Filefront Closes, Realm Firsts, 3.1 Changes

In a sad bit of news for the gaming world, it looks like filefront has hit the end of it’s line…where are we going to upload videos now!

We regret to inform you that due to the current economic conditions we are forced to indefinitely suspend the FileFront site operations on March 30, 2009. If you have uploaded files, images or posted blogs, or if you would like to download some of your favorite files, please take this opportunity to download them before March 30th when the site will be suspended.

We would like to give a warm thank you to all of you who have been part of the FileFront communities we have built together. Your support has had a meaningful impact for all of us here at FileFront. Again, we want to give you a sincere “thank you” for your support over the years and wish you all the very best.

Keep gaming alive,

FileFront Management and Team.

Realm First Achievements for 3.1

Realm First – Death’s Demise:

• Participated in the realm first defeat of Yogg-Saron without the assistance of any Keepers on Heroic Difficulty.
• Title Reward: Death’s Demise

Realm First – Celestial Defender:

• Participated in the realm first defeat of Algalon the Observer on Heroic Difficulty.
• Title Reward: The Celestial Defender

More Flask Changes

To answer some questions brought up in this thread:

• Mixology will work like it does now, if you know the recipe to create the flask, the flask will grant double the duration, so 2 hours in the new case.
• Elixir Mastery is also being updated to work with the new flask design so for example where you got 2 or 3 extras before you will now get 4 or 6 extras.

[...]The new changes apply to all flasks. The only change specific to Northrend flasks is the conversion to mixtures for already-crafted flasks prior to 3.1. All other flasks will have their durations lowered to 1 hour when the patch is released. The material costs for all flasks will be cut in half as will the vendor sell prices.

Arena Season 6 Notes

In order to make joining teams later in the season a little easier for players, the system will now be setup so if a player joins a team that has a team rating of 1000 or higher, the player’s personal rating will start off at 1000 instead of 0.

To answer some players’ questions:

• Only the current arena season’s weapons (furious) will be available. Deadly weapons will be removed when Arena Season 6 starts.
• The first tier furious weapons will be equivalent to heroic Ulduar weapons and the second tier furious weapons will match heroic hard mode Ulduar weapons.

Another thing to keep in mind is that until you start to get close to your team’s matchmaking rating, you will be gaining around 20 or more points in a win and zero or nearly zero in a loss. So players will make steady progress through games played until they near their team’s matchmaking rating.

Dual Spec and Balancing Issues

We will not be balancing around the existence of dual-spec. The example I used was a case we already have — multiple tank fights, then single tank fights, then multiple tank fights. We didn’t design that around dual-spec. We assumed you’d probably have an OT who tried to do dps on Saph. Dual-spec gives them a way to do better dps.

This is one of the reasons though that we think it’s important to keep pure dps slightly elevated.

Mostly, though, dual-spec is a convenience factor. You can already run back to town and respec in the middle of a raid, and plenty of people did that already (and hated it).

Death Knight: Tanking Specs and Trees

We like that DKs have three trees in which to tank. It accomplishes a few things. One is it lets a class keep their role while trying a different spec. A mage can switch from Fire to Arcane and still do pretty comparable dps. A prot warrior who wants to switch spec is doing something like choosing Imp Heroic Strike vs. Warbringer.

Second, I’m not sure that the Prot trees for warriors and paladins were huge success stories for us pre-LK. They had a ton of passive mitigation and threat talents that felt necessary, so they had very few talent points to spend on fun stuff (like Warbringer). Druids are in a slightly different boat since they get two roles in one tree.

Third, it lets the DK shift from tanking to dps a lot more readily than warriors or paladins (at least in a world without dual spec). I know what it’s like to be the Prot warrior OT desperately trying to out dps the healers on fights where you are supposed to dps. That has improved, but I suspect a lot of players in that situation when dual-spec comes out will opt for a dps spec. DKs have to commit to tanking talents too, but they are more spread out, and they aren’t having to give up things like Scourge Strike or Frost Strike to get them.

