The topic of the thread revolved around the Rogue Subtlety tree and how it’s underwhelming compared to the other trees. But Ghostcrawler’s reply contained something for all pure dps classes to be concerned with. Perhaps it will also be true for other classes that have more than one dps tree too. Here is the interesting reply of Ghostcrawler:

Somewhat related, for the pure dps classes it’s likely that there will always be a spec with the theoretically highest dps. It’s going to be nigh impossible to make multiple talent trees provide identical dps regardless of gear improvement, encounter specifics or group synergies. Our goal instead is just to get things close enough that players are willing to sacrifice a little bit of dps for a playstyle they really enjoy. source

What I understand from this then is that their goal is to design the different pure dps classes so that damage potential is not the deciding factor for their different talent trees but a desired play style. If what I understand is correct, this should be true whether you’re talking about PvE or PvP. We’re seeing this already to a certain degree in the present trees. For example, the Frost tree is usually associated with PvP and AoE farming but steps have been taken to move Frost closer and closer to being competitive to the other specs.

Wouldn’t it be fun to be able to choose your spec because you like how that spec is played and not because it’s the best damage dealer? It’s similar to how a shaman would pick Enhancement because he likes the melee play style and how another would pick Elemental because he likes being ranged DPS. A warlock would pick Destruction because he likes the direct damage while another would pick Demonology because he likes what his minions bring to the table and relies on them more.

I’m not sure exactly how they plan to see this goal through but something tells me that the Mastery talent system coming in the Cataclysm expansion will help. The Mastery system will give players more room to be creative with their talents and not stick to cookie cutter specs. By allowing players more leeway to play around with their specs, this will give them a better opportunity to further customize the trees to fit how they want to play.

Of course this is all just plans and no one knows if we’ll truly get to that “play style rules all” state. But it’s something to look forward to and something to hope for.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

soul shards

Right now it’s still very vague as to how exactly this would work. I was thinking that since the warlock is a pure DPS class, the new use of the soul shard would also be used to boost their damage. In the Warlock class Q&A, Ghostcrawler mentioned that the new soul shard system would give warlocks a combat boost and that’s why more damage was the first thing on my mind (in the form of more spell power, crit, or haste for a short period of time). But Ghostcrawler recently came out in the forums and said that the new soul shard system would indeed be cool but not necessarily a dps buff. This statement poses a few questions right away.

If it’s a combat boost but not a dps buff then exactly what is it? The only stuff that I can think of are more of the cute maintenance things that the current shard system already has. Maybe more threat management abilities or survivability abilities? Maybe they’re things like more stuns and other crowd control effects? But these don’t scream core class mechanics to me.

If it’s not a dps buff, would making it more prevalent in class mechanics actually make it more annoying? I mean, this means you’ll have to worry about shards even more than before. It’s really got to be so cool and so fun to make the extra effort worth your trouble. Somehow i wish Ghostcrawler would give a clearer picture about what he’s really talking about but I guess even giving an example would come across to other people as “this is what it’s going to do” instead of just an idea.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Past Me

In those days I really couldn’t see myself playing a healer. I did try to level a dwarf priest in the hope of probably getting to try it out but in those days my real intention of leveling that priest was the melt some face as a shadow priest. Well it didn’t work out and I eventually deleted that character. Things are different now. I played a Holy Paladin as a main for the latter half of the Burning Crusade expansion and I currently play a Restoration Druid, with my paladin still holy and somewhere between shelved and “played very sparingly”. I still plan to level that pally to 80 sometime though.

I now consider healing something I’m pretty comfortable with and it’s also a nice change of pace especially if you don’t want to worry about rotations, kill targets, dealing with adds or doing enough dps. In trash encounters, healing is actually quite relaxing. The thought I had last week was this. When I was being convinced to level a priest, I was actually choosing between a priest that I still had to make or a level 21 troll shaman that I had made and played to that level sometime before and shelved. I realized that no matter what I choose it would eventually be a healer if and when it got to level 80. In fact somehow deep inside I feel like leveling both and by doing that I would have all four healing classes that already are or should be healers.

This reminds of that quest Chromie gives to go to the Bronze Dragonshrine. If I could go back in time to the Vanilla WoW days and tell myself of my current situation favoring healers, I wonder if if Past Me would believe Current Me.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

priest

Priests are not a jack of all trades, master of none healer. Priests are strong and versatile healers and the only trade off is knowing how to manage the many spells that priests have since a lot of them have these small niches.

Shadow priests used to just a leveling spec which didn’t do enough damage. Then in TBC they were better damage dealers but traded damage for utility. Now shadow priests can do comparable dps to other dps classes.

