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A new beta build is going up soon that has damage nerfs for many classes and specs in order to hit our target goals. Predictably, this has led to many posts of what I would generously characterize as light on useful feedback.

Here is how to prevent your posts from falling on deaf developer ears:

• Tell us how much damage you were doing before.
• Tell us how much damage you are doing now.
• Tell us how much damage you think you should be doing.
• Tell us who is beating you.

Will tanks be encouraged to get to the parry cap for expertise?

Unless there were changes to bosses, while melee DPS classes do not need to hit parry cap, as bosses can't parry from behind, tanks do not have that luxury. While I can appreciate needing hit and expertise (especially when I remember successfully running raids in Wrath of the Lich King with less than 1% hit rating), it seems like a lot of stats to ensure that our active mitigation abilities are able to hit.
Our general philosophy is that you should want hit and expertise to make your resource-generating attacks hit (paladin example: Crusader Strike) but not to have your active mitigation abilities work (paladin example: Shield of the Righteous). Probably the right call is to have the damage portion of SotR miss but always get the defensive benefit in the way Shield Block always works. This one-size-fits-all strategy might not work for every ability, because Death Strike is just such a different model than Shield of the Righteous, but that's out general philosophy.

Do you have an updated list of what you consider tuned or not? That post a few days ago was very useful and after the recent changes it would be nice to see what is considered tuned and what isn't.
I do. The problem is that A) even with this recent build, our changes are still ahead of yours, so what I say may not make sense without the full context of every change, B) it seems like the majority of players (though not all) worried about their damage are basing their concerns on the Simcraft work (typically done by other players) and not actual damage tests from beta. We understand that everyone is very concerned about their own DPS, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, we can't easily tell if it's the sim or the in-game damage that is off. (Though again, part of the purpose of this thread is to help improve the sims, and the new test dummies should help that process as well.)

Internally, Windwalkers and Frost mages are a little high (though Frost is even more RNG than Fire now so it takes a large sample size to determine this) and Shadow and Unholy (and maybe SMF Fury) may be slightly low. Tank single target is tuned, though AE is not, and healer DPS is not tuned.

Overall, damage in the current beta build (the one most players are discussing) is a little lower than damage in our current beta build, so the good news is that many classes will see buffs next time around.

Current simcraft of all classes. http://simulationcraft.org/504/Raid_T14H.html

Currently maining a shadow priest, and don't see why further nerfs were needed considering we were still only at 108k before these recent nerfs. But that's just my little complaint of the day.
I'll post this and let the topic lie for a bit, because I'm sure everyone is sick of reading it. We can't buff and nerf actual class numbers based on posts like this unless the sims are very accurate. Do you feel comfortable making that claim? If not, is there some contribution you can make to improving the sims?

The latest sims don't look promising: www.simulationcraft.org/504/Raid_T14H
We're just going to delete posts like this going forward. No offense intended, but it's a long thread already and we need to improve the signal to noise ratio.

If you have information that will improve the sims, have questions about the sims, or can help demonstrate where the sims do or do not mirror actual numbers on beta, then those are potentially great posts.

Harken back to the very first post in the thread, which says:

First and foremost, as a ground rule let’s keep this one thread free of pleas about ability feedback, DPS being too low or other subjective declarations. This thread should be about information sharing. If you aren’t a theorycrafter, this thread may not be for you.

Hunter (Forums / Skills)
Wasn't Dire beast on a gcd before? I got on the beta and it seems to begin to trigger a gcd when I use it but It cancels the gcd and I am able to use other abilities immediately. Is this intended?
Dire Beast is supposed to be on the GCD. We are seeing the weird self-cancelling GCD bug as well though.

