Green Fire Quests, Voidbinders Removed in 5.2, PTR Class Balance, Blue Posts, Comic

Even Ethereals need a vacation, and the item upgraders (Voidbinders), are no exception. They’re saying they need to go home to take care of business arrangements, but … I’m not convinced. I think they’re just homesick for their ‘space mummy’ families.

Ok ok, fourth wall broken, we’re actually just temporarily removing them from the game for 5.2 due to the new raid tier. The idea with the item upgrade system is that it’s a way to spend currency on upgrading items when buying new items isn’t the clear path. Either you’ve bought everything, or at least most of them, and then spend currency to get that extra *oomph*. With a new raid tier coming, we don’t want to create a trap where people are wondering what’s more lucrative: spend currency on new items, or on the new gear appearing on vendors? (Hint: It’s the new gear on vendors.) To help ensure we’re not indirectly encouraging anyone to spend their currency somewhere they probably shouldn’t, the item upgraders will be taking a break.

Right now we’re planning for them to return in 5.3, which will not have a raid tier, and offer upgrades again as people will have likely have some currency to burn. We’re not sure yet if we’ll continue this cycle of having them take a break for raid patches and then come back in non-raid patches, but we’ll continue evaluating as we go, absorb feedback, and let you know how these plans evolve.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Aimed Shot cast time has been lowered from 2.9 to 2.5 sec.

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• The Elemental 4pc does count Lava Burst cast while in Ascendance.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• The Protection 4pc counts damage after all mitigation, and does count absorbed damage.
• The Retribution 4pc set bonus has changed. It now has a chance for Hammer of the Righteous or Crusader Strike to cause your next Divine Storm to cause extra damage to your target. The idea being that you might swap from TV to DS when you get the proc, so that the RNG is something you can actually do something with rather than it just being RNG for extra damage.
• Retribution now does 50% extra healing with Flash Heal. The Selfless Healer talent has been reduced to 20/40/60% bonus healing.
• Sacred Shield absorb effect is now dispellable, but the periodic effect is not.
• Blinding Light has a 1.8 sec cast for Holy only. We think Holy's CC chains are too strong at the moment, but we don't think Ret or Prot need the nerf.

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• I said above that the Zandalari from the 2pc benefited from Unholy mastery. That was a bald-faced lie. It deals physical damage, like the ghoul.
• There is a good chance we're going to redesign the 4pc DPS bonus.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• The Golden Apparition from the Healing 4pc heals the lowest % health friendly target within 40yd. Note that it has no visual yet, but will not work like Shadowy Apparitions. It is a simple missile, not a summoned unit.
• Further clarification on the Healing 2pc: the Glyph of Prayer of Mending will only boost the first heal. The glyph effects won’t be carried over due to the set bonus. It will be 160% -> 110% -> 121% -> 133% -> etc.
• We are going to redesign Shadow Word: Insanity.
• We are going to nerf Divine Aegis for Prayer of Healing, but also lower the cost of Power Word: Shield (for Disc only) and increase the healing and damage of Penance. In 25 raids, Disc is using Prayer of Healing almost exclusively and we don't think the Spirit Shell change will be sufficient to change that. We actually want Disc to get back to using PW:Shield a little more, along with Penance. Disc's throughput is overall too strong in PvE, not even counting the fact that absorbs are often more beneficial than heals.
• Angelic Bulwark and Spirit Shell can no longer be dispelled.
• The 4pc PvP bonus for healing priests has changed: Reduces the cooldown of Chakra by 25 sec and during Spirit Shell, Flash Heal costs 50% less mana.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• The Guardian 4pc is currently a 50% increase to rage generation while Enraged.
• We are going to slightly increase Resto druid healing across the board.
• We still like the DR change to Cyclone, but we are going to increase its range to 30 yards, and the PvP glove bonus for Balance and Resto will be to increase Cyclone duration by 2 sec.

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Spinning Fire Blossom's damage now scales from weapon damage rather than attack power. This will result in an intended nerf.

Keep in mind with those changes you haven't seen yet that they may change again before they reach the PTR.

Patch 5.2 PvP Gear Blog Coming This Week
Changing the PvP Honor gear from 483 to 476 next season is a HUGE mistake. You are making it impossible to enter PvP Arena/RBG on a near level playing field when people with full 2/2 Malevolent are starting the season with 491 gear and 498 T2 weapons.

This is the biggest gear disparity EVER in PvP. Usually Honor Gear > Last season PvP gear so players can have a fresh start and compete on semi-even playing field. You guys are making a huge mistake and you have time to fix it. Please listen to you community and don't go through with these changes.
Not to worry, there's already stuff in the works, and the item level change on that gear is just a smaller part of the larger picture.

We'll be posting a blog that explains the upcoming changes later this week. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Daily Quests Feedback
You want gear? Do dailies. You want quests? Dailies. You want end-game content without raiding eight days a week? Dailies, dailies, dailies.
You want gear?
Do heroics, Raid Finder, Scenarios, upgrade items, PVP (for PVP gear, of course)

You want quests?
Do the quests you haven't finished while leveling through Pandaria. Or yes, do dailies (let's not forget it's "daily quests").

End-game content without raiding:
Pet battles, Scenarios, Heroics, Challenge Dungeons, PVP.

And in any case, casual players can still play the game just as always, at their own pace. There's no requirement for you to have everything at a particular pace (especially if you aren't really on the raiding competition).

Daily quests being the only way for reputation was, is, and will always be BAD.
Why is this the case?

If you want the gear purely for progression terms, LFR is readily available and you won't have to go through reputations, you can also get some 496 items from crafting (though I bet those won't be exactly cheap if you need to look for a crafter you don't know at all).

Other than gear, what the reputation is giving you access to right now is just vanity items. On which case, why do you think it's unfair to invest some time leveling the reputation of those factions that offer you a vanity reward you want? (especially considering that, thanks to Grand Commendations, it doesn't take as long to raise reputations to Exalted as it did during 5.0). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

TFB Hotfix on Arena Pass Realm
We have a problem with latest hotfix patch not being live there (30% battle fatigue and fire blast glyph, warrior 3 stack tfb).
Thanks for the report Minpojke, we just want to let all of you know that this is something that we are actively looking into at the moment. We will keep you updated if any new information comes to light. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Future
Maybe focus on the PTR/Beta feedback instead to avoid having millions on forums e-mails and twitter?
We definitely give more weight to players who have actually tried something. (Source)

How do you feel about a flimsy/squishy class getting a 'touch me, and you'll regret it' type of ability in the next expac?
Doesn't that take a weakness and make it not a weakness? (Source)

I've always wondered what's your take on innovation in games? Blizzard isn't known for it per se but what do you think?
It's tricky. IMO sometimes features get lauded as innovative my jaded gamers when really they're just different (and bad). (Source)
I think it's fare to say that World of Warcraft has had many innovations but do you feel recent expansions have had enough?
Is tons of innovation what the game needs? It needs enough for players getting bored, but risky for folks who are happy. (Source)

Derp, I dont think he ment that he was asking is there any plans for more space i.e bigger bags??
I get that, but we don't think heading towards 50 slot bags is the answer. Less stuff to put in bags might be. (Source)

Sunsong Ranch changes sound good. Now allow some personalization and some item storage space, and we've got player housing.
Isn't an important part of player housing being able to show off your stuff? (Source)