item you can find. Sell them when you get back. If you run out of inventory space, then prioritize your grays and get back to town ASAP. Vendor trash greens (i.e. stuff with +spirit, mostly, or weapons with no damage stats on them) gray 2-hand weapons > gray 1-hand weapons > gray other gear > full stacks of misc. grays > partial stacks of grays.

There's more to it, especially with the "other gear" part (in general, it's plate > mail > leather > cloth, but it depends; plate bracers sell for less than mail chestplates, for example), but that's the gist.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

They haven't set a release date yet. It's not in beta yet, either, so I'd say that at the rate it's going, it won't be until June/July '08, as the most optimistic estimate I could think of.

also lol resto shamans get nerfed into uselessness in 2.3.2.

"Hey blizzard! Blizzard! My earth shield is dispelled all the time! Can you do something to stop this?"
"It'll be on a 30-second cooldown now."
"Nyoro~n"

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Earth Shield is nice for tanks and AOE situations (slap it on that 'lock and go to town), but it's hardly necessary. Resto shamans are good raid healers, yes. However, their single-target heals are comparatively weak (Lesser Healing Wave is insanely mana inefficient, and Healing Wave has the lowest base healing out of any class), and before Water Shield they had nothing but Mana Tide/Spring for mana regen (and Mana Spring pre 2.3 required half of its duration just to return the mana cost).

Yeah, totems are good buffs, but they've got a lotta problems too. It takes 6 seconds to fully buff up a group, and you have to buff again every 2 minutes, no matter your spec. For elemental shamans, this is a big loss of DPS. For Resto, it's lost spirit regen. The only one that isn't all that chuffed about it is Enhancement, because they have several free GCDs in their spell rotation (which I believe is Flame Shock, Storm Strike, Earth Shock, Earth Shock, repeat), and their godly mana efficiency means they can afford to not only drop totems, but also twist totems by using a macro to drop Windfury for the 9-second buff, then dropping Grace of Air and dropping Windfury again when the buff expires.

But yeah, I was pretty much talking about PVP when I mentioned Resto being useless. Which is pretty big, since the days of raiders steamrolling anything that moves are long gone.

Put bluntly, if you want to be a good arena healer, you roll a druid for 2v2 and 5v5 4-DPS teams, priest for 3v3 and 2345 5v5 teams (AKA Elemental Shaman, Frost Mage, MS Warrior, Holy Paladin, Disc. Priest), and paladin for 3v3 and 5v5 (and decent 2v2). Resto shaman have all the weaknesses of a holy paladin (incredibly vulnerable to interrupts, easy to keep in melee), without the mana efficiency and utility.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Quote:

Also, there's a section that explains how Bonus Spell Damage is supposed to work. And it's dependent on the spell's rank, when the spell/rank is first available to be learned, and the character's current level.
-This is the formula they use: [(spell level)+6]/(player level)
--Spell level = when the spell is available to learn, but at it's full potential level. Example: a level 22 spell can reach it's full potential at level 27. Meaning, as the character levels up to 27 from 22, the spell's tooltip should update with each level up with a new amount. This is all done on whatever rank the spell is. Same thing will occur on the next rank.
-- +6 = the "slack" the game's system provides until any penalty to Bonus Spell Damage is introduced.
--Player level is the player's current level.

Spell damage and healing - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Coefficients are not based on the level you learned it at, but on its casting time (or duration, if it's a DOT).

The formula for direct-damage spells is basically x + (y/(z/3.5)), where x is the base spell damage, y is your spell damage (or healing, where applicable), and z is the casting time of the spell*. A 3.5-second cast (like Starfire) gets 100% of your +damage applied to it, but a 1.5 second cast like Lesser Healing Wave only gets roughly 43% of your +damage. Also, an instant cast spell like a shaman's Earth Shock is treated as a 1.5 cast for the purpose of ensuring it scales in some fashion. In addition, there are several penalties applied to the coefficient. In Death Coil's case, it applies a debuff (terror) AND heals you. That means that not only is it getting an already paltry coefficient (43%), it's also being penalized for the debuff and healing effect it does on you. WoWWiki, the site that you should be going to to begin with, states that Death Coil's coefficient is 21.4%. That means that either you don't have enough +damage to see any scaling (and since you talked about the level 68 DC, that means your gear SUCKS i.e. power-level tailoring and get the Frozen Shadoweave set dickweed, it's the best thing you'll see until around T5-T6 levels), or you are seeing scaling, it's just small enough so that it usually falls within the damage range of Death Coil.

*-There are some exceptions to this formula, such as the 2.3 shaman's Lightning Bolt, which has a base cast time of 2.5 seconds (meaning it should get a roughly 75% coefficient), but due to balance concerns was given an 80% coefficient.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Read his post again. He claimed that since the last rank of DC was at 68, that it should get the full benefit from +damage. That's just plain wrong in every way possible. For the purpose of level 70 spells (or ones near 70, like DC at max rank), he's completely wrong. Yeah, there is a penalty for using a lower rank past a certain level, but that's to nerf downranking, like you said.

Most amazing jew boots

I can see the misunderstanding, but I merely said that the coefficient was based on the casting time instead of the level learned (which is right), not that there was no penalty.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

All I'm gonna say is that this is the new Whirlwind in 2.4:



FELIPE NO

How ironic. I might be quitting, myself. Not out of any actual desire to quit, but because I got a new hard drive and Vista x64 (DAMN YOU DIRECTX10 YOU'RE TOO FUCKING TEMPTING ;_ and WoW's causing lovely BSODs the moment it finishes installing the expansion.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Fuck you, internet. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Welp, I just quit. Why?

Patch 2.4.2: Scare Beast (Hunter) is now instant cast and has its range increased to 30 yards.

Thanks for ruining Feral Druids in ALL PVP and wrecking Enh/Resto shamans in arena. Y'know, Blizz, the class that's competing with hunters for worst class in arena?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

personally I'm in love with the enh shaman changes.

Ghost Wolf breaking snares/roots? Yes.
Maelstrom Weapon giving us instant-cast spells after melee crits so we can actually BE A HYBRID and use all our skills? Yes.
Condensed hit/crit/haste ratings so we can actually be a hybrid and have all of our spells scale instead of one attack and Windfury? Yes.
Spirit Wolves with a stun? FUCK YES.

Also I gave my war a quick respec to fury a while back to help a resto drood friend of mine farm some powder for a PVP gem pattern. And despite my utterly shit gear (have enough hit rating, but I ALSO have only like 1.7K AP unbuffed, AND only 71 DPS blue weapons) my GOD is it fun. I sorta wish that bloodthirst did more than my white attacks though.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

lol, I'm not in the beta, actually. I'm just speaking from the perspective of a person from the outside looking in. Trust me, if I were in I'd be rockin' a death knight right fucking now.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

You can skip everything up to and including the 60 areas if you have the expansion. Once you hit 58, just go to Outland and you're all set.

I was speaking idiomatically.