Scheduled Game Maintenance - 02/05/2013, ProzaicMuze: Thunderstrike Barbarian Guide, Curse Weekly Roundup

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Patch 5.2 - Horridon Preview
Today we take a look at the second Throne of Thunder raid boss, Horridon!


Name Points Category
Cretaceous Collector Defeat Horridon in Throne of Thunder on Normal or Heroic difficulty without killing any Zandalari Dinomancers.
10Pandaria Raid
Heroic: Horridon Defeat Horridon in Throne of Thunder on Heroic difficulty.
10Pandaria Raid

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
  • Triple Puncture - A brutal tri-horned strike that inflicts 500,000 Physical damage and increases the damage taken from Triple Puncture by 10% for 1.5 min. This effect stacks.
  • Double Swipe - Horridon swings his massive head and tail to and fro, inflicting 300,000 Physical damage to players in a 35-yard cone in front of and behind himself. This effect happens twice.
  • Charge - Horridon charges at a random player, performing a Double Swipe once he reaches their location.
  • Disorienting Roar - Horridon emits a powerful roar, inflicting 300,000 Physical damage and disorienting all players for 3 sec.
  • The Farraki - War-God Jalak will first call upon the aid of the Farraki tribe.
    • Sul'lithuz Stonegazer - Once called to action, Farraki Skirmishers pour from the Farraki tribal door until it is destroyed.
      • Stone Gaze - The Stonegazer gazes at the target, stunning them for 2 sec.
    • Farraki Skirmisher - Once called to action, Farraki Skirmishers pour from the Farraki tribal door until it is destroyed.
    • Farraki Wastewalker - A total of three Farraki Wastewalkers will jump down from the arena stands once the Farraki are called to action.
      • Blazing Sunlight - The Wastewalker calls upon the scorching sunlight of Tanaris to inflict 75,000 Fire damage instantly and 10,000 Fire damage every 1 sec for 30 sec.
      • Sand Trap - Summons a Sand Trap, which inflicts 200,000 Nature damage to nearby enemies every 1 sec and grows in size over time.
  • The Gurubashi - War-God Jalak will call upon the Gurubashi tribe to enter the arena second.
    • Gurubashi Bloodlord - Once called to action, Gurubashi Bloodlords pour from the Gurubashi tribal door until it is destroyed.
      • Rending Charge - The Bloodlord charges at an opponent and strikes them, causing them to bleed for 30,000 Physical damage every 1 sec for 6 sec.
    • Gurubashi Venom Priest - A total of three Gurubashi Venom Priests will jump down from the arena stands once the Gurubashi are called to action.
      • Venom Bolt Volley - The Gurubashi Venom Priest unleashes a spray of vile toxins that inflicts 15,000 Nature damage to all enemies instantly, and 15,000 Nature damage every 3 sec for 60 sec. This effect stacks.
      • Venomous Effusion - The Gurubashi Venom Priest can summon a Venomous Effusion.
        • Venom Bolt Volley - The Venomous Effusion unleashes a spray of vile toxins that inflicts 15,000 Nature damage to all enemies instantly, and 15,000 Nature damage every 3 sec for 60 sec. This effect stacks.
        • Living Poison - When a Venomous Effusion is created, a pool of Living Poison forms beneath it. Living Poison inflicts 200,000 Nature damage to enemies within 8 yards every 1 sec and wanders around.
  • The Drakkari - War-God Jalak will call upon the Drakkari tribe to enter the arena third.
    • Risen Drakkari Warrior - Once called to action, Risen Drakkari Warriors pour from the Drakkari tribal door until it is destroyed.
      • Uncontrolled Abomination - The foul necromantic magics that animated the last remnants of the Drakkari tribe left them bereft of intelligence and purpose, causing the Risen Drakkari to attack random targets.
      • Deadly Plague - Risen Drakkari spread a Deadly Plague when they strike players, inflicting 22,500 Shadow damage every 3 sec for 5 min.
