Listed on MMO Champion as new patch notes!!!!!
Druid

Swipe: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

Holy crap does that make my life easier for multi mob tanking.

yea..thats huge

Wow! That's like them making Consecrate (for Pallys) not break CC. Excellent.

{psst - Blizzard: hint hint}

On a bright note the Avenger Sheild won't hit anyone CCd. Does that make you feel any better?

That'll do. :grin:

Especially since my Prot Pally gets Avenger's Shield in the next level or so. :thumbsup:

These changes are awesome ... I have both a feral druid and prot pally.

Errh what happened to Skill!!

ove away from CC targets.... This is making druids auto-tanks with no skill needed.

This is making druids auto-tanks with no skill needed.There is far more to tanking than keeping away from CC'd targets.

When I did try tanking I always swiped CCed targets. WHats why I fail at tanking.

These are really stupid changes in patch 2.4....
The game should be renamed into "World of Wardummies"

Swipe not hitting CC.
Avengers shield not hitting CC.
ultishot not hitting CC.
Cleave not hitting CC.

No brain needed for tanking or DDing anymore. (Accept aggro-watch...)

It seems like Blizzard wants a new pool of 5-10 year old players in the endgame content.
So ridiculous...

With all due respect to you.... half the problem is that the person CCing can't cc them in the right spot. So now its 99% on the tank to find the on good spot that they can plant themselves?

This isn't going to make people who can't tank suddenly better. This is going to make it easier for those who do tank. Personally I think its a good change and I'm a very long time tank. I live and breath it with my druid and I can't imagine even doing it with a warrior.

Tanking is a mindset. Not one button you just sit there and mash wildly. This change isn't going to change that. Its just going to make it a lot easier to tank three mobs at once.

half the problem is that the person CCing can't cc them in the right spot. So now its 99% on the tank to find the on good spot that they can plant themselves?


Why is that such a big problem?? Most CC classes can CC there mobs easy far away enough from the tanking spot.

So now its 99% on the tank to find the on good spot that they can plant themselves?


This change makes spot-finding not necessary at all
(except special encounters)

This isn't going to make people who can't tank suddenly better. This is going to make it easier for those who do tank.


So this change doesn't make it easier for weaker ppl to tank??
Your sentence makes no sence...
Weak ppl do tank!! So it makes it easier for them to tank -> make them better tanks...

And i tanked a lot too... so i too know what im talking about.

Lets just call it a difference of opinion and leave it at that. Not all people who CC are made equal. My experiences have been that the CC people I've dealt with haven't been as fast on the draw as they needed to be.

It's just another example of the continuing dumbification of WoW. Is it a big deal? No, it really isn't. Does it make an already easy game even easier? Without a doubt.

Lets just call it a difference of opinion and leave it at that. Not all people who CC are made equal. My experiences have been that the CC people I've dealt with haven't been as fast on the draw as they needed to be.

Agree :thumbsup:

It's just another example of the continuing dumbification of WoW. Is it a big deal? No, it really isn't. Does it make an already easy game even easier? Without a doubt.

Agree :ohwell:

It's just another example of the continuing dumbification of WoW. Is it a big deal? No, it really isn't. Does it make an already easy game even easier? Without a doubt.
agree.

all designed to keep a lot of people who are currently playing, playing and paying!

and to attract more people, especially those without 84 hrs a week to devote to it.....

from a personal perspective as someone who only runs 5 mans, often with people i dont know, it will make some runs a little easier i guess being able to swipe when the cc'ers have been a little slow and not having to move the action away from a sheep for example.

From the looks of it, the final release of Patch 2.4 rescinded the Multi-shot, Cleave & Swipe change. Avenger's Shield kept the change though (mentioned in the Paladin section).

I think I would've liked to have seen the change, if only because real-life druids would logically know to pick Swipe targets. Then again, when did Blizz follow logic?

Yeah ... this caught a few people off-guard ... I guess not reading the release notes ... lol.

I was running the new instance Magistrate's Terrace and multi-shotted breaking the sheep and my trap :(

Yeah I tested this out on one of the pulls in Magister's Terrace to see if it worked and was sadly disappointed to find out that my Swipe broke sheep.

Like the thread-name said: "THERE IS A GOD".
And thank god this change didnt come in 2.4 :-D
I would have hated seeing everyone being able to tank just by button-smashing, cause u cant do anything wrong...

Yeah I tested this out on one of the pulls in Magister's Terrace to see if it worked and was sadly disappointed to find out that my Swipe broke sheep.

You know, I did the exact same thing...


As for the dumbing down of Warcraft, I do believe to an extent Blizzard are making the game easier, but I think their motivation isn't simply to keep people playing. In fact if the game became too trivially easy it could have the opposite effect - players might leave in search of more challenging.. um.. challenges.

I think Blizzard are making the game gradually easier so that a greater number of players can participate in the end-game content.
If you look at the demographics for pre-tbc, something insane like only 1% of all players even glimpsed Kel'Thuzud for themselves. I believe that Blizzard want more people to see the Illidan encounter and thus have a satisfying conclusion to their adventures in TBC.
Furthermore I believe that the game will become appropriately difficult once again when Wrath of the Lich King is released, repeating the process to become gradually easier with each subsequent patch to help open up the game's content to a wider audience of players as time goes by.

A lot of Blizzard's "dumbing down" actions directly point to this, for example the recent change removing the attunement requirement to get into Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.


