Azel
30/12/2009, 10:01
Cataclysm - Path of the Titans
The Path of the Titans is a new form of character leveling introduced in the next expansion. The system is an expansion of the existing Glyphs and will ultimately add 10 Ancient Glyphs slots to your character.
Ancient Glyphs are new items discovered through the new Archaeology profession, at this point we don't really have many details on the professions and I will probably write a mini-post about it later.
Unlike conventional Glyphs, the Ancient Glyphs won't be tied to a class. Players will join cults dedicated to various titans and will follow its path, unlocking new glyph slots as they progress. You can earn progress down any of these paths by doing things such as questing, raiding, PvP, trade skills, etc. with a possible weekly cap for maximum progress. Over time, you’ll be able to unlock new ancient glyphs that will greatly benefit your character.
During the Blizzcon developers made it clear that the goal will be gated and not grindy and that everyone would eventually get all their ancient glyphs. More slots might be added after the release of the expansion (in content patches, etc ...)
The known paths are:
Path of Aman’Thul, the High Father
Path of Eonar, the Lifebinder
Path of Norgannon, the Dreamweaver
Path of Khaz’Goroth, the Shaper
Path of Aggramar, the Avenger
Path of Golganneth, the Thunderer
We also saw a few glyphs from the Path of Golganneth, you can only pick one glyph for each rank.
Rank 1 - Path of Golganneth - Physical damage taken reduced by 4%. or Reduces the duration of Bleed and Stun effects by 20%.
Rank 2 - Path of Golganneth - Bandages heal targets by an additional 30%. or Nearby allies take 10% less damage for 6 sec. Instant. 5 min cooldown.
Rank 3 - Path of Golganneth - Increases damage dealt by 10% for 10 sec. Only usable after you deal a critical strike. Instant. 5 min cooldown. or 2nd Glyph unknown
Making all paths available to all classes will most likely create an insane amount of possibilities and it probably won't be a problem to find a tree that suits your playstyle.
div.gamesys img {background: url(http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/august/sprite_gamesystems.jpg); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 100px; height: 67px;}.gamesys .s022 { background-position: 0 -1428px; } .gamesys .s023 { background-position: 0 -1496px; } .gamesys .s024 { background-position: 0 -1564px; } .gamesys .s025 { background-position: 0 -1632px; } .gamesys .s026 { background-position: 0 -1700px; } .gamesys .s027 { background-position: 0 -1768px; } .gamesys .s028 { background-position: 0 -1836px; } .gamesys .s029 { background-position: 0 -1904px; } .gamesys .s030 { background-position: 0 -1972px; } .gamesys .s031 { background-position: -101px 0; } .gamesys .s032 { background-position: -101px -68px; } http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_022.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_023.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_024.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_025.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_026.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_027.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_028.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_029.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_030.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_031.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_032.jpg)
Addon Review - Rankwatch
Cross-realms dungeons are awesome, players sometimes aren't. Rankwatch (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/rankwatch.aspx) is one of the most useful mod I used, it will monitor the spells cast by you and your party/raid members and warn them if they are using a downranked spell. A lot of people are running around and use lower ranks of spells because they never changed their bars or trained them after dual speccing, or even just because they use an outdated/bugged bar management addon.
It's also very useful when leveling an alt, when the amount of lower ranks becomes too high you know it's time to train! Of course it's nothing compared to the joy of knowing you made the world of cross-realms dungeons better because the addon yelled at your paladin tank when he used his Rank 1 Consecration in the Halls of Reflection. Download it (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/rankwatch.aspx), now.
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/december/rankwatch.jpg (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/rankwatch.aspx)
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
"Interesting" stats
I think you're approaching it as a player, in which your goal is to improve your character as much as you can as fast as you can. From that viewpoint, any piece of loot that isn't an unambiguous upgrade just gets in your way. But think for a moment about the over-arcing design of loot in the game and the role it fills. Deciding what is an upgrade is part of the challenge in the same way figuring out to beat the boss is part of the challenge. The hit stat represents a gearing challenge because you can't just assume any loot from Icecrown is an automatic upgrade. It may be a huge upgrade. It may be a sidegrade. It may be a slight upgrade, but only if you swap around a couple of other pieces, consider regemming, etc.
In short, you have to game it.
