AT World of Warcraft Thread (Mists, Where do you play, General BS and all that)

[lupi]

Can we acquire this now? Will it count for Warlords requirements?

Proving Grounds
Proving Grounds will be updated for Warlords of Draenor and Blizzard wants to expand its functionality. It will be used as a prerequirement for raids. For example, players will need at least a silver medal in the Proving Grounds to queue in a dungeon. If you want to play in an instance with your friends or your guild, no problem, but if you want to join a random group you will have to prove that you know how to handle some mechanics of the game. This should be ready for Warlords of Draenor. Blizzard hopes it will improve the experience of players in LFD and LFR, and each player in the group should have the minimum knowledge required to fight the bosses.

 

[Phoenix86]

Proving Grounds
Proving Grounds will be updated for Warlords of Draenor and Blizzard wants to expand its functionality. It will be used as a prerequirement for raids. For example, players will need at least a silver medal in the Proving Grounds to queue in a dungeon. If you want to play in an instance with your friends or your guild, no problem, but if you want to join a random group you will have to prove that you know how to handle some mechanics of the game. This should be ready for Warlords of Draenor. Blizzard hopes it will improve the experience of players in LFD and LFR, and each player in the group should have the minimum knowledge required to fight the bosses.

Wow. Just wow. So many people will bitch, but this is an amazing change for the average LFR player. FWIW we have a healer in heroics that can't get gold. I believe it's holding us back, and this kind of confirms my thoughts.

Heroic players should be able to get gold easy if they are expecting gold to be the LFR (equal to the current normal difficulty) equal. Of course tuning isn't set for this yet so it isn't a 100% fair comparison but my point is the same.

 

[JujuFish]

Wow. Just wow. So many people will bitch, but this is an amazing change for the average LFR player. FWIW we have a healer in heroics that can't get gold. I believe it's holding us back, and this kind of confirms my thoughts.

Heroic players should be able to get gold easy if they are expecting gold to be the LFR (equal to the current normal difficulty) equal. Of course tuning isn't set for this yet so it isn't a 100% fair comparison but my point is the same.

I'm not sure what you mean here, but LFR in WoD will be like LFR now. The current normal difficulty will be called heroic in WoD.

 

[Phoenix86]

I'm not sure what you mean here, but LFR in WoD will be like LFR now. The current normal difficulty will be called heroic in WoD.

Sadly I had it backwards, so this only affects 5 mans?

 

[lupi]

Warlords of Draenor Developer Interviews
There were a few developer interviews at the recent press events, so today we are taking a look at interviews with Ion Hazzikostas from videogameszone.de.



Beta / Misc
Beta is Soon™
The team has been working hard since Blizzcon to make the content. The team has even added another boss to the Highmaul raid since Blizzcon!
Gul'dan isn't the threat in Warlords of Draenor, Grommash and the Iron Horde are. Gul'dan might even be an ally against them.

Classes and Races
Casters have slightly too many instant cast spells, especially healers that can keep themselves alive without ever using a spell with a cast time.
Melee used to be the masters of damage on the move compared to ranged, but over time ranged got more and more abilities that allowed them to do damage on the move.
Many classes will have talents that change depending on your spec. For example, From Darkness, Comes Light is really two talents built into one spell. This results in either talents that are bland or talents that do two separate things.
When it makes sense in Warlords of Draenor one spec may have one talent option, while another spec will have access to another. Almost all of the Level 100 talents work this way, and some older talents will also work like this.
For example, the Mage Bomb talent row could have all three bomb spells consolidated into one talent, which gives the mage a bomb based on their spec. This would free up two spaces on that row for more talent choices.
No brown skin for Orc players is planned right now, but the team has heard all of the player interest in subraces.

Dungeons and Scenarios
Mists of Pandaria Heroic dungeons were too easy for many players, which was somewhat necessary due to not having Normal difficulty dungeons at Level 90. Warlords of Draenor fixes this by having both Normal and Heroic dungeons at Level 100.
Normal dungeons will likely be similar to the Mists of Pandaria Heroic dungeon difficulty, while Heroic will be more challenging.
Raid Finder will be balanced around players having gear from Normal difficulty dungeons.
Gear progression will likely use Normal difficulty dungeons to gear up for Raid Finder and Heroic difficulty dungeons to gear up for Normal difficulty raids.
The Challenge Mode daily quest in Warlords of Draenor will give you a piece of epic gear that is on par with or better than Raid Finder loot, even before Raid Finder and maybe even the raids are open. This is awarded to anyone who completes the dungeon, meaning that there is no time requirement.
Warlords of Draenor leveling will make use of some solo scenarios at the end of a zone, similar to what we saw on Isle of Thunder.

