I doubt the green-eyed monster (Blizzard is jealous of something?) in the background is supposed to be something related to WoW. You have one character for each of the current franchises represented in the foreground, so why have another thing that's supposed to represent Warcraft/WoW? Possibly it's supposed to be something related to Titan, but it's probably just there to cause rampant speculation and not be a specific entity.
I don't feel like looking up the quote right now, but I'm 99% sure someone at blizzard said recently that they won't be showing Titan at this Blizzcon at all, so I doubt they'd have teaser eyes related to it. I think that whatever that is will be related to whatever this particular Blizzcon's big announcement is. Hell, maybe it's something for SCII, who knows. But most are guessing it's related to the WoW xpack.
People have largely (at least in the forums I've visited) been asking for/spreading rumors about a class that can "heal while dealing damage", typically referencing a monk or monk-like class when they bring it up. I can see that working out as well as the Death Knight has with dealing damage while tanking.
Frankly, I'd love to see Blizzard scrap every class that exists today and start fresh. Slim chance of that happening though.
So, what would a DPS class that heals look like?
I'm imagining something along the lines of a Death Knight, except with a healing tree in place of the tank tree. Maybe a second heal spec as well. So your three specs are "pure" DPS, single heals, aoe heals. Figure it uses spell leather or spell mail. It's a caster, but its spells are almost entirely melee-range with maybe a moonfire-spam equivalent for when you have to be at range, and mostly instant with cooldowns. Aggro's no longer an issue with the tank threat buff so heal aggro in melee shouldn't matter. A couple of casted heals that are spec-agnostic - figure one 2.5s cast direct heal, one 1.5s single-target HOT.
DPS tree obviously buffs your damage output, maybe gives a little extra control. "Filler" points include a hit buff (probably the same spirit-to-hit conversion we see on other classes), some cooldown reductions, crit buffs, that sort of thing. Actives include a gap closer, an escape mechanism, and a raid cooldown. Bloodlust, maybe, although a ride-wide movement speed buff could be fun and useful too, and would be unique. Healing is possible but mostly only there as an oh-shit button - long cooldowns, short durations, that sort of thing. Mastery acts like armor pen.
Single-healer spec basically gives the caster Bacon of Light. A percentage of your damage done to the target acts as a heal on the Bacon. As most strikes are instant, most heals are instant. Heals are almost all direct. Have the same sort of slow/big/efficient, medium/negligible/efficient, short/big/expensive setup that the current healers have. Big/efficient and short/big are on cooldowns of ten seconds or less, with a 1min cooldown that allows you to spam them. Other cooldowns are oh-shit single-target tank heals or shields (something like a targetable AD or Last Stand would be cool, if possibly OP.) Mastery improves healing on the Beacon'd target.
AOE healer looks like a buffed-up shadow priest. Heals are significantly reduced in strength, but splash from the monk for 100% and their Beacon target for 50%, so you're mostly healing the melee stack. Cooldowns are raid-focused - something like a raidwide Mirror of Broken Images would be cool, or giving everyone 10% lifeleech for fifteen seconds, that kind of thing. Mastery increases amount healed on targets in melee range.
Just kinda spitballing here. Most of it is probably not really doable at all - AoE spec in particular needs a lot more work.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
Wasn't that the original intention of the Paladin, to be a DPS that also heals a little ?
Yep. The shaman was the offensive minded hybrid, and the paladin was the defensive minded.
You can still see that a little.
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
Well, I think the idea isn't so much "a DPS who has a heal spec" as much as it is "a class that can offer strong heals/support heals while dealing damage". It would most likely be a bit overpowered (or a lot overpowered) at release and eventually be scaled back to reasonable levels in the next expansion as the Death Knight was.
Or who knows, they may go a completely different direction and make some kind of "pure" support class who focuses on buffs and debuffs, a la Enchanters in Everquest.