Put another way, even if there is a "best in slot" list for every spec, the order in which you get those pieces is significant, and makes you have to think and solve problems. That's why I call hit "interesting." Spellpower, while quite desirable, is not interesting in that more is always better to the extent that we can't even offer variation on it from one piece to the next any longer. The rating-based stats, especially those with caps as low as hit, cause you have to solve the puzzle in order to wear them. There aren't a lot of huge decisions you make in WoW, beyond perhaps your class and maybe your guild. But there are a lot of little decisions that when taken together make the game fairly compelling.
Too often players approach gear design as "I would never wear that piece, therefore it's a badly designed piece." But consider for a moment that badge vendor +hit trinket again. It might not be attractive to you personally assuming you're hit capped in your current gear. Your conclusion might be that the trinket was itemized wrong. But that might not be the conclusion of say a Resto druid who decides to try Balance and now has a huge hit deficit to overcome. Regemming or farming old content is one way to do it, but relatively slow and / or painful. Getting a shiny new trinket off a vendor (i.e. isn't even subject to the whims of boss loot RNG) with a whole bucket of +hit on it starts to look pretty attractive. Just because the piece isn't for you doesn't mean it isn't filling a gap in the fabric of the game. (Source (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/22049520286-no-hit-juggling-if-no-defense-juggling.html))
+Hit bonus
I will agree that the complication from hit that comes from bosses being higher level than characters, along with the difference among melee and spell hit and dual wield hit make the system more confusing than it needs to be, and the various raid buffs (and particularly Heroic Presence) can put you in a mode of constantly swapping around rings and bracers or whatever. This is something we'd like to improve. (Source (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/22049520286-no-hit-juggling-if-no-defense-juggling.html))
Spellpower, AP, and Armor Pen changes in Cataclysm
We're changing spellpower, attack power and armor pen for other reasons, not really because they're confusing. For example, armor pen is almost impossible to balance because of the way armor works. Spellpower we're actually pulling because it's too boring -- it can virtually be derived from item level and we figure if we have to put both it and Intellect in equal proportions on every piece then something's wrong. AP makes us split leather stats ...
Fonte (http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/path-of-the-titans-rankwatch-blue-posts/)
The Path of the Titans is a new form of character leveling introduced in the next expansion. The system is an expansion of the existing Glyphs and will ultimately add 10 Ancient Glyphs slots to your character.
Ancient Glyphs are new items discovered through the new Archaeology profession, at this point we don't really have many details on the professions and I will probably write a mini-post about it later.
Unlike conventional Glyphs, the Ancient Glyphs won't be tied to a class. Players will join cults dedicated to various titans and will follow its path, unlocking new glyph slots as they progress. You can earn progress down any of these paths by doing things such as questing, raiding, PvP, trade skills, etc. with a possible weekly cap for maximum progress. Over time, you’ll be able to unlock new ancient glyphs that will greatly benefit your character.
During the Blizzcon developers made it clear that the goal will be gated and not grindy and that everyone would eventually get all their ancient glyphs. More slots might be added after the release of the expansion (in content patches, etc ...)
The known paths are:
Path of Aman’Thul, the High Father
Path of Eonar, the Lifebinder
Path of Norgannon, the Dreamweaver
Path of Khaz’Goroth, the Shaper
Path of Aggramar, the Avenger
Path of Golganneth, the Thunderer
We also saw a few glyphs from the Path of Golganneth, you can only pick one glyph for each rank.
Rank 1 - Path of Golganneth - Physical damage taken reduced by 4%. or Reduces the duration of Bleed and Stun effects by 20%.
Rank 2 - Path of Golganneth - Bandages heal targets by an additional 30%. or Nearby allies take 10% less damage for 6 sec. Instant. 5 min cooldown.