Raids
Highmaul is very non-linear, with a layout that is similar to Firelands (open outdoor area with some optional bosses before the two final bosses).
Blackrock Foundry has a layout that is similar to the second part of Icecrown Citadel, with three wings of three bosses each. You can do the wings in any order you want, gaining access to Blackhand after all three are complete.
Less linear structures work better for players and feel better, so that is what will be used going forward.
There isn't a separate raid tier for each Warlord, and we may even see two or three in the first raid tier.

World Bosses
Attempts at creating a hard World Boss haven't worked out very well.
Sha of Anger may have been the most successful world boss in Mists of Pandaria. It was accessible, felt epic, and you could see him while leveling.
Three different world bosses are planned for Patch 6.0. Initially one boss may be available, with Highmaul quality loot. Then a few weeks later, a second world boss could unlock that drops Foundry quality loot. Much later in the tier, a third world boss could unlock that drops some Heroic raid quality gear.
If a world boss gives rewards that are better than anything you could get if you aren't a high end raider (Ordos), it diminishes the importance of raid zones. If rewards aren't that good, players will start raiding and the world boss won't be relevant anymore.

 

[Anubis]

Wow. Just wow. So many people will bitch, but this is an amazing change for the average LFR player. FWIW we have a healer in heroics that can't get gold. I believe it's holding us back, and this kind of confirms my thoughts.

Heroic players should be able to get gold easy if they are expecting gold to be the LFR (equal to the current normal difficulty) equal. Of course tuning isn't set for this yet so it isn't a 100% fair comparison but my point is the same.

getting silver isnt hard now
and this change is a good thing

 

[lupi]

Going along the theme of BC being the worst expansion,



Blizzard plan to strip currency systems from World of Warcraft raiding in Warlords of Draenor
By Jeremy Peel, 1 days ago, 4 Comments
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Randomised loot drops are, when tuned well, a recipe for joy - but the flipside is the potential for crushing runs of bad luck. There’s nobody who understands that better than Blizzard, who first introduced a currency reward to World of Warcraft raiding as consolation prize for players who never seemed to land the shoulder piece they wanted.

These days, there are two currencies at work in the raiding system - but Blizzard want to remove both of them.*

“We are planning on simplifying our currency structure,” lead encounter designer Ion Hazzikostas told PCGamesN.

In the current system, players running the latest raid bosses earn valor points, while those playing lower tier raids and dungeons earn justice points. Both can be exchanged for gear if raid bosses fail to drop the loot you’re after - but Blizzard believe they’ve become unnecessary.

“The traditional role of valor was to offer compensation for bad luck - and that goes all the way back to badges in Burning Crusade,” said Hazzikostas. “Where you’d go, ‘Okay, I’ve run this raid 15 times now and never seen a shoulder piece dropped - so I’ll take this currency and buy a shoulder piece for myself’.

“The bonus rolls system that we have these days actually goes a long way towards helping counteract that.”*

The bonus roll system, introduced in patch 5.0, allows players another chance at a boss’ loot table upon completing a raid. With each roll, the chances of getting an item appropriate to the player’s loot specialisation increases.

“We think we can take the bonus rolls system and make it a little bit more intelligent, so that it tries to avoid giving you duplicate loots - and allow that to be the way players counteract bad RNG,” explained Hazzikostas. “It removes a little bit of the grind and a little bit of the awkwardness of the current valor system.”

PvP currently functions in a similar fashion - honor points are rewarded for kills, wins and objectives in non-ranked PvP, and conquest points reserved for playing ranked matches.*

Asked whether the WoW dev team were considering a further simplification there, Hazzikostas told PCGN that arenas and battlegrounds needed “at least one” currency.

“We are trying to get rid of one of the two, but at the end of the day a purely random system probably would not work as well for higher PvP gear,” he said. “Conquest makes a lot of sense.”

It’s sort of fascinating that Blizzard are still fine-tuning systems introduced a decade ago - designing new features and throwing out others in an attempt to keep random rewards meaningful - without asking players to suffer too much frustration.

Do any of you lot run raids or voluntarily fight other players? Or perhaps you used to - in which case, why did you stop?

 

[lupi]

Warlords of Draenor Developer Interviews
There were a few developer interviews at the recent press events, so today we are taking a look at interviews with Ion Hazzikostas from Eurogamer and Brian Holinka from PlayersCut.

Eurogamer
The Level 90 boost is being sold to allow players that would have purchased multiple copies of WoW to get more Level 90 characters to do so in a more reasonable way.
The $60 price point was decided upon to avoid devaluing the accomplishment of leveling a character to 90.
If Blizzard's goal was to sell as many boosts as possible, they would have set the price lower.
The $60 price point wasn't selected to maximize profit, just to represent the amount of time that it takes to level to 90.