Quick question: Should we be on the look out for a general Blizzcon thread, or just stick the to respective game ones?
A damage-minded healing class is definitely something I'm interested in. Like you guys point out, the ideas are already steeped in existing WoW-chanics--from Shaman and Paladins, to Shadow Priests, to Blood Deathknights, to Disc Priests. The ingredients are there.
I've played mostly DPS my entire time in WoW. Except for when I first started rolling a warrior and discovered tanking wasn't for me, and spot healed Heroics for my group of friends in BC, it's all been about the damage for me. Specifically non-castery, as I can't stand that style. So warrior, enhance shaman, ret pally, feral druid (also did some tanking there), deathknight, and hunter.
If there was such a class which enabled me to fight a mob while not worry about standing back healing a group (let's say right alongside a rogue next to the action) as my primary class function, I'd be all over it. And, as an extra bit, a class that isn't dippings its toes into the lore or ideology of another. If they could pull it off, that is.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
If there was such a class which enabled me to fight a mob while not worry about standing back healing a group
This would be a monster in PVP, tho, and require a ton of very careful balancing.
Why don't they just make the damn thing BoA and reusable like the CE pets? Because that is precisely how they work. You need one and you can give it to everyone on your account/server. Of course you get one for every character made (you get all of them now, before you had to choose for the vanilla CE pets), but it's redundant.
It doesn't make any sense, other than a money grab, to make it simply one use only period. They have the means already to change that. It's not something technical.
They said themselves, it opens an avenue for people to essentially "buy gold", and that is part of the reasoning. It's an experiment. Can we head off some of the gold buying by giving players a safer, more secure (albeit more expensive) way to exchange dollars for gold.
EVE Online did something similar with time cards, and it mostly worked. People went that route to get their ISK rather than supporting account hacking and possibly getting banned.
I don't see how what I suggested would change what they're intending. Don't bind it till its first use, then make it BoA. They can still sell it in the AH etc.
I don't buy stupid things for my alts in general, but I would be more likely to buy one with gold if I could have it on all my characters. More likely than I am right now anyway, which is to say, not at all even though I have nearly every pet in the game and am the target market.
It was on MMO-Champion. There was a link to it from the early swag bag thingy. I also saw it on their forums.
EDIT: Actually the one on the mmo-champion front page isn't really visible at all. lets see if this works:
check out almost all of the pandaren art that's out there as well. They all have small pointed green eyes just like in the back of that image. Here are some examples:
I would seriously hedge my bets on a pandaren expansion. maybe not as playable characters, but definitely as the focal point of an expansion.
Green = Emerald
Eyes = Close them to go to sleep
4th Portrait in the picture = 4th WoW Expansion
Emerald Dream Con-fucking-firmed!
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"Did ya hear the one about the mussel that wanted to purchase Valve? Seems like the bivalve had a juicy offer on the table but the company flat-out refused and decided to immediately clam up!"
let's be fair, this is blizzard. they love to throw hints around like this (everyone remember the image that you could see diablo in if you raised the brightness?). Realistically speaking, it could only be another WoW expansion unless they have some secret project no one has heard of (because there's no way Titan is ready yet). Given what we know about WoW, the only green eyed characters that immediately come to mind are blood elves, which we've already had an expansion for, and panderans, which they've recently filed a trademark for. it's not exactly a giant logical leap.
Theres another version of the poster pic where you can pretty clearly see the black outlines around the eyes. Here it is:
Take it as you will.
Also, theres another picture floating around of two people in a golf cart with a panda on a poster behind them. Ignore it. Its the same picture they have used for the food areas at Blizzcon for the past few years and has nothing to do with anything.
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
Some of the most fun I ever had in EQ was twinking out a monk with dual beat sticks, an FBSS, etc. Used my necro to farm up all the gear and plat to do it.
