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Mage Tier 15 and Season 13 Armor Sets Preview
Keep in mind that this is just a preview and the final sets may be different!







Patch 5.2 - No New Dungeons
Zarhym has confirmed that there are no new 5 player dungeons planned for Patch 5.2.



Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
PvE
Whose idea was it to remove "Random Normals" at max level?, and could you fire them?
Not many players ran them. Most jumped into heroics as soon as they could. Why did you like them? Gearing up for heroic? (Source)

LFR loot system is beyond terrible.Such a way extending content artificially by making no loot to drop.Pathetic..Just pathetic
The drop rate is the same as it was in 4.3. Just a different mechanic. Gearing is intended to take some time and effort. (Source

Suggestion: For raid lockouts, just lock out rolls for loot, let people run as many raids as they want otherwise.
Here's our concern: "Main tank, I know you won't get loot but can you run the raid with us for the third time this week?" (Source)

Do the devs think all offtanks really want to dps? I die a little inside with every new 1 tank fight.
We offer mostly 2 tank fights, but with so many bosses in the game, it's going to get repetitive if they all must be. (Source)

Is the plan in Mists to have raiders go through each raid and let the new ones pile up or use LFR to leapfrog tiers?
Want to err on the side of the former. If you want to do 5.2 raid, you can gear up in 5.0 LFR. (Source)

Any thoughts to being able to pass the ability to receive loot in LFR if you don't want/need to give others a chance at a roll
That gets around the point of it being personal. Now players could beg you again. Begging was super awkward. (Source)

Are you happy with tank balance in challenge modes? Most groups seem to strongly prefer a DK tank.
Death Grip is really good. Shockwave is too though. (Source)

any reason why every weapon in terrace but Regail's Crackling Dagger is sha touched?
The dagger is intended to be hard to get. (Source)

Do you think shamans could get CD reset on reincarnation on raid wipes? Or at least shorter cd? QoL changes? :P
Not sure we like the idea of shaman being able to die on every single attempt. (Source)

In ramping up the difficulty on 10N, you now have some guilds used to clearing it for 4 years that now can't. That is not fun.
You're saying that the current raid tier feels too hard on 10 normal? What bosses are problematic for your group? (Source)

PvP
Alliance get 25% buff when they control the tower in dominance offensive, but horde only get 1%. It is ridiculous.
That is based on the H:A ratio of your particular server. (Source)

on a general note if you can`t burst down a healer and you can`t oom a healer what are you supposed to do?
You should be able to oom a healer. Our plan remains to nerf PvP healing once we feel like burst is solved. (Source)

I hope you arent planning on leaving war/mage nerfs till 5.2 after hotfixing demo... would be incredibly annoying
We are concerned that trinket nerfs were not sufficient in curbing mage and warrior burst. Discussing options. (Source)
The nerf to PvP trinkets was pointless. You just nerfed those that didn't need it and kept burst still OP for those who did.
A trinket with 5000 stats can be 20% dps during the window. That is probably too high for anyone. (Source)
This was quiet dumb, 10% cooldown? Lets just go get a pve trinket. Also, you only shaved 2 - 3k off damage that still globals.
You lose a lot of PvP Power (5% DPS maybe) to get the PvE trinkets, but we will take steps if those show up in PvP a lot. (Source)

Just your fault for genius scaling. Why would you grants stats still anyway? Whats pvp power for?
PvP trinks designed years ago back when 1-2 classes had timers. Now everyone does. Burst trinkets are fine. Numbers just too high (Source)
Doesn't make sense, fine but "to high". Fine is how they were before. Just admit you didnt want to effect pve.
The concept of clicky trinkets in PvP is fine. The tuning of PvP trinkets giving 5000 stats is not. (Source)

Seeing mixed feedback about whether all PvP damage is too high or just a few overpowered spec or abilities still. Discuss if interested. (Source)
I'm not sure how to fix it...but hey, I bet I could if I was getting paid for it!
Fixing it is easy. Fixing it in the right way is not. It's really unfun in our opinions when you can't kill anyone. (Source)

PVP Power is only marginally better than regular main stats. Thats why it wont stop PVE trinkets in this case.
But look at the PvE trinkets. Your'e giving up passive PvP Power for expertise. Or you can have clicky secondaries. (Source)

Another Xpac which Casters R extremely dominant + warriors. They hv bttr cc, surv, damage vs. dks/rogues/rets. Caster > melee
In PvP? Most complaints these days are mage and warrior. (Source)