Of course this is only my speculation on the matter. I've been horribly wrong before... :>


-Annikk

I don't mind if they dumb-down old content (reduce mob health, damage, anti-cc, remove attunement, etc.) as I think it is a great way to give casual players a chance to see the content (even so, I doubt I'll ever see current 25-man content). I do not like it when Blizzard dumbs down game play (like the proposed 'swipe don't break CC' changes).

I think a lot of the changes Blizzard is making are good. My opinion has been that they're doing it because of all the content. If you are new, started over, or just a casual player; there is tons of content you'll never see. So my observation has been that they tune and adjust previous content as they roll out more (Sunfury in 2.4). This makes is "easier" for those who want to catch up to do so without spending most of their lives getting attunements and such.

This way, power gamers have moved on to the new content replete with new time investments, while casual and new players can enjoy "slightly older" content that might have been prohibitive in the past. So it's "new" to them.

Yes as an adult it feels like some of it's being dumbed down. I agree. But all-in-all, Blizzard has done a great job of staying vital, adding content, and tuning. If Verant had done this, I might not have got tired of EQ back in the day. I lost count of the hours spent on broken quests and no one would even tell you they were broken. Hell I doubt they knew. But they should have. I've been playing WoW since day 1 and I can't believe it still holds my interest. Warhammer or Conan are going to need to have some sweet hooks to draw me away. :duel2:

Warhammer or Conan are going to need to have some sweet hooks to draw me away.My brother is a warhammer beta tester. I watched him play a bit a few weeks ago. The game "looks" nice. And has some nice improvements/fixes over some weird things in wow. I was surprised at how slow the gameplay was. You know how WoW PvP looks like a bunch of Jolt powered monkeys on pogo sticks running all over the place? WH's PvP was much, much slower. Maybe 'cause it is still in beta. But my brother told me that they want PvP encounters to be much longer than those in WoW. Something like "you should be able to survive for 15s with 3 players on you of your level". I did like that they have a "chicken" feature in the game. If a higher level player enters a PvP zone for lowbees they automatically get turned into a chicken. And you can enter BG from anywhere (it is a menu item), once you are done you are ported back to where you joined the BG.

The game appeared to me to still be in a very early beta. Quite a few features were still not complete (typically just "disabled"). The beta has stopped for a week or two. Not sure why, but it has.

I signed up for the Beta but didn't get in. I was a big Conan fan growing up so I like the world. But it will be a whole different scene w/o elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. The standard fantasy accoutrement. I know Warhammer was pushed back to an October release. Haven't been invited to that Beta yet either. Hopefully they'll both have open betas. But I can't support time for two MMORPG's so one of them will need to be sweet!

BT is still incredibly tough for guilds who dont have a LOT of t5 / Hyjal equivalent gear and the skill to accompany it. Removing the attunement isn't going to magically allow the 'casual player' to kill Illidan. First day of 2.4 we went to Hyjal (had 6/6 SSC and 3/4 TK with Kael almost down) and killed the first two bosses, then went to BT and wiped on trash :( Specifically this 5 pull at the beginning where you can't CC anything, and if you do a naga dispells it giving his party 250% increased casting time or something ridiculous while every single mob spams AOE lightning of death. Ugh.

Rage in Hyjal, yeah. That guy's the easiest boss in the game. BTW - side note. For anyone who loved WC3FT and hasn't been to Hyjal, try to get there - its like you are playing IN a WC3FT campaign as a hero. The first two bosses are the Lich King and Dreadlord from the Undead campaign, and you have to fight wave upon wave of ghouls, necromancers, banshees and crypt fiends while helping an ally town (complete with riflemen knights and footsoldiers, not to mention Jaina with a brilliance aura) fend off an undead attack. I digress.

IMO It is nice that they are opening up things for new players, though moreso for alts :) I wasn't looking forward to getting my Warrior Kara attuned so that I could tag along on some guild badge farming to pick up epix. For new players, however, pug'ing 5 mans should still be a part of the experience

Re: removing the swipe / multi etc not breaking cc, I think it's a good thing. PvE is easy enough as is.

Cant wait for Warhammer, but I must say, WoW has kept me hooked for a long time, and I am not getting bored yet.

sounds good Clar - loved all of the warcraft games and expansions.

but wont ever get to see the end game stuff in BC or the future which does make me question why i continue playing really.

but yeah at least there is a bit of new content for non raiders like me. and ofc i now need a million badges for all that nice new gear i've seen available from the Sunwell quartermaster type person !

I still cant decide on the swipe not breaking CC being removed. If i could have it would have helped a couple times last nite in a heroic - esp where the Lock pulled 4 bogstrocks by accident, died in a heartbeat (despite 13k HP) and left the 4 of us to pick them all up with my trying to swipe and pick up 3 of them whilst someone cc'd the 4th.

i can see why it would be viewed as making things a little too easy / button mashing.....there were plenty of times last night i moved the 2 mobs i was tanking away from the sheep to be able to do the odd swipe....which i would not have had to bother about if they'd changed it....

yeah and i'll have to agree that as someone who participated in FB and then from Day 1 i'm still here although i did take a 5-6 month break last year but returned !

Why, I remember way back in '99, in EQ, tanks didn't get multi-tank capabilities. We had to constantly tab and taunt non-CC'd mobs to make sure the squishies didn't get squished.

You young wippersnapper tanks in these new fangled games have it too easy, they've taken all the skill out of tanking.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to walk, uphill, through the snow, both ways, to get me some prune juice.