WWI - WotLK info

Green = updated

Death Knight

* Developers don't want talent trees to be pigeonholed into specific roles. Each tree will be functional both roles.
* Runes have a 10 second separate cooldown
* Army of the Undead will make players feel like how the Lich King feels when he commands the Scourge to attack
* All races are confirmed to have Death Knights. The Lich King wants them all

Hunter

* Steady Shot will no longer clip Auto Shot, meaning it won't have to be timed, just spammed
* The skill point system of pets will be replaced with Pet Talents, one tree for utility, one tree for tanking and one tree for DPS
* Ability: will make the pet deal extra 20% damage when on 20% health

Mage

* Mage Armor will be reworked to reduce harmful debuff durations
* New ability: Frostfire Bolt. In itself it's not as good as Frostbolt or Fireball, but when the player talents into both Frost and Fire, Frostfire Bolt will be better.
* Devs will make sure Mages are kings of AoE damage, and scaling up their damage to be viable

Shaman

* Totems will affect the entire raid!
* Strength of Earth and Grace of Air will be merged
* Windfury will be changed, so that druids are affected by it too. It's no longer a weaponbuff, but a buff.
* Rockbiter Weapon will be replaced with Earthliving Weapon which increases healing done
* Flametongue Weapon will increase spell damage
* Ability: Hex. Emergency CC spell that leaves movement control for the hexxed player, but is unable to cast spells. 0.5sec casting time, 8-10sec duration

Rogue

* Sap will work on not only humanoid targets, but on pretty much everything that has a brain
* Ability: Fan of Knives. Similar to the Warden spell in Warcraft 3. Short AoE

Warrior

* Talent: Titan Grip is now confirmed. Allows the Warrior to wield Two-Hand weapons in both hands.
* Ability: Shockwave. Helps prot warriors dealing damage
* Talent: Bladestorm. Similar to WC3 spell
* Devs want warriors to feel more like the warriors in Warcraft 3
* Prot will carry more DPS

Warlock

* Talent: transforms the warlock into "Illidan demon form". One of the available spells in demon form is an AoE shadowbolt that can be spammed!
* Ability: Demonic Circle. Small area where the warlock can teleport back into and decreases pet summoning time

Paladin

* Retribution itemization will be moved even closer to Warrior and Death Knight itemization
* Ability: Hand of Purity. Reactive healing spell

Priest

* Ability: Divine Hymn. New holy spell that allows the priest to heal the entire party. When a partymember is struck they go into a trance.
* 51 point shadow talent: Dispersion. 90% incoming damage reduction, 6% health/mana regen. The priest can move, but cannot cast spells. Allows a new form of defense against melee to make Shadow Priests more viable in highend Arena PVP
* Talent: Guardian Spirit. Prevents friendly target from being killed. A pet that gives "Cheat Death" to the target, if the player would die, the spirit pet dies instead

Druid

* Entangling Roots will work indoors as well, to help druids get into heroic groups
* Ability: Flourish. 1.5sec casting time healing spell, its effectiveness depends a lot on what HoT effects are on the target
* Cyclone won't be changed
* Potions, on-hit effects and items will work in forms.
* Dire Cat

PVE

* Tanks will be more versatile, in such a way that there is not one MT for all the fights, but all the different tanks will be used for different encounters, making sure that Warriors will not be the only tank that is assured to be MT'ing all the time.


PVP

* The Orgrimmar arena will be used for future arena fights
* Line of sight will be removed or changed to improve people kiting a lot in arenas. There might be a timer on the pillars so they can be up for 20 seconds then down and then up later on again

Dungeons and Raids

What's new in WotLK?