Honestly though, why do you feel like mages/locks should have both blanket+interrupt in one ability? Makes no sense at all.
Those two abilities are on our list as well. (Source)
I'm getting slightly interested in that list. If you can post a blog on some primary PvP balance concerns, awesome!
Yeah, probably good water cooler fodder. I still owe y'all one on alts as well. So busy... (Source)

The problem is blanket silences. With the amount of burst and silences, you die before you can cast anything.
Let's break that down more. Counterspell? Spell Lock? Silence? Anything else? (Source)

i was wondering how you feel about removing Hard CC from the game completely.. Would it cause balance issues?
We think it would cause fun issues. Knowing when to use the right CC feels smart. (Yes you can take it to extremes.) (Source)

What if CC worked so that there is a cast time for targets at range, but targets within melee brings it down to instant cast?
We'd like to shift more CCs to cast time overall. Instant anything should be rare and we've let it get too common. (Source)

Don't you think removing PVP Power would address many issues players have? Like burst and huge gap in gear between players?
Players would just use the PvE weapons which have about the same DPS potential. (Source)

I saw Blizzard apologise this morning. You guys need to read more ^^
Yep. I'll apologize right now that we have overpowered specs in PvP when MoP launched. (Source)
Mistakes happen; but beta feedback was ignored. You're still not even acting on PvP balance concerns!
Sure we are. We nerfed Chaos Wave just the other day. Look at the 5.1 patch notes, and I'd bet most of them are PvP nerfs. (Source)

Community is even making surveys for you ! Just make abilities do diff in PvP/PvE game fixed
Never understood the laser focus on this. Abilities do work differently between PvE and PvP -- just look at CC durations. (Source)

Please admit removing skrimish was a mistake as well and bring it back soonish :>
I do wish we had not removed it. As I said, not many players used it, but it's clear those players miss it dearly. (Source)

That's the PVE way of thinking. No serious PVPer will ever say that it should be gear=skill let alone gear>skill.
WoW is an RPG and rewards that improve your character are an RPG staple. Gear is normalized for tournaments where it makes sense. (Source)

Twitter: PVP is ^%^ - No, it doesn't. Forums: - no response. Seems you tweet, because you cant forum.
Not sure my posting in the forums worked. Players expected a detailed analysis of any passionate post and I don't have that time (Source)

hey there you ever going to do anything about the bots in pvp. oh wait you might avoid this question or give us the usual BS
It's something we take seriously, but the solutions aren't simple. Do you have suggestions of how to catch more of them? (Source)

what are your honest quick thoughts of why people think Disc pvp is weak?
Because they see mostly Resto shaman. (Source)

Upgradeable gear is okay for honor gear, but it shouldn't be for Conquest, as it'll take months to catch up. Thoughts?
Problem with catch up (PvE or PvP) is it encourages everyone to play less. We like playing more to feel like it's worth it. (Source)

Blizzard Christmas Gift and 20 Year Gift
Nick Carpenter recently shared pictures of this year's Christmas gift (Treasure Goblin Statue) and 20 year service gift (Crown / Mask) on Twitter. There is a short writeup about the 20 year gift on Weta's site.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Mage Tier 15 and Season 13 Preview, No New 5.2 Dungeons, Blue Tweets, Blizzard Gifts started by chaud View original post
Comments 46 Comments
  1. Durandro's Avatar
    Huh. So they don't give us new 5 mans, something the game is seriously lacking now (seriously, leveling in MoP with only two dungeons over and over again? Not fun), because of raid progression? So don't make them heroic only, and don't give them better gear! Simple!

    Not everything new needs to be at max level or progression.

    Yet we get more scenerios, that are generally worth doing once. And then never again. Makes sense...?

    Honestly scenerios are a waste of resources. They could all easily have been turned into 5 man dungeons.

    What gets me most though, scenerios are max level only. That boggles my mind. They rarely give loot, give a small amount of gold, no reputation, and no experience. So what's the point in them beyond the lore, which is only worth a single runthrough?

    Here's an easy fix. Real easy. Would improve the game MASSIVELY. Retune all low-level dungeons as scenerios, then add in max-level heroic versions. Then no-one needs to level up as a healer or tank (which are honestly rarely needed in dungeons as it is now!), queue times are faster and we get something to do at max level.