    • Risen Drakkari Champion - Once called to action, Risen Drakkari Champions pour from the Drakkari tribal door until it is destroyed.
      • Uncontrolled Abomination - The foul necromantic magics that animated the last remnants of the Drakkari tribe left them bereft of intelligence and purpose, causing the Risen Drakkari to attack random targets.
      • Deadly Plague - Risen Drakkari spread a Deadly Plague when they strike players, inflicting 22,500 Shadow damage every 3 sec for 5 min.
    • Drakkari Frozen Warlord - A total of three Drakkari Frozen Warlords will jump down from the arena stands once the Drakkari are called to action.
      • Mortal Strike - A powerful blow inflicts 300% weapon damage and leaves the player wounded, reducing the effectiveness of any healing received by 50% for 8 sec.
      • Frozen Orb - Summons an orb of frozen power that shoots a bolt of frost at a nearby enemy target every 1 sec, inflicting 200,000 Frost damage and slowing movement speed by 20% for 2 sec.
  • The Amani - War-God Jalak will call upon the Amani tribe to enter the arena last.
    • Amani'shi Protector - Once called to action, Amani'shi Protectors pour from the Amani tribal door until it is destroyed.
    • Amani'shi Flame Caster - Once called to action, Amani'shi Flame Casters pour from the Amani tribal door until it is destroyed.
      • Fireball - Hurls a ball of fire at a random player, inflicting 75,000 Fire damage.
    • Amani Warbear - A total of three Amani Warbears will jump down from the arena stands once the Amani are called to action.
      • Swipe - The warbear swipes with its claws, inflicting 180,000 Physical damage to players in a 0-yard cone.
    • Amani'shi Beast Shaman - Amani'shi Beast Shaman ride atop the powerful Amani Warbears and can be attacked once the Warbear has fallen.
      • Chain Lightning - The Beast Shaman calls upon the spirits of the storms to inflict 90,000 Nature damage to a player. Chain Lightning can jump to another player within 5 yards, affecting 3 total targets and increasing damage by 50% per jump.
      • Hex of Confusion - Hexes a player for 30 sec, giving them a 50% chance to injure themselves for 60,000 Physical damage when casting a spell or using an ability.
      • Lightning Nova Totem - Places a Lightning Nova totem that emits a pulse of lightning every 3 sec, inflicting 500,000 Nature damage to enemies within 8 yards.
  • The Zandalari - War-God Jalak and his faithful Zandalari Dinomancers will come to the aid of Horridon during the battle.
    • Zandalari Dinomancer - Zandalari Dinomancers will jump down into the arena periodically.
      • Dino-Mending - The dinomancer channels a beam of healing energy at Horridon, healing 1% of Horridon's maximum health every 1 sec.
      • Dino Form - At 50% health, the dinomancer transforms into a powerful Devilsaur, increasing Physical damage dealt by 50% but preventing the dinomancer from casting Dino-Mending.
      • Orb of Control - When the Zandalari Dinomancer transforms, it drops its Orb of Control. A player can interact with the orb to temporarily dominate Horridon's mind, forcing the beast to charge into a tribal door. Destroying a tribal door prevents additional members of that tribe from entering the arena.
        • Headache - Charging into a tribal door gives Horridon a terrible headache, stunning him for 10 sec.
        • Cracked Shell - Horridon's shell cracks after ramming into a door, increasing damage taken by 50%. This effect stacks up to 4 times.
    • War-God Jalak - After all four tribes have been called, or when Horridon has been damaged below 30% health, War-God Jalak himself will enter the arena.
      • Bestial Cry - War-God Jalak unleashes a savage cry, inflicting 100,000 Physical damage to all players and increasing damage dealt by War-God Jalak by 25%. This effect stacks.
      • Rampage - War-God Jalak's death causes Horridon to go on a rampage, increasing damage dealt by 100% and attack speed by 100%.



