A Word on Tier 12 Set Bonuses
Originally Posted by Zarhym (Blue Tracker)
We've seen a lot of discussion and debate over the new set bonuses. Just so everyone is aware, we're still assessing the set bonuses for tier 12 as we go through more testing and gathering more feedback.

To give you a heads up on what we're looking at so far though, here are the most recent bonuses we have in mind for some of the sets (some of what's listed below are amendments to the existing bonuses on the PTR).

Some of these bonuses might already be live as of the build pushed earlier this week, while some are yet to be implemented. If your class/specialization isn't listed here, it means the bonuses either haven't changed, or the changes haven't been solidified. Just the same, all of this is subject to ch-ch-changes over the course of the PTR process. Your feedback is appreciated!


  • Blood Death Knight 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Dancing Rune Weapon now begins when Dancing Rune Weapon wears off, instead of lasting while Dancing Rune Weapon is active.

  • Frost/Unholy Death Knight 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Your Obliterate and Scourge Strike abilities deal 6% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 seconds.

  • Feral Druid 4-Piece: The bonus to dodge from Barkskin now begins when Barkskin wears off, instead of lasting while Barkskin is active.

  • Restoration Druid 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Your Swiftmend also heals an injured target within 8 yards for the same amount.

  • Holy Paladin 2-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Healing with Holy Shock has a 40% chance to grant you 6% of your base mana.

  • Holy Paladin 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Your Divine Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Light spells also heal an injured target within 8 yards for 10% of the amount healed.

  • Protection Paladin 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Divine Protection now begins when Divine Protection wears off, instead of lasting while Divine Protection is active.

  • Holy/Discipline Priest 2-Piece: Now also triggers from casting Prayer of Mending.

  • Holy/Discipline Priest 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- You have a chance when you cast a helpful spell to summon a Cauterizing Flame at the target’s location. Each second the Cauterizing Flame will heal an injured party member within 20 yards for 9250 to 10750 health. Lasts 5 seconds.

  • Shadow Priest 2-Piece: Now requires the priest to be in Shadowform to be active.

  • Warlock 4-Piece: Now also triggers from casting Drain Soul.

  • Arms/Fury Warrior 2-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Your Battle Shout and Commanding Shout abilities grant you an additional 35 rage. Cannot occur more often than once every 60 seconds.

  • Protection Warrior 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Shield Wall now begins when Shield Wall wears off, instead of lasting while Shield Wall is active.
Current Tier 12 Set Bonuses
For reference, the current T12 Bonuses (PTR Build 14040) are as follow. If a set bonus is different from the one in the post above, the official (blue one) is obviously the most recent
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Item - Mage T12 2P Bonus - You have a chance to summon a Mirror Image to assist you in battle for 15 sec when you cast Frostbolt, Fireball, or Arcane Blast.
  • Item - Mage T12 4P Bonus - Your spells have an increased chance to trigger Brain Freeze, Hot Streak, or Arcane Missiles. In addition, Arcane Missiles is now castable while moving.

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

Priest (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Item - Priest T12 Healer 2P Bonus - Casting your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Mending spells cause you to regenerate 2% of your base mana every 5 sec for 15 sec.
  • Item - Priest T12 Healer 4P Bonus - You have a chance when you cast a helpful spell to summon a Cauterizing Flame. Friendly raid and party members can use the Cauterizing Flame to be instantly healed for 4625 to 5375. Lasts for 45 sec sec or 10 charges. After using the Cauterizing Flame, players cannot benefit from it again for 10 sec.
  • Item - Priest T12 Shadow 2P Bonus - While you are in Shadowform, your Shadowfiend deals 20% additional damage as Fire damage and its cooldown is reduced by 75 sec.
  • Item - Priest T12 Shadow 4P Bonus - While you have Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch active on the same target you gain Dark Flames, which reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 3 sec.

Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Item - Rogue T12 2P Bonus - Your melee critical strikes deal 6% additional damage as Fire over 4 sec.
  • Item - Rogue T12 4P Bonus - Your Tricks of the Trade ability also causes you to gain a 25% increase to one of your combat ratings at random for 30 sec.

Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Item - Warlock T12 2P Bonus - Your periodic damage has a chance to summon a Fiery Imp to assist you in battle for 15 sec.
  • Item - Warlock T12 4P Bonus - Casting your Shadow Bolt, Incinerate, and Drain Soul spells has a 5% chance to increase all Shadow and Fire damage you deal by 20% for 8 sec.

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)



Don't Worry Folks. We Got This.
Originally Posted by Zarhym (Blue Tracker)
We've been repeatedly saying in various threads recently that we are listening, even if we're not acting on every piece of feedback we read. Well readers, listen up!

With the help of Ghostcrawler, the following will be added to the patch notes for the next PTR update:


  • Players are once again free to dance in combat (without causing graphic errors). Other animations, such as attacks, will take precedence over dancing. The dance animation will be suppressed until the higher priority animation is complete. Fun has been unnerfed.

The concerns of the people vanished. And there was much dancing.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Patch 4.2 Conquest Points Changes
So, as many of you are interpreting this change, it is to encourage more participation in Rated Battlegrounds. We see the fact that participating in Arenas is by far the superior way of obtaining top-notch PvP gear, in terms of time investment, as a problem. If you want to maximize your Conquest Point gains in patch 4.2, you'll need to participate at least a little bit in Rated Battlegrounds.

We know this may not sound very appealing to those of you who have grown accustomed to spending as little as an hour a week getting the top PvP currency in the game via Arenas over the last couple of expansions. To put things in perspective though, the total number of items that can be purchased with Conquest Points today is much larger than what you used to be able to buy with Arena Points pre-Deathwing world explosion. And there is no longer a requirement to “grind” unrated BGs for Honor each season, so the real time investment isn't changing as much as some players are perceiving it to be.

On top of that, the frank reality is that the total time investment required in season 9 to get all your points has been much, much too low, as you could do that from a few 2v2 Arena games each week completed in less than an hour’s time. It shows that Rated Battlegrounds are currently sub-par in terms of the rate at which points can be accumulated.

We do feel this change is necessary to keep the time investment vs. high-quality item accumulation in check, even if it doesn't read well on paper. However, as always, your constructive feedback is welcomed. :) (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Holy Paladins Nerf in 4.2
We increased paladin mana costs because they were too efficient at healing. In raid encounters, for instance, paladins were sitting at 40% of their mana while the other healers were flat out of mana. Paladins were casting Divine Light as their main heal because they didn’t need the efficiency of Holy Light. You personally may not have been in that situation, but when looking at the overall picture, as well as running plenty of tests, this was our conclusion overall. It is entirely possible this will hurt Holy paladins in PvP, where mana can be harder to come by. It is our hope that the recent Speed of Light change as well as another change or two coming will help offset that.

We did not make these mana cost changes because of the change to critical heals or because of any upcoming set bonuses (which are still being designed, by the way). We made the changes only because paladins were too efficient compared to druids, priests and shaman.

As a postscript, we see a lot of paladins advocating a strategy of Beacon the tank, heal the off-tank with Divine Light, and never ever do anything else... and if you ever heal the Beacon target, you fail. That’s just not a realistic goal. Stuff is going to happen that is unpredictable, or else you’d probably win every fight. You should make the most of Beacon, absolutely. It’s a great tool. But you shouldn’t consider anything that doesn’t maximize Beacon to be a class design or personal performance failure. Sometimes you’re going to want to heal the Beacon target directly. It happens.(Source)

Comics
People threatened to burn me alive because I forgot to post comics this week. Fixed! Dark Legacy Comics #287 and Teh Gladiators #234 + #235 are out!

This article was originally published in forum thread: Updated Tier 12 Set Bonuses, Dance in Combat Hotfix, Blue Posts, Comics started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 95 Comments
  1. Pandragon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Adrim View Post
    Amen. How about developers stop going out of their way to ruin dual-wield unholy or tanking. Even when it actually works by complete accident and no thanks to the developers...they will actually spend resources to stamp it out. It's one thing to say, hey we don't really believe in this so we aren't going out of our way to make it work. But it's completely different to actually work to take things away from players.
    Yeah that was the only versatility DKs had. I love to DW, especially when I could DW tank.
  1. Tjamen's Avatar
    Blood Elf Donald is awesome! \o/
  1. iorcedurmother's Avatar
    Umm, I'm not sure I get this, so popping dancing rune weapon will be a bad thing? We only get avoidance if we leave our buffs off? Past the first time we hit it I guess.
  1. Adrim's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yomirizer View Post
    Yeah that was the only versatility DKs had. I love to DW, especially when I could DW tank.
    For two years whenever a warrior or paladin said "lol no shield, you aren't a real tank" I got to say "Oh yeah? I got TWO tanking swords so I'm twice the tank you are!" Oh plus awesome DK-only tanking chants.

