From Booty Bay to Blizzcon

Blizzcon was abuzz this weekend, and the panels strained themselves to answer all of the questions that were being posed to them (And it was only 1 question per person). This included everything from “will mages be competitive in raids outside being a table with a portal at the end” to which the answer was sadly inconclusive, to “please visit the Druid forums for all out questions, because I can ask only one”.

As far as the broadcast was concerned (because I lack the funds to visit it myself, so I was relegated to the 2nd-hand steam) Blizzcon seemed to have the dual atmosphere of anticipation of the latest changes and decisions, and the QQ and boo-ing from the crowd at particularly undesired changes and unprofessional outings from the Blizzard panel (really guys, the Bacon of Light joke is old now. It’s ready for the retirement home).

Anyway, some changes relevant for Shadowpriests did crop up:

• Dual-spec will allow you to change your talent spec to a predefined new spec at the touch of a button; no cost, no going back to town, no cooldown. Your glyphs will change along with the spec, so you do not have to resocket those. Also, Blizzard is working on an “item rack” like configuration so that your gear will switch along with it.
• Mind Sear was given to us Shades to give us competitive damage. Even so, the panel conceded that Shadowpriests still needed some work and damage needed to be bumped up.
• Dispersion probably will not be changed, as it was mostly meant for PvP. Even though its uses in PvE is limited, the panel believes that most 51-point talents are situational and they don’t all need to be appealing to raiders.

So there still is hope we will have competitive damage, but I am afraid the PvE Shades will have to deal with Dispersion being a poor man’s evocate. Ah well, I will still be looking forward to exploring Northrend (especially the fishing locations, I have to say).

Turning one’s coat – on switching talents

Before the current Wrath of the Lich King beta, somewhere around the time of the alpha, rumors started circulating of Blizzard working on allowing players to have more than one talent spec, switching between the two determined by their need.

This idea was welcomed with cheers, whether by Shadowpriests who sometimes had to heal faces, to tanks who’d be able to grind for their income, and of course PvP players who wanted to have a shot at raiding without spending 25g every day.

As time progressed other things important to us have pushed this idea out of view, but still people ask about it sometimes on the forums. Usually these pleas for an update slowly drift from the first page, and the question slumbers in players’ minds.

But now, it seems that this idea has been revitalized. Tigole feels that this idea still has merit, but requires a lot of internal discussion and testing before even being presented as an option. Let’s have a quick skinny on the hows, whys and whos of the matter:

Who and why?

• Raiders who want to change talents based on the raid’s needs
• Hardcore PvP players who change talents from BGs to Arenas
• Tanks who want to grind for their money (less relevant due to increased tank DPS)
• Switching talents from Heroic Dungeons to raids
• Maximum DPS talents vs. Mana conservation talents
• Or just to play with one spec as a test while having your old in case it does not work out

How?

Although it is clear it could be done, and aside of the discussion whether it should be done, how could it exactly be implemented? Maybe having two talent sheets, and a button that switches between them. Of course it would be imbalanced if you could do this at will, so there’d have to be a limit to it.

The current limit on respeccing is Location and Resources. You can only respecc at a class trainer, and paying a (sometimes hefty) sum of gold. If we remove the gold component, then Location becomes key. For instance, you’d have to go to a particular location to do this. To allow some form of mobility, a Summoning Stone would make a good “anchor”. Place similar stones near the BG queue NPCs, and done.

If Location would be removed as a limit, then you’d just lose some gold every time you click the button. Although still a limit, I think players don’t mind paying the gold. Players don’t like having to go to a town to respecc.

If only it were that simple, of course.

What are your ideas? What reasons would you have to have two speccs?

What do you think would be a fair and realistic limit to just respeccing at a whim, anyplace anytime?

As we stand today…

As ascertained by Ghostcrawler on the WoW forums, Shadowpriests have a very clear goal. It is time we step away from the thought that we are a utility class with decent DPS – we are now a full DPS “class”. This goes a long way to keep our emotions in check, as this means that we get a treatment similar to – but not as extensive as – Warlocks, Mages and Boomkins.

It is awfully quiet on us on the boards. It is currently unclear whether large amounts of QQ – carefully balanced against posts filled with charts, spreadsheets and computer simulations – have caused the developers to clam up and focus on their jobs while giving only the most needed information.

Threads are deleted everywhere, whiners are being banned, and the moderators are coming down on people who aren’t constructive enough like steam-powered jackhammers. The boards cry out as if they are being oppressed, and it’s almost a study in human politics. I must say it is quite fascinating, even though it is a bit sad.

We have been emotional, yes. In the wake of having our utility torn away, to be replaced by awesome increases in damage, we cannot but be worried that the treatment we are given may prove to be not enough, not on time.

The top fears expressed are:

• We still will not do competitive DPS and be left out of raids;
• We are not competitive in PvP and our new 51 talent may not be up to the challenge;
• Our lowered mana regen has not been calculated into the fact that we now run OoM ourselves;
• Our playstyle will radically change (which is mostly people’s innate resistance to change);
• Our gear – professed by Blizzard to now be awesome because we need Crit and Spirit – will still just not do at all.