PlayersCut
The team has already started planning for the next two expansions.
Removing arena teams was an important part of increasing participation in arenas.
There is a lot of Garrison content that comes from having followers.
Patch 6.0 isn't the end of new content for Garrisons, as more content can be added as the expansion progresses.
The devs know that some kind of Garrison PvP sounds really cool, but there aren't any solid plans yet.
Ashran has a lot of players taking part in the battle, but they are spread out so that performance doesn't suffer. Ashran has a fortress for each faction, as well as capture points spread around the outside of the zone that are beneficial to hold. There will likely be a larger central battle with other battles going on around the outer part of the zone.
There aren't any plans for mobile content for WoW right now.
The technology for character model animation was finally at a point where models could updated for this expansion. Character models had also started to look outdated compared to some of the newer art assets in the game. The Pandaren were the test for new character models, and using lessons learned from them the team can update all of the other races.
There are so many older armor models that it isn't possible to go back and update them all. The team can use them as inspiration for new armor sets though.

 

[lupi]

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Development on World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor is progressing well, and we'll soon be ready to enter the first phases of public testing. To help prep you for battle, let’s break down some of the upcoming changes we’re making to stats, abilities, and crowd control for the expansion.

Stat Squish
Character progression is one of the hallmarks of any role-playing game, and naturally that means we're always adding more power for players to acquire. After multiple expansions and content updates, we've reached a point where the numbers for health, damage, and other stats are so big they’re no longer easy for players to grasp. What’s more, a lot of power granularity is tied up in tiers of older content, from Molten Core to Dragon Soul—and while it was once necessary for your character's power to spike up suddenly when you hit level 70, that’s not the case anymore.



In order to bring things down to a more understandable level, we'll be reducing the scale of stats throughout the game and smoothing out those obsolete spikes, so that power scales linearly through questing content from levels 1 to 85. This applies to creatures, spells, abilities, consumables, gear . . . everything. And while that means your numbers for stats and damage are being reduced by a huge amount, the same goes for creatures' health and damage output. For example, a Fireball that previously hit a creature for 450,000 out of his 3,000,000 health (15% of its health) may now hit that same creature for 30,000 out of its 200,000 health (still 15% of its health).



It's important to understand that this isn’t a nerf—in effect, you’ll still be just as powerful, but the numbers that you see will be easier to comprehend. This also won’t reduce your ability to solo old content. In fact, to provide some additional peace of mind, we're implementing further scaling of your power against lower-level targets so that earlier content will be even more accessible than it is now.

We’re also removing all base damage on player spells and abilities and adjusting attack power or spell power scaling as needed, making it so that all specializations will scale at the same rate.

Racial Traits
We want races to have fun and interesting perks, but if some of those traits are too powerful, players may feel compelled to play a specific race even if it’s not really the one they want to play. For example, Trolls' Berserking ability was extremely powerful, and their Beast Slaying passive was either completely irrelevant or tremendously powerful, based on the situation, compared to other racial traits. On the other end of the spectrum, many races had few or no performance-affecting perks. On top of that, a number of racials that currently grant Hit or Expertise will soon need replacing, since those stats are being removed in Warlords of Draenor.



To keep racials more in line with one another, we’ve decided to bring down the couple high outliers, then establish a fair baseline and bring everyone else up to that. We’re accomplishing this by improving old passives, replacing obsolete ones, and adding a few new ones where necessary. Ultimately, our goal is to achieve much better parity among races.

Ability Pruning
Over the years, we've added significantly more new spells and abilities than we've removed, and the game’s complexity has steadily increased. We’re to the point now where players are starting to get overwhelmed, sometimes feeling like they need dozens of keybinds (in a few extreme cases, over a hundred). While the game is loaded with niche abilities that could theoretically be useful in some rare scenario, in reality, many of these are barely used at all—and in some cases, the game would simply be better off without them.

For Warlords of Draenor, we decided that we needed to pare down the number of abilities available to each class and spec in order to remove some of that unnecessary complexity. That means restricting some abilities to certain specs that really need them instead of being class-wide, and outright removing some other abilities. It also includes removing some Spellbook clutter, such as passives that we can merged with other passives or base abilities.



This doesn’t mean that we want to reduce the depth of gameplay or dumb things down. We still want players to face interesting decisions during combat, and we still want skill to matter . . . but we can achieve that without the needless complexity in the game now, and we can remove some of the game’s more convoluted mechanics while maintaining depth and skill variety.

