The worst thing about the 2.0.3 patch from my perspective was that last night the server went down twice, and in a way I had never seen before -- I lost game time.

In both cases I lost some of what I'd done; I'd estimate that about a minute of game events was lost.

That is, IMO, the very worst kind of crash. Not exactly the way that Blizz wants to greet new and returning players, or reassure stalwarts on the eve of the BC release.

PS -- The buzz among Druids in my circles is that the patch was not a nerf, but rather strengthened Druids noticeably.
 

Noticed the pvp+ alliance people yesterday and just chalked it up to the old "hiding behind the internet" plan. Honestly for the silly tabard as the only reward I don't worry about it that much...

I read about the warlock nerf, and it really didn't seem much. My lock alt was still able to destroy all in his path without issue. Out damaged a rogue and mage duo helping with an elite quest, even with my random gear assortment.

The druid one...well the guild druids are mostly divided but the most passionate one hates the changes. He tanked UBRS last night though, so it couldn't have been that bad =)
 

As per usual, Blizzard designs content with Alliance in mind.

Thanks for your impossible quest Bli$$ard, as a Hordey I have NO chance of getting the tabrad (not that I really care, but it is principle) owing to the 20+ team of alliance sitting at the gate spamming AoE.
 

On Stormscale PVP it was pretty easy to get 6 and get out with the tabard. I still like my tabard of frost a lot better.

Doeg: I'm surprised you've never been rolled back before. When I was on Stormreaver we had rollbacks a few times when there were problems. I don't think I ever had more then like 20 minutes in WoW.
 

These sort of events bring out the same spirit as a huge 50% off sale at a department store brings out in old ladies. Rabid masses flock and have little or no interest in who they trample in the process. GIMME GIMME GIMME!!!
 

Got the Tabard but I agree to it being badly designed. The AD nps also look like headless chickens spinning around on very predictable path. a totally unsocialble event!
 

Whacked with a nerf bat? More of a tickle.

With 300 spirit I get 87.5 mana per tick.
Previously inside the FSR I get 30% of that (talent + set) so 26.25 per tick or 65.625 mana per 5

With the change I now get 15% of that so 13.125 plus 20/2.5 = 21.125 per tick or 52.8125 mana per 5 inside the FSR

12 measly mana difference per 5 seconds inside the FSR.

Now sure this gets higher with more spirit and If you have 500 spirit you may even notice it (30 per 5 difference) but this a change blizzard had to make and quite frankly it could have been worse.
 

AoEing where PvP tagged enemies stand around doesn't tag you too though - you have to do targeted stuff in order to become tagged.

I hope the invasion does get stronger though :)

Personally, as a destruction warlock, I got more of a buff than a nerf really. My DoTs never were that strong, so 10% ain't much, and Shadowfury now has a third of the CD, so when I wanna use it it's actually up. Which is nice :)
 

Only raiding Affliction locks like me are really affected by the dot nerfs. In long boss fights my total damage is really going to be affected by this - even less need for your average Warlock in a raid, now, and if Blizzard think this will make Locks in PvP less powerful, they are mistaken.
As Haslo said, destruction locks have not been affected, so all those PvP locks are simply going to respecc Destruction.
At least Rogues are happy with the latest patch. Our Guild chat was flooded with excited Rogues comparing their new abilities.
(sorry for the whine)
 

I haven't logged my druid in to redistribute the refunded talent points yet, but as a full balance druid the patch notes suggested a definite buff to me.
"Improved Starfire" has been further improved to offer possible resists to spell interrupts (the bane of the balance druid) and "Barkskin" can now be cast while stunned. Barkskin reduces melee damage taken for 15 seconds, but was pretty useless if you couldn't use it when a rogue you trapped you.
The other changes were mainly feral druid ones and some of them were nerfs. I feel for them, but a lot of people were complaining about bear druids in PvP. They weren't all nerfs though. Suspect it balances itself out overall.

Without meaning to offend any Warlocks here, I was glad to see the Felhunters melee damage was reduced. My poor mage was often left bruised and battered by a felhunter attack.

Now if only they'd fix the battleground lag...
 

Alsalil, you probably mean Felguard. Yes, it was overpowered, but for a 41 point talent you should get something for the investment. We might be seeing a lot fewer of those lumbering hulks around now.
I'm surprised with so many changes in the Warlock trees that they didn't get a talent point refund.
 