Rank 3 - Path of Golganneth - Increases damage dealt by 10% for 10 sec. Only usable after you deal a critical strike. Instant. 5 min cooldown. or 2nd Glyph unknown
Making all paths available to all classes will most likely create an insane amount of possibilities and it probably won't be a problem to find a tree that suits your playstyle.
div.gamesys img {background: url(http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/august/sprite_gamesystems.jpg); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 100px; height: 67px;}.gamesys .s022 { background-position: 0 -1428px; } .gamesys .s023 { background-position: 0 -1496px; } .gamesys .s024 { background-position: 0 -1564px; } .gamesys .s025 { background-position: 0 -1632px; } .gamesys .s026 { background-position: 0 -1700px; } .gamesys .s027 { background-position: 0 -1768px; } .gamesys .s028 { background-position: 0 -1836px; } .gamesys .s029 { background-position: 0 -1904px; } .gamesys .s030 { background-position: 0 -1972px; } .gamesys .s031 { background-position: -101px 0; } .gamesys .s032 { background-position: -101px -68px; } http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_022.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_023.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_024.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_025.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_026.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_027.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_028.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_029.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_030.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_031.jpg)http://sancus.off.net/mmoc/pixel.gif (http://www.mmo-champion.com//i/news/2009/august/gamesystems_032.jpg)
Addon Review - Rankwatch
Cross-realms dungeons are awesome, players sometimes aren't. Rankwatch (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/rankwatch.aspx) is one of the most useful mod I used, it will monitor the spells cast by you and your party/raid members and warn them if they are using a downranked spell. A lot of people are running around and use lower ranks of spells because they never changed their bars or trained them after dual speccing, or even just because they use an outdated/bugged bar management addon.
It's also very useful when leveling an alt, when the amount of lower ranks becomes too high you know it's time to train! Of course it's nothing compared to the joy of knowing you made the world of cross-realms dungeons better because the addon yelled at your paladin tank when he used his Rank 1 Consecration in the Halls of Reflection. Download it (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/rankwatch.aspx), now.
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/december/rankwatch.jpg (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/rankwatch.aspx)
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
"Interesting" stats
I think you're approaching it as a player, in which your goal is to improve your character as much as you can as fast as you can. From that viewpoint, any piece of loot that isn't an unambiguous upgrade just gets in your way. But think for a moment about the over-arcing design of loot in the game and the role it fills. Deciding what is an upgrade is part of the challenge in the same way figuring out to beat the boss is part of the challenge. The hit stat represents a gearing challenge because you can't just assume any loot from Icecrown is an automatic upgrade. It may be a huge upgrade. It may be a sidegrade. It may be a slight upgrade, but only if you swap around a couple of other pieces, consider regemming, etc.
In short, you have to game it.
Put another way, even if there is a "best in slot" list for every spec, the order in which you get those pieces is significant, and makes you have to think and solve problems. That's why I call hit "interesting." Spellpower, while quite desirable, is not interesting in that more is always better to the extent that we can't even offer variation on it from one piece to the next any longer. The rating-based stats, especially those with caps as low as hit, cause you have to solve the puzzle in order to wear them. There aren't a lot of huge decisions you make in WoW, beyond perhaps your class and maybe your guild. But there are a lot of little decisions that when taken together make the game fairly compelling.
Too often players approach gear design as "I would never wear that piece, therefore it's a badly designed piece." But consider for a moment that badge vendor +hit trinket again. It might not be attractive to you personally assuming you're hit capped in your current gear. Your conclusion might be that the trinket was itemized wrong. But that might not be the conclusion of say a Resto druid who decides to try Balance and now has a huge hit deficit to overcome. Regemming or farming old content is one way to do it, but relatively slow and / or painful. Getting a shiny new trinket off a vendor (i.e. isn't even subject to the whims of boss loot RNG) with a whole bucket of +hit on it starts to look pretty attractive. Just because the piece isn't for you doesn't mean it isn't filling a gap in the fabric of the game. (Source (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/22049520286-no-hit-juggling-if-no-defense-juggling.html))
+Hit bonus
I will agree that the complication from hit that comes from bosses being higher level than characters, along with the difference among melee and spell hit and dual wield hit make the system more confusing than it needs to be, and the various raid buffs (and particularly Heroic Presence) can put you in a mode of constantly swapping around rings and bracers or whatever. This is something we'd like to improve. (Source (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/22049520286-no-hit-juggling-if-no-defense-juggling.html))
Spellpower, AP, and Armor Pen changes in Cataclysm
We're changing spellpower, attack power and armor pen for other reasons, not really because they're confusing. For example, armor pen is almost impossible to balance because of the way armor works. Spellpower we're actually pulling because it's too boring -- it can virtually be derived from item level and we figure if we have to put both it and Intellect in equal proportions on every piece then something's wrong. AP makes us split leather stats ...
Fonte (http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/path-of-the-titans-rankwatch-blue-posts/)