The Glade 4.0

So does Blizzard usually do a hard gear reset every expansion? Just in leveling up 2 characters, the reset seemed to be pretty big in Outland and then bigger still in Northrend. From what I read it'll be even more of a hard reset in Cataclysm.

Reason I'm asking is I'm basically not going to exert myself too much to gear up anymore. Wondering if it's worth going for Shadowmourne or even Shadows Edge since I only have about 8k gold and 1 single primordial saronite. I'd need 25 for the Edge...

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Save the money.

Depends really.

Cata's not going to be out till probably Christmas. They *just* started their F&F Beta, and then there'll be the select beta, the invite only open beta, the preorder/blizzcon beta, the open beta for non-douchebags, the stress test beta, and then the final release before we go gold beta, then the beta after we go gold and need to fix a few last things before release beta.

So yeah, Xmas.

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Holy shitsnacks!

The few gear leaks so far show that Cataclysm will be the worst gear reset so far. A... friends dps dk has 40k hp at 82. There's pictures of cloaks from the first 5 man with almost 1400 sta on them.

The number data mined already also show that the 80%+ crit rate from being full 277 geared will be equivalent to a 15% rate at 85. By far the worst jump, even though there's only five levels instead of 10 in the last two expansions.

Unless you're hemorrhaging cash at this point, don't start buying expensive gear. I'm looking into buying some raid mounts, but beyond that I've got 30k and will probably have twice (if not more, I easily make 2k+ a week without trying) that by the time the expansion drops.

Yeah at this point if stuff falls into my lap great, if not oh well. Thanks.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

I don't know about you, but my BC raiding gear lasted me until Naxx gear at 80(with a few exceptions, notably weapons). There wasn't that big of a jump at all.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Yeah this is the first expansion for me. I only had raid gear starting from ToC on to ICC now. I heard in the past you could use your raid gear all the way up through the new expansion leveling, but supposedly now in Cata the reset is so hard you'd basically be replacing everything by level 83 =p

I mean it is only alpha but just seeing what they want to do with the gear makes me think that quest greens and blues will far surpass current gear.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

They want the expansion to feel "new". So they generally jump the stats enough that you replace a few pieces, and get a new look for your character.

If you're completely decked out in end game raiding gear, it will last a bit. If not, you'll probably be swapping with the new greens right away.

However, as people have been saying, the expansion is still 7 months away (at least).

Well if the highest tier of bandage is any indication of changes in gear......

Dense Embersilk Bandage" Heals for 34,800 over 8 seconds. Requires 3 Embersilk to create

That can't be right. 34k from a bandage?

Yep. Players are probably going to have upwards of a hundred thousand hitpoints now.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Wow... That's some serious inflation right there.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Yes and no. We have tanks that are verging on 70k, and they're not the best geared in the game. There are probably 80k bears out there.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Current rumors have hp totals for 85 raiding gear putting all classes at 150k+ hp. With the leaks I've seen, I'd say basically all classes will be hitting at least what tanks are right now by 85.

Unless bandages are just really good this time around, at best they'll heal a dps class for 50% of their health. This easily gives 85 hp totals 70k, which is a huge increase for basically everyone.

Currently the only easily findable item leak is a blue cloak drop. It's req lvl 78, meaning it's from one of the first 5 mans, is ilvl 279, and has 1354 sta. That alone would jump my rogues total hp to almost 40k.

I'm glad that this means I can solo basically any of the earlier mount dropping mobs on my rogue. Yeah, some of them are doable already, but it's still kind of a pain. It'll be cake when you're pulling 25k+ dps and have 100k hp though.

But those are top, raid geared tanks.

Bandages like that tell me that we should expect green-blue geared level 85 DPS to be hitting 70k or so, based on a comparison of that bandage to Heavy Frostweave.

Wow, same logic as Jocificus, just a few seconds later.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Well, it'll make soloing old world content for shits & giggles interesting. LOL

Yeh, its going to be utterly ridiculous.

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Holy shitsnacks!

It's a little hard to judge by the bandages, but we'll see! That's a tricky thing about expansions. The current relative values of things may change. Based on their plans to adjust healing, a change in bandages would fit in well, not to mention this Dense bandage doesn't have an in-game counterpart to compare it to.

They are definitely upping HP considerably, though. The goals, I believe, are that you won't be at full hp 99.9% of the time during raids, and that PVP isn't basically "get PVP gear or don't bother" like it is now.

Though yeah, bringing up how this will affect old content is interesting. :p On one hand the borderline stuff will be trivial. On the other, I don't think doubling/tripling your HP will make that big a difference. The really impressive solos tend to take quite awhile, and in these cases your HP total doesn't really count for much of anything. Instead, it's all about sustainability.

So unless you're a bear, where your self healing is based off your HP total, I don't know if too terribly much will change beyond the standard awesome increase a new expansion gives you on the old stuff. And that's if they keep Imp. Leader of the Pack as is!

What it mainly changes is reaction time.

There were things I just couldn't solo as Ret, not because I couldn't keep up with the damage healing, but after a really bad round I couldn't heal fast enough to not get killed.

More HPs will definitely be a huge buffer to soloing old content.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

DKs also self-heal based off their HP total.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

And Paladins with Seal of Light/Judgement of Light.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Heavy Frostweave= 5800hp/8sec
Heavy Netherweave= 3400hp/8sec

From my math, this was around 1/3 of my hunters hp pool, and my hunter is very, very average in gear (i.e. no raid gear at all, and only some lvl232 badge gear). Same applied in BC.

Along those lines, this would mean he would have 100k hps in the same quality gear in Cata.

/speculation

They mentioned wanting to make First Aid more useful for solo, instance, and raid play at the Blizzcon Panels.

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Yeh. cause as they are now... bandages are less than worthless in any of those aspects of the game... And as long as they remain channeled and interruptable, they will remain useless in soloing, raids and instances.

I can beat up a mob, go out of combat, and use a bandage to restore 1/4 of my health... or eat a biscuit and restore it all for the same amount of time investment.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Hunh. For some reason I didn't think Death Strike was based on hp. I probably blocked out part of its mechanics out of blind jealousy. Me and a DK friend solo a lot of old world stuff, and where I as a Druid am relying on Imp Leader of the Pack heals of ~1800 hp each every 8-10 seconds or thereabouts, his Death Strikes are obscene and make me sad.

Do Paladins use JoL for soloing hard stuffs? It's only half as effective as Imp LotP which isn't much to begin with, but moreso I was thinking JoW was more important.

The only awesome Paladin soloer I know of offhand has a rather... obscure UI which looks nice and probably serves him well but isn't very helpful to outsiders!