Alsalil, this patch buffed druid pvp is far I can see.

The nerf is in our threat generation, which is now a flat value like with warriors. What I don't understand is why Blizzard didn't change warrior threat generation into a percentage, but instead nerfed druids'.
 

@ Anony
Apologies, I did mean Felguard. However, I didn't realise it was a 41 point talent. I've never played a Warlock, so I don't know too much about them.
I agree, for a 41 point talent you should get something for the investment.
At least it works I suppose. On the rare occasions the pet bar appears when my mage summons her 41 point Water Elemental, it usually floats around looking uninterested... no matter how many times I tell it to attack.
 

My Felguard got buffed with more armor. So I have to be careful not to cause too much hate, but that is better than having to stop attacking and give my health to the Felguard just to keep him alive. I had better results soloing the single demons in DM:West post 2.0.3 than before using my Felguard. Still way easier than using my VW to do the same thing like I was doing pre 2.0. As far as melee damage, there was a bug fixed which was not properly scaling the damage against different armor types. I had wanted to switch to Affliction for BC and was just playing with the FG in the interim, now that plan is taken away...but oh well.

OT...love your blog Tobold!
 

The "nerf" to druids was for tanking only - the extra swipe threat is gone. This means they have a harder time tanking vs multiple mobs. I have no idea how bad it is all I read is arguing.

The most annoying thing is as they level to 70 warriors are going to be 41 in arms or fury and when I need a tank they're going to say "I'm dps not tank" like they did from 1-59. So all blizz did was lower the number of quality tanks, I know few warriors that can tank or even want to.

The most annoying thing about the warlock dot nerf is they FINALLY got all the caster classes +damage rules the same, now suddenly they are putting little exceptions in and going to make a big spaghetti of rules again. Why didn't they just change the duration, or lower the damage, or set it to the % of 18 seconds, instead of 15 seconds. Then it would be a simple change and the rules would be predictable. That's one thing I like about DDO, you know how it works because it works the same way for everyone.
 

I meant DM:East in the above comment :P
 

It seems to me that the easiest fix to a bunch of 51+ Warlocks running around with Felguards was to put a cap on the Talent Trees. There's already a cap, of sorts. You cannot assign talent points to Tier 2 talents in any tree if you don't have 5 points invested in that same tree. It would have been a simple matter to have had a lvl 55+, or even lvl 60 requirement on the 41-point Talents.
 

The argument is made that as they level to 70, warriors will be arms or fury.
Yep, my 60 warrior specced arms for PvP and for leveling.

Just as lots of priests are specced shadow for PvP and leveling.

I like tanking (though a lot of people don't).
I've been told I'm a pretty good tank.
But let's be clear: A prot-tank speccing out to the prot-41 talent is good for one thing only. Tanking.
So I don’t expect to see many prot-tanks until level 70, and I'd expect that most of them will be re-speccing to prot at 70, members of raid guilds, committed to guild raids.
I may be wrong, but with the sharply-defined specialization of the warrior protection talent tree, I just don't expect there to be many prot-tanks around for pick-up groups, even after 70.

That's the issue (problem?) with the specialized talent trees, and making players pay gold to re-spec.

I don't have a good answer to that problem within the current WoW framework.

Even "free re-specs" wouldn't really be free, since the abilities that are given by talents have to be retrained past Rank 1 after a re-spec.

I can tell you that most of the warrior protection tree is pretty much only good for tanking, and that the 31 and 41 talents are next-to-useless, IMO, if you're leveling or PvP-ing. The sad thing, to me, is that it seemed to me (pre-patch) as I tanked in a hybrid spec versus a prot-spec, that a warrior has a lot harder time holding aggro if he hasn't made an investment in talent points to increase his aggro generation. That strikes me as inconsistent, since other classes get aggro 'for free' when they put points into talents that increase damage. So, IMO, warrior talent points spent into increasing aggro should have a residual damage increase effect (because, after all, isn't there a correlation between damage and aggro?!).

I guess the counter-argument is that a good tank specced arms or fury, in a party that is conscious of aggro, should still be able to tank successfully, especially if he has some investment in the low end of the prot tree. But that also opens up the hybrid classes for tanking. There may be no specific need for prot-tanks until the raid instances of BC.
 