It is but some of the NSFW art I have seen for wow is pretty good as well
Still Pandarains is a BAD idea
Jesus christ, would you just chill out? You've been going on and on for the last couple pages about this nonsense. Let me spell it out for you.
We don't know anything about the expansion yet.
Would it kill you to wait and actually find out what they're doing first?
I could even go so far as to say we don't even know what Mists of Pandaria is, but that'd be a bit foolish; there's pretty strong evidence that it's the name of the expansion. But beyond that, we don't know anything. Just the name.
Thing is, the Pandaren are bipedal pandas. The Chinese goverment is apeshit about pandas. In China its illegal to show pandas being killed or harmed in any way. If Mist of Pandaria is the next expac then Blizz either has to have the Chinese goverments okay or wave the chinese market bye bye, because you can't show pandaren characters being killed in China.
People who don't believe me should remember all the shit Blizz had to do get WOLK released in China. They made it illegal to show undead with visible bones, if you died and resurrected instead of bones on the ground like in western servers you got a tiny gravestone.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I'm pretty sure alot of what people say with regards to China and Panda's is made up or grossly exaggerated when it comes to WoW.
If we see a new class that can dps and heal, then you can guarantee they won't be the only ones able to (i.e. if such a thing were introduced, I'd fully expect Ret. Paladins and Enh. Shaman to join the club), in addition to the current healing model being scrapped (this is most likely happening anyway).
Lets hope if a new class does come along, Blizz don't make the same mistakes they made with DK's and introduce something that is head and shoulders better than everyone else that shares the same role.
Personally I liked the idea of how the green dragons healed in Oculus, and it's been the only time I've ever found myself enjoying healing. Draining yourself to heal others, while healing yourself through damage on enemies.
Ok. So I finally have been able to raid some but my guild completely sucks. I mean completely. In addition to the fact that only about three or four people can be considered regular raiders, most of our dps struggle to reach 10k even with what should be decent gear.
We spent two and a half hours Wednesday night wiping on Nef. We had low dps but the more serious problem was that one of our healers, a shaman, was terrible. He never broke 7k hps and had no chance of keeping his tank up even after I asked the druid who was supposed to be on raid heals to try to focus more on the shaman's tank (the druid wasn't super either but that's another story).
So I figure his gear must be crap and I need to check these guys out more thoroughly before inviting them, but after he signed up for the next raid I checked him in Armory and he's at average ilevel of 363, all of it seems to be appropriate, all of it's gemmed and he's only missing one enchant. His spec is a little different from standard but not enough to account for such crappy healing. How can he be doing so poorly? You can't even keep a tank up in heroics with that level of output. Help me out here. We're always hurting for healers so it'll be hard to turn him away, but ye gods, we're just going to wipe again if he's struggling to stay over 6k hps.
A friend of mine was asking me for help with speccing/gemming/enchanting his prot paladin, and wanted me to go over it with him on vent after his current raid. I got several "wiped to Cho'gall" messages via DBM that night. He mentioned to me his raid just isn't putting out the DPS.
So I checked his guildies out on armory...yeah his GM is a resto druid wearing 4 pieces of PVP gear and not all of it is enchanted. The rest of the armory audit went downhill from there and I couldn't even finish going through the officers.
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GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
Ok. So I finally have been able to raid some but my guild completely sucks. I mean completely. In addition to the fact that only about three or four people can be considered regular raiders, most of our dps struggle to reach 10k even with what should be decent gear.
We spent two and a half hours Wednesday night wiping on Nef. We had low dps but the more serious problem was that one of our healers, a shaman, was terrible. He never broke 7k hps and had no chance of keeping his tank up even after I asked the druid who was supposed to be on raid heals to try to focus more on the shaman's tank (the druid wasn't super either but that's another story).