Paladin (Forums / Skills)
Quick question GC. The recent built that nerfed Light of Dawn. Was there a particular reason for that outside of the possibility you guys thought it was too strong? I'm just curious for that nerf to me seemed out of the blue considering it has a potential long ramp up time outside of cd's like Holy Avenger and if it has a faster ramp up time it usualyl costs a hefty amount of mana.
We were seeing a strategy in some heroic raids of Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, Crusader Strike -> Light of Dawn that took almost no mana and was very effective. We want Light of Dawn to be a good button (we didn't like using Holy Radiance and ignoring Light of Dawn when the going got tough) but we want paladins to use cast time heals too. As a consequence of this, we also made Crusader Strike cost much more mana for Holy. Using CS should be an option, not the only viable way to heal.

Druid (Forums / Skills)
Beta Balance Druid Changes
There were two problems. Balance druid DPS was high, not even considering DoC. Second, DoC was too much of a DPS increase. Some players attached themselves to the story that DoC caused them to get nerfed, but that wasn't what happened.

We changed the set bonus to 2 seconds. That means 14 sec without the set bonus and 16 sec with the set bonus. We won't keep offering that set every tier.

You should not be 20K DPS behind mages. We also aren't seeing that.

Before DoC was nerfed, it was the clear choice for that talent "tier". With the current dmg set at 50%, will this bering it down enough to where it won't be the obvious choice over NV.
With the current data, we believe all 3 talents are pretty close. Heart of the Wild is slightly high compared to the others since you can't control the timing. You can use a cooldown exactly when you need it, which means overall it's probably going to let you tune damage better. That's why we left Heart of the Wild a little high.

If you think they aren't the same though, please let us know. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Paladin (Forums / Skills)
Beta Retribution Feedback
now we will be doing 70k dps for 1 min 40 secs then 175k dps for 20 secs (rince and repeat)... that's prety shame
Are these real numbers or just something made up?

That does not follow. All it means is that they'd like a consistent baseline for our tests, and that this is one that everyone can manage without any trouble.
Yes. The PvP gear is on a vendor available for gold.

You guys do your job some of the time right? Pretty sure you should know what the numbers are....Being sarcastic as usual? You must think the DPS is fine, but are you basing our dps around our CDs? The concern is sustained damage.
So if you're concerned about the delta between your burst and sustained damage, why don't you make a post saying "I believe that our sustained damage is X and our burst is Y, so my concern is that our DPS is only Z when our cooldowns are down?"

Maybe you could just come clean and tell us what the numbers you have are. Because I'm sure a lot of us are tired of doing your job for you, we just get called liars anyway
Balancing the game is our responsibility, and is a task which we are comfortable doing. However, we understand that many players want to be able to contribute to the process or at least offer their feedback, so we thought we'd make it easy for you to have a forum where you know we'll see your opinions and concerns. We totally understand that doing rigorous testing is not trivial. We totally understand that many of you may not have the inclination or time to make that kind of commitment. Honestly, we're not asking you to. However, if you are interested in doing so (and historically many players are), here is place to communicate your results. Comparing those to ours is beneficial for us. It does catch bugs and design problems. But we consider it all bonus information -- we're not depending on it to do our jobs.

Don't confuse our providing a spot for conversation with our asking you to design the game for us. It's not responsible for us to make number changes based on hunches or suspicions that your DPS is too low. You're welcome to still make those claims, and we'll investigate them, but if you're still not sold, then the burden of proof is on you to convince us of the fact that something is wrong. It's not going to work out well if we have to convince the community to let us design or balance the game as we see fit.

Seems like most of these parses are around the 40-50 k range. Which isnt much better than live.
Well, you're comparing ungemmed and unenchanted PvP gear to (I presume) final tier heroic raid gear. We recommended that particular gear setup because it was easy to acquire, not because we think it's representative of what players will actually have.

You need a lot of combat ratings to make up for the drop that occurs every time you level up. Once you start getting raiding gear again, your DPS will be much higher than it is today. Furthermore, a level 85 player after the 4.0 patch should also not see their DPS decline, provided they modify their rotations to account for design changes. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Beta Retribution Changes Feedback
Yeah, too bad they stripped another 15%wpn off Crusader Strike in this build. Do the developers even play this game? Never mind Ret at this point, we'll be sitting. I wonder if Prot will even be able to hold aggro by the time they're done.
If you want us to take anything from this thread, tell us how much damage you were doing before, how much damage you're doing now, and how much damage you think you should be doing. Making a "I don't like it when my number goes down" post isn't super helpful to anyone.