* 10/25 player raids for every single raidzone.
* heroics will be featured in WotLK
* more non-linear content, more than 1 way to get to a boss and defeat it (example: Occulus)
* Spirit Shard reward system for every dungeon connected to Wintergrasp. Whoever controls wintergraps will add all unique items, enchantments to all dungeon and raid bosses for the controlling faction
* 8 levelup dungeons
* 4 max level dungeons meaning 12 heroic dungeons alltogether
* 3 Tier7 raid instances
* separate loot by a full Tier between a 10 and 25 man raid
* more loot in 25 man raids, because there are more players
* more accessible heroic dungeons, wider variety of setups will be successful in them
* 1 hour dungeon experiences
* better quests, not only kill the boss, kill 10 creatures.
* Gun'drak - 80 dungeon in Zul'drak. Accumulation of a large questline that encompasses the entire zone. Feel more connected to the story, understand why stuff happened
* Arthas will be kept as the last boss, like Kil'jaeden, won't be patched in earlier

* PvP gear from the PvE system. Won't be the best loot, but it gives access and an early starting gear
* Items that work for more classes. Remove unnecessary stats from classes that keep loot seperated. Merge stats so that items work with at least 3 classes
* faction shouldn't feel like a grind. Championing: equipping a tabard for the faction rewards you reputation when in any dungeon
* remove faction requirement from heroic dungeons
* Death Knight isn't intended to replace any class

Occulus

* Level 80 dungeon in Coldarra. First dungeon where you can fly inside. Players get a drake, mount it and fight with individual spells. Some drakes heal, some tank, some damage!
* Series of flying rings, you can choose what order you defeat the mobs on the rings

Ulduar

* 2 dungeons and 1 raid in Storm Peaks
* Halls of Stone: level 77 dungeon. Closely tied with Titan lore. Has Iron Dwarfs!
* Halls of Lightning next to it, level 80 dungeon.
* There's a raidwing in Ulduar as well
* Continues the Uldaman platinum disc quest line with the the history and creation of Azeroth

Caverns of Time - Culling of Stratholme

* built because of player feedback
* level 80 dungeon, fully scripted
* fighting alongside Arthas before he was corrupted by the Lich King
* timed encounters, non-linear paths on the streets of Stratholme
* same voice talents for Jaine, Uther, Arthas as in Warcraft 3!
* Infinite Dragonflight will cause troubles here as well
* players will start outside the city in the forest when they enter the dungeon

Q&A

How will legendary drops work in WotLK?

They prefer like how Atiesh worked, but time restrictions may interfere.

Will there be attunements in WotLK or only gearchecks

No attunements on initial level 80 content (including Naxxramas), level-up dungeons, or Heroics. They do plan to have an attunement path on higher end raiding content in the expansion, but it will be easier to understand what's required, and won't be nearly as overbearing as initial TBC attunements.

More PvP

Wintergrasp

* First outdoor world zone entirely dedicated to PVP
* Only a few PVE elements
* No control for number of opposing forces, only statistics help designing. Supports large and small scale combat
* Siege Weapons on ground and in air
* Destructable buildings
* Taking control of Wintergraps gives an Spirit Shard-like loot for every boss in Northrend
* Rewards will be unique version of other items
* Honor and "Marks of Honor"
* A river is also added, that ground siege weapons can't cross.
* There are bridges, which are destructable of course. The bridges are wide and tall.
* Graveyards are capturable and help as the offense advances
* The goal is to capture a huge keep. Every wall of the keep is also destructable
* The walls have stationary cannons to defend against siege weapons
* Players can tell what percentage of the destructable elements are destroyed

Siege Weapons

* The Demolisher: baseline vehicle. Support short and long range attack type and ram attack. Bombard players and buildings. Houses the driver who fires the weapons. Also houses 3 exposed players who can fight with their own spells as if they were standing still.
* Forsaken Catapult: faster than the Demolisher. More agile than the rest of the siege weapons. Shorter range, but still longer than player combat range. Lower damage, flame breath attack at the front. 2 additional passanger. Costs less supplies at the siege warshop than other siege weapons.
* Siege Engine: hardest hitting, longest range ground vehicle. Driver controlls the ram attack, independent gunner in the turret that can turn around fires the main weapons. Additional passengers are protected.
* Fighter: very fast air vehichle, used for transportation, vulnerable against anti-air weapons.
* Bomber: fast air vehicle. Carries a pilot and a gunner who controls the bombs.
* Goblin Shredder: counter-air unit, long-range ground-to-air rockets against fighters and bombers. Also works as a personal armor suit, once the vehicle is destroyed the player can continue fighting on its own. Strong melee attack with its shredders. Ability to jump high to destroy incoming rockets and jump over walls. Vulnerable against ground siege weapons

