World of Warcraft XIII: Even Aspects Get Nerfed

[Karoht]

Hah nice.

For me, I'm going to expect the following:

---
Shot of human and goblin ships sailing to the isle of Panda-land
voice: "You dare enter my realm..."

Shot of a picnic basket surrounded by Alliance and Horde:
voice: "You are not prepared!"

Panda does a roll and grabs it

Benny Hill music plays as Alliance and Horde chase him around but he avoids them for the whole song

Intro fades with the Panda eating the food

And quickly fades back in to an all male panda group dancing to LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem
---

I figure whatever they have will be better than that so I cannot be disappointed.

You forgot a mentioning of Onyxia in there somewhere.

Part of me hopes that Blizzard trolls everyone with exactly this, followed by "lols, just kidding, here is the real deal"

[subanark]

Well we did our first real night of attempts on heroic madness... and got it down. Much easier to figure out than spine. Both mounts dropped, but kind of crappy on the gear. The spell power staff that is terrible and a 2H sword that went offspec to a tank. I guess that leaves tomorrow for trying out heroic rags.

[Gryffon]

Trailer up and watched.

I liked the narration. I enjoyed it overall, but they definitely played up the comedy, which is fine by me. But it doesn't go very far to go against the Pandas are a joke people.

[Traab]

Trailer up and watched.

I liked the narration. I enjoyed it overall, but they definitely played up the comedy, which is fine by me. But it doesn't go very far to go against the Pandas are a joke people.

I dunno, the fact that the panda was able to slap around both the human and the orc with ease shows that they are pretty effective fighters.

[Dublock]

I dunno, the fact that the panda was able to slap around both the human and the orc with ease shows that they are pretty effective fighters.

I gotta agree with Traab.

Also this is further prove that there is no other video game company that can do cinematics better then Blizzard, even though I felt like it could have used something...not sure what though.

[Hullabaloo]

Also this is further prove that there is no other video game company that can do cinematics better then Blizzard, even though I felt like it could have used something...not sure what though.

Never played any of the later Final Fantasy by SQUARE ENIX huh? :p

That aside, the cinematic are great for all Blizzard products, but I agree, something a bit off about this one. Looked great, interesting, but cant put my finger on it.

[Mutant Sheep]

The thing I don't like IS the panda effortlessly beating both of them while wearing a Jack-Black-as-a-panda-grin. Not to mention the orc and human deciding to team up for the sake of killing the bear-with-a-hat.

[Dublock]

I am ok with that.

Both the Orc and Human know each other (as in each race), they never seen the Panda before. The panda is the unknown in this situation, it is better killing off the unknown and then working on the known, more so if you are confident that you can kill the other (I know Orcs think they can take on one Human, I am less sure of Humans).

Also there was a few hits between the Orc and the Human after the Panda appeared, mostly I only remember the Orc taking a shot at the Human.

[Admiral Squish]

What was weird to me was the human had a sword. Why would he make a wooden spear? I mean, he's shown using the sword to MAKE the spear.

Other than that logical disconnect, 'twas a very cool cinematic.

[illyrus]

Enjoyed the intro though I tend to like a bit darker for WoW such as the WotLK intro. There isn't some great evil threatening to destroy the land in the intro. In the trailer for BC we had Illidan, WotLK Arthas, and Cata had Deathwing. In both vanilla WoW and this trailer there is no obvious villian presented and its more of an "explore this exotic new world and its people".

As for them teaming up, it made sense to me. I doubt the team up would have seemed dubious if it had been a(n) Dreadlord/Infernal that appeared and probably comes down to: Do you like the fact that Pandas have been added as a race? Yes/No/Maybe

I wouldn't say Blizzard trailers are my favorite though, I'd probably go with some of the Eve trailers for that (Empyrean Age, Dominion, and the 2012 Fanfest trailer) as they tend to use the game's engine and are still beautifully done. Note I'm not comparing the games themselves, just what I like in the trailers.

[Aidan305]

What was weird to me was the human had a sword. Why would he make a wooden spear? I mean, he's shown using the sword to MAKE the spear.

Other than that logical disconnect, 'twas a very cool cinematic.

Not really. The sword was broken and wouldn't prove to be an effective weapon, and while the spear is primitive, it would still work better than using a broken sword.