We will continue to lock or delete threads that just come across as whining. There are plenty of other places on the internet to do that.
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums / Skills)
Shadow Priest Feedback
I'm done trying to bring attention to the issues with Shadow in a PvE setting with yet another round of nerfs. I guess I need to pick a new main for Mists as I have provided evidence of the issues with Shadow and the numbers we are putting out. I would like to know why we continue to get nerfed over and over again.

How can you justify yourselves? Why are you constantly nerfing us? Have you changed around how a Spriest is supposed to play and feel so much that you completely forgot what to do with us? You say bring the player not the class correct? How do you expect me to take comfort in this motto you want to live up to when the class is imbalanced? How can we enjoy ourselves if we are so lackluster?

So far, since priests are just garbage class now, I'll turn my legendary raider into a farmer and Rper. So sad to see this but, he's not raid worthy when 5.0 comes out.
These are not helpful posts. Every time we have to read posts like this is time we are not spending working on the game. Please don't use this forum to vent. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Spirit Shell
The biggest challenge Disc has currently is learning how to use Spirit Shell effectively. You can simply use it on CD on some fights, or use it on CD and pad a tank. SShell will shine particularly after we learn the fights and understand the damage patterns. Its the same as prepping a raid/group with POH/DAs prior to big damage coming out. (or PWS Spam in the WOTLK days). You just get to do it via cast/SShell and its ALL absorb. Learn the fight. Prepare for damage. Mitigate. --- that is Disc. It is arguably the most proactive>reactive healer in the game.
Well said. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warrior (Forums / Skills)
Second Wind Feedback
Second Wind is really powerful in duels. We don't balance all of our PvP around duels however. Outside of duels, it feels like a coordinated team should have no trouble overcoming the heal, especially considering that many execute abilities also come into play during the time Second Wind is beneficial. It is one of those abilities that is really hard to put a number on, compared to an ability with a duration of X and a cooldown of Y. In a contrived situation, Second Wind could account for 300% of your total health in healing. Who wouldn't take that talent? But it's more likely to be far less.

What will be most telling is if every PvP warrior ends up taking Second Wind. Then we'll know it's too good, or at least too good relative to other talent points on that tier.

IMO, this topic is best served discussing Second Wind, not "I wish my execute hit harder."

This. Second Wind has few counters other than raw damage, so we are free to state that our supposed counters to it are weak.
You're free to state anything you want (within forum guidelines). You're also free to ignore my opinions. Understand however that that strategy is less likely to get us to change our minds.

The reason I believe that steering a discussion of Second Wind towards your own executes is counterproductive is that we believe the counter for a player being tough to kill in PvP should be to coordinate with your teammates, not that you can individually hit so hard that you blow them up no matter what. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Execute Feedback
Someone made a post on EJ asking about warriors switching to SMF for Execute phases. This is a valid concern since it just requires weapon swapping now. I personally like the idea (I like abuseable stuff), but I can see it's not intended. Maybe turn SMF and TG into a out of combat toggle mode or something like that?
We are going to use the same solution we did for Frost DKs, which is that a weapon swap will prevent the passive bonus for applying for 30 sec or so. In this case, if you switched to SMF for Execute, you wouldn't benefit from the SMF bonus for a long enough time that it's probably not worth it. There are very few legitimate cases where a warrior would want to switch from TG to SMF in the middle of an encounter.

All three of those recent Execute parses have a very high crit rate. I assume you were just getting lucky (or unlucky as it were if you're trying to demonstrate that Execute does too much damage) or had popped Recklessness.