Arenas

* Keep the new ones simple but still innovate
* Moving objects in the arena - dynamic LOS. Can be timed, can be set random. Helps focusing on player skill.
* Unique starting areas, that might be very close to each other
* 2 new arenas, one in Dalaran, one in Orgrimmar

Dalaran Arena

* Based on the new lore of the city
* Arena map is located in the sewers of the flying capital city of Northrend
* No mounts allowed
* Similarly sized as the Blade's Edge arena
* The dynamic element is a pipe, a wall of water flows out of it sometimes, that is a complete LOS block
* Only a few ramps to the center area, player-height ledge on the sides
* Water shoots players out of the starting area, players can't stay or return there

Orgrimmar Arena

* New area in the old world
* Dynamic objects that do damage to players (spikes)
* Moving pillars on timers, players will see a wheel spin up before that happens
* Extremely close starting areas - elevators bring players up to the center of the arena, only 10 yards away from each others, the spikes drop and the fight begins
* Mounts are allowed
* Bigger than Dalaran Arena
* Orcs like watching fights, so there are NPCs on the edges who make noise too!
* Players can stand on the pillars that sometimes move up. Still vulnerable to ranged damage there
* When the pillars go up, the spikes come out of the ground so the player has to decide what to do. Take the damage when moving across the area? Stay separated from the group?
* No other LOS objects
* Players have a couple of seconds to check out the opponents before the spikes go down and the fight starts

Battleground

* Located on an island off Dragonblight, which was a Titan testing area
* The zone has an attack-defend game type: when the event goes active one side attacks, the other defends. Once the time has run out, the winner faction gets control of the resources. If the attack fails the offense gets a resource advantage to help on the next wave.
* Destructable walls and buildings
* Siege weapons and warshops
* Attackers start on 2 steam battleships in the water and play to reach the top of the valley
* Defenders start on the beach close to the dock and play to defend the capture points at the top
* 3 sections of destructable walls in the valley
* Behind the walls there are siege warshops, the controlling side can use it.
* 10vs10 or 15vs15, not decided yet
* Similarly sized as the rest of the battlegrounds

Q&A

Some players lose battlegrounds on purpose to get marks faster.
They are tuning the winning and losing rewards to solve this, they are also using the Report feature for this.

Spectator mode in Arenas?
Still on the list, but some players don't want to be spectated so it's a complex issue. They are also thinking about spectating raids as well

City raids make servers crash. What's going to happen in Wintergraps?
They are working on the technical side. If there are many players, you might see less into the distance to help computer and server performance. The objectives are also spaced apart so players don't cramp up.

Will BG and Arena rewards be freed from each other?
The PVP loot structure will remain the same. Arena will give 5 slots and the weapons, honor will give the rest.

Some class' CC abilities are better for PVP, others for PVE.
They don't see that as a problem. They are trying to balance them.

Any change for Warlock pet resilience and AOE damage scaling?
They are happy with the pet scaling right now.

Faction imbalance in Battlegrounds?
It's the result of being able to queue for more battlegrounds, and the starting time is the same as the popup question timeout. They are going to be changes to fix this.


Updated 28.06.08 19.00
Updated 29.06.08 15.31

I'll keep this updated every day

warriors are gona be so op. Dual wield two handers?

a little info on the warrior talent Titans grip: It is a deep FURY talent, which means you can't get MS and Titans grip. And on top of that there is a 26% speed reduction, which means an average 2h with 3.5 sec swing timer will have 4.41 attack speed. It will not be overpowered, but it makes FURY more viable as an arena spec since arena is all about those two seconds you are close to the target.

They going to hit hard like hell! a warrior with WF is going to be bad ass! with a lucky hit they can do over 15k DMG with both wepons..