    Now I have a 2H strength DPS weapon that has less avoidance than 2H agility polearm. :\

    *DE's Bloodlord Defender again*

    /sigh
  1. iorcedurmother's Avatar
    Waaaaa holy paladins have to heal like every other healer in the game now. Goddamn I didn't realize every holy pally in the game was a spoiled 12 year old girl.
  1. Redbounty's Avatar
    Thats a very descent idea for the 4 set bon`us for tanks, esp. warrior, its nice to not get freight trained after sheild wall isnt active.
  1. dochon's Avatar
    the t12 warrior dps set bonus is garbage.
  1. mmoc72d9093e07's Avatar
    Phew, I'm glad they changed the 4p Holy/Disc set-bonus to something usable. Now it just needs a nice visual effect and i'll be happy!..until i found out how good the bonus really is at least!

    And the DLC comic is awesome.
  1. mmoc878ebd00c0's Avatar
    I cant help but notice that certain set boni are severely more powerful than others.

    Blood Death Knight 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Dancing Rune Weapon now begins when Dancing Rune Weapon wears off, instead of lasting while Dancing Rune Weapon is active.
    Uh... Hooray?
    Diminishing returns bitch. DRW already grants 20% extra parry.
  1. Phive's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Noctim View Post
    LOL @ DLC

    hilarious!
    one of the better ones

    ---------- Post added 2011-05-13 at 01:40 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by reve View Post
    Blizzard obviously knows what they are doign with Holy Paladins...

    /sarcasm off

    paladins in general

    ret was horrible from the get go

    prot was fun and im guessing the wog system revolves around this tree
  1. Jasyla's Avatar
    That's a great change to the resto 4-piece bonus. It's nice to see a different spell getting some attention.
  1. CaspianRoach's Avatar
    So, tanking 4piece bonuses don't mention any sort of duration, is it to assume that they last indefinetely? If they do, that's crap. "Oh wait, let me pop my tanking cooldown prepull so I get that bonus!"
  1. Jasyla's Avatar
    The change to the resto druid 4-piece bonus is great. It's so nice to see a spell other than Lifebloom get some attention.
  1. vyrse's Avatar
    Holy paladins in PVP just got trained:X

    hope something changes or they are once again unviable
  1. Hexus's Avatar
    Re. DLC: Made my day. I always knew Gigz was a troll at heart.
  1. Jathro's Avatar
    "Holy Paladins Nerf in"

    Anyone else feel like this text is just copy and pasted into every set of patch notes?
  1. Vasz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Phive View Post
    one of the better ones

    ---------- Post added 2011-05-13 at 01:40 PM ----------




    paladins in general

    ret was horrible from the get go

    prot was fun and im guessing the wog system revolves around this tree
    Prot used to be fun, but like everything else, Blizz changed to to be less fun. "Lets give all paladins a small heal they can use instead of gaining threat". By 4.1 they changed their minds already.

    Just like in 4.1
    Hunter - multi shot buff
    Frost DK - howling blast buff

    4.2
    hunter - multi shot nerf
    frost dk - obliterate nerf

    In a way, its like they always have to be seen to be doing SOMETHING.
  1. littlewisp's Avatar
    Every fight better be a stacking fight for rshaman 4 piece!
  1. Spotnick's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by reve View Post
    Blizzard obviously knows what they are doign with Holy Paladins...

    /sarcasm off
    You can include all paladins, not just holy.
  1. mmocd877c7b7ee's Avatar
    Quote: "Because Blizzard has decided nobody is allowed to have unapproved fun with THEIR game."

    Current choices in World of Warcraft will do, for sure, affect the perspective of the upcoming Project Titan.

    This is a matter of fact i can bet with confident, being my job marketing.

    Fact is, are developers still in time to listen subscribers?

    Now sorry if i go, time to turn off pc at office, going home play Rift.

Site Navigation