In any case, we don't think it's a problem. I haven't seen a compelling argument for why it's bad design to do a lot more damage during Execute. It's still around 10-12% of total damage even for the very lucky parses, so it's not like Execute accounts for half your damage. Even a warrior who forgot to Execute would do decent damage. Once in awhile we do a boss that stops fighting at 10% health or something, but we also do bosses that start wounded.

Warriors (some at least) want smaller executes and paladins and priests want larger ones. We like the classes being different. We think that's ultimately better for the game. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Pandaren Race Changes
Quick question, will people be able to race change to Pandarians Day 1 or will it be a few weeks later?
You'll be able to change on day one. (Twitter)

Pet Battle Healing Changes
A few updates:

• The bandage drop rate from Battle Pet Tamer quests has been increased significantly.
• The number of bandages dropped has been doubled.
• The stack limit has been increased to 10.
• We have reduced the cooldown on Revive Battle Pets to 8m.

We will be watching the cooldown feedback at this new value but we think that combined with the bandage drop rates, most players will be happy with the results. The increased chance at bandages are a great way to supplement any extra healing you may need while the heal is on cooldown. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Greater Pet Family Ability Diversity Needed
We will be adding more diversity as we progress through the patches, it's something we know about it. You have to remember that most of the critters in the world were animals. We added as many new pets as we could without disrupting the general feel of the world. There is a unique pet in almost every zone in the game now. We took care to try and make these pets fit in the different family's. (undead, dragonkin, aquatic, elemental etc.)

This is just the beginning, we will be supporting the system with new updates every single patch. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Duplicate Pet Restrictions
The only pets that are flagged as unique are in the categories listed below. This can of course change at any time, but this is what we are looking at for MoP release currently.

• Achievement Pets
• Blizzard Pet Store Pets
• Promotional Pets
• Guild Pets

Everything else will be allowed up to 3x of the same pet. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

LFR Feedback
I was forced to run it 12 times for my 4th set piece that never wanted to drop on 10 man Hagara. I hated every second of it.
Forced by who?

Note that for heroic progress, this tier, we needed to get our tanks the four set bonuses to be even remotely able to compete with other guilds at our levels - getting extra raid cooldowns without altering our setups, that's just impossible to pass up. But if we were unlucky and never saw that fourth protector token for our warrior? Yea, screwed. If we'd had a blood Dk and a feral druid tank, we'd have needed *two* sets of vanq tokens.
Right, and would you have felt better if those guilds you were competing against progressed over you, just because the "RNG gods" decided to not give you those items missing to complete the 4 piece bonus?

In that case you would just accept that the other guild is more skilled than you and deserving of the higher realm rank because their loot was there before yours?

I keep reading all these downsides about LFR, yet I don't see many posts about the positives it brings.

A CM who doesn't understand peer pressure.

You want to stay in your high end guild? You do that soul draining LFR, week after week. You don't want to it? *kicked for someone who will* That, is forced.
Just a crazy thought: How about leaving that guild if you don't like that pressure, and join one that suits better your playstyle?

The main point here I believe was, whether you get lucky or not, you are still forced to run the LFR in hopes of better loot. Because doing it gives you the better chance of getting lucky than not doing it.
Have you never run heroics when you were raiding in hopes of upgrading that lingering green/blue item to something better? Once you were raid ready but having greens/blues you stopped entering Heroic dungeons? Because in that perspective, I think LFR would be positive as it gives you just another venue to try and upgrade those items while you wait for the one you truly want to drop, right?

Yes yes, the fights are easier, the gear is crappier, but I don't care. LFR does for me exactly what I want it to.
Then you might be interested in knowing that in Mists of Pandaria, the initial raids will be divided in 5 for the LFR: 2 sections for Mogu'shan Vaults, another 2 for Heart of Fear, and a single one for Terrace of Endless Spring. That will probably help you deciding which ones you need/want to hit first once they're all available.