    And before you say low level dungeons help people learn how to tank and heal... Not really. Things change drastically at max level. And you need a healer just as often during a scenerio (tough luck if you don't have someone able to do off-heals)!
  1. The Ogdru Jahad's Avatar
    That crown/face mask for the 20 year workers looks absolutely amazing. You can definitely see their inspiration being the Lich King and the lead angel in diablo 3. Very nice work to whoever designed it. 10/10.
  1. Ralph2580's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shaley View Post
    I don't get GC's response to this one:



    Why exactly is a normal epic w/o a sha touched socket intended to be rare?

    Did he misunderstand the question?
    It is because that weapon has a hard mode elite version of it. That is what he meant.
  1. Caerule's Avatar
    Is it me, or is the Mage tier lacking the fancy 3d belt the other tiers have? I sure hope they will add one. The blue and gold version of this tier is magnificent, in my opinion!
  1. Bahska's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Caerule View Post
    Is it me, or is the Mage tier lacking the fancy 3d belt the other tiers have? I sure hope they will add one. The blue and gold version of this tier is magnificent, in my opinion!
    Love that set as well i might be the only one who likes the mage tier more than the druid set :x
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Strafer View Post
    Didn't even notice random normals were gone.
    Removing the end-cap normal mode dungeons was fine, as GC said, nobody really did them. But they should have made more of the dungeons into leveling dungeons. For people who didn´t like to quest, they literally had to do each dungeon about 15-20 times. I believe there is only 4 of them.

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-27 at 03:49 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Nindoriel View Post
    Because I liked the dungeons? If loot is a problem, give them bad loot. I didn't run them only because of the loot, I loved the ICC and Cataclysm/CoT 5-mans.
    I think they are just moving everything towards scenarios. It is one of the hallmarks of the WOW devs.. when they get a new technology, they abuse the crap out of it ( vehicle fights in wotlk, phasing in Cata etc). For MoP, they added the tech for scenarios and for increasing ilvls of items.. expect to see it everywhere.

    I am with you on more heroics. Not sure why they couldn´t do heroics with ilvl of gear around 473 - 483. A newer player would either do the new 5-mans for most of their gear, or run the 5.0 LFR for tier sets. Players who have been doing 5.0 LFR and reps wouldn´t get many, if any upgrades, but at least we could run semi-challenging heroics for our 80 VP.

    Current heroics are a joke. As a bear tank, I can almost solo all of them (with just LFR and rep gear). Already, many dps are figuring it out and are semi-afk through most of them. Almost every heroic I did this week, I had double the DPS of all of the dps ( usually like 60k for me, 30k for them). The really interesting part is the availablility of the Call-to-Arms satchels is increasing. I only queue when it is up, and it is almost always up for tanks. Another round of gear, and all the heroics will be down to about 8 mins to finish. that is not bad if you still need some of the rare mounts.
  1. mmoc77b12e8d71's Avatar
    I would like 5 mans as long as the loot is not better than he current teir of raiding
  1. Freia's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Azrile View Post

    Current heroics are a joke. As a bear tank, I can almost solo all of them (with just LFR and rep gear). Already, many dps are figuring it out and are semi-afk through most of them. Almost every heroic I did this week, I had double the DPS of all of the dps ( usually like 60k for me, 30k for them). The really interesting part is the availablility of the Call-to-Arms satchels is increasing. I only queue when it is up, and it is almost always up for tanks. Another round of gear, and all the heroics will be down to about 8 mins to finish. that is not bad if you still need some of the rare mounts.


    So let me guess...you leave your recount set to overall damage throughout the whole dungeon and pull multiple packs of trash and and act like the dps is bad or afk because they can't compete with your aoe dps. Game has changed. Blizzard wanted tank damage to be a factor. At the beginning of the expansion tanks were topping WoL on many fights because dps needed the gear to scale past vengeance. Fresh 90s probably won't beat you in overall damage, especially not on trash pulls.
  1. Nerraw's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Strafer View Post
    Didn't even notice random normals were gone.
    I didn't notice until a month after release when a guildie told me about it. I'm glad they've consolidated the max-level queues.

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-27 at 06:52 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Caerule View Post
    Is it me, or is the Mage tier lacking the fancy 3d belt the other tiers have? I sure hope they will add one. The blue and gold version of this tier is magnificent, in my opinion!
    Good thing it's only a very early datamined model. I'd be surprised if one set doesn't end up using the new belt models if all the others do.
  1. Ferocity's Avatar
    So main content for lv90 is now officially dailies? What about actually less daily hubs and more dungeons?