I quite liked the trailer, and I thought that it got the message of what the expansion was about across loud and clear. The bad guys are defeated, and now we're back to fighting each other tooth and nail. But why are we fighting each other?
(Essentially the reason why the panda was able to lay the smackdown on the human and the orc was because unlike them, he was fighting for a cause (and teaching them a lesson while he was at it)
There were also the subtle hints about the dangers of the mindset that the human and the orc had. They were ripping bits out of the scenery without stopping to realise just what was around them because they were so intent on killing each other. It wasn't until the pause in the battle that they actually took a moment to see what was there.

Judging from the trailer, I am very curious indeed about the storyline that this expansion will follow.

[Karoht]

When anyone sees a Pandaren do anything, no matter what it is, they will say Blizzard is copying Kung Fu Panda. Even though it's actually the other way around, but whatever (Pandarens existed in canon (WC3) years before Dreamworks even existed), people are dumb. Especially Fandumb.

@Aiden
Yaaaaay, some people saw more than just a Panda doing Kung Fu, and actually noticed other stuff like collateral damage!

Chen was shaggy. He wasn't cute, he wasn't fluffy. He had some haggarred-ness to him. Really gave him character. I liked that, big time.

The smirk when the Orc and Human work together...
"Wow, getting these guys to work together is almost too easy."

I mostly called it on the trailer.

The thing I am actually rather sad to not see?
Right at the end when you see the Valley?
No cloud serpent. That would have been the perfect time for one to pass (maybe with a Female Pandaren rider, maybe with no rider), the camera could have followed it as it zoomed past the guys practicing their forms, the serpent could have gone under the bridge while the camera went over or under, I tell you it could have been gorgeous. Sad to see the missed potential, but what we got was still breathtaking.
But other than that...

3 words.
I. Am. Pumped.

Also, today I discovered a neat trick with Druid Mushrooms that is going to make working them into my healing rotation much easier.

[Castaras]

In both vanilla WoW and this trailer there is no obvious villian presented and its more of an "explore this exotic new world and its people".

This was what I quite liked - it gets old very quickly having a "THE PREVIOUS VILLAIN WAS NOTHING, I SHALL SMITE THEE AND CAUSE YET ANOTHER APOCALYPSE TO OCCUR."

Here, it feels like it'll be more of an expansion rather than just a heightening of the game.

[Dublock]

Also, today I discovered a neat trick with Druid Mushrooms that is going to make working them into my healing rotation much easier.

As a person who is VERY tempted to make his Restro druid as his main, I want to know it.

[Karoht]

As a person who is VERY tempted to make his Restro druid as his main, I want to know it.

I will do a stream video about this at some point soon. Also, this does somewhat apply to Boomkin.
I currently call it Shroom-Queing. I'm open to better suggestions for the name.

Now, this works with any cast-time spell, specifically Healing Touch, Regrowth, and Nourish. Though I did test it with Wrath and Starfire, it works there too.
Before we begin, I want to point out that this is much easier if you have Shroom and Detonate both bound to buttons on your mouse (I have 14 buttons total on my mouse so yeah, done), but in a pinch, just leave Shroom on your mouse. I also tested it with just clicking, it was trickier but it worked fine.

So you start the cast, we'll just say Healing Touch.
Watch your cast bar, you'll see the 1 second GCD go by.
Click Shroom. You'll see your pointer turn into a reticle to position the mushroom. Click anywhere you want, even if you are still casting. It will not break the cast.
The cast will end, Healing Touch will go off, and the shroom will drop instantly, exactly where you told it to. This will also trigger the 1 second GCD, right after Healing Touch completes it's cast.

My advice for timing this is during a Healing Touch/Nourish on a tank, and combo up the Shroom with that. It should make for a more natural way to work Shrooms into the 'Rhythm' of your healing. My advice is practice this now, just casting on yourself. If you can do it with Regrowth and not miss a GCD, you're doing great.
If you can keep up your casts and throw down three Shrooms (one at your feet, the other two at arbitrary locations around you) and Detonate them and never miss a Detonate cooldown and never miss a GCD, excellent.
If you can do all of the above while fighting Slabhide in Stonecore with a team that insists on always breaking line of sight to the healer, you are awesome. Of course, they'll be confused as to why you are throwing mushrooms in odd places but whatever.