There should be no incentive for heroic level players to run LFR, since LFR is not aimed at this demographic. And as mentioned above your post, the chances of you winning something in LFR increases slightly if you actually are present in that LFR, so you have to run it.
And since LFR and Heroic will be opening at the same time, it's likely that those Heroic level players will prefer to run Heroic for the progression rather than LFR where, due to personal loot, they might get just inferior items to what they have. Remember, there's a new loot system coming to the Raid Finder in Mists of Pandaria, so the "gaming" that was done on the LFR by the hardcore guilds after the release of Dragon Soul is not going to happen.

With LFR, this can be bumped up to completing every single tier set for your entire raid in a single week, if you take 25 alts, clear the entire LFR, and then bring in one main and clear it again - only the main will be eligible for loot now.
This won't be possible with personal loot. You can't trade the items you get... (as it was explained on the blog some time ago).

Reward comes after effort. When reward is guaranteed, its no longer a game. Its a chore with an added bonus of waiting a while to beat the other 24 players on the loot roll.
You're not getting any rewards if the boss doesn't die, so, the reward isn't guaranteed. Sure, you may feel the chance of failure is much lower than in a normal raid, but still, it's a possibility and sometimes it does happen.

World first guild just took all RNG out of the equation by doing LFR like 100 times first week,
thats totaly a good solution isnt it?
It won't be possible on Mists of Pandaria, as I've mentioned before.

However the problem everyone is talking about isnt so much the fact that it gives loot to people who arent willing/can play alot, it is the fact that the people who do wanna play on a high lvl are forced (by their guilds and themselves) to do EVERYTHING POSIBLE to be as good as they can be.
Aren't those players supposed to do everything possible to perform at the highest level? Those players will actually even pick professions and items from those professions that net them a dps increase, even if it's incredibly marginal (saronite bombs during Wrath of the Lich King come to mind).

That's because there aren't very many positives, and the cons of this feature far and away outweighs the pros, imo.
I'm talking about raiders here, not the "casual" crowd (as that seems to be the label used on this thread), and there're benefits from running the LFR:
-More chances at loot that may increase your raid performance -> benefit for your raid team.
-More raid content to do outside your weekly lock, if so you wish.
-Raid content where you can actually test your off-spec or bring an alt knowing that you won't be dragging the rest of your guildmates, and even try to perfect your rotations in a real raiding environment.

Did it not occur to you I like this guild, and I'm in this guild because I enjoy doing heroic modes competitively, not because I enjoy doing LFR? I'm supposed to leave it because of LFR? Wow!

You consistently remove things from the game that force raiders to go for upgrades in channels they wouldn't usually. 25 mans doing 10 mans for example. Now you are completely bending this the other way for no real logical reason, saying raiders should do more.
So, you enjoy playing competitively, yet you won't use every possible resource available to get an edge over your competition?

They might not get disregarded, but they are met with a cocky attitude on the forums by the representative. That's what's making it so hard to have a normal conversation...Like the "leave your guild" ludicrous remark.
I don't see how the "leave your guild" remark is any different in this context than when it is said to casual players that say the debuff is useful for them because they can't progress without it, and they're replied with a "leave your guild and join a better one"...

Why is that argument valid only in one direction?

Yeah..kinda a low blow to just flat out say leave your guild if you don't like it. I have to wonder whether the blues actually play the game. Maybe they just say they do because them saying "I don't play" looks bad.
We do, and in my book I have this note that says: "Don't do something you don't enjoy". I'm just that weird.

It's an aggressive non respectful way of posting, which quite frankly I've not seen in all these years yet. The only one that came close was Aeus, and usually there was just a hint of cynicism in there.
I'm just typing text. It's up to the reader to put the tone and intention of my words. But one thing is for certain: I'm neither aggressive nor disrespectful on my vocabulary. If we start interpreting in which tone the words of particular posters (be it blue, green or white) are written, then there's no way the discussion is going to get anywhere, as there'll be the assumption that this particular individual is writing from *this* perspective (which in my case is certainly not true).

Pros:

• New content to do outside of raid lockouts.
• Introduces new players to raid content, allowing them to experience it.
• Raid content where you can actually test your off-spec or bring an alt knowing that you won't be dragging the rest of your guildmates.

