Monday, September 8, 2008

WotLK Update: 09/08/2008

Two posts in one day is strange for me I know, but I am trying to keep up with news as it happens. That way I hopefully don't post to many walls of text.

Anyway, here are some "quick" updates on recent WotLK beta happenings.


Official Patch Notes Updated:
There isn't any thing really special here. Most of it is just an official listing of all the changes that have been made to the original patch notes, but there is one little gem that caught my eye.


Focused Starlight (Balance): is now Nature's Majesty (Balance): Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish, and Healing Touch spells by 2/4/6%.

For those of you that don't know the current talent on the calculator has only 2 ranks and increase our crit rate by 2/4%. My guess is that it is a typo, but you never know.

Spell Hit Chance Changed:
Currently, the highest hit chance a caster can have is 99%, but that is about to change. According to Kalgan (aka Tom Chilton, Lead Game Designer at Blizzard) we will be able to over come that last percent in WotLK.


Obviously this is a good change for every caster. It will be interesting to see how spell hit will work in WotLK. I have recently gotten a lot of conflicting reports on what the hit cap is in WotLK. Some have said it has been reduced to 9%. Others are saying it is still at 17%. All the while there is nothing official coming out of blizzard. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Racial Abilities Changed:
You can find the complete list
here. Not that big of a deal but some of the changes are kind of interesting.

- Endurance (Tauren): now scales based on base health, to be tuned to approximately a 5% heath increase if the player were wearing green quality gear - This is the single reason why many Horde tanks choose to play Taurens. This is a pretty big nerf and for high end raiders.

- Gift of the Naaru (Draenei): The amount healed is increased based on the caster's Spell Power or Attack Power, whichever is higher. This ability does not lose casting time from taking damage - Excellent change. Now if they can make the new Herbalism heal act similarly.

- [Spell School] Resistance (Various Races): reduces the chance to be hit by [Spell School] spells by 1/2/3% - The school and percentage change depending on the race, but this is an interesting change. The old +10 resistances were practically useless, so this is probably for the better.

Naxx Gear - Moonkin Itemization:

MMO Champion has a great list of all the gear they have found. (link)

Obviously, I head straight to the Moonkin set to see what it is like. (link) Most moonkin seem to agree that this set leaves a lot to be desired. Here are a couple of quick points.


Socket Bonuses - What the heck is up with Int and Stam socket bonuses? Yes, the stats are useful and I like them more then your average caster, but I never want to see them as a socket bonus.

Stat Allocation - If you look at the moonkin set on its own the Stat allocation may not seem so bad, but if you compare it to the other 4 set bonuses you can see that we are way off. We have less Hit, Crit, and Haste then most of the other four classes. Only warlocks have less crit and hit then the moonkin set does, but they have 160 more haste then the moonkin set.

Obviously blizzard has an item budget so the moonkin set has to be better in some ways right? This is correct. The moonkin is far superior to the other sets when it comes to spirit. Yes, that's right. We are much better itemized then the other sets when it comes to SPIRIT!!!.

This is obviously because we have a talent that converts 30% of our spirit to Spell Power. No wait. That's Shadow Priest who's set has 61 points of spirit less then the moonkin set.


Well, it must be because we have a self buff that converts 30% of our spirit to Spell Power. No wait. That's Warlocks who's set has 120 points of spirit less then the moonkin set.

All moonkin get from spirit currently is mana regen. While this is important it shouldn't dominate our gear. Mana regen is also important for Mages but I don't see them with 236 spirit for there evocate. They have a much more reasonable 120. Its like they took the resto set, and just added a little sell hit here and there and called it a day.


Obviously these sets are not final, but it scares me a little that this is the first draft.

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