Will WotLK eliminate the need to downrank your spells?
PC Gamer: What else is changing?
Tom Chilton: We’re also going to be doing away with spell-damage only type of gear. We’ll moving to a system that, as part of your talents, player will be able to convert healing into spell-damage and vice-versa as part of their talents. That way, they can use the exact same gear, but their talents just adapt what it does.
With so little information provided, I have so many questions about his statement because I can take it in so many directions. However I do believe Blizzard will eliminate the ability to downrank your spells with this change.
By making your talents a part of the system, it is forcing Blizzard to insert a predetermine amount of extra damage/healing which may not benefit as it once was. Your +1400 healing maybe equivalent to a +1000 healing with the new conversion system.
I am looking forward to more information about this.
June 19, 2008 at 10:35 am
Man it better not! I worked so hard to get to +2000.
June 20, 2008 at 8:32 am
That sounds a bit different to me (so yeah, I agree that this could mean about anything), but it sounds more like for hybrids, your talents will be able to convert an item with +35 healing and spell damage into an item that does +15 healing, +45 damage or +45 healing and +15 damage based on how you spec. If anything, it seems more like we’ll be able to specialize even more than we currently do. Sounds kind of like item gemming, but with talents.
July 1, 2008 at 4:09 am
I’m suss on this, but then like you’ve said we’ll have to wait and see. The idea that making Spell Power instead of +SpDam or +Heal will not help all the hybrid classes. I can see Priests getting a major boost from this, but a Druid will still need different sets for cat-dps, bear-tank, and caster-resto. Maybe it might make boomkin to resto easier?
Likewise Paladins might find that some gear is ok to use twice, but unless they make huge changes to Pally Tanking, you’ll still need Def gear for Tanking and +SpPower for healing. And now dps gear will be totally different from those. So no change/buff for the Pallys.
Knowing that Talent trees might be switchable between two modes in a great thing, but again will suit some classes more than others. DPS Warriors might be able to switch to Tank mode between fights – thats a good thing when you need a spare off-tank for 2 fights in a whole instance.
August 14, 2008 at 4:29 pm
[...] called it…well sorta. Either way I knew downranking would be eliminated it was a matter [...]