Incoming!: August 2008 Archives


We are currently in the beta phase of the next expansion, as you are all well aware. All of the classes have new talent trees, and some have spectacular abilities that totally kick ass. Some, not so much. I understand that some all players want those OMFG abilities to be seen. Not all will get them. Some may get them eventually. Everyone wants a Divine Storm, a Titan's Grip, a Beast Mastery, a Typhoon to be given to their class. Not everyone can. This is a fact of life that we will just have to struggle to accept and live with.

The way I see it, having a Hunter, 2 Paladins, and a Druid at 70, is that the big skills are being given to those classes and specs within classes that really, really need them. Hunters have long been the mockery of gaming. Ret Paladins too have suffered being the butt of all DPS jokes. Many raiders seem to feel that Moonturkey are carried, not doing real damage or contributing much to a run other than the aura. I play all of this. I see why we are getting the OMFG talents. We need them.

In a most recent Ask the Beta Tester segment on WoW Insider, their rogue columnist said that Rogues aren't getting any must have talents. He admitted that they will still do massive damage in any raid or group. No doubt rests in my mind that without the changes to Paladins in Wrath, Rogues would still be the hands down favorite for any raid or group. As it stands now, I have a small chance I could win out if their was a choice in a raid, especially with buffs to auras which make them raid wide and the talents and improvements to Retribution Aura that I have taken in the Retribution tree.

Changes to spell power will definitely affect Arita, my druid(renamed Aritas due to name change), but I am trying to get Medros to Dalaran in order to see the amazing city of magic. He only just dinged 71 last night, so it will be a bit until he hits the 74 minimum, but I will then spend some time learning the druid abilities to see how they do in solo and group play. I pretty much stuck to the prospective talent tree I posted about, and I will be sure to report here when I begin doing more than mere fedex quests on the Doomkin.

Hunters. Huntards many call us. Too easy to play, too streamlined, too anti group. We are the most insulted group, and the least wanted in groups. In fact, I think that if a raid were to choose between a Hunter and a Doomkin, they would likely choose feather over fur. Not to mention that hunters are almost never allowed to bring out their biggest asset, their pets, in most raid or group encounters. While Beast Mastery will undoubtedly be the most popular hunter spec in Wrath, cause let's be honest, who doesn't want to tame a Devilsaur, but Chimera Shot and Explosive Shot seem to have some promise. I will be looking at my Hunter last in the line of alts I will bring to the beta.

I guess what I am trying to say is, if your class isn't broke, don't expect a fix. Blizzard is giving clothies spell power, which will automatically give you a buff in that all that juicy healing gear that used to drop will now be usable. They are still working on classes from the Death Knight on down, so don't think that just cause we might have a cinematic, that the beta is over, cause it's not. This change. Things will continue to change. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.

You may have wondered where I have been these last few days. Well, I have been away from blog. AFB. I love the beta. I wish I was in it. I want to be testing and trying and learning. I want to poke and prod and see what breaks. I want to see what is good, and bad, and learn from the beta. Sadly, as I said, I am not in the beta yet. Therefore I must rely on the reporting of sites like Deathknight.info, WoW Insider, wotlkwiki.info, and MMO Champion.

While the WoWHead wrath Talent Calculators are good, they just can't adjust to the changing state of talents on the beta realms. Reminiscent of the original beta, Hunters and Paladins are the last to have received their Wrath talents, and therefore the talents for these classes are changing often. Within a day or two of my recent piece on the Retribution tree for Paladins, the layout of the tree I spent days writing a post about, as well as several critical items in it, were changed.

I wouldn't choose Art of War for any money now. My prospective tree breaks by tier 4. I do not know of anywhere that keeps a record of the talent trees as they change from patch to hot fix to beta round. Dire Cat Form was 'wrongly stated' since it will just be a Cat Form version 2, with a new look via inscription, apparently. Yes, just because Tom Chilton, Lead Game Designer for World of Warcraft, says that something is coming, doesn't mean a thing. Can't count on 'it's coming' from anyone at all, it seems.

So, I guess you could say that I am tired of being bitten by the Beta bug. Sure, more pet slots, spell based mounts and vanity pets, and all the great abilities coming, or stated they will be coming, are here, or in the next patch, all of this looks awesome. And all of it is a single patch from being gone, as well. Maybe the vanity pet and mount system is too tech intensive. Maybe the pet slots make a hunter just too over powered. Maybe... maybe this is beta, and it's just not worth blogging about? Yeah, I think that might be it.