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Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King |
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Aug 13, 2008 - 11:40 PM - by Mithan
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Ghostcrawler, a Blizzard Developer made a post today describing Tanking Priorities in Lich King:
Quote:
Threads have popped up in several class forums that seem to be converging on a few of the same issues. So rather than cross-posting a lot, I thought I would start a new thread.
Tanking design:
1) Our goal in Lich King is for all 4 tanking classes to be viable.
2) We would like for tanking to be a little more fun. I'm going to leave this vague on purpose, but it is definitely a concern.
3) In 5-player instances, most warriors, druids, paladins and death knights should be effective tanks. The healing specs may have a harder time than the dps specs. Arms wariors, Fury warriors, Ret paladins, Ferals and most DKs should do fine.
4) In 5-player heroics, the expectation is that the tank has a heavy investment in tanking talents and appropriate gear. Arms warriors might have trouble tanking a heroic unless they overgear the instance.
5) For raids, we want all 4 tank classes to be viable. If your group has e.g. a Prot paladin and Feral druid as main tanks with appropriate gear and reasonable skill, you should be good to go.
6) This is a shift in philosophy for us. Previously, we sometimes tried to steer Ferals as being better off tanks than main tanks. We also expected specific classes to appear in the raid. Our new assumption is that you might have any of the 4 tanking classes as a tank. We are trying to achieve as much parity as we can among the 4 tanks without making them too similar. If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed.
7) This is a big one: the game isn't finished. We aren't spending too much effort yet to make sure mitigation, threat and tools are similar across the 4 classes at level 80 in blue or purple gear. Likewise, your talent trees and core abilities aren't finished. Tanking (and PvP) need to have a lot of other pieces of the game in place before we can really get the numbers right. It's fine (useful even) to point out when you feel a particular ability, talent, class or build is too good or not good enough. But please don't infer the work in progress as a reflection of our intent. If we end up changing our minds or if things don't work out, it will be posted here.
8) There are a lot of changes in Lich King that change tanking and raiding in general. I won't list them all out here, but keep in mind things like itemization changes, widespread raid buffs, consumables, UI changes, etc. Just keep them in mind. We're not in Tempest Keep anymore.
Concerns or feedback? This is a great place for it.
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6 Replies | 79 Views
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Vault Exclusive: Interview With WoW Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan |
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Aug 05, 2008 - 4:07 PM - by Mithan
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World of Warcraft Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan was in New York City over the weekend and Vault staffer Trinity Divine grabbed the chance to have a rare one-on-one interview with him. As Blizzard's PR team ran a demo of their latest beta build of Warth of the Lich King, Jeff discussed the new features being introduced in WoW's latest expansion, set to be released later this year.
Quote:
The three raid instances – Naxxramas, Chamber of the Aspects (where you get to fight a black dragon!), and Eye of Eternity (part of the Nexus) – all have two versions, 10-man and 25-man, each with its own progression path. What this means is that, unlike the way raid progression is set up in Burning Crusade where guilds have to go through Karazhan first, in WotLK 25-man raiding guilds do not have to split up and do 10-man raids in order to get to the next level. Conversely, it won’t be necessary for a raiding guild to switch from 10 to 25-man raids in order to continue raiding. They can go on to the next level with the same 10-man group.
As an incentive for people to do the bigger group raids, the loot dropped in those raids are a full tier better than those dropped in 10-man raids. There are also cosmetic items like mounts that are only available in the 25-man raids. New factions are also introduced in WotLK which require the player to take sides. The most notable ones are the wolvar and the oracles, which are highly evolved murlocs. The player will also need to curry favor with the Dragonflight, the Kirin Tor and the Argent Crusade in order to get certain items.
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You can read all about the Vault's exclusive interview and listen to an audio clip of the full interview right here on WoW Vault!
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1 Reply | 213 Views
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Recruit a Friend, Get Triple Experience |
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Aug 05, 2008 - 4:05 PM - by Mithan
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Blizzard has announced a new Recruit - A - Friend promotion today. What does the promotion do?
1. Characters on both accounts can summon each other once per hour.
2. While adventuring with your linked friend/family member, you will each gain triple experience and honor.
3. For every two levels the new player earns, the new player can grant one free level-up to a lower-level character played by the veteran player.
4. Get a Zhefra Mount.
I guess if you guys have any friends who want to come play WoW, now is the time to do it.
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2 Replies | 172 Views
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Screen Shots for All New Zones |
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Jul 23, 2008 - 11:55 AM - by Mithan
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MMO-Champion has a pretty good new zone/screenshot area of their site here:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php
Click on "Zones" on the left side, then pick the zone you wish to see. You will see a map popping up and if you select the "screenshot" option, you can see a few dozen shots for that zone.
Some of the zones are actually pretty cool looking, though most are not as different as what we had in Outlands, but still cool regardless.
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0 Replies | 184 Views
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