The other good time to drop Shrooms is when moving. I did a video on my stream called "Healing + Moving" that I completely recommend if you are looking at making a Resto Druid as your main. Healing and moving is one of our greatest strengths, and given our kiting toolset as well as our host of heals which can be done on the run, AND our new movement based abilities, I fully expect that this is going to be a big deal in the not too distant future. Especially in PvP.


Melee1 VS Disc Priest: "It's no good, I can't burst through this Discipline Priest's heals and damage reduction."
Melee2 VS Resto Druid: "Forget that, I can't catch the Resto Druid long enough to auto-attack more than twice."

I look forward to the future. How can you tell?
www.livestream.com/Karoht

[Shishnarfne]

Just got back after a significant layoff (with a very nice new computer). Since my guild downed H Madness about six weeks ago, I got to heal this week's Heroic Run. Got me the achievement, the heroic DW healing mace, the mount, and also the hardest part of Chromatic Champion done.

Two-healing H Madness, starting on Kalecgos' platform was a bit of a shock for my first time back... but it worked! A little crazy, but it worked. (Ended the fight pretty much completely out of mana.)

Now, to figure out what's going to happen when the Mists pre-patch happens...

[The Succubus]

What was weird to me was the human had a sword. Why would he make a wooden spear? I mean, he's shown using the sword to MAKE the spear.

Other than that logical disconnect, 'twas a very cool cinematic.

2H weapon. More damage than a 1H sword.

[Gryffon]

Additional cinematic information:
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/08/16/mi...c-achievement/

Apparently there is an achievement for re-enacting part of the cinematic in game.

[The_Jackal]

This was what I quite liked - it gets old very quickly having a "THE PREVIOUS VILLAIN WAS NOTHING, I SHALL SMITE THEE AND CAUSE YET ANOTHER APOCALYPSE TO OCCUR."

Here, it feels like it'll be more of an expansion rather than just a heightening of the game.

I have to agree. WoW definitely had apocalypse fatigue in Cataclysm.

[Karoht]

@Shroom-Queing:

Okay, my description above was not entirely accurate. Turns out my timing just happened to match the casting. So let me explain again.


Cast-Healing Touch
While cast is casting
Cast-Shroom and position it
Right when Healing Touch finishes, click the mouse to actually drop the Shroom. You have 1 GCD of time to get your next heal ready to roll.


Also, was reading up on Shaman Healing today...
Man, so many free, automatic heals (usually smart healing too) it isn't funny.
Healing Stream Glyph? Any time you heal anyone with healing stream, 20% heal goes to you.
Crit? Ancestral Spirit, 30% bonus to lowest health raid member.
Earthliving Weapon? Chance to proc a HoT, guaranteed chance on raid members below 35% health.
Tier 3 Passive Talent? Chance to proc an extra heal (exact copy, no idea if it is smart healing or if this second heal has it's own crit chance) on every direct heal or damage on every direct damage.
Tier 4 Passive Talent? If you heal someone who is standing in your healing rain, 20% of the heal for everyone else standing in the healing rain. If you throw a lightning bolt (Telluric Currents glyph, get mana back at the same time) at an enemy standing in your healing rain, 50% of the damage is dealt as healing to everyone standing in your healing rain.
Ascendant cooldown? All healing is copied 100% and then split among everyone in range, just like Ysera's Blessing on Ultraxion. Which combo's crazy good with Spirit Link Totem
Healing Stream Totem? Single smart heal cast on lowest health raid member every 2 seconds, totem lasts 30 seconds.
Healing Tide Totem? (also a tier 4 talent) basically works like 5 healing stream totems at once, but on a 3 minute cooldown.

I'll say it just so it is said.
"Yo dawg, we heard you like heals, so we stuck heals to your heals so you can heal while you heal!"

[Dublock]

@Shroom-Queing

Sweet, Thanks for the help/tips and I will defiantly start practicing.

[Karoht]

@Shroom-Queing

Sweet, Thanks for the help/tips and I will defiantly start practicing.

Can you help me come up with a better name before I make a video on it?

I was thinking Bloom-Queing
named after Wild Mushroom: Bloom

Also, should I make a video for Healbot? There are plenty out there but it might need some revisiting when MoP lands.

