Interesting GC post

[Darksend]

We do want to make sure that 10 player raids can get all of the major buffs a little easier. You should feel like most reasonable comps (3 warriors and 7 rogues is not what we'd consider reasonable) give you all of the major buffs and several of the more minor ones. There will be a little more consolidation than what we've described so far.

We are scaling back the magnitude of some of the buffs, as we did with Sunder Armor. We want you to feel awesome when you have strong good synergy, but we don't want the buffs to overwhelm say your gear or skill. We're also planning on getting rid of any talent that buffs a buff. Any buff that is earned solely by talent needs to have a selfish component thrown in so that you don't feel like you should respec if someone else with that buff comes along.

Obviously things like Rebirth can't just be handed to out to more classes unless we did something like a second exhaustion mechanic for battle rez or whatever. For now we're going to try the cooldown at 30 min again. In Icecrown's world of limited attempts, a 30 min cooldown likely meant you just cooled your heels until the cooldown was available again. In Cataclysm the hope is sometimes you'll have the benefit available but not every time, which scales back on how much of a game-changer it is.

No more improved buffs, that is nice, but I wonder if that extends to debuffs, No more having to spend points to get a warrior and druid demo shout to be as good as a paladins would be nice.

As for the second point: read no more limited attempts?

[swelt]

Good news on the buff talent buff removal. I'm really starting to wonder what these slimmed down talent trees are going to look like.

I'm pretty sure they already said no more limited attempts. I also think that battle rez does need some attention. In my raid, I used to consider whether a BR was necessary or not and call it based on how successfully the attempt in general was going, with the idea that a) it was a valuable cooldown and b) it might be better used on the next attempt. We are not the kind of raid to simply wait around until it comes back up again. With the current short cooldown, it seems as though you might as well throw out a BR as soon as pretty much anyone dies. The idea of an exhaustion type mechanic sounds pretty cool to me... 1 BR every few mins, available to any healing class with a personal cooldown of say 20 mins.

[felhoof]

I would love - LOVE - if they gave brez to another class. That would be awesome. Hell, I'd almost be thrilled if they gave it to another spec in a class and took it away from ferals completely. Then we could get rid of the stupid 'but ferals bring brez!' argument as to why they shouldn't do good damage and/or tank well.

They've mentioned that they don't like the limited attempts feature. My suspicion is that if they want people to limit the attempts, they'll do it by locking it out on accounts or simply do it like Algalon, where you only have so often to work on a boss.

[Darksend]

This post actually made me think of something I have brought up a few times in the past but had since forgotten about, feral tank innervates.

WTB minor glyph that restores the functionality of the old 6 minute innervate, or in other words doubles the mana return of the current innervate but also doubles the cooldown. As a feral TANK the reduction of innervate to 3 minutes and the reduced mana return it entailed really devalued the worth of a tanks innervate.

[felhoof]

Innervate and Brez are both something I hope will be in forms, period. It's long overdue, especially for bears.

[Darksend]

Well the thing with battle rez is, there are times where I would not mind it being in forms, but think about something like morrowgar. Not the best idea to battle rez someone while tanking him: Rez>CLEAVE

[Arikak]

As a Warrior I'm stoked for the ramifications this statement could have on shouts. Though I wonder if "Buffing a Buff" will apply to increasing its duration and not just is effect?

[felhoof]

Well the thing with battle rez is, there are times where I would not mind it being in forms, but think about something like morrowgar. Not the best idea to battle rez someone while tanking him: Rez>CLEAVE

Sure, there are times when brez would be a bad choice to make. But most of the time that's not the case, and it's just inconvenient. If they're going to make it a 30 min CD, why not put it in forms and make sure all druids can use it whenever without losing massive survivability?

I think anything that buffs a buff is going to go by the wayside. Power, duration, whatever - all of it is gone. None of it is interesting. It's all just meh for people anyway, and all it does is make it a bit nicer when soloing or cost fewer reagents.

[damionrayne]

This could bring Cata raiding more inline with Classic raiding, which is where I see blizz moving. It seems like with Cata they want to return to the /roots/ of the game, streamline everything, make it more skill based again. Lets hope it works.

[felhoof]

I'm not sure that the roots of classic raiding were 'skill-based'. Having to bring 6 paladins just for buffs, bringing druids for innervate only, and many fights having people succeed because you simply found enough warm bodies? Not the most skill ever.