And so the boards are now quiet, and this answer is what is to console us.

Will we do competitive DPS? I am sure of it, maybe not at WotLK launch but a patch later, but we will. Will we feel improved? I doubt it, we will not change what we are. Will we be forced to adjust our talents and gear to prevent languishing without mana for half the fight? I think so, but I am confident the players behind the Shadowpriests know enough of min-maxing and loopholing to find ways out even Blizzard did not figure out.

Cheer up people, we will come down to haunt our raids again!

Spoils of War – Whipping the crafters

Since it is going to take quite a while before I can get even the quest rewards sorted out I would want to obtain while leveling in Northrend, I occupied some of my time with gathering the item enhancements currently known in the Beta. As it looks now, there will not be much change in what we want to enchant our gear with, except with the quantities of return we get from it.

There is more on each enhancement, but percentage-wise we are likely to benefit less from it.

Think about it; although the numbers are not crunched yet, we will need more rating points to achieve a similar percentage number. So, let’s hope they will come out roughly equivalent.

The reason this is done, of course, is to prevent “mudflation”, where an ever-increasing amount of stat points without a filter will eventually mean that players become indestructable. You can see this happen when level 70s start 5-manning Gruul and such in Sunwell gear. As you become higher level, you need more rating points to achieve the same result agains similarly leveled foes, mitigating this in some fashion.

Anyway, without further ado, some of the smexiest item enhancements our pockets need to deepen for:

We are likely to require a bit of help in the +hit rating section, as we require more of it, but blue gear and up seems to be lacking a bit with this. Of course, the second you are over hit capped, see if you can replace this one with:

Even with improved scaling with Critical Strike rating, Spell Power will still be king, and the dominant stat we will be stacking.

Whoa there, what’s this? Yes, I know we would usually just put Stamina or Vitality on our boots, but once our gear is good enough for Twisted Faith, this may be a worthy contender. A slight bit of mana regeneration and the flimsiest amount of increased damage is still better than no damage at all.

The great-old standby of enchantment leftovers, it still is a good foundation for all of our skills. Basically this enchant will give 80 HP, 120 mana, a slight bit of mana regen and a teensy-weensy bit of extra spell damage with Twisted Faith.

Moar! Because

Moar! We stacked it before, we stack it again, and we will stack more in Wrath.

A slight bit of threat reduction and a bit of mana regeneration. With Twisted Faith, we can now see all those little Spirit upgrades count up to a small chunk of Spell Power. Also, it seems the mats are a bit more reasonable than those of the old Subtlety enchant.

And of course, our weapons need a treatment too. Although there’s no way of knowing whether there will be an equivalent to Soulfrost in the works, as there is now only unified Spellpower, this represents at least a tiny upgrade. And, the costs will be relatively lower than Soulfrost.

Revered with the Kirin Tor gives us our new head slot enchant, giving 30 Spell Power and 20 Critical Strike Rating. Wyrmrest Accord gives us a similar one, with 8 MP/5 instead of 20 Critical Strike Rating. Even so, I’d go for this one, as we should not have that great an issue with mana if we play our cards right.

And courtesy of the Sons of Hodir comes our new Shoulder enchant. Mind you that this item is most likely bugged right now, as it gives the same stats at Exalted as the blue version of the glyph, namely 18 Spellpower and 4 MP/5.

The new evolution of Runic Spellthread gives us 20 Spirit as well as 50 Spellpower. There is a version with Stamina available for tailors, but with Twisted Faith (once again) all these bits of Spirit add up to Spellpower again.

When Threat is no longer an issue, and Spirit flows aplenty, Tailors will be able to switch from the Wisdom enchant on cloak to this one; however, it is BoP for the tailor making it. Still, it does wonders in increasing mana efficiency at that level of play.

Conclusion

At the end of the line, assuming you are not a tailor and are hit capped before enchantments:

Spellpower +201, Spirit +56, Crit +20, +4 MP/5 and 2% threat reduction.

It is possible I missed an enchant along the way, or some of this information is already outdated; if so, warn me, and I will update this post!

Build 8982 sees us humbled

Well, that was seriously unexpected. After our complaints on the Dispersion nerf now making it useless for PvE falling on deaf ears, look what we have here…word is that we are doing such enormous DPS that we need to be nerfed to “not exceed the benchmark”. Well, after seeing the other classes, I am wondering about that. And if it is true, couldn’t they do it in another way rather than smearing our talents down even more?

Without further ado, the changes for Build 8982:

• Mind Flay damage has been reduced. (690 to 588 for rank 9, 576 to 492 for Rank 8, etc …)
• Shadow Word: Pain damage has been reduced. (1530 to 1380 for Rank 12, 1302 to 1176 for Rank 11, etc …)

• Twisted Faith now Increases your spell power by 2% of your total Spirit, and your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 2/4/6/8/10% if your target is afflicted by Mind Flay.
• Improved Shadow Word: Pain now Increases the damage of your Shadow Word: Pain spell by 3/6%. (Down from 5/10%)

Ouch. Tomorrow morning I will try and figure out what this means, for now I just scratch my head and hope it is worth it…