Yeah, as far as healers go, I've always felt that Resto Druids are really really skill-cap based healers. Shamans got most of their stuff automatic, Paladins are cooldown dependant, Holy Priests have to spam but spam wisely and react wisely, Disc Priests have to think ahead, know what is coming, and be highly pro-active rather than reactive (especially now with Spirit Shell), while still squeezing in some DPS.

Resto Druids are just a little bit of everything. We have to think ahead, we have to time cooldowns extremely well (partly why I'm probably going to take Treants instead of Treeform, less timing issues), we have to be a bit spammy, we have to react, BUT on top of all of that, we have to be extremely good at squeezing in shrooms during lull periods, we have to be extremely good at moving and healing, and we have to be extremely good at using some of our new CC/Snare tools. Symbiosis will also be yet another mechanic we have to master as well. I really hope someone comes out with a clever addon for Symbiosis.

Druids, I would argue, are the closest of the main 5 healers, to how a Mistweaver Monk heals. Mistweaver has some automatic heals going on (Statues, Healing Sphere procs) some rather good Heal over Time effects (an AoE heal that also refreshes their HoT means that in theory you can have 5 raid members with the HoT up at all times, it's just hard to maintain and takes some buildup), the Chi management is about as difficult to manage as Holy Power but not quite, they have a shield effect, they have some awesome defensive cooldowns, and they have some pretty decent burst but they have to build up to it first.
I fully predict that in the first raiding Tier the top three healers are going to be Shaman, Monk, Druid, probably followed by Paladin, Holy, and Disc. But, from the Beta, balance is looking quite good, so the margin between the top and bottom shouldn't be huge. I'd be amazed if the margin turned out to be more than 8%, itemization aside of course. Monk, Druid, and Disc are emerging as the 3 highest skill-cap healers, while Shaman, Paladin, and Holy Priest are emerging as the easier playstyles to master.

In no way should anyone read the above and think "oh crap, my class isn't as good, reroll" BTW. Also bear in mind that certain classes are less gear dependant (Druids were actually quite behind until you hit a certain amount of haste in T11, and Haste was hard to come by) than others which gives them an early advantage, the kind of thing you see most prominently in the first tier of content of an expansion. Shaman is expected to be the top of that list due to all the free healing and smart healing and procs, making them really only need 2 stats, mastery and spirit.

[Dublock]

Ok, after thinking about it over night I think it should be shrooming or blooming. To my knowledge there really hasn't been any real use of them outside of the initial pull or an add spawn point (bloods on DW) and because of that you can start adding it in and become an use so you can use a generic basic name since currently there is one use during the combat. You can toss in those and make in all encompassing.

Personally I do have healbot installed but I have not really touched it. I got grid and thats pretty much the extent of my healing addons. So I know I would watch a video of you going into detail of it (I would watch someone else's video if I do decide to make my druid my main, I would rather watch someone I have had interaction with :p)

Although my guild currently has 4 druids in it and I don't think any of them are switching, if they are then I am switching to my druid :p.

I would pick the skill cap healer to have at level cap first wouldn't I?

[Karoht]

@Blooming

So I've been running Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle in marathon sessions to try and get the mounts to drop. So far no luck on either of those fronts. Also, it's rather amusing to come in as top dps as a healer. But, I've been using the time to get a lot of practice in with my mushrooms, even if it is just DPS.

Theory-Detonate is a 10 second CD. You can drop up to 5 mushrooms. I think that in a given 10 second expanse of time, your goal will be to always drop at least 2 mushrooms, in addition to everything else you are doing. This will be the sort of normal usage of the ability. Meanwhile, when crazy AoE healing is needed, you're goal might be to get mushrooms down, use Wild Growth, use Swiftmend, and Bloom those mushrooms. That might literally be all you do when trying to brute-force your way through heavy AoE damage, it might just come down to spacing all of those out, maybe weaving in a Lifebloom and Rejuv somewhere in that mess.

I find it interesting that the 'optimal' method of healing in an AoE situation isn't necessarily going to be one method. Especially when you have a range pile and a melee pile, or if everyone is really really spread out.