Patch 5.2 - Darkmoon Faire Updates
In Patch 5.2, the Darkmoon Faire daily quests no longer reward a Darkmoon Prize Ticket directly, but instead reward a Darkmoon Game Prize.

This usually contains a Darkmoon Prize Ticket, but also has the chance to contain a Darkmoon Top Hat. If you aren't lucky enough to get one out of the prize, you can purchase one from Gelvas Grimegate for Darkmoon Prize Ticket x 10.

Patch 5.2 also adds the Darkmoon Fishing Cap, but no source has been determined for it yet.



PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
At this point in 5.2 development, we are greatly slowing down on class mechanic changes. There will still be some, particularly in response to feedback and PTR testing, but ideas for new talents, core spells and the like are even less likely to get our attention now.

We still have not completed our tuning pass. You’ll know we're in the midst of it when you start to see a lot of PTR notes with number tweaks. Having said that, if you have specific concerns about PTR (not live) numbers, and you have some kind of mathematical evidence to back those concerns up, please let us know.

As always, this is not a good thread for whining. No thread is really ideal for whining, but we'll be particularly vigilant here. Sorry to end on a negative note, but it will likely be another long thread and we want to maximize the prospects for communication.

Paladin
To stave off the controversial Protection haste issue, we are making a chance to Grand Crusader to proc from dodge and parry at 30% instead of CS and HotR at 20%. This will improve dodge and parry slightly for active mitigation purposes without negating the +haste slant that many paladins have taken.

Mage
This is very much a PTR experiment, but we are going to try moving Blazing Speed to the top talent tier to replace Scorch. Scorch will become a baseline Fire spell. Blazing Speed’s old position on the talent tree will be replaced with a new talent.

The new talent is currently called Flameglow, and it is a “permanently on” ability that reduces all damage taken by a flat amount, based on spellpower, up to a maximum of 30% of the hit. The intent is to give mages a passive defensive option, and also one that varies with the frequency of incoming damage. Remember, mages must give up Temporal Shield or Ice Barrier to take the new talent.

We agree with the feedback that Blazing Speed makes more sense grouped with the movement talents than with the defensive talents. In addition, we have buffed Ice Floes already from live, and we have added an additional perk that spells cast within the first half a second of Ice Flows don’t consume a charge. Currently if you’re making use of spell queuing, it’s easy to waste the first charge, so this fix is intended to help with that.

That brings us to Scorch. Sorch feels really valuable to many players (above and beyond Arcane using it rotationally to avoid dropping stacks), but we’re concerned that it feels more valuable than it actually is. Yes, Elemental and Hunters can do a lot of damage while on the move, but not every spec in the game needs to do so, and mages have a lot of other advantages. Mages do have several tools to deal with movement, such as several instants and abilities such as Blink and the tier 2 talents to minimize movement time. We’d rather seem mages plan, move quickly, and plant rather than just stay moving all the time. Scorch preempts all of those tools and has the added psychological benefit of feeling like you’re always doing something, and because of that feeling of being productive, we’re concerned you have less motivation to minimize movement. Mathematically, if you’re making full use of your available tools without Scorch, Scorch isn’t much of a benefit of all, and we think the mage class would feel and play better overall without Scorch as a crutch. We debated removing Scorch completely, and we still might, but we’re sensitive to the fact that so many mages are using Scorch today and might not understand or appreciate its loss. As a compromise, we’re going to try Scorch as Fire only to preserve the gameplay for players who really like it and to help differentiate the Mage specs a bit more.

This is a big change, and the kind of thing we might revert if we and you don’t like how it plays. Try it out and let us know.

EDIT: The correct Grand Crusader number is 30% in case you're trying to theorycraft it.

Unless you can demonstrate that "scaling" is going to cause a 5-10% DPS difference between one spec and another within a single tier (say 13 ilevels or so), we're not inclined to mess with it. I'm not trying to dismiss the concerns, but it's become such a buzzword among players that I worry scaling discussions are drowning out other conversations.

Priest
- We are reverting the change to how Devouring Plague deals damage. It will have more up-front damage in 5.2 as it does in 5.1. We think the more recent nerfs to Shadow healing and Phantasm are more appropriate changes for PvP.

You mean that you're leaving haste AS IS for prot, but removing GrandCrusader from proc'ing off of CS/HotR and changing that to dodge/parry? Or do you mean that you're removing Sanctity of Battle for prot, and giving us the above change as the "fix"? Your wording was a little ambiguous, and it makes a HUGE difference about the angry prot pally mob forming or not.
No change to haste, dodge, parry or Sanctity of Battle. Grand Crusader changes to proc on dodge / parry to increase their value for active mitigation.

To address other concerns I've seen: yes, this is a small nerf to DPS when not the focused tank (and is similar to blocks for warriors). Yes, this improved Holy Power generation when AE tanking (but again is similar to Revenge for warriors, which hasn't been a gigantic balance problem). No, you shouldn't have to give up all your haste gear. This change should just let any dodge or parry you do accumulate be more attractive.

The tooltip for PW:S on the PTR was recently updated to show it shielding for 40% more than on live. However, the actual numbers for PW:S on the PTR do not reflect the 40% buff. Can you confirm if this is just a tooltip error or if there is an intended buff to PW:S in the pipeline?
We did not make a change to PW:S points nor is there anything in the patch notes or in one of my posts as far as I can recollect.

I will add that so far on our PTR raid testing, Disc priests are using PW:S along with PoH and not having abnormal HPS or mana problems. Heroic testing will tell more.

Level 90 Hunter Talent - Powershot. Yes you have stated that you are trying to rebuild it