patch 5.2 ?

[Fenris]

Paladin
- For Retribution, we were trying to emphasize what was once the most awesome spell in the Ret arsenal (Divine Storm) while reacting to some of the initial feedback that the first set bonus wasn't exciting. As often happens in cases like this, the players who liked the first set bonus and not the second have now offered their feedback. I want to stress that when this happens it's not a poll or a contest to see who can yell the loudest. We evaluate the feedback we get, weigh the strengths of the various arguments, and come to a decision. For 5.2 we're going to go back to the initial 4 pc set bonus of Templar's Verdict sometimes hitting for Holy damage. I also want to stress that anyone expecting said bonus to be a 20% DPS increase or something are going to be disappointed, so I hope that's not why you liked the bonus.

Incorporating Divine Storm into the single-target rotation, sometimes, is still a neat idea and the kind of thing we might do as a glyph or something in the future.

[Holyblaze]

Patch note doesn't say the Scenario/dungeon rep bonus only applies to Pandaria reputations. Possibly just an oversight, but interesting if not.

Players in low level battlegrounds will have their effective level raised to the maximum level allowed in that battleground bracket. Players' base stats and spells are scaled accordingly and are treated as the same level when determining hits, misses, and critical effect chance.

Level scaling in battlegrounds - interesting change. No longer any issue of lowbies versus higher levels. Though it means the very fun (and horrendously unbalanced) level 10 pvp will be gone.

So I was just bitching to myself about this very thing this last week. I just now started to lvl my Mage (Frost...DUH!) and have pimped him out in all the best gearz GOLD CAN BUY! I cant hit a BG Boss to save my LIFE! I almost went as fast a Reforge all to hit! haha bah! I dont have much issues hitting lvl 89 players though.

Its been a very long time since Ive bothered with my Mage though. haha rusty as hell! I used to pull 10-15 mobs at a time and now taking 6 same lvl mobs on is a streach. bah!

[Teranoid]

Guess that means if I want the easy way to Wrecking Ball I need to get working on it before I can't just mow down a bunch of lowbies.

[Holyblaze]

What do you ahve to do to get that one? 300k dmg? I have most all of them me thinks...never pay attention as Im only there to kill horde. haha OH! And win from time to time.

[bldavis]

30 HKs without dying i think

[Skye1013]

Pretty sure it's 20 HK without dying, but I haven't looked at it in awhile... so things might have changed.

[Fetzie]

http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=231

20 Killing Blows without dying.

[Shoju]

Patch note doesn't say the Scenario/dungeon rep bonus only applies to Pandaria reputations. Possibly just an oversight, but interesting if not.

Players in low level battlegrounds will have their effective level raised to the maximum level allowed in that battleground bracket. Players' base stats and spells are scaled accordingly and are treated as the same level when determining hits, misses, and critical effect chance.

Level scaling in battlegrounds - interesting change. No longer any issue of lowbies versus higher levels. Though it means the very fun (and horrendously unbalanced) level 10 pvp will be gone.

I'm wondering, if now they will think about reintegrating battlegrounds between "Twink" and Normal. Now, the only advantage/disadvantage is gearing, one of the biggest things that they mentioned.

Gearing, seems to be sort of a joke anymore. You have

Heirloom
Head
Cloak
Shoulders
Chest
Legs
Trinkets (Including a PVP Trinket)
Weapons

In 5.2 You get new shields, and an off hand as well.

The playing field is pretty open at this point.

[Worldie]

They can't really let twinks and normal players play toghether. A twink will have up to 2-3x the HP of a normally geared person and does easily oneshot a normally geared player.

[KysenMurrin]

I think there's still an issue of fun regarding the seperation of the twink bracket, even if the level differences are gone. Twinks are expected to be very experienced and have the best gear they can get at that level (along with full enchants and buff food), whereas most levelling in BGs will be in either heirlooms (most likely unenchanted; the gear's good but not automatically best) or in quest/vendor gear (for new players). Twinks would still tend to outclass random levelling players, leading to frustrating experiences in the BGs.

[Shoju]

They can't really let twinks and normal players play toghether. A twink will have up to 2-3x the HP of a normally geared person and does easily oneshot a normally geared player.

2-3HP only if the "normal person" isn't wearing heirlooms.

This was my "project" when I stopped playing.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/t ... a/advanced

I'm wearing heirloms, and dungeon drops.

Compare him to my original twink on my old server
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/b ... e/advanced

My heirloom toting paladin outhealths my twink hunter by 400+ HP. Heirlooms seriously leveled the playing field.

[KysenMurrin]

Different level, different class, different race, stamina enchants...

[Shoju]

Different level, different class, different race, stamina enchants...

Same Level. Both are 19.
Different Class. Paladin V Hunter
Different Race. The Tauren HP difference isn't that noticable.

16 difference in Stamina from enchants.

So let's compare an Heirloom Hunter with no enchants against my BIS No Heirloom Hunter.

This is completely unenchanted.

The No Heirloom Twink Hunter has

Less Agility (7)
Less Stamina (1 - And that's with the hunter sporting a ring that hasn't been around for 2 expacs now)
Less Armor (62 - that's 10%)
Less Resilience (6 - not sure how much that matters at that low of a level)
Less Haste (12 - 5.67% - that's more than negligible.)
Less Hit (20 - 11.82% - That's hit capped)
Less DPS (1.6 stated)
Lower Ranged Min Damage
Lower Ranged Max Damage

more Crit (by 1 = .34% at 19)
more Spirit (lol)
More Strength (lol)

And I didn't even use the same "non heirloom pieces" Giving the heirloomed player the pieces that would come more "naturally" from leveling. Quest Rewards, a few common Dungeon Drops.

The difference, comes down to the enchants. And.. Really. In a game where enchants are part of the game play, who would be surprised by that? Now, I could mix and match to create the best set, but that isn't the point. The point is, Heirlooms have leveled the playing field. Not only have they leveled it, they have skewed it in favor of using them.

I used the gear as stated off my hunter, removing enchants. I used as much heirloom gear as I could on the other (without the ring, since that's not a "gimmee") Heirloom gear at low levels took away the "Gear" advantage that Twinks had. Now, it's just a few archaic pieces that you wont run into that often, and enchants, which are readily available to everyone. They removed the loophole on the Leg Armor Kits, and the Head Enchants (the 8 stamina enchant on his head gives +0 until level 55).

This new level change, will take away the level difference, meaning you wont get bonuses for attacking a lower level foe. So really, it comes down to:

Are you wearing heirlooms, or not?
Did you enchant your gear?

What's the difference between that and max level pvp? Gear, Enchants, and Skill.

[KysenMurrin]

Sorry, saw a 20 on the Tauren and forgot it was the ilevel not character level. Was just a quick glance over.

Okay, so heirlooms make your alts closer to the twinks in stats, although I doubt a lot of people take the effort to fully enchant them like twinks would. When I was levelling my Paladin entirely in BGs, with no heirlooms but taking advantage of all the pvp vendor gear I could get, using buff food, and enchanting a lot, I was frequently far ahead of the other players I got grouped with in health and other stats.

The average player levelling in BGs doesn't give a damn about getting their stats up, and will be way below twinks in capability.

[Newsom]

The average player levelling in BGs doesn't give a damn about getting their stats up, and will be way below twinks in capability.

So? The same is true for max level battlegrounds.