One type of ability that we focused on removing is temporary power buffs (aka "cooldowns"). Removing these also helps achieve one of our other goals, which is to reduce the amount of cooldown stacking in the game. In cases where a class or spec has multiple cooldowns that typically end up getting used together (often in a single macro), we merged them, or removed some of them entirely.

The process of determining which spells and abilities to cut or change is a very complex one—we know that every ability feels vital to someone, and we don't take this process lightly. Even if we ended up cutting your favorite ability, we hope you’ll understand why we did so in the context of our larger goals for the expansion. Ultimately, the point of these changes is to increase players' ability to understand the game, not to reduce gameplay depth.

Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns
One other big takeaway from Mists of Pandaria is that there is currently simply too much crowd control (CC) in the game, especially when it comes to PvP. To address that, we knew that we needed an across-the-board disarmament.



Here's a summary of the player-cast CC changes:

Removed Silence effects from interrupts. Silence effects still exist, but are never attached to an interrupt.
Removed all Disarms.
Reduced the number of Diminishing Returns (DR) categories.
All Roots now share the same DR category.
Exception: Roots on Charge-type abilities have no DR category, but have a very short duration instead.
All Stuns now share the same DR category.
All Incapacitate (sometimes called "mesmerize") effects now share the same DR category and have been merged with the Horror DR category.
Removed the ability to make cast-time CC spells instant with a cooldown.
Removed many CC spells entirely, and increased the cooldowns and restrictions on others.
Pet-cast CC is more limited, and in many cases has been removed.
Cyclone can now be dispelled by immunities and Mass Dispel.
PvP trinkets now grant immunity to reapplication of an effect from the same spell cast when they break abilities with persistent effects, like Solar Beam.
Long fears are now shorter in PvP due to the added benefit of a fear changing the players position.

Additionally, we've significantly reduced the number of throughput-increasing cooldowns and procs in order to further reduce burst damage.

Whether your favorite class is losing an ability or taking a hit to its CC potential, we hope this discussion helped you better understand why we’re making these changes. It’s important to remember that other classes will be getting some of their CC removed too. We think this entire package will make exploring Azeroth and PvPing a more enjoyable experience for everyone, and we’re looking forward to having you try them out when we open up the expansion for testing.

In the next Dev Watercooler, we'll explore the changes coming to health and healing in Warlords of Draenor.

 

[lupi]

Alliance Racials
Humans lose the Mace/Sword racials. The Human Spirit becomes +X to two secondary stats of your choice. (Source)
Change to Human Spirit seems really cool. Can you talk about the interface for choosing which secondary stats it'll give you?
Still designing it. Probably a flyout button of some sort (like Rogue Poisons, Mage Portals, etc) (Source)
The idea is interesting, but are you worried it will be too strong since it's customizable? Or just needs proper tuning
The downside is that it's split between two. If haste is your best stat, 1% haste is better than 0.5%haste + 0.5% crit. (Source)

Weapon Specialization racials are removed because Hit/Exp are removed. (Source)

Draenei's Heroic Presence is now +X to your primary stat. Gift of the Naaru heals for the same amount but over 5sec. (Source)

Night Elves' Quickness also increases movement speed by 2% passively. They also got a new passive which is quite unique... (Remember, no more haste breakpoints!) Touch of Elune, a new passive which grants 1% Haste at night, 1% Crit during the day. (Source)
Might annoy some specs that benefit from one stat but not another (e.g. feral druids benefit from crit, but not haste)
We're making sure that everyone benefits from them. (Source)
Shadowmeld is unchanged. (Source)

Gnomes' Escape Artist dropped to a 1min CD (from 1.5min), and Shortblade Specialization became Nimble Fingers, 1% Haste. Also a tweak to Expansive Mind. Was +5% max Mana. Now +5% Max Mana, Energy, Rage, or Runic Power. (Source)

Darkflight is staying unchanged. (Source)

Dwarves lost Crack Shot and Mace Specialization. Gained Might of the Mountain, a passive which adds 2% Crit Damage and Healing. Also a change to Stoneform: Also removes Magic/Curse. HOWEVER, it still cannot be used while CC'd. (It is still NOT a CC-break) (Source)

Horde Racials
Undead are seeing relatively few changes. Tweaks to the scaling rate of Touch of the Grave, and WotF to 3min CD (up from 2). (Source)

Blood Elves gain Arcane Acuity, a 1% crit passive. Arcane Torrent now restores 20RunicPower, or 1HoPo, or 3% Mana. (Also, Rage and Chi) (Source)

Orcs were one of the outliers we brought down. Lost the Axe Specialization, and Hardiness is 10% Stun reduction (down from 15%). (Source)
Blood Fury is unchanged. Every Man For Himself, we're still evaluating. Itemization changes may mean no nerf needed. (Source)