It seems the arms warriors before still had 15 in prot, now with 41 in arms .. well I don't know if that means it will be much harder or not.

But that's not really what I meant, what I really meant was when I was levelling my priest I could never find a tank. No one even wanted to tank.

So when I want to do an instance, I would get guilt trips, whining, etc, those were the warriors who did not outright refuse to tank. Druids were the only ones that seemed to WANT to tank, warriors all seem to hate it. I don't mean pugs I mean even people I knew.

So very often I'd have druid tanks since they didn't complain and were always willing to go along. My priest is shadow again also for levelling but I'm not going to complain that I'll be healing. (Maybe you've met a bunch of shadowpriests that do complain.) I guess i'm just bitter :)

Blizz should have just buffed warriors instead of lowering bear threat.

I noticed they also lowered priest threat (mind blast) and the spells shaman used that had high threat. I knew a few shaman that could tank pretty well, now they can't either. They are playing around with threat for some reason.
 

Is the protection/arms tank difference huge? I constantly hear the holy vs shadow priest comments, but my raiding guild didn't know I was shadow spec'ed until I told them - I could heal that good as a shadow. I had zero issues in instances or raids with mana/healing/etc.

Assuming you don't go full and only shadow (although VE is quite nice), you should still be a solid healer. Skills beat talents every day of the week.

Side note that really won't help my point: Most fun AV recently was with 5 shadow priest attack group. They were completely unstoppable. At most one would be silenced, while the other 4 killed stuff. The rest of the battlegroup just marched behind them.

ps. every time I have to verify the word twice. Just me?
 

Yes, just you :)
 

It is because it times out. The post above only took one shot, this one (by the time I have remembered what I was going to say) will take two. Not ideal, and mine is in German but at least I now know what "post" and "preview" are in another language ;)

Interesting to tie the tanking warrior, healing priest back into the blog about TSR the other day.

It is fairly obvious that Blizzard feel the weight of history from AD&D. The cannonical forms of characters that they just don't feel able to change. They quite often refer to the Tanking Warrior, Healing Priest and damage dealing Mage as "The Holy Trinity".

You just don't mess with 3 decades of lore, apparently.

This is lost on quite a proportion of the WoW playing public, who compain that some whizzy non-canon class gets a load of new stuff, and can do everything, but their holy cow class got nothing.

Playing a Holy Priest or a Prot Warrior is like owning a classic car. You expect some pain, but ultimately you *know* that you have a classic and accept that.

This is all well and good for "classic" play. This trinity should be better than any other at "warrior grabs attention of thing, priest keeps him alive, mage kills thing" all go home for tea and scones.

But to keep people interested Blizzard have made dungeons that require the other classes. Warlocks for the dispel, Paladin buffs, etc.

40 mans are one thing (you have a small number of specialist slots but can max out on the classic classes) but it will be interesting to see what the group make up for the newer instances are like. Is a Shadow Priest, who can switch from pretty-good healing to pretty-good damage when required going to be more flexible in a smaller group ?

Interesting about the 5 Shadow Priest attack group. All giving each other 20% of their damage as health (which if they are doing the same dmg is 100% of their individual damage each). And getting 10% of that damage returned as mana. Awesome indeed !
 

Anonymous said...
Alsalil, you probably mean Felguard. Yes, it was overpowered, but for a 41 point talent you should get something for the investment. We might be seeing a lot fewer of those lumbering hulks around now.
I'm surprised with so many changes in the Warlock trees that they didn't get a talent point refund.

The problem was that for 41 points you got way TOO much with Felguard. Add in the fact that more than a few of the 41 point talents are truly garbage (Surprise Attacks anyone?) and having a feeling of entitlement about it probably won't go too far. There's a reason that the warlock population skyrocketed, and there's a reason that I was absolutely dumbfounded in a battleground if I ever got DOT'd with Unstable Affliction. Every alt lock and his brother were prancing around with Felguards topping the kill charts.

As for the druid nerf, it is a nerf. It would have been more intelligent to adjust warriors rather than nerf druids. The problem is that druids on the beta server were significantly better at tanking than warriors, which was obviously not the intent. Blizzard ran out of time, plain and simple. The expansion looms, they couldn't keep things status quo and allow druids to be the best tanks in the game, they took the easiest route to keep that from happening.