Patch 5.0.5 Hotfixes, Dev Interviews, Leaderboard Preview, Blue Posts, Weekly Roundup

Battlegrounds
Alterac Valley

• Boss NPCs in the level 85-89 bracket are now level 90, and their guards are now level 89.
  

Isle of Conquest

• Boss NPCs in the level 85-89 bracket are now level 90, and their guards are now level 89.
  
• Boss NPCs in the level 90 bracket are new level 91, and their guards are now level 90.
  

Classes
Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Thrash periodic damage has been increased by 60%.
  

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Keg Smash damage has been increased by 50%.
  
• Keg Smash can now hit every target in range (was previously a maximum of three).
  

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Wild Strike damage has been increased by 18%.
  
• Execute damage has been decreased by 7%.
  
• Mortal Strike damage has been increased by 5%.
  

Dungeons and Raids
Bastion of Twilight

• Players are no longer able to earn the Feat of Strength "I Can't Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am".
  

Stormstout Brewery

• Ook-Ook should now suffer impacts from players on barrels who hit him immediately after another barrel does.
  

Pet Battles

• Battle pet quests are no longer flagged for Mists of Pandaria only, and can be accepted by players who have not yet upgraded.
  
• Slicing Wind can now hit multiple times on pets, regardless of their family type.
  
• Crimson Moth and Wharf Rat should appear as expected in the Pet Journal.
  

Quests

• Players will now receive AOE credit for sinking both the Bladefist Reaper and Stygian Scar while in proximity of the ships being destroyed during the quest "Unleash Hell".
  
• Players no longer remain in the Orgrimmar Gunship phase of "Into the Mists" once the quest is completed.
  
• In the quest "Strongarm Tactics", players should now receive credit for killing Gyro-mechanic Lavenderp or Master Engineer Cogswing if the other NPC is slain by a second player.
  
• Players should be able to turn in the quest "The Elder's Instruments" and then see and interact with Pearlkeeper Fujin.
  
• The quests "Regroup!", "You're Either With Us Or......", and "Face to Face With Consequence" should be offered automatically to characters who enter Honeydew Glade after leaving Thunderhold without receiving them from General Nazgrim and Taren Zhu.
  
• In the "Wicked Wikkets" quest, paratroopers how drop the quest item Alliance Service Medallion 100% of the time.
  
• The cutscene that plays during the quest "The Jade Serpent" cannot be cancelled by the player. This is intended.
  

Bug Fixes

• Players should not receive duplicate messages in chat channels.
  
• Crossing a zone boundary on a multi-passenger mount should no longer dismount passengers.
  

I don't have to try it out. I watch the video and can actually see what the priest is casting. Like Conductivity, Atonement should allow the priest to DPS during times of light damage. I just watched a video where 90% of a speed run challenge mode dungeon was "light damage"
It's amazing how player synergy goes a long way. Sure, some dungeons Challenges will favor some classes or class combinations over others, but that hardly matters if each class isn't using every tool in their arsenal to benefit the entire group most effectively. Our team had a healer. But they also devised extremely calculated strategies with every pull to take as much of the healing burden off their priest as possible. Their healer would've been in much more trouble had the rest of the group not executed CC with complete efficiency. They min-maxed the dungeon and had it down to a science, which is what groups will have to do if they want to top the Leaderboards.

To speak to both posts below, the main reason I love the design philosophy of Challenge Modes is that they'll still cater to a wide range of endgame players. There isn't a huge barrier to entry in World of Warcraft for manually forming a group of five capable, moderately coordinated players. Once you do, you'll find that bronze is very accessible with decent clears of Challenge dungeons without any major disasters (i.e. repeated wipes on bosses). Perform that way in all nine dungeons in Challenge Mode and you'll unlock the title "Challenge Conqueror."

If your group is well coordinated, or takes the time to gain more experience in bronze-medal clears, you'll probably enjoy the task of hitting silver. Get silver times in all nine and you'll get a sweet mount. And by the way, if you're good enough from the start the awards will be retroactive -- winning silver on your first clear of a Challenge dungeon will count toward the bronze achievement as well.

But gold is going to be quite difficult. It's going to take a lot of practice and coordination for most people. That's how you get the unique Transmogrification sets that have some insane visual effects specific to each class. You can see images of the sets and Leaderboard samples on our Facebook album.

The Leaderboards definitely won't be for everyone. But it's also likely players who work hard toward gold might feel compelled to outdo themselves, or their realm or guild mates. But getting to the top of the Leaderboards will no doubt be for extremely skilled, relatively hardcore players.

The added difficulty in this dungeon setting, requirement to manually create a group, item scaling to prevent out-gearing, and awards/bragging rights that cater to a healthy breadth of players, is what we hope will make it a popular new system in the game.

So excited for Challenge Mode competition at USA launch! Makes a great spectator sport because there is so much movement and action.
It would make an even better spectator sport if you could spectate
Yeah. Hopefully someday. We'd love to have a spectator mode.

When will the req to be in a raid group to enter raids be removed? everyone knows work around's anyway so what's the point?
Soon! Maybe next major patch!

Give every class a special area like Peak of Serenity like Monks have. (Paraphrased)
I worry if every class had a special place that they wouldn't feel special any more.

What do you think about the current bandage system? I think it could use a lil revamp, maybe so that DoTs don't interrupt it?
I'm not sure First Aid has much of a role these days. I kind of wish it did.