    Mark my words, new 5.2 dailies will give significant rewards, so that everyone would feel compelled to do them. "Dungeons were too rewarding" (according to GC), so everything worthwhile was pushed into dailies, and we won't even see new dungeons :/
  1. Nitrax's Avatar
    Im doing heroics as holy dps sometimes just for the "challenge" (trying to beat real dpsers). My next idea is to tank as holy... with a guild group it should be no problem...
  1. Destructus's Avatar
    Why don't they just increase the max ilvl you can upgrade the 5.0 heroic dungeon loots to match new dungeons? That way its still worth doing old dungeons for gear and JP would stay useful.
  1. chocobo606's Avatar
    "Too funky", that's a new one. How about "Scenarios are just easier to add than dungeons"?
  1. mmocf11091e3a8's Avatar
    I swear I've seen those tweets before, I think some of them are weeks old.
  1. Svovel's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lumidar View Post
    i thought that crown was a RING. i woulda bought one if they made it and sold it as a ring.
    My thoughts exactly. It wouldn't go with any piece of clothing i own, but I don't care. I'd still wear it. It would add true epicness to my roadrage too. "Cut me off there did you? Say hello to the Lich King!"
  1. Idletime's Avatar
    GC tweeted this last week, I don't get where the confusion it, it was even posted here.

    New dungeons are implemented as a means for either catchup gear or for something extra to do. Dire Maul was a late release, and it offered Tribute runs for extra challenge. ZA was released and had bears for those who were pounding away at Tier 6, and Sunwell's only instance was just a means to offer more storyline. Wrath offered the Tourney AFTER Ulduar as a means to offer a little catchup gear and break the monotony of Wrath Heroics (which you could not queue for at that point). Cataclysm offered no new dungeons until the final raid, just a retooling of outdated content. From Wrath through Cata, you could get your catchup gear quickly from badges. I know this had to cause problems with their subscriptions, as people were no longer tasked with actually raiding and staying active to stay current. With the implementation of LFR (especially staggered release), a person can now have consistent access to catchup gear and content.

    I think it's time everyone realizes that they are going to go with the model that worked for them and for most players - content should stay relevant for the entire expansion, requiring those with mains and alts to progress through the game like everyone else before them, and not just unsub every 3-5 months and await the next tier to come out and pound the previous tier through nerfs and spend a weekend getting the latest catchup gear in heroics. This Wrath experiment lead to the only people consistently staying engaged in the game being the high end raiders and PvPers, and that's just bad community design. Will be fun when 5.2 arrives.
  1. Leonard McCoy's Avatar
    well it finally happened. Blizzard catered to virtually every whim of the no life loser crowd. Good for them. I hope they stick to it. Don't give us gear in dungeons, or hell even the dungeons themselves and force people to "work" for there gear and let's see how long and how many people stay in this game. My devout and sincere hope is that they lose record number subs in record time so that they abandon this foolish model.
  1. Ferrouswheel's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Somebody View Post
    There is no way you could possibly know that and there are no past events to back up any reasoning. We'll just have to wait and see if it works.
    Alright call me the oracle then. Most of the population will be on their mains and alts they've already geared, they'll be off doing the 5.2 lfr. The only people that will be queuing for 5.0 lfr are people new to the game/coming back, or newly created alts. That's not going to be a lot. You have all those people spread out over 7 days queuing. So any given time you're probably looking at 2 or 3 hours, maybe more before you'll get a group. When the group forms you're gonna have a lot of undergeared impatient pissed off people who more than likely put on some pvp pieces or bought some tank trinkets to gimp the system to get into it. You won't have raid geared superstars in there anymore carrying the baddies. One wipe and all those pissed off people are going to start a drop and kick fest. It will all just be toilet paper raiders, one wipe and they're done. Good chance the raid will fall apart and back to a 3 hour queue you go. How long do you think people will put up with that? They'll give up, making it even less people queuing.

    This will be a learning experience for Blizzard. They'll look back on this as an example of why they can't have raid tier progression. They'll have to make some new 5 man dungeons asap and just eat crow. I'm looking forward to reading all the QQ threads though.
  1. gutnbrg's Avatar
    its sad that GC doesnt even know what he is working with...

    " Q: The problem is blanket silences. With the amount of burst and silences, you die before you can cast anything.
    A: Let's break that down more. Counterspell? Spell Lock? Silence? Anything else? (Source)"

    how about strangulate, gag order, silencing shot...im sure im missing 1 or 2 more, but hey im not a freakin developer.
  1. Zonex's Avatar
    He was referring to the abilities cast by Mages and Warlocks, if you look only 1 question up..

    It's easy to whine like a little spoiled kid, but at least have the decency to whine about actual pertinent stuff.. wow

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