[mavfin]

Well the thing with battle rez is, there are times where I would not mind it being in forms, but think about something like morrowgar. Not the best idea to battle rez someone while tanking him: Rez>CLEAVE

Yeah, that would be bad. Better to keep it like it is, where you rez people when you're free for a moment. Most fights have that moment, or it can be created.

[mavfin]

I'm not sure that the roots of classic raiding were 'skill-based'. Having to bring 6 paladins just for buffs, bringing druids for innervate only, and many fights having people succeed because you simply found enough warm bodies? Not the most skill ever.

Other than the core 15 people who did most of the work, the biggest skill the other 25 had was scooping up epics on farm content, and making sure their cats were on fire once we got to content we didn't have on farm yet.

[Arikak]

Other than the core 15 people who did most of the work, the biggest skill the other 25 had was scooping up epics on farm content, and making sure their cats were on fire once we got to content we didn't have on farm yet.

Funny how this is still the case. But instead of 15 carrying 25 it is 15 carrying 10.

[MonkH]

I made this post ages ago on druid forums and just got flamed by load of druids! I suggested they should give another class a cr. I think they should just change way soul stone works make it like combat res.(or visa-versa)
Quite a while ago my guild at time always wanted a druid in our 10man group but could never recruit any druids so many times doing 10man HMs wished if only we had cr now we could of beaten an encounter. The top guild on my server used 6 CR's on their first LDW HM kill and certainly wouldn't of killed that try without them.

[Arikak]

The sheer power of Combat Rezzes and Soul Stones while pressing the bleeding of progression is undeniable. I think looking into some sort of raid-wide Sated debuff from combat rezzing would be a good thing.

[KnThrak]

The sheer power of Combat Rezzes and Soul Stones while pressing the bleeding of progression is undeniable. I think looking into some sort of raid-wide Sated debuff from combat rezzing would be a good thing.

I guess overall, they're putting Soulstone, Crezz and Selfrezz on the same "level" of ability.
Sure their flexibility is very different, but overall they have the same effect if I assume I fire random instant kills at the raid.

[Starálfur]

As a Warrior I'm stoked for the ramifications this statement could have on shouts. Though I wonder if "Buffing a Buff" will apply to increasing its duration and not just is effect?

good point, being able to shout once before a fight and pretty much be done with it most of the time is nice, but since they will be generating rage I could see shorter shouts happening

[Maèl]

I'm wondering about the 30 min CD of b-ress.
Does this mean we are going back to fights that last for 15 minutes?

Shouts are in a sorry state at the moment. Yesterday I was suprised my shouts didn't get overwritten by every other buff in the book. They have been made irrelevant by pally blessings, diminuitive entities of a demonic persuasion(just to stay PC) and quite a few other, more convenient way to either buff HP or AP. Speccing into them only makes sense when you know your exact group composition.


So, talents that buff a buff either get a "selfish" component or get removed? Alongside passive talents? They are reducing talent trees to small and inoffensive shrub, I venture. We shall see. Seems like they will not leave anything unchanged.

[Denekawa]

Honestly, Battle Resurrection and Bloodlust are crutches in a raid. Plenty of guilds do just fine without them. Imagine if dying meant you were dead? Sort of encourages you to stay alive. Imagine how more effective your DPS would be if they knew there was no powerboost in the raid? So instead of waiting around for someone to pop Bloodlust to justify a tight rotation, they actually did a tight rotation all the time?

I do agree that Druids shouldn't have to pop out of form to use a baseline ability. Other classes don't have the added step to go through. As for passing around the Battle Resurrection... why stop there... Warlocks are the ONLY class that can Soulstone. Shaman the ONLY class that can Anhk. It's becoming like Noah's Ark... we're seeing everything go in pairs now... two classes that can do every conceivable buff/ability known. I fully expect a sweeping change to Paladins then... they are probably going to lose the whole buff kit that they have now because they are the only class that brings so many buffs in a single class. Yep, you read it here first. It's the only logical step left.

[Belak]

I do agree that Druids shouldn't have to pop out of form to use a baseline ability. Other classes don't have the added step to go through.

Um... played a warrior lately? But yeah, I wouldn't mind them easing some of those restrictions as well.