We don’t know what any of this means for the future of older classes like the warrior. With the DK we had a chance for a fresh start. Can I see a world in which Arms warriors tank with a two-hander and Prot warriors do dps with a shield? Sure. Is it easy to get there. Not really. Are players even excited about going that direction? I think the jury is out on that. (And you don’t need to turn this thread into whether or not you think that’s a good idea.) It gets even more difficult when you talk about the dps Holy priest or the healing Boomkin. Lolz.

Rune Strike won’t earn a premiere niche in the game design hall of fame. It does its job, but it’s not a particularly fun ability like Shield Slam or even Scourge Strike. We implemented it to solve a problem, which was that DKs are so locked into their rotations that missing an early Plague Strike or whatever could totally botch DK threat generation. We would like to add other DK abilities that center around threat generation, but it’s tricky. For one, Heroic Strike aint going into the hall of fame either. Again, it does its job but at some risk to the player (not the character). Second, any new DK abilities we added would have to also fit into their rotation while tanking but not while dps’ing. We can’t just make Icy Touch 2.0 that generates a lot of threat. How is that different from Icy Touch? Yet if we make an ability that takes Blood+Unholy or something that takes 20 runic power, it has to fit in naturally to DK cycles while tanking yet be unattractive to DKs doing dps, who have abilities to contend with already.

That’s a lot of text, so I’ll just say in conclusion, that this is a new class for us all and I think sometimes players don’t give enough credit to just how much iteration has gone on in the existing classes over the past 4-5 years. We’ve tried to make up for lost time with the DKs, but they still have a long way to go.

The good news is, players seem to enjoy tanking with them. :)

Druid: Restoration Discussions

I am looking right now at a PTR attempt by a very good guild. Now you can argue that these trees need to L2P, but that’s a tough argument. You could argue that eventually the community will figure out the most optimal way to heal, and that these numbers will shift over time. That I might believe a little more.

Small sample size is small and I’m sure other guilds might do it differently.

One boss

Lifebloom 56%
Wild Growth 29%
Rejuv 9%
Swiftmend 1%
Nourish 1%

Another boss

Lifebloom 27%
Wildgrowth 25%
Nourish 16%
Rejuv 15%

Hunter: Mark Durations

5 min PvE duration. 2 min PvP duration.

Mage: Improved Scorch Changes

It’s just a passive bonus. You gain the 1/2/3% crit even if neither you nor anyone casts Scorch.

Increases your chance to critically hit with Scorch, Fireball and Frostfire Bolt by an additional 1/2/3% and your damaging Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1 billion and lasts 20 hours. Stacks up to 5 times.

Paladin: Seal of Blood  & Seal of Martyr

We’re not going to pull the recoil from Blood, at least not right now. While it did play nice with Spiritual Attunement, it is also an important balancing tool to keep Ret PvP under control. And it’s one of those things that makes paladins play a little differently, which is worth preserving at a time when so many players are worried about class homogenization.

One thing we have talked about doing is shifting some of the damage from the Judgement to the Seal. Basically your dps would stay the same, but those big crits would be less scary at hurting yourself. This has the added bonus of reducing PvP burst a little more.

We don’t think Rets are going to be sat out for raids (even Algalon) because of the self-damage. Guilds are using them now while testing Ulduar hard modes. If it gets to be the case, we can easily scale back the self damage done.

Remember, if you are very low on health, you don’t have to hit that button. You do have an alternative until you get healed up again. Yes it will hurt your dps for a time, but classes have to make decisions like that all the time. Ask a mage or hunter that has to sacrifice personal dps for mana gain.

Paladin: Mana Issues and Gear

To answer some discussion above, it isn’t our intent that Ret paladins gear for mana. Their damage is balanced around the assumption that they don’t.

The numbers I came up with yesterday were not for a paladin who dives in the slime. Not every guild is doing that. Since some of you seem to be having mana problems while doing about the exact same things other paladins are doing who do not have mana problems, we need to figure out why.

Shaman: MP5 on Elemental Gear Replaced

The Elemental Worldbreaker set had its mp5 replaced, mostly with crit IIRC.