So I figure his gear must be crap and I need to check these guys out more thoroughly before inviting them, but after he signed up for the next raid I checked him in Armory and he's at average ilevel of 363, all of it seems to be appropriate, all of it's gemmed and he's only missing one enchant. His spec is a little different from standard but not enough to account for such crappy healing. How can he be doing so poorly? You can't even keep a tank up in heroics with that level of output. Help me out here. We're always hurting for healers so it'll be hard to turn him away, but ye gods, we're just going to wipe again if he's struggling to stay over 6k hps.
If your shaman is a tank healer, have him follow this simple guide:
1) Keep ES up at all times
2) Keep WS up at all times
3) Keep Earthliving on your weapon
Rotation: Riptide, GHW, GHW, GHW (replace GHW with HW if the tank isn't low)
The advanced version would be to Riptide multiple people (3 targets with the glyph) and use Unleash Elements before the Riptide on the tank.
So we have been wiping to heroic rag 25 for a couple of months already, only got to phase 4 a handful of times. This being blizzcon week we are missing a bunch of people so a 10 msn got formed instead. First attempt got him to 40% in phase 4, and people weren't even wearing their sorrowsongs. I logged off soon after since rogues are not optimal there and I wasn't in the group, so for all I know they killed him.
For the people talking about a healer who DPSes while healing, I just don't think it can work in WoW unless they retool all healers to operate that way. What I mean is, in gear appropriate content, a healer has to be using basically every GCD for something that contributes to healing. To make them DPS and heal you'd have to make them an advanced version of the smite healing priest thing, where they have attacks that are also AoE heals and stuff like that, but that would probably be a nightmare to balance, not to mention make all the other healing specs demand that they be retooled to do the same.
Now if they retool healing altogether for 5.0 with this in mind that's another story, but I guess we'll see.
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GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
On that topic: Holiday events show where a niche half healer/half dps would be possible. My Disc priest has basically no gear (only greens and pre-heroic blues) and I can easily Smite-heal the Horseman while doing 6k dps or so. This is definitely better than when I queue as my fully geared Resto Shaman and maybe get 4k dps if you count the Fire Ele.
The problem really is fitting a class that does two roles subpar into the current LFD system.
They're not going to release a Support class (like Rift's, where they can do decent damage and passive healing w/ limited spike healing when necessary) without giving other classes the ability to spec into that role, too, because it would basically become an absolutely required class. It would also require a huge rethinking of the trinity design that they've been working with for a couple expansions now.
I mean, I'd love it if my enhancement shaman could spec into a certain talent in Resto that makes him heal people around him for a % of the damage he's done over the last couple seconds or whatever, but I'd also love it if I could spec enhancement to tank. Given Blizzard's track record, I don't see either happening.
but I'd also love it if I could spec enhancement to tank. Given Blizzard's track record, I don't see either happening.
Were you aware that every time shaman tanking, hunter tanking, etc, is mentioned on tot Blizzard Tank forum, all the tanks who read it take a drink? It happens every friday. You are a drinking game.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Posts
I don't feel like looking up the quote right now, but I'm 99% sure someone at blizzard said recently that they won't be showing Titan at this Blizzcon at all, so I doubt they'd have teaser eyes related to it. I think that whatever that is will be related to whatever this particular Blizzcon's big announcement is. Hell, maybe it's something for SCII, who knows. But most are guessing it's related to the WoW xpack.
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*Edit. That's what I get for not refreshing before I post.*
So, what would a DPS class that heals look like?
I'm imagining something along the lines of a Death Knight, except with a healing tree in place of the tank tree. Maybe a second heal spec as well. So your three specs are "pure" DPS, single heals, aoe heals. Figure it uses spell leather or spell mail. It's a caster, but its spells are almost entirely melee-range with maybe a moonfire-spam equivalent for when you have to be at range, and mostly instant with cooldowns. Aggro's no longer an issue with the tank threat buff so heal aggro in melee shouldn't matter. A couple of casted heals that are spec-agnostic - figure one 2.5s cast direct heal, one 1.5s single-target HOT.
