New Classes Skills in Wrath

In World of Warcraft new expansion: Wrath of the Lich King, you will see many new skills for all classes.

Nonlinear dungeons return in Wrath

To me, one of the most exciting parts of this morning's Dungeons and Raids panel at the WWI is the fact that they're going to add more nonlinear elements to five man dungeons. Thank Uther! As far as time it takes to complete dungeons, The Burning Crusade was a massive improvement, but I couldn't help but feel something major was lost when they all amounted to pull-drink-pull with solid hallways guiding you straight forward. I really started to miss places like Blackrock Depths.

The Caverns of Time was a gloriously refreshing change from that, and I'm glad they took something out of that poll they did awhile back. The previews of The Occulus and Caverns of Time: Stratholme were fantastic, and that nonlinearity is one of the best parts, easily. Even though you will probably have killed all of the same bosses in the end that you would have if the dungeon were linear, just in a different order, having choices available and environments that aren't simply enclosed hallways that go in one direction really brings a place to life. It's hard to believe that the Botanica is just one really long constant hallway, for example.

Here's hoping that these elements extend beyond Old Stratholme and The Occulus, and Wrath will bring dungeons back to life.

Hybrid Theory: Shaman and the Wrath Alpha

Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.

The seedy underbelly of the internet continues to supply the goods. Just in time to follow up on our look at Druids and Shadow Priests, we're supplied with some potential Shaman information. Let's hope Paladin timing will be as convenient, though it seems unlikely.

As usual when discussing Alpha information, it's always wise to remember that much of it will likely change by launch. Stay optimistic, but cautiously so. That way you can get excited without your hopes being crushed later on. Now, with the disclaimer out of the way, let's dig right into the Shaman talents and abilities. A lot of the previous weaknesses of the class are being addressed (much like they were for Shadow Priests) with a few new interesting things tossed in, accompanied by a side of itemization band-aids.

The first thing I noticed about the Shaman talent trees in the Wrath of the Lich King alpha is that a few old talents have been changed (and a few talents have been added) to patch up the issues that would arise with the itemization homogenization (see how many times in a row you can say that out loud) in the expansion. For example, Enhancement Shaman no longer get a 5% boost to their Mana via Ancestral Knowledge. It's a boost to Intellect. At face value, it's roughly the same thing. However, when you go deeper into the talent tree, you'll find that Enhancement can turn 100% of their Intellect into Attack Power.

A little strange, considering Enhancement barely gears for Intellect at all. Your average Black Temple geared Enhancement Shaman probably hovers around 200 Intellect unbuffed, and uses a lot of leather intended for Rogues. Still, even then, that's 200 Attack Power. When you take the fact that Hunter gear has a fair amount of Intellect on it currently into consideration, this talent gives Shaman a pretty good reason to share with their predatory friends. Especially when you consider Shaman have relatively low Attack Power compared to the other melee classes, this will help fill that gap in a way other than just stacking Strength endlessly.

Another example of this is the Restoration talent tree. There's a renewed emphasis on Spell Crit that wasn't there before. There was always Ancestral Fortitude, but one minor talent doesn't dictate how you gear, usually. Usually. So far in Wrath, the most notable example of an emphasis on Spell Crit is Ancestral Awakening, a spell that automatically heals the player with the lowest health in the raid for 20% of the healing your Crit did. On top of that, the Restoration talent tree gives you 14% 'free' Crit for your Healing spells.

It's very possible that those talents supply such a large amount of passive Spell Crit so you don't need to gear for it, but I find it more likely that they're specifically encouraging Spell Crit, and we'll see a lot of it on Healing gear. Why? So Restoration and Elemental Shaman can use the same gear for each spec with the new Spell Power mechanic (combining +Damage and +Heal). A strange way to do things, but if they manage to do it right, it's a good thing for Shaman, and probably something we should hope for for all Hybrid classes. It would certainly make things easier as far as bag space goes. Really, anything that helps my Shaman, Paladin, Priest, Druid, et cetera make bag space is a good thing.

Well, that's not true. I think they may be going overboard on homogenizing loot, but this particular example is a good thing, probably. It helps the Healing spec out by letting their gear shine in their alternate spec as well. The current Healing to Damage conversion is nice, but it isn't enough to let a powerful Healer still feel powerful when their friends aren't around. They still want a set of DPS gear currently, even with that conversion.

Moving on from the Gear side of things, there is another thing I noticed. They seem to want an Elemental Shield and a Weapon Buff for each Shaman spec, which is how it probably should have been from the beginning. This is the source of a few talents, the augmentation of an old weapon buff, and the addition of a new one. Each of these things should help the viability of all of the Shaman specs in a raid and PvP setting, supplying either a boost to damage that generally does not keep up well with other classes, or a bit of utility the class previously did not have.