Cons:

• Content is a watered down version of its superior normal and hc modes.
• The LFR content causes players to be burned out and sick of the raids before even getting into normals/heroics due to having to farm gear.
• LFR is part of the progression curve, forcing players to run the same raid three times over in the same progression cycle.
• Does not force players to improve in order to succeed.
• New players/casual players will not experience the content as its best quality.
• Very undertuned raid instance where a lot of tactics can be completely ignored, resulting in a steamroll tactic for almost every boss, with the exclusion of tanks needing to babysit everyone else.

This is the kind of post that is actually useful for everyone.

I mean, whatever gives insight into what you're thinking that goes beyond "X doesn't deserve this" or "I don't like this" is good. Not just for us as something that can be used as feedback, but also for that other part of the community that may not understand what doesn't sit right with you.

There is no progression of play within LFR. You blast through all of the content in a week and are done with it regardless of how much time you have or the amount of skill you have.
For normal/Heroic raiders this is most likely true. However, for MoP, casual raiders will face a different prospect. First, because Mogu'shan Vaults has a lower item level requirement than Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring, and second, because those players will need that LFR gear to jump into the next. So unless they're extremely lucky and get *everything* they need in a single reset, they'll have a reason (the same reason than raiders do once they've beaten the content) to go back and keep running it.

That may be a niave point of view, but at the moment, LFR is little more than loot pinatas in which you go in, kill the boss and then loot roll with the emphasis being on the loot roll rather than the killing of the boss. And it doesnt give any incentive to become a 'better player' or progress futher with their game.
There're two things to consider there:
-What may be extremely simple for experienced raiders may actually be difficult to adapt to for a completely new player that gets into raiding.
-Perhaps those players don't have the will to progress further and become "better raiders", and they just want to be able to experience that content without investing additional time in becoming "better".

If I'm in a somewhat competitive guild at the moment, with players I have known for years and that I truly enjoy playing with I have 2 options:
1) Run LFR, something I really hate doing.
2) Leave the guild and leave behind the players I have known for years and truly enjoy playing with.
There's a third: Skip LFR and run the raid without that gear. It's not required for you to progress through it. Dragon Soul was not balanced around the assumption of players being LFR geared.

You may feel set bonuses are too important to pass on, but if you're progressing slowly through normal mode, it's likely you'll complete at least the most important ones before hitting Heroic, right?

In LFR you barely speak to eachother, last LFR I played I saw one word and that was at hagara, "RESS".
You can run LFR with your friends if you wish to. Actually, that makes for quite an enjoyable experience as it's usually a good time for jokes and a more relaxed environment than during progression nights. Not pretending that it's the perfect solution, but hey, it may help if you definitely need to visit LFR and hate the lack of communication with others. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Raid DPS Test Dummies
As many of you have discovered, we were able to get most of this working without a new beta build.

We (and you) found a few bugs:

• The dummies can parry from behind. This may require a server restart to fix.
• The Windwalker food buff should now give you Agi instead of Int. This may require a server restart to fix.
• Dropping combat (e.g. Vanish) should no longer cause them to regen health. You may need to kill a wounded dummy in order to get a fresh one. This may require a server restart to fix.
• The buffs they give you should no longer break stealth. This may require a server restart to fix.
• The buffs and debuffs seem to be working, but you can't see them. This will require a new build to fix.

The dummies appear to despawn whenever a new build is pushed. They should be back up now and we will try to keep them active.(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Bring Back Skirmishes in Mists of Pandaria
It's like the blue post made a(n) (almost final) statement-but doesn't wanna discuss it further.
The comment "it’s very unlikely that Skirmishes will ever be brought back" is not us saying it is never going to happen; it’s just a statement that it is highly unlikely. Also, don't take my lack of additional responses as this discussion being dead and over. My lack of responses to the questions and comments here is because at this moment, we don’t have the answers on hand, but will provide a response as soon as is possible. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)