DPS tree obviously buffs your damage output, maybe gives a little extra control. "Filler" points include a hit buff (probably the same spirit-to-hit conversion we see on other classes), some cooldown reductions, crit buffs, that sort of thing. Actives include a gap closer, an escape mechanism, and a raid cooldown. Bloodlust, maybe, although a ride-wide movement speed buff could be fun and useful too, and would be unique. Healing is possible but mostly only there as an oh-shit button - long cooldowns, short durations, that sort of thing. Mastery acts like armor pen.
Single-healer spec basically gives the caster Bacon of Light. A percentage of your damage done to the target acts as a heal on the Bacon. As most strikes are instant, most heals are instant. Heals are almost all direct. Have the same sort of slow/big/efficient, medium/negligible/efficient, short/big/expensive setup that the current healers have. Big/efficient and short/big are on cooldowns of ten seconds or less, with a 1min cooldown that allows you to spam them. Other cooldowns are oh-shit single-target tank heals or shields (something like a targetable AD or Last Stand would be cool, if possibly OP.) Mastery improves healing on the Beacon'd target.
AOE healer looks like a buffed-up shadow priest. Heals are significantly reduced in strength, but splash from the monk for 100% and their Beacon target for 50%, so you're mostly healing the melee stack. Cooldowns are raid-focused - something like a raidwide Mirror of Broken Images would be cool, or giving everyone 10% lifeleech for fifteen seconds, that kind of thing. Mastery increases amount healed on targets in melee range.
Just kinda spitballing here. Most of it is probably not really doable at all - AoE spec in particular needs a lot more work.
You can still see that a little.
Or who knows, they may go a completely different direction and make some kind of "pure" support class who focuses on buffs and debuffs, a la Enchanters in Everquest.
A damage-minded healing class is definitely something I'm interested in. Like you guys point out, the ideas are already steeped in existing WoW-chanics--from Shaman and Paladins, to Shadow Priests, to Blood Deathknights, to Disc Priests. The ingredients are there.
I've played mostly DPS my entire time in WoW. Except for when I first started rolling a warrior and discovered tanking wasn't for me, and spot healed Heroics for my group of friends in BC, it's all been about the damage for me. Specifically non-castery, as I can't stand that style. So warrior, enhance shaman, ret pally, feral druid (also did some tanking there), deathknight, and hunter.
If there was such a class which enabled me to fight a mob while not worry about standing back healing a group (let's say right alongside a rogue next to the action) as my primary class function, I'd be all over it. And, as an extra bit, a class that isn't dippings its toes into the lore or ideology of another. If they could pull it off, that is.
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"Did ya hear the one about the mussel that wanted to purchase Valve? Seems like the bivalve had a juicy offer on the table but the company flat-out refused and decided to immediately clam up!"
This would be a monster in PVP, tho, and require a ton of very careful balancing.
I don't buy stupid things for my alts in general, but I would be more likely to buy one with gold if I could have it on all my characters. More likely than I am right now anyway, which is to say, not at all even though I have nearly every pet in the game and am the target market.
In other news, H Rag down, yay. So much yay.
Fuck PVP balance
WHERE IS MY LIME!
In the coconut.
0431-6094-6446-7088
check out almost all of the pandaren art that's out there as well. They all have small pointed green eyes just like in the back of that image. Here are some examples:
I would seriously hedge my bets on a pandaren expansion. maybe not as playable characters, but definitely as the focal point of an expansion.
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
Green = Emerald
Eyes = Close them to go to sleep
4th Portrait in the picture = 4th WoW Expansion
Emerald Dream Con-fucking-firmed!
Pokemon White Friend Code: 0046-2121-0723/White 2 Friend Code: 0519-5126-2990
"Did ya hear the one about the mussel that wanted to purchase Valve? Seems like the bivalve had a juicy offer on the table but the company flat-out refused and decided to immediately clam up!"
I really miss my monk from EQ.
