4.0.1 Stage 3, Heroic Videos, Tol Barad Testing, Blue Posts

We are planning to do a focused playtest on Tol Barad on Monday the 27th at 4pm PST. We would like to get as many players out there on the beta to help us as possible. You must be level 85 to join the battle. We will speed up the game timer so we can play multiple games during the test.

I will make a new feedback post after we finish the test for everyone to post in. Feedback is very important for us at this point so please take your time and try to be as concise as possible with your findings.

Thanks for the help!

Guild Leveling
25-Man Raids Achievements
We just made a change to all of the old 25 player raids that allows guild achievements to be completed as if they were a 10 player raid. This means you will only need 8/10 instead of 20/25.

Get hyped. =) (Source)

Raids & Dungeons
Dungeon Finder average iLVL
The built-in Blizzard number is an average of the best piece of gear in every slot. It counts equipped gear as well as your bags and banks. It is meant as a general measurement of whether you're capable of handling a dungeon or not, and shouldn't be taken too seriously as a measurement of awesomeness. (Source)

GCD Locked
This is a good start, but there are other reasons we don't like being GCD locked. It means you can never take even a moment to look around and notice the battlefield, notice who is in trouble, maybe shout something out on Vent. If you have a situational utility ability, or even are asked to do something unusual on a boss fight, you're reluctant because you need those GCDs for more dps!!!!

(Usually when I say that, the response is "I can multitask!" But the reality doesn't always match that boast. What we see instead if players complaining about e.g. movement fights because that means they can't always get to step 6 of a 6 step damage rotation.)

Even more importantly, we also want design space for ourselves. When your spec is GCD locked, you have to start ignoring things like procs or free resources, because you can't spend them without screwing up your rotation.

That said, we know that being GCD locked is a really subjective issue. Some players like hitting a button every 1.5 (or 1.0) seconds and feel like they are waiting around when that doesn't happen. Fury warriors and the dps paladins who can't necessarily hit a button every 1.5 sec now have found their Cataclysm versions of the classes to feel almost foreign... though we still think it will feel better in the long run. I worry a little about the overall health of our game if going 1.5 seconds without hitting a button bores you to tears. Overall, I think everyone would have more fun if they focused more on beating the boss as a team and less on their individual contribution to that effort.

We also know that some players are just really intolerant of randomness. They make the logical leap from understanding that dealing with randomness is a challenge they need to overcome to campaigning for us to remove the randomness altogether. This is particularly true in PvP, which some players want to be more like a button masher fighting game and less like an RPG. Suffice to say that we think randomness is healthy and necessary as long as it doesn't get out of control. Even though you may claim it's the easiest thing in the world to hit that Pyroblast button when Hot Streak procs, we also know that dps can vary enormously even between relatively skilled and fantastically skilled players, and a great deal of that is using the right abilities at the right time. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
GCD Locked
Now with regard to DKs specifically, we think what is happening is that players are transfering characters in at 80 and ending up with 40% haste or whatever because of the way gear was converted on their character (no mastery, no armor pen). Once you get closer to 85, you won't have that much haste. You may be GCD locked for short periods of time when the stars align and you get a bunch of procs at once, but you'll also go streaks without those procs. This is still a world of difference from the DK on live, whose rotation collapses if they fail to get off a Plague Strike, or who can't even take advantage of free runes or procs, or who just have to reroll if they experience the unfortunate but also inevitable lag that comes with playing an online game.

Now, if you're one of those players who just hates gaps, then go ahead and stack a bunch of haste. You'll have to go out of your way to do that though, and sacrifice some other stats to get there. For the DK that balances gear out, you shouldn't be GCD locked for long periods of time. (Source)

Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Stampede change
You have 10 sec to use Ravage once, not as many Ravages as you can manage in 10 sec. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Protection and Holy Power
If we give Protection ways to generate more Holy Power, then that opens the door for getting both Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous going at the same time. As soon as that's possible, you're going to assume you have to do both to be competitive, and whenever you can't keep both up, you're going to be frustrated. (Source)

Retribution in WotLK
Ret was broken. If you don't see eye to eye with us on that, then it's understandable why the degree of change might be surprising to you. We tried to advertise that change was coming for a long time because we didn't want anyone to be surprised when it happened. Many players, including many Ret players, were just not happy with the mechanics of the spec in Lich King. I can understand if you just happened to love your character the way he or she was, but unfortunately, that doesn't give us much room to maneuver in attempting to implement a design that we will be happy with, and ultimately many players (though it will never be all) will be as well. (Source)

Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Quality of life
Power Word: Fortitude no longer requires candles. Poor candle vendors.

Power Word: Shield does not require the target to be in your party or raid today on Live. We made this change in 3.3 IIRC.

We still want Shadowform to be a little bit of a tradeoff. If you have all the utility of a healer and can do competitive damage with any caster, then why would players want to be anything else?

We agree that the number of self buffs feels high. We'll try and think of a way to address that. (Source)

Discipline Priest
There is an optional Discipline build where you take Atonement/Archangel and you can use Smite on the tanked target, and have higher HPS than if you just chain Heal the tank. This isn’t always optimal, as Atonement heals the lowest health target (which could be a Rogue standing in a fire), but that’s not always such a bad thing in Cataclysm’s environment where the MT doesn’t have to be spam healed. That said, we think it is interesting gameplay unique to the Disc priest.

In an upcoming build, when you critically hit with Smite your Atonement will critically heal (and cause Divine Aegis).

We’ve also optimized some of the talents, and pruned some of the 3-pointers down to 2-pointers and also reduced the mana cost of Power Word: Barrier throughout the tree.

We’re toning Spiritual Guidance down to bring the healing mount between Discipline and Holy closer together, Holy’s “talent tree passive” is currently stronger than intended than Discipline’s.

We want Disc to be able to do any raid job, but we are also trying not to just have every healer use the same retinue of spells. If the situation arises, they should be able to Prayer of Heal, Holy Nova, Prayer of Mending for comparable healing throughput / efficiency as Holy can to raid heal. The only difference is Holy can be in a Chakra state which increases the healing done, but then again Disc can heal for 30%+ (depending on Mastery) with Divine Aegis and can also cast free Prayer of Healing with Inner Focus. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Combat DPS
Yep. I can tell you right now that Combat's dps is a little low. This is a known issue. (Source)