Tag Archives: glyph

Cosmetic Glyphs are a great idea, more please.

Aside

Short comment today to note – I love the fact that we have cosmetic glyphs in the game. Ideally I would have said that we could have kept major & minor glyphs and trivial levels, but its a call that Blizzard made and its not worth crying about.

What I would like to suggest is that the options get expanded for all classes. Paladins for example have a number of cosmetic effects, while DKs have a few that affect out pets. I’m sure Shadow Priests have some (something about being less shadowy) just as examples. More please, perhaps even non-class specific effects too.

A side effect of adding so many new glyphs might be a massive effect on the market, but I think adding very rare glyphs from some other sources or drops is a good thing. In fact I’d like to see some of the rare or lost weapon and armour patterns added to the Blacksmith profession as well.

How about these glyphs:

  • (all characters) Burning red flames, blue and white arcane glows and wisps, smoldering smoke, leaves dropping from them, and shadows writhing on the character – as aura effects. These would be translucent effects which surround the character in a subtle way when out of combat.
  • (all) The Footsteps of Illidan card where you leave burning footprints effect as a permanent effect.
  • (all) Ioun Stones (from dnd, similar to the Shaman watershield), Floating Orbs, etc as special rare find glyphs for Inscription only characters. ie. They get a rare pattern which creates a BoP Glyph. The pattern might be tradable (allowing a market effect) but the glyph is not.
  • (all) switch your casting, special weapon swing, standard weapon swing to an alternate animation. Meaning that this will give a fixed alternative for each race, and adding the glyph might make that the default, or even let the toon choose randomly from the set of options.
  • (all) Change of default voice, to a different sub-set.
  • (all) different Death animation, as many raiders spend a lot of time on the floor. Perhaps the character even twitches a little.
  • (all) race specific powers have a chosen colour tint. ie. Let the Draeneo healing effect be a purple aura on my DK, rather than normal.
  • (Death Knights) Path of Frost animation whenever a Frost run is used.
  • (Druids) As forms are a key part of the class, perhaps allow a greater degree of switching and swapping? Allow a horde model to be used by Alliance. Swim form as a shark, nessy, or Crocolisk.
  • (Racial, e.g. Worgen) Make your Worgen form look like the very cool Northrend Worgen instead of your normal model. Likewise for the Dark Iron Dwarves for Dwarves, etc. The roleplaying potential is huge, mechanical effect nill.
  • (Engineers) A transporter mistake offers a much wider range of changes, or always one, depending on the glyph used.

What else folks? What is your dream animation, change, or effect?

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Initial thoughts on WoW patch 5

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Here are a few thoughts from the first hours of playing Wow in post-patch-5 times.

  • I’ve logged in and respec’ed my Death Knight. It was easy. Simple in fact. I feel it might actually be too simple, but do not wish to be negative about an idea which I think has huge merit. Having talents which were default selection is no choice. I’m not decided if the current style has too little impact on gameplay.This is almost the D3 model for spec trees, and I hope that we are not seeing a merge into a single game philosophy (yes, that is drawing a long bow).
  • Some of the choices for DKs are still clearly for certain activities (pvp or tank, or…) and therefore we have defaults again. One or two talents are things that I’ll never take. Time will tell us if that is because the talents are shitty, or if I’m a grumpy belligerent old bastard.
  • If you liked the multi-tree specs from wow version of yore there are still a huge amount of games using that model.
  • I’ve seen that minor glyphs have basically almost no mechanical effect, or are totally cosmetic. Major ones do less than the Primes used to, but one or two are bloody fantastic. Overall the glyphs need work – I’m a bit underwhelmed by glyphs and talents because somebody could still perform their role fine in a 5 man without picking any talents or glyphs. That seems wrong.
  • I’ve seen the new collector’s edition mount and pet, and watched people fanark around on their many mounts. Its a good change.
  • I’ve watched people login an alt and get the ding! of shared achievements. I don’t care at all for achievements, but like that almost everyone else likes them and therefore its a nice change.
  • I’ve not yet seen group looting, but am excited by that due to a propensity to farm old instances.
  • After running three instances I can say that Unholy Death Knights are essentially the same as before. Thank god. I’ll get around to testing Blood and Frost at some stage, but they look the same on paper too. Given Blood DKs already had a form of active mitigation it is the other Tank classes that have to learn what that means more than DKs.
  • Overall the complexity in the game is reduced, and it was the complexity in places where it was not feeding 90% of the player base.
  • I don’t care to train, test, or watch a pet battle. This patch just shares all my pets, and its unsurprising that I have hardly any at all. If I could unbind them and sell them I would.
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Quick Patch 3.0.8 thoughts

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Overall I rate this patch as good. Its going to cost me a small chest full of gold for the respecs while I muck about, but it will be worth it.

  • The “Tap” change is wonderful! No more missing out on a tag because your opening affect does no damage. Warlocks (dot), Priests (dot), Druids (faerie fire) will benefit.
  • DK changes are not over, and while they’ve up’ed some stuff (Blood HP regen) and down’ed other stuff (general Unholy damage), the changes in the middle for Frost tanking make sense to me the most.
  • Especially good for DK Tanks is the new weapon enchant: Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle, apparently adds Def +25 and Stam by 2% as a Weapon Enchant. That is tank love!
  • Having the Summon Ghoul and Raise an Ally as two spells makes sense. Nice change.
  • Having the Glyph remove the Corpse Dust cost is an even better change for Unholy. Combined with the 40/70% avoidance means pets don’t insta-gib as much.
  • Sigil of Haunting Dreams, now gives a chance to grant 173 crit strike rating for 10 secs on Blood Strike and Heart Strike. Nice, for 15 tokens.
  • Blacksmithing has been adjusted so that its harder to level at the 390-415-ish bracket. Basically there was a pattern that made it ultra-cheap to create stuff and get skill points. Its been adjusted so that the mats are more costly. I’d be a bit miffed if I hadn’t already passed 420.
  • Shaman have had their Talent points refunded, so why not the Death Knights? Not enough of an adjustment I suppose.