The most notable is the addition of Earthliving Weapon, a weapon buff for Restoration Shaman. It gives a flat +Healing buff, and has a 20% chance to proc a small HoT. This isn't something that is just a toss-away buff. It's something you'll want to keep on your weapon constantly. Shaman receiving a HoT, any HoT, is a good thing and hopefully an omen for Holy Paladins as well. We can hope, can't we?

Flametongue will be the Elemental weapon buff of choice, as it seems it will soon provide a Spell Damage boost, like Earthliving provides Healing. My guess is this won't have much of an effect on anything besides what you see on the surface, and is simply something added to diversify things a little more for Shaman.

Enhancement already has their ultimate weapon buff in the form of Windfury, so their love is in the shape of an Elemental Shield. Lightning Shield, to be precise. The talent Static Shock (with 3/3 talent points) gives a 6% chance to zap your target with a Lightning Shield charge on melee hit. To help that out a little further, you can improve Stormstrike with two talent points, both reducing its cooldown and adding two more charges to the debuff. Combined, this is a pretty great boost to Enhancement DPS.

Elemental's toys mostly seem aimed at PvP. Since that's generally their niche in The Burning Crusade, it makes a lot of sense and that probably won't change much in Wrath. A Fire-based nuke in the form of Lava Burst helps the issue of all Shaman abilities besides two Shocks (and now Totems) being Nature-based. Talents give a few new ways for the Shaman to escape as well: Frost Shock gets the chance to freeze an opponent entirely for 2 seconds, being crit twice in a row procs a 3 second Blessing of Protection with a 30 second cooldown, and the most awesome of them all is Thunder, an AOE knockback that also regenerates some of your mana.

Take that, melee assist train. I'm BoPed and tossing you right out of melee range!

This one is still largely up in the air, but it also seems Shaman in general are getting Hex. I'm sure you remember Hex from Zul'Farrak and LBRS, right? You know, repeatedly getting turned into a frog, over and over again? Gosh, I hate Zul'Farrak. Anyway, yes, it seems Shaman will be getting a form of CC. Hoorah!

I think you get the idea. Shaman get a lot of pretty neat things. I didn't even mention the straight up awesome stuff like the ability to summon Spirit Wolves, Thrall style. I basically just mentioned the things that will probably have an active effect on how Shaman will play in their primary raid roles. A full rundown of their abilities is probably better suited to Totem Talk. Maybe Matt Rossi will take a look at that for all of you.

Now why did I mention these things? Well, I explained what they are probably doing to handle loot homogenization. The other thing I notice while looking over Shaman and the previous classes I've talked about is that it seems they're increasing just how much damage the Hybrids are capable of dealing. I'm sure the Pure classes will still pull ahead, but there seems to be an active effort to lessen that gap, which is something we've discussed before.

Why would they be closing that gap, though? Things seemed pretty balanced in The Burning Crusade, didn't it? Sure, Hybrid damage didn't keep up with the pure classes, but the sheer utility made it worthwhile, right? I, at least, think that was definitely the case in TBC raiding. However, Wrath is taking the emphasis off of 25-man raiding and placing it on 10-man raiding. That massive utility is not going to be as good as it used to be, and not as important.

You likely won't have an entire group benefiting from the entire range of an Enhancement Shaman's utility. Your Enhancement Shaman will probably be with two other physical DPS and your two tanks in a 10-man raid. It's possible that your 10-man fields a full physical DPS group, but it's unlikely. In 10-man raids, the raid DPS that a Shaman supplies is far smaller than if he or she were in a 25-man raid. Their utility no longer makes up for their lower personal DPS in a Wrath of the Lich King raiding scene. The gap between Hybrids and Pure classes must be smaller for a raid game that emphasizes the smaller group sizes. Plus, that potential CC in the form of Hex makes 10-man group composition more lenient in addition to its obvious PvP applications.

If you look at the spells and abilities these classes are getting so far, the heavy emphasis on buffing your group and raid has also been toned down. The group-wide buffs are mostly what they are in The Burning Crusade. Very little has been added or altered on that front. The emphasis has been taken off of buffing others, and been placed on empowering the Shaman, Druid, et cetera. This was needed to some extent, but the shift was rather fast, and indicative of the kind of game we'll see in Wrath.

