LOL STARCRAFT 2 (+beta patch changes :))

Kay, so It's been a week and starcraft 2 has taken up FAR too much of my time with its engrossing campaign that is diverse in pretty much all of its missions and tbh I had such a fun time playing it I had to play it and get all the achievements, I might write up a guide to all the missions on hard, going to start doing them on Brutal to get the Kerrigan Portrait at some point, but I thought: OMG not posted on my blog for like a week and although nobody reads it :DDD, I kinda like to get my thoughts down on like some sort of "paper".

Ok, so over the next few days I hope to finish my Durotar write up, I have all the screenshots and did all the missions I just never got around to writing it up. I also hope to write up all the Mar Sara Missions. They are pretty easy but they are great missions for practicing very simple Micro and Macro.

Haven't done my ladder games yet, waiting for a few friends to get into starcraft 2 so i can play more custom multiplayer games with them and then move into Multiplayer.

I want to make a comment on the new patch notes for the beta, since I might aswell make them in this post: I'll discuss the new masteries in a separate post but on talent and spell changes there are a few things I want to comment on.

First I'll comment on the druid changes since this was the first char I was levelling in my endeavour: Mostly all the feral changes are either mixing in old talents into new talents like Survival of the fittest into thick hide and stuff and rebalancing old 5 point talents into 3 point talents. The only major change is to Heart of the Wild and I presume the reduction of intellect is because it is a subspec possibility and anything too high would make it mandatory and too powerful for Resto and Balance, since it would have been 12% spellpower (or close to it) increase to both specs.

The Balance Druid changes are again very similar, obviously wanting to tone down the power of the lunar guidance talent by baking in the lunar/solar power generation into the spell, making the balance druid levelling experience that much smoother. Same thing with Nature's Grace, I personally much prefer talents that are like 100% proc and the effect is increased per point rather than points which are like MAX EFFECT but 33/66/100% chance to proc, because at max level they do the same thing but the chance to proc is much more annoying to the lower level player, especially with the new point system where you now have to wait a good 6-ish levels to get the full experience of the talent, Pain and Suffering in the priest tree is another talent I wish was changed to a 100% chance to proc and if it remained a 3 point talent make it like (INCREASES DURATION OF SW:P BY 5/10/15 SECONDS) although perhaps people could get away with 2 points there but regardless. I digress.

I won't comment too much on Hunter changes, it looks like they are very much playing around with the focus costs of some spells and focus generation of the class, the arcane shot change is probably aimed to help out lower level players but ye.. nothing much I can comment on balance wise since I don't play a hunter anyway :).

Similar thing with Mage changes, definitly playing around with how the mage gets their spells, getting water elemental early seems to be very nice and stuff like Reactive Barrier seem very nice aswell for frost, meaning in pve you won't have to spend a global on your ice barrier if you suddenly take lots of damage and weren't expecting it and in pvp meaning you get your shield up even if you are silenced, which is very nice. There was a separate post on upcoming fire tree changes, and personally what I would like to see impact get is some sort of spawn phoenix ability, I always wanted fire mages to get a fire elemental spawning type thing, I am not sure what the phoenix would do, but personally I always loved the phoenix in warcraft 3 and it would be nice to see it come into wow, it could be a lovely reactive spell so like if you fire blast the phoenix becomes like a searing totem if you blink it like increases your run speed, that sort of thing, Idk I think it would be pretty cool and iconic even if it would be hard to balance, it also could bring more variety to the fire mage rotation since you would want to proc it at some point and this sort of thing.

Only thing I want to say about the Paladin changes is 1) If Protector of the Innocent makes it to tier 1, so should Pursuit of Justice: I want to have that choice of Utility vs. Utility and without moving Pursuit of Justice to tier 1 I feel like my 10 points outside of Holy would be totally set in stone. 2) I liked the Idea of Protection choosing between threat and dr, but now they are choosing between threat,dr and self healing. It's too much unless you double the holy power regen. I know it's been said you are trying to get shield of the righteous to refresh holy shield with holy power, but then whats the point of Holy Shield, you might aswell just roll them into one anyway, It would be cool say if you could make a rotation where you went 3->DR->3-> Threat/Heal -> 3 -> DR by somewhat doubling holy power generation so you choose between threat and self heal, or you could make it a choice between holy shield and self heal and threat being a constant but choosing between 3 things is almost always too much since 1 will always get left out (mostly).

Last changes I will comment on are the warriors, since the other classes had nothing substantial changed. I am really liking the sounds of Colossus Smash, one because the name is just awesome and 2 because it seems to have synergy, my thoughts on it though are a little: Well it will probably only be used with M.S/Bloodthirst so why bother putting all the other stuff on it, but ye, idk. The best change however is that, FINALLY, fury warriors got some kind of easier to manage emergency cooldown/aggro drop in die to the sword. My god I always hated how fury was a class that was all about taking a little more damage when dpsing but also to not have an emergency cooldown other than complicated shield wall macros that take far too long to activate sometimes, was just really irritating. I also like how fury is really going back to its essence with it all being about enrages and all that jazz.

So anyway that was a quick overview of my thoughts on that patch, I'll try and dish out some more posts today on both Durotar and Mar Sara Missions