Something like this.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
Take it as you will.
Also, theres another picture floating around of two people in a golf cart with a panda on a poster behind them. Ignore it. Its the same picture they have used for the food areas at Blizzcon for the past few years and has nothing to do with anything.
Some of the most fun I ever had in EQ was twinking out a monk with dual beat sticks, an FBSS, etc. Used my necro to farm up all the gear and plat to do it.
Wow... this has to be one of his best works yet.
Still Pandarains is a BAD idea
Jesus christ, would you just chill out? You've been going on and on for the last couple pages about this nonsense. Let me spell it out for you.
We don't know anything about the expansion yet.
Would it kill you to wait and actually find out what they're doing first?
I could even go so far as to say we don't even know what Mists of Pandaria is, but that'd be a bit foolish; there's pretty strong evidence that it's the name of the expansion. But beyond that, we don't know anything. Just the name.
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People who don't believe me should remember all the shit Blizz had to do get WOLK released in China. They made it illegal to show undead with visible bones, if you died and resurrected instead of bones on the ground like in western servers you got a tiny gravestone.
this isn't true by the way
If we see a new class that can dps and heal, then you can guarantee they won't be the only ones able to (i.e. if such a thing were introduced, I'd fully expect Ret. Paladins and Enh. Shaman to join the club), in addition to the current healing model being scrapped (this is most likely happening anyway).
Lets hope if a new class does come along, Blizz don't make the same mistakes they made with DK's and introduce something that is head and shoulders better than everyone else that shares the same role.
Personally I liked the idea of how the green dragons healed in Oculus, and it's been the only time I've ever found myself enjoying healing. Draining yourself to heal others, while healing yourself through damage on enemies.
We spent two and a half hours Wednesday night wiping on Nef. We had low dps but the more serious problem was that one of our healers, a shaman, was terrible. He never broke 7k hps and had no chance of keeping his tank up even after I asked the druid who was supposed to be on raid heals to try to focus more on the shaman's tank (the druid wasn't super either but that's another story).
So I figure his gear must be crap and I need to check these guys out more thoroughly before inviting them, but after he signed up for the next raid I checked him in Armory and he's at average ilevel of 363, all of it seems to be appropriate, all of it's gemmed and he's only missing one enchant. His spec is a little different from standard but not enough to account for such crappy healing. How can he be doing so poorly? You can't even keep a tank up in heroics with that level of output. Help me out here. We're always hurting for healers so it'll be hard to turn him away, but ye gods, we're just going to wipe again if he's struggling to stay over 6k hps.
0431-6094-6446-7088
Or the Chloromancer from Rift.
There are plenty of DPS archetypes in other MMO's that dps and heal at the same time
So I checked his guildies out on armory...yeah his GM is a resto druid wearing 4 pieces of PVP gear and not all of it is enchanted. The rest of the armory audit went downhill from there and I couldn't even finish going through the officers.
If your shaman is a tank healer, have him follow this simple guide:
1) Keep ES up at all times
2) Keep WS up at all times
3) Keep Earthliving on your weapon
Rotation: Riptide, GHW, GHW, GHW (replace GHW with HW if the tank isn't low)
The advanced version would be to Riptide multiple people (3 targets with the glyph) and use Unleash Elements before the Riptide on the tank.
Now if they retool healing altogether for 5.0 with this in mind that's another story, but I guess we'll see.
The problem really is fitting a class that does two roles subpar into the current LFD system.
I mean, I'd love it if my enhancement shaman could spec into a certain talent in Resto that makes him heal people around him for a % of the damage he's done over the last couple seconds or whatever, but I'd also love it if I could spec enhancement to tank. Given Blizzard's track record, I don't see either happening.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Were you aware that every time shaman tanking, hunter tanking, etc, is mentioned on tot Blizzard Tank forum, all the tanks who read it take a drink? It happens every friday. You are a drinking game.