Tauren's Endurance becomes +X Stamina. Brawn is a new passive which increases Crit Damage/Healing by 2%. (Source)

Can you tell us what exactly will be changing with the Troll racial Berserking?
Reduced to 15% Haste (down from 20%). (Source)

Will there be any changes to Worgen and Goblin racials?
Not much. They were about at baseline. Time is Money becomes real 1% Haste, not just attack speed / cast speed. Subtle diff. (Source)

Squish
Re the squish, simple yes/no question-- will noninstanced world bosses like Oondasta be soloable at level 100?
I'd be surprised if really skilled players didn't solo him at 100. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if a couple are close already. (Source)

Any idea what enchants & set bonuses that currently reduce disarm duration will turn into?
We'll change the set bonuses but the weapon chains won't be relevant anymore. (Source)

PvP
PvP trinkets now grant immunity to reapplication of an effect from the same spell= bad idea, everything else good.
You actually want to trinket a Solar Beam, and have it instantly reapply to you? (Source)

"Long fears are now shorter in PvP due to the added benefit of a fear changing the players position." How short?
6sec instead of 8sec. (Source)

Is paralyze dispellable? Like cyclone is going to be.
It's a physical effect, like gouge, so it can't be dispelled.
Cyclone is not a physical effect?
No it's magic
Magic in WoD, you mean? It's always been Physical CC.
It's more of a "behind the curtain" thing here. It's actually magic, it just isn't dispellable. (Source)

Can we expect more relative damage in WoD with the reduced amount of cc?
We're reducing crit damage done to players by 25% (i.e. crits do 150% damage against players). Damage will be more consistent. (Source)

The blog doesn't mention abilities that break CC, which is significantly more powerful (Lichborne, Fear Ward, TT, BRage..)
In a world where we have too much CC and we're trying to tip the balance away, I can't see going after breaks as aggressively. (Source)
What about mechanics like subterfuge/dematerialize? Those are really bad mechanics..
Subterfuge no longer leaves the rogue in stealth but provides the rogue access to stealth abilities. (Source)
Will there be changes to all the root breaks that melee have now that they all share a DR and we have less instants?
Certainly concerned about all the root breaks. We haven't arrived at exactly what we want there yet.
What about interrupts? Skull bash/rebuke staying?
Interrupts are staying. We think their gameplay is more interesting than blanket silences. (Source)
If interrupts dont have globalCD & casters dont cast a lot,then I disagree.Its just random, no-skill
Our other changes will mean a lot more casting, fewer instants. (Source)
Will Interrupts remain off the GCD?
Yes, that's just a gameplay feel issue. (Source)

Confused about "Removed Silence effects from interrupts." No more 3s lockout on kick?
No more silence on counterspell, spear hand strike, silencing shot, etc. Things that added a silence to an interrupt. But a spell that is specifically a silence, like, well Silence, isn't going away. (Source)
So no more blanket silence as a CC unless Spriest?
There are others like Strangulate. (Source)
Short silence, or wait for a cast for a longer interrupt. how is that not a choice?
Disagree. It feels like people more often use it to silence and the lock out ends up as a bonus. (Source)
What about the "Spell locks"? Will Wind Shear still have a 2 sec lockout and will CS keep it's X secs?
Yeah, interrupts still lockout the interrupted spell school for X sec. (Source)

Are you going to do some kind of pass with the goal of equalizing CC is some way? IE: Each class has like 1-2 CC spells?
Some classes will have more control than others. (Source)

Are PvP set bonuses going to be reworked? I think it would be cool if they were really interesting like PvE bonuses.
Probably. Some classes rely on their set bonuses more than others. (Source)

With the stat squish, number retuning, and CC changes are you looking to make PVP fights overall longer or shorter?
We'd like to see people rotting and healers having to triage more. No one likes 100-0 gameplay.
So overall it would take longer to die/kill someone, but it is also much harder to heal someone back to full?
That would be the goal (Source)

Classes
Regarding removing CDs, which is likely gonna be cut for Ferals Berserk or Tiger Fury or both?
Both of those are staying. Tiger's Fury is on the border between feeling like a DPS cooldown and a rotational button. Keeping it because it has significant impact on your rotation; good gameplay. (Source)

So the 197 of CJL's damage (6 * (197 + 1[1.2] * Attack power * 0.386) is going away?
Correct, no more base damage on spells. (Source)