As someone who adores 25-man raiding, it is admittedly a little saddening to see class design shift away from that so sharply. However, I will admit that it's probably the best move for the majority of the WoW community. Plus, some of that stuff is pretty sweet. Summoning spirit wolves? Hell yes. Again, I didn't mention every new ability and talent that Shaman are getting. There's a lot of other really cool stuff, including some fantastic PvP buffs for Enhancement Shaman. Yeah, you heard that right. PvP buffs for Enhancement.

Here's to hoping that my theories and interpretations are interesting to someone other than myself, and that Shaman will be in top form in Wrath! The love is definitely needed, and I hope that Blizzard follows through.

Badges in Wrath

As we were promised, the latest Blizzcast episode talked some about the Badge of Justice system, and where they want to take it in Wrath of the Lich King. Specifically, Tigole said the following:
Badges will definitely be back in Wrath, in some form.
Like how it's ended up in BC, they want badges to appear in both Heroics and raids.
However, they want to stratify it more, so it's not just one gigantic pool of items. (They also want to spread the vendors around the world, so it's not just "one dude in Shattrath and one dude out on the Isle of Quel'Danas"; this sounds like an annoyance to me, and at any rate will not make a real difference in how the system works.) Proposed stratification options include:
"A token from different levels of content" as well as badges that would need to be turned in for the different levels of items
Different kinds of badges
I'm glad to hear all of this (except maybe the spreading vendors around part). I think badges are one of the best ideas they had in BC, since it means that as long as you kill a boss, you walk away with something, even if the item you wanted off that boss didn't drop and/or you didn't win the roll. Reputation does this as well, but not all instances have reputation (like Zul'Aman), once you get to Exalted there's no gain, and there are typically not many items you want from a given faction. Badges avoid all these problems: all heroic and raid bosses drop badges, you can always use more badges, and there's always something to spend them on – even if you're kitted out in T6 or equivalent, you can at least buy epic gems or Nether Vortices to sell on the AH.

I'm a little ambivalent on the stratifying idea, actually. Currently, someone running heroics or Karazhan can, eventually, get best-in-slot or near-best-in-slot items like the Crossbow of Relentless Strikes or the Adorned Supernal Leggings, although it might take them a month or two. However, if it was the case that you needed a Mystic Widget from the Tier 9 raids, or special badges from same, to get the T9-equivalent badge gear, it would be completely inaccessible to players on the lower rungs of raiding, no matter how long they kept at it.

BitterCupOJoe and darian, in comments on the Blizzcast post, neatly addressed this issue through a simple mechanism: exchange rates. Let's say there are four types of badges; we'll call them A, B, C, and D for simplicity. We know (from this same Blizzcast interview) that they want the 10-man and the 25-man versions of the same raids to be separated by about a tier in terms of item quality. Therefore, it would make sense if:

Naxxramas, the tier 7 raid, drops A-Badges on 10-man and B-Badges on 25-man.

Ulduar, the t8 raid, drops B-Badges on 10-man and C-Badges on 25-man.

Whatever the t9 raid turns out to be drops C-Badges on 10-man and D-Badges on 25-man.

And so on, if they add more raids.
Then, you just allow players to exchange badges up at a rate of two-to-one: two As get you a B, and so forth. This allows Blizzard to make it clear that certain gear is "meant for" certain levels of play, and to make it easier to get the appropriate gear at the appropriate levels, while still making it possible for the dedicated t7 raider to get top-quality gear eventually.

Now you may be asking at this point: if you can easily exchange badges, why bother having multiple kinds? Instead of one D-Badge, just give players eight A-Badges. There are two problems with this. First, the number of badges could quickly become intimidatingly large; 150 BoJs for a weapon already is in my opinion. And second, then you basically wind up right back where we are in BC, with a huge, undifferentiated pool of items. Those of us who know what we're doing may not find it particularly problematic, but it's not as organized nor as flavorful (so to speak) as it might be.

I would probably also want downwards exchanges to be possible, just in case it seemed like a better idea to get a lower tier of items than I was currently raiding for.

This seems like a good opportunity to bring up a suggestion that was making the rounds a while back, before BC: a keyring for tokens. There are all sorts of tokens we collect throughout the game, from Badges of Justice to Battleground marks to various reputation turn-ins. Why not have an infinite-space bag just for tokens, like the keyring? Then you wouldn't have to worry about showing up at the vendor only to realize you'd left your tokens in the bank, or clearing an inventory space to pick up that Badge. They could call it the "purse" or something.

There's another, related option that I think might bear exploring: raid points. Currently, Blizzard hands out points for Arenas and Battlegrounds that can be spent on items; why not do the same thing for raids? Badges are really just a crude version of points anyway. You could give everyone that participates in downing a boss a certain number of points, and you'd be replicating the badge system, but without the clumsiness of having to remember to run to the corpse and pick up your badges (and clicking again in case you get a "that item is busy" error), and then bank them or keep them in your bag. Not to mention it takes forever for everyone to loot their badges out of a chest, like for the chess event in Karazhan.