EDIT: BREAKING NEWS
This just in. Icy-Veins just revealed their resto druid guide for MoP.
http://www.icy-veins.com/restoration...-healing-guide

[Calemyr]

Shroom Bloom Boom

[Karoht]

Shroom Bloom Boom

Doesn't accurately describe the 'trick' being applied in order to get Shrooms down faster, but not bad. I might adjust that just a tad and go with that when I make my video.

I'm probably going to do the video on patch day. Test a few things out, see what's what. It will probably be about my thoughts of Druid talents and my recommendations, along with how to pop out Mushrooms and still keep up on everything else. The whole thing will be live-streamed, but if you miss it, you can catch it on my livestream channel.


EDIT:
Tinfoil Hat Theory, Spoilered for Length.
(As in, don't bother replying in spoiler text yourself)

Spoiler

Show

So, the Paragon system in Diablo 3 is kind of interesting.
For those not in the know, the level cap in D3 is 60, but you can then get 100 Paragon Levels on top of that. Paragon Levels basically grant you increased magic item find, and no other real perks that I am aware of. It is interesting because it is a character progression system that takes place at level cap, in level cap content.

So what if we had a Paragon System in WoW?
They could call it Path of the Titans if they wanted to. They could call them Titan Levels. Or whatever really.
The perks could be unlockable every few levels. Lets say that in the next expansion the level cap is 95. The Paragon Level cap could be... lets just say 25 for now. Every 5 levels, a perk opens up, you get to choose 1 of 3, much like the current talent system.
I highly doubt these perks would be combat bonuses, otherwise people would be obligated to get them maxed out right away.
I also highly doubt that such a system would not be gated. In fact, I would bet that the intention would be to take most of the entire expansion pack in order to max it out.
Think like guild perks, but on an individual basis, and with customization choices. IE-At level 1, you get a choice between 3 perks. 1 gives you more "stuff" from PvE content (JP, VP, XP) another gives you more "stuff" from PvP content (Honor, Conquest, XP, Rating?), and one gives you some kind of middle of the road option.
Originally, they wanted Guild Perks to be customizeable, and they had talent trees for them, but realized that if your guild leader made a choice you disagreed with, it could cause issues, so they just made the perks gated.
If you want to change your perks, you could respec them. The cost would have to be pretty significant to prevent people from picking up all the PvP related perks, going to PvP, then respec to PvE perks, then going to Raid or somesuch.

What gives you XP for these new Levels? EVERYTHING!
Crafting, killing stuff, questing, raiding, dungeons, PvP, Archeology, Pet Battles, practicing on a target dummy, pretty much doing anything and everything with your character.


Big Bad Questions:
1-Would it be per character or account wide?
1a-If it is Character based, could it be tailored specifically to the class, without providing too much of a combat boost?
2-Would Achievements play any kind of role in it? IE-A character who has Loremaster has less quests available to go and complete in order to advance these levels, where a character who has none of the Loremaster achievements has much more opportunity to complete quests and advance. So someone who has lots of Achievements might maybe get a boost in this regard?
3-What sort of perks would be involved that wouldn't make this system or the Guild Leveling system redundant or overpowered?
4-Could they successfully gate this system to in such a way that it would take pretty much the entire expansion pack (or about 75% of one) to complete, without making it too grindy, but not something one completely ignores for the entire expansion until a message comes up that says "Ding, Max Paragon Level." Recall that Legendary items are expected to now take an entire expansion to complete, so could a progression path like this also take an entire expansion to complete?

[Karoht]

Oh boy, patch day is here!
Go to mmo-champion.com if you need to catch up on all the changes.

Took me 20 minutes to get the patch all optomized and stuff this morning, so I'm set for when servers go back up. I'm going to fiddle with addons and my keybind/configurations when I get home, then rock out some 85 heroics. Depending on how good that goes I might try for an LFR run, time permitting.

[The Succubus]

The colossal game breaking monstrosity that is 5.0.4 or just a small standard patch?

[Dublock]

and I have class from a hour after maintenance (which will go over odds are) until 9pm EST yay! Although I have only one class on Mondays and Tuesdays so I guess I shouldn't complain.

I hope the exp nerf is this patch, I don't feel like leveling my rogue the last 4 levels, yea I know laziness :P

[Traab]

So... im stuck on it optimizing the game for me, its at 0% and holding steady. Is it safe to cancel it since it hasnt actually dont anything yet?