Blizzard would probably want to change/add shadow talents so that they affect all damage spells and not just DoTs. This should help solve the problem of their damage needing some time to get the ball rolling dps-wise.

They think vampiric embrace damage is fine but could look into the threat even if it isn’t something they think is a problem.

They could look into changing the Mind Flay glyph to increase range without losing the snare.

Reducing the mana cost of shadowform so that it’s easier to pop out of it to heal or do holy damage is an idea they’ve been discussing.

Blizzard is considering changing shadow word: death so that it doesn’t have a backlash when the target is in execute range. They’re also thinking of changing it so that the backlash damage isn’t affected by things that would increase your damage.

Blizzard would want to improve on the mana efficiency and burst healing of the Holy tree.

Their intention is that Greater heal is the default heal while flash heal would be the heal to use for emergency since it’s fast. Such really isn’t the case now with flash heal being valued for its speed over greater heal.

They will not collapse dispel magic and cure disease into one spell. They feel that would make the dispelling game too easy. They have also expressed that dispels missing isn’t something they want in the game but would need a code fix to solve.

Inner fire will not have its charges removed unless they can think of alternatives for it just like mages have molten armor, mage armor etc. Removing the charges would make it a passive armor buff that would essentially make a cloth wearer have the armor of a leather wearer. At least mages have to make a choice.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

two rogues posing in group shot

Rogues used to be the the class with the best dps but now Blizzard has been pushing them into being more normal and having some utility instead.

Blizzard is very happy with the combo point/finisher system that rogues use. In fact there’s a risk of making other classes adapt a similar system but that would make rogues less unique.

Vanish is not working properly. A possible solution to the problem would be to make the rogue always enter stealth for a minimum of 1 second.

A long term plan is in the works to change Hunger for Blood wherein it will be more reactive and used for certain situations instead of just a plain passive damage increase.

Blizzard would like to buff the Subtlety tree a bit to make it more competitive but they want to be careful since if they make it too good, then every rogue would want to play subtlety because of its utility.

Cloak of Shadows isn’t meant to be an I-win button. Buffing it further would give them an unfair advantage even in PvP, by being immune to thing they shouldn’t be immune to.

They would like to make rogue survivability a lot easier by making some active abilities passive, like the Feint change.

Blizzard could allow rogues to be able to take more damage. Rogues seem to rely on crowd control a lot and if they can’t do this, the rogue just takes too much damage. They might allow rogues to be able to take some punishment while cooldowns are active.

Blizzard could allow a weapon swapping feature in the future similar the Diablo 2. This could be the answer for those weapon swapping macros rogues use. But they don’t feel like it’s something they need to address right now.

They’re allowing rogues to use one handed axes because of itemization and because it fits with the rogue image anyway. They felt they were dropping one handed maces a bit too much and wanted some variety in what players would use.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

hunter bow

Before you complain that this change only affects people who have that gear, it seems Ulduar isn’t the only thing in Blizard’s mind when it comes to hunter damage. Ghostcrawler also revealed that there are further plans to work on hunter damage, citing that the above mentioned change is not enough. He still doesn’t want to name any specifics but it should come within a few weeks and hopefully it’s something cool.

I’m still hoping that Blizzard will finally be able to implement the changes to eliminate consumable ammunition since this will really help hunters save some money by not having to spend on them anymore and also by having an extra bag to store more things. Hopefully at least a step towards that direction is part of their plans.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Retribution Paladin

When all that is said and done, Ret’s PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.

Note that I made no promises. These are all just things we are discussing. The eventual solutions could end up different. source

While this is good news and welcome changes if they are implemented, there are still things that could use some work. As someone who doesn’t really play a Ret pally (holy paladin used to be my main and now it’s an alt I’m levelling), one of the things that hit me is that Seal of Command doesn’t seem to have much use anymore. It may be the greatest thing before you get Seal of Blood/Martyr as a Ret pally but once you do get it, Seal of Command gets pushed out of the spotlight. Maybe PvP is the only place you use SoC and even that I’m not sure. It needs a reworking or maybe even replaced with something else so that players could find more use for it even at higher levels. Of course, Seal of Blood/Martyr is still a big issue for Ret pallies since it just sucks to take damage out of your attacks. I know I’d be pissed if my mage took damage every time he casts a frostbolt or something. I don’t want to say anything more and comment on something I really don’t know much about but all I can say is that it seems like now is a pretty sucky time to be a Ret pally *sigh*

Post from: WOW Obsessed