But that's just the beginning of what a points system could bring. You could reward people much more flexibly; for instance:

Finer control over how much the bosses are worth; instead of one badge for every Heroic boss, you could give (say) 100 points for most of them, 170 for the end bosses, and 200 for the Wrath equivalent of Magister's Terrace Kael'thas

A bonus for guild-first kills

A bonus for completing the encounter quicker, or with fewer deaths, or any other restrictions

Give players more points if they're less well-geared, or less high-rated – basically, if it's a progression raid

Let guilds earn guild raid points, which they could choose to spend on whoever they felt would most benefit from them (e.g. tanks)

Share points in common among all of a player's characters on a given server, letting you much more easily gear up alts
These last points are probably going to be controversial, but it can be very hard to gear up tanks, and it would make me very happy if the credits I earn raiding on my priest (whether they're badges or points) could be spent on my rogue, who is rarely needed in my guild's raids.

The purpose of raid points would not be to replace the current token-based tier gear and random-drop-based other gear, but rather to complement this relatively random system with a less-random one, and to keep casuals with a way to gear up; it's not that much different than the Badge system really, just a bit more flexible and bit less convoluted. This is where you guys come in: I have relatively limited experience with MMOs other than WoW. Has an MMO used a similar system to reward PvE activity in the past, and if so, has it worked well?

Either way, I'm very pleased to know that the badge system will be continued and will be improved upon in some form in Wrath. Alternative gear acquisition methods are good.

Wrath release dates

We're all anxiously anticipating the announcement of a release date for Warth of the Lich King. Many of us speculate that the game will be released in November of this year. Many players have sent us tips about various retailers and their release dates. Lubu of EU-Burning Blade shared an email from the vendor with which he placed a preorder of the game:

Dear sir

Thank you for the following order placed with GAME.

As you may already be aware, the release date for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack has changed to Oct 2008. Changes to release dates are relatively common in the videogames industry and are unfortunately beyond our control.

Don't worry, your order is still live and will be despatched prior to its release date via your chosen method of delivery.


I just wanted to remind everyone that retailers have no more information than we do about the development of the game. Amazon.com lists November 30, 2008 as the release date for WoTLK, Game Stop's website says the game will ship on November 3, 2008. As mentioned in the order listed above, the date is subject to change. Online retailers usually put a release date up for preordered sales.

I suspect Blizzard will shoot for a November release, but we're more likely to see the game come out in early 2009. The preorders are usually trustworthy, but the dates are not. If you're like me and planning on taking some time off work to play the game, do not submit your PTO request until Blizzard gives an official date.


Thanks to all of our readers who have submitted release dates, we cannot post anything official until Blizzard makes an announcement. Rest assured that we will let you know as soon as the date is made public.

How to be a death knight

When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players.

Last week, we took a look at how roleplaying a death knight will be different from roleplaying other classes, because death knights come pre-packaged with elements of a backstory for you to flesh out: they have, for whatever reason, at one time joined forces with the Lich King, learned from him how to be a death knight, and now are breaking free of his influence and striking out against him.

As Medeni pointed out in her comments, however, this can potentially lead to a kind of unlikable "celebrity in rehab" type of personality. Imagine, if you will, the death knight known as Marisoo: formerly a paladin of the Light, she sought to destroy the Scourge that plagued her homeland of Lordaeron, but eventually, as she was consumed with vengeance and hatred, she joined the Lich King instead of destroying him. Having learned to turn corpses into slavering ghouls and call forth armies of the undead, she eventually thought better of the whole "wickedly destroy all life" thing and decided to destroy the Lich King after all, only this time she would use his own power against him! Muahaha.

As you can see, there are some pretty obvious flaws in this idea. First of all, the first half of it is almost a direct copy of Arthas' own tale, and, while I can certainly appreciate the power of that story, and the possibility that other paladins could have gone through something similar, roleplayers who want to play a death knight character must realize that it's going to get old fast. Just as death knights aren't just human paladins, we can't all go around copying Arthas, brooding on how moody and wicked we've become. We have to come up with new ideas that fit the death knight mould.

So today I decided to see if I could come up with several death knight "template" characters, which could serve as inspiration for roleplayers already thinking about their own approach to this problem. Feel free to leave your own template characters in a comment, or to create template characters of other races and classes as well, if you desire.