Does "One type of ability that we focused on removing is temporary power buffs (aka "cooldowns")" mean hero/lust/windfury/etc?
We're keeping Bloodlust/Heroism as the only raid-wide throughput cooldown. No more Stormlash/SkullBanner. Time Warp, Ancient Hysteria stay. We count those all as the same thing, just different sources of the same buff.(Source)
When are we getting those changed from Haste to Amp? Makes much better sense as raid cooldown
Based on our experiments with the SoO trinkets, we're holding off on doing Amp and Cleave as stats, at least for now. (Source)
Plans for a different new secondary to take its place then? DPS could use more options. (I know readiness+multistrike)
Crit/Haste/Mastery/Readiness/Multistrike. We think 5 is enough for now. Will make sure none are terrible. (Source)

What of the Raid Wide CDs, other than Bloodlust, like devotion aura?
Defensive cooldowns stay. May tweak them of course, but as a concept they stay. Only offensive one will be Bloodlust (etc). (Source)
Wait, the ONLY offensive cooldown will be Hero/BL/etc? Every other one is gone?
No, only *raid-wide* offensive cooldown is Bloodlust. I'm referring to removing Stormlash and Skull Banner. (Source)

I'm worried that class flavour spells are going to vanish. Things that don't take up keybind space, like Enslave Demon/Undead.
We're less concerned about removing those (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Death Knights' runeforges. Anything new there, yet?
Couple tweaks, but nothing ready to announce yet. Not an overhaul. (Source)

DKs don't fit in a world with fewer CCs.They r essentially gonna become immune CC.(other than slow/root)
Then root them? (Source)

Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Can you still NS healing abilities? or is NS just going completely?
You can NS all other spells. (Source)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
What about Silence/Counter Shot for Hunters. How will you go about changing these?
Counter Shot stays, Silencing Shot goes (Source)

NS Clone/PoM poly gone is a good change. Wyvern Sting gone as well I presume?
Wyvern is still available. Hunters have had other changes to their CC (Silencing Shot gone for example). (Source)

With all incap sharing DR will scatter and trap now DR w/ each other? How will hunters land traps?
Scatter Shot is gone. Traps arm and activate instantly. (Source)
"arms and active instantly"? Does that mean it can be fired at a person directly to be trapped? No luncher
No, it has to be placed and has a travel time. (Source)

Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
How will combustion work in relation to the new "dynamic" dots? Popping CDs just to have them be meaningless after
Combustion is based on the damage of the Ignite, so will not dynamically change. (Source)

Re pet-cast CC: Freeze going away? If so, room for a non-CC replacement?
Water Elemental Freeze is staying. However, there is a minor talent that teaches Squirt a new spell that shares a cooldown with it (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Divine favor is gone right?
Healadins had a whole bunch of cooldowns. Merged some of them together. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
For example, are Combat Rogues going to See AR and Shadow Blades combined?
Killing Spree and Adrenaline Rush for Combat, Vendetta for Assassination, Shadow Dance for Subtlety. Plus talents. (Source)

Shadow blades gone? I'd love that.
Yes, Shadow Blades lost the roll of which Rogue cooldown to cut. (Source)

Is preparation considered bloat? I think it's good having the choice, I hate abilities with 2 charges it promotes tunelling
We're exploring an idea where Preparation becomes a passive. Details still being worked out. (Source)

Removing tricks damage modifier as well, yes please?
Yes, Tricks of the Trade no longer increases damage. Yay! (Source)
Is it going to be free, then?
Oh, yes. Tricks is free. (Source)
Awesome, now it's pure utility! It's not as needed anymore with threat buffs it's still an old fav
Indeed. We expect it to be used for helping pick up new adds, that sort of thing. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Regarding pet-cast CC, will Seduction still be in the game as it currently exists?
A nerfed version. We don't like so much CC coming from the pets. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
The blog post implies that Charge is going to be changed to a root after all?
Yes Charge will become a root. Our stance was we liked that change, but 5.4.7 wasn't the right time to do it. (Source)
Will Warbringer still add a stun? That will be the only choice for PVP, jumping charges with Freedom/druid shifting/windwalk totem
Yes, Warbringer will be a short stun off DR. Players will be able to get the same behavior with a talent.
Warbringer stun off of DR seems counter to the idea that all stuns share a DR.
There are a number things with very short duration that do not share DR. (Source)
Clarify very short? Heard warbringer will be a 3 second stun. Also presume they DR with themselves? (warbringer rotations in RBGs)
Basically baseline charge, 1.5 seconds. (Source)
Charge should remain as is change the talents instead!
We like the added mobility that the talents give, but charge stun every 12 seconds is too much. (Source)

 

[Xonim]

I wish they'd give more details about what class abilities are getting changed or removed, rather than all this general stuff and the focus on the racials. I don't know why, but that's really mostly what I'm interested in at this point.