Any thoughts about making TCG items BOA (such as Fishing chair, fools gold etc)
I agree that would be cool. Is sad to have your toys on the "wrong" character.

Any chance of getting the blacksmith TBC specialization weapons back on a trainer or vendor? E.g Lionheart Executioner.
That's a common request. We want to do more with BS. Look at Cooking in MoP as an example of our new ideas.

Any plans to do anything about the overcrowding of hotbars with skills for some classes. Eventually it will get overwhelming.
It's overwhelming now! We weren't successful in pruning many abilities. Too many player favs.

What about the opposite of CRZ, that tech that allows zones to deal with overpopulation with multiple shards?
We'll see, but we don't want to totally give up on the idea of a realm's community and already much works against that.

Was in Deepholm and saw people from other servers, do you think its fair that we have to compete for rare spawns with them?
They were designed with certain player densities in mind.
I understand bringing some low pop ones together,I was just a little miffed when I ran into Illidan people camping rare spawns
We always wanted there to be competition for rare spawns. That's how the game felt when there were more folks in lower zones.

If DS closes after Mists, how will rogues be able to get the Fangs of the Father? And will the clusters be available in LFR?
DS isn't closing. You just can't use Raid Finder for lvl 85 raids when you fare 90.

With acct wide achievements, if you gold all challenges on one character, do you get xmog set on all?
Just that character.

Since Vanilla it's bugged me the Eviscerate icon looks like some one is getting stabbed in the back. Does it bug you?
Yes, it bugs me too. We started to change some of these icons, but decided they were... um... iconic and let them stay.

Why, in an xpac so aimed at playing the toon you want, did you chose to make SoH BoP in stead of BoA? Please make boa!
We probably will eventually. At first we want your prof choice to be meaningful, not a problem you solve by having many alts.

Any plans to address the players on your own forums, or are they effectively abandoned?
I post on the forums frequently. Just perhaps not as much as players would like.

You don't want players to feel forced into LFR, so you give them a chance to get legendaries there? Wheres the logic there?
If you're the kind of player who completes set bonuses by running LFR, then maybe.
no. EVERYONE wants legendaries. saying "if you do LFR you get an extra chance for it" is OBVIOUSLY gonna push them into LFR.
You are probably thinking of them like Dragonwrath drops. I'd be surprised if N/H raiders are in Raid Finder after a week or two.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
If you had a chance to redo the class specs with out consequence, would you keep Beast Mastery in the game?
Yes. It has a strong kit. Players "get" it.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
One of your tweets said Volley was boring. "Channel, snooze, repeat". Can we have a change to Mind Sear then? etc..
Shadow dots are worth using for AE on many targets unless they will die really quickly. Mind Sear is better for fast kills.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
May I ask the reasons for the warrior nerfs? Just curious... Would like to understand the developers views on this.
Damage was too high at 90. Players were able to improve a little more on the rotation and gear than we anticipated. We don't like the risk of WW going into single-target rotation though, so we might tweak numbers some more.

Questing the Only Way to Level
The point of this thread was to ask the question why is questing the only way to level? If I want to bg or dungeon grind, why should I be penalized for choosing to play the game a different way? Why should I be forced to quest? Why is Blizzard forcing me to play the game a certain way?
Questing is hardly the only way to level, and while it’s easy to toss around imaginary numbers on how many people are interested in quest text, I can assure you that a rather large number of people do care. I actually think you’re missing out on quite a lot of great story nuggets if you ignore the text entirely, but you know what they say: different strokes for different folks.

With that being said, if your aim is to simply reach max-level as quickly as possible, there are a number of different ways to do so. I know of several people that have rotated between running dungeons, questing, running BGs, and grinding mobs as the mood strikes them. I’d definitely encourage people to experience the game the way they would like to experience it. Battle some pets, work on some professions, explore exotic new places, and just, well, enjoy the journey. There’s an awful lot to see and do beyond those bubbles on your XP bar.
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria Cross Realm Zones
Just saw a player from different server in Jade Forest. Again Blizz, you seem to say one thing and do another. Guildmate reported it.
While we aren't sharing zones in Pandaria, this doesn't preclude people from grouping with friends and bringing them over to play via Real ID or Battle Tag. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria Initial Impressions
It's still 30 seconds.. most choices are no brainers.
I suspect that what constitutes a 'no-brainer' for you might not be so clear to another player. Personally, I've already thought of several different talent load-outs I'd like to experiment with for different circumstances on the characters I play.

Perhaps they're worthy of more thought than first impressions provide?

This is the expansion that Cataclysm should have been. You know that feeling you got when you walked through the dark portal or into Northrend? That sense of "wonder" and "anticipation" for what is to come? Mists of Pandaria has that.
This captures the feeling I'm getting from Mists very nicely. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Gyrocopters Quest Bug
We're aware of the issues players are having with this quest. We're monitoring the situation closely and looking to see what we can do to ease the burden. As the introductory Alliance quest for Pandaria, we know it's a big deal. In the meantime we ask only for your patience. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Realm Queues and Free Character Transfers
We're watching realm populations very closely. For those on high-population realms, your patience is appreciated. The fact is it's not wise for us to be incredibly hasty with free transfers. The game has been out less than a day. We're also in peak play times in the evenings. It's something we have to evaluate carefully as the number of concurrent players stabilizes over the week so that, if free transfer are needed, we can provide the service in the most effective way possible to/from the realms that need it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)