One rule I'm trying to stick to here is that all these characters are basically good. They became death knights without truly becoming evil, or if they originally joined the Scourge with evil intent, they have some plausible reason why they would later on turn against it. In some cases, the character might not be "good" so much as "opposed to the evil guys bent on destroying all life," for some reason. Also, in some cases, I'm trying to go for a very light-hearted, humorous, or even innocent approach to the character, in so much as that is possible with a death knight.

Unwilling servant

You were once some sort of warrior fighting the scourge, but like Sylvanas and Highlord Mograine, Arthas defeated you and decided to raise you from the dead to serve him afterwards. For a long time, you have longed to be freed of this slavery and corruption, and now, with the help of other death knights who are breaking free of Arthas' control, you too are gaining your freedom. Now, you are trying to pick up the pieces of your broken life, gathering what you have left to form something new, some shred of hope to cling to.

This fits best with forsaken characters, who are obviously undead, but if you can choose some sort of pale skin color and make another race look mostly dead, then it could work with them too. Don't try to pull this off with your typical ruddy blond hero -- death knights certainly aren't all undead, but this one is, and if you aren't going to be forsaken, then you'll need to find another way to make him look the part. Also, be aware that this type of story has been done lots of times before, so you should try to make yours unique in some way, without being melodramatic. Perhaps, if you died in a particularly embarrassing or ironic way, for instance, your character could play off lots of cliches in the horror genre and also make other people laugh without being a total farce.

Survivor

You were just a youth at the time the Scourge came through and destroyed your hometown. At the time you joined the Scourge out of fear, thinking it was your only way to survive, but all along you planned to leave it if the chance came. You found others like you, and together nurtured one another's courage until the time to strike finally arrives.

This could work for humans, orcs, or blood elves, all of whom could have suffered at the hands of the Scourge during the Third War. Humans and elves in and around Lordaeron obviously got invaded by the Scourge, and there were orcs in concentration camps around that area as well. Dwarves (and maybe gnomes too) could have conceivably been caught in Muradin's lost expedition or something, with somewhat similar results. Trolls, tauren, night elves, forsaken and of course draenei would not have been in the right time and place for this story to make sense for them, however.

Forbidden knowledge

You come from a culture that loves nature and life, but for a long time you were tempted to know what this corrupt death magic is all about. The more your people warned you against it, the more you wanted to know until you finally set out for Northrend to just have a look. Needless to say, you were intrigued and took up your studies with enthusiasm, only to be horrified at the depth of corruption being a death knight involved. Now, breaking free of the Scourge, you know it is too late to go back to your own people and ask for forgiveness, but you hope that by your example, you can prevent others from following your path.

This story could work well for tauren and night elves. It could also be called "recovering drug addict," and it's different from "celebrity in rehab" mostly because the character doesn't have any pretensions of being cool or unique. He or she just wanted to know a lot of things that shouldn't be known, and now wishes to make good of this mistake.

Frankenstein

You used to go digging up graves, trying to assemble various body parts together and zapping them with electricity, but nothing ever seemed to work, no matter how loudly you shouted "It's alive!" Being a loner type, you didn't have many friends to talk you out of dumb ideas, so you decided to go and find out what really made life work by learning about undeath straight from the Lich King himself. Now that you've become a death knight and all, you've realized that Arthas is a nasty sort and you don't want his kind running things, but you're still convinced that if you could just get those assorted limbs, brains, and intestines arranged in the right way and infused with the right quantity of mystical energies, you could create not some ghastly monster, but a real living creature, albeit a rather ugly one.

This idea is tailor fit to gnomes, but it could work for a number of other races as well, since all races are capable of becoming engineers, and anyone can be bitten with the lust for scientific advancement. This character could be a serious commentary on philosophical issues like the original Frankenstein was, but it seems more fun to fill him up with fun references more in the vein of Young Frankenstein. Any horde race other than blood elves could even get away with calling themselves "Igor," "Igorina," or some variation thereof.

Religious ascetic

While most religions in WoW, such as the Holy Light, Shamanism, and worship of Elune (Elunism?), are focused on reaching some sort of enlightenment through virtues, good deeds and the like, there could be a subset of mystics who seek spiritual enlightenment through direct, face-to-face confrontation with the grotesque realities of life, just like real life people who sometimes undertake tantric rituals. Some, such as blood elves, may see this as the key to freeing themselves from an existing problem or addition, even though it goes in the face of everything their people stands for.

This concept suits blood elves most of all, but I could see it made to fit any race except gnomes (who tend not to be all that religious in their worldview).


That's a review of the best ideas I came up with. Can you think up some more? I'd be especially interested in plausible death knights that were either humorous or innocent or both.