I'm hoping they don't change destro warlocks too much ... even without the massive damage output, I love the playstyle. I also would like to see fire mages fixed back to what they were at the beginning of MoP (crit modifier, specifically), except make changes to spell coefficients to bring damage in line with what they should be. They're quite boring otherwise.

I'm also interested to see how healer mana is going to work (I currently run 14.5k spirit for LFR), and how far they're going to go in regards to stripping out smart heals. I hope it's a lot, and they go back to having the tank take the majority of the damage instead of this ridiculous raid-damage model they've been doing. As a holy paladin, Holy Radiance + Illuminated Healing + Light of the Dawn make up like 65-70% of my healing (in LFR so most of the raid ignores mechanics, but still). Other healing classes are the same (healing rain, wild mushroom, cascade, renewing mists, etc) It's kind of out of control.

 

[lupi]

Got another ghost box last night. Sent it to my smith as my rogue can't pick those yet. Made a key, opened the box...and got another box as a result. Repeated the process half expecting to get yet another box and then having a gm whisp me laughing.

 

[dougp]

lupi, what do you think?

I plan on insta-90ing a rogue - on my main server, which is Alliance, I have a 80 Goblin Rogue from a SoR - should I race-change him to Dwarf, and use the insta-90 on him to max out Engineering and Mining?

 

[lupi]

If that's what you wanted to do, make sure you have those as your professions prior to the level jump and if the level jump comes prior to them raising the level cap (or if the achievement text stays the same) level jump him before swapping faction to get the max on each faction achievement.

 

[lupi]

Update: Celestalon clarified why no changes to Every Man for Himself are listed:

Unlike the other racials that provide some type of CC-dispel, Every Man For Himself actually replaces a CC-Break PvP trinket; it isn’t in addition to it. So what you gain with EMFH is actually a trinket slot. Thus its power is very much related to what trinkets there are available. We're still determining our plan for PvP trinket itemization, so haven't decided on what to do with EMFH quite yet. It’s quite strong, and we agree that it looks unfair from those patch notes; we just haven't decided what to do with it yet. So, don't take that list as a statement that EMFH won't be changing somehow.

Warlords of Draenor Racial Traits
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We’re planning some changes to racial traits for Warlords of Draenor. We recently posted a Dev Watercooler (Pruning the Garden of War) that dives deeper into the philosophy behind these changes, and now we wanted to give you the full details of what’s coming.

In order to keep racials more in line with one another, we’ve decided to bring down a couple of high outliers, then establish a fair baseline and bring the other racials up to that. We’re accomplishing this by improving old passives, replacing obsolete ones, and adding a few new ones where necessary. Ultimately, our goal is to achieve much better parity among races.

There aren’t any current plans to change Pandaren or Worgen racials.

Blood Elf
Arcane Acuity is a new racial passive ability that increases Critical Strike chance by 1%.
Arcane Torrent now restores 20 Runic Power for Death Knights (up from 15 Runic Power), 1 Holy Power for Paladins, or 3% of Mana for Mage, Priest, Warlocks (up from 2% of Mana). Other aspects of the ability remain unchanged.

Draenei
Heroic Presence has been redesigned. It no longer increases Hit by 1%, and instead increases Strength, Agility, and Intellect, scaling with character level.
Gift of the Naaru now heals for the same amount over 5 seconds (down from 15 seconds).

Dwarf
Crack Shot has been removed (was 1% Expertise with ranged weapons).
Mace Specialization (was 1% Expertise with maces) has been replaced with Might of the Mountain.
Might of the Mountain is a new racial passive ability that increases Critical Strike bonus damage and healing dealt by 2%.
Stoneform now also removes magic and curse effects in addition to poison, disease, and bleed effects, along with reducing damage taken by 10% for 8 seconds. It remains unusable while CC'd.

Gnome
Expansive Mind now increases maximum Mana, Energy, Rage, and Runic Power by 5% instead of only increasing maximum Mana.
Escape Artist’s cooldown has been reduced to 1 minute (down from 1.5 minutes).
Shortblade Specialization (was 1% Expertise with one-handed swords and daggers) has been replaced with Nimble Fingers.
Nimble Fingers is a new racial passive ability that increases Haste by 1%.

Goblin
Time is Money now grants a 1% increase to Haste (up from only attack speed and spell haste).

Human
Mace Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with maces).
Sword Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with swords).
The Human Spirit has been redesigned. It no longer increases Spirit by 3%, and instead now increases two secondary stats by an amount scaling with character level. You can choose which two secondary stats it increases. This has not yet been implemented.

Night Elf
Quickness now also increases movement speed by 2% in addition to increasing Dodge chance by 2%.
Touch of Elune is a new passive ability which increases Haste by 1% at night, and Critical Strike Chance by 1% during the day.

Orc
Axe Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with axes).
Hardiness now reduces the duration of Stun effects by 10% (down from 15%).

Tauren
Brawn is a new racial passive ability that increases Critical Strike bonus damage and healing done by 2%.
Endurance now increases Stamina by an amount scaling with character level, instead of increasing Base Health by 5%.

Troll
Berserking now increases Haste by 15% (down from 20%).
Beast Slaying now increases XP earned from killing Beasts by 20% instead of increasing damage dealt versus Beasts by 5%.
Dead Eye has been removed (was 1% Expertise with ranged weapons).

Undead
Will of the Forsaken’s cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes (up from 2 minutes).

Mists of Pandaria Digital Deluxe Edition Heading into the Blizzard Archive

In approximately one week (no sooner than March 10), the Mists of Pandaria Digital Deluxe edition will be earning a bit of much-deserved rest in the Blizzard Archive. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your standard edition for the in-game extras or contemplating coming back to the game to check out the latest content, you might want to consider snagging the Digital Deluxe Edition now before it heads into the vaults.

If you already own the standard edition of Mists of Pandaria and are interested in upgrading, you can head over to your account management page to do so now. The Digital Deluxe edition might come back out of the archive in the future, but even the jinyu waterspeakers don’t know if or when.



The Digital Deluxe edition of Mists of Pandaria includes the Imperial Quilen Mount, the Lucky Quilen Cub pet, a Mists of Pandaria–themed Diablo III banner sigil and accent, and Horde- and Alliance-themed StarCraft II portraits. Learn more about the Digital Deluxe Edition here.

 

[lupi]

New WoD & Healing dev blog out. Healers confused in general, some not happy and disc really not happy.

 

[Phoenix86]

I'll read it in detail later, but they tried this with cata. The whole attrition style of healing... It failed horribly, but I think that's because people didn't have the regen needed to maintain it. I really like the idea though.

"Ideally, we want players to spend some time below full health without having healers feel like the players they’re responsible for are in danger of dying at any moment."

 

[lupi]

What I found somewhat funny is that in the same expansion where they are going through with the item squish process to correct the number problem brought on by previous expansions which used expanded numbers to "solve" other issues, they state they're doubling base stam to "fix healing".

 

[Anubis]

are they gonna change the "whole raid takes damage all the time" raid model then?

 

[Phoenix86]

It's to limit pvp fallout in pve. It makes a lot of sense, forget the squish because all that's doing is changing #s, it doesn't change %s.

Take the current values of a boss hit on a tank is 45% of their health. Squish the numbers down, double boss damage, double player health. Now pvp damage is cut in half without adjusting EVERY ability in pvp, which would then affect pve.

This change keeps pve 100% the same, but increases health pools in pvp. Or rather, cuts damage in half in pvp but keeps the same in pve.

 

[Phoenix86]

are they gonna change the "whole raid takes damage all the time" raid model then?

I expect so, it should change from medium spikes of raid damage all the fucking time to light/stead damage+large predictable spikes.

That would allow constant raid damage that needs be healed up by a certain time, but not immediately, aka attrition healing. Now you are single target healing low DPS/healers as opposed to constant blanket aoe heals.

 

[Anubis]

honestly none of the changes really bother me. some people really dont like the squish. which i find mind boggleing.

as for PVP i really think the game would be better off if they 100% removed resiliance, PVP power and battle fatigue. just to back to the rock paper scissors model where PVP didnt take forever and classes were even matched agains a few, dominated a few and got dominated by a few

 

[Phoenix86]

Hmm, as someone who has pvp'd since vanilla, I honestly can't say I -ever- saw a rock/paper/scissor model.

edit: wait no, forgot about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX1dPTAQ5_U

 

[dougp]

I think they need to go back to allowing PvE gear to be viable in PvP - and keep the gear on equal levels. I preferred that in Vanilla - it's not that hard to gear up in PvE now ... that way those of us who don't want to raid, can still play PvP and raid occasionally if we feel like it, and viceversa for raiders.

 

[Anubis]

Hmm, as someone who has pvp'd since vanilla, I honestly can't say I -ever- saw a rock/paper/scissor model.

edit: wait no, forgot about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX1dPTAQ5_U

there really was. that vis is exaggurated. Rogues struggled against plate & hunters. could eat some cloth classes alive and got dominated by some others. im talking equally skilled and geared.

same goes for all classes,

i played both a lock and a rogue at 60 in PVP a lot, actually my rogue made rank 14, the only rogues that gave me issue on my lock were undead ones, fuck will of the forsaken (and yes not every rogue was undead)

plate and hunters were not easy kills as a rogue, actually well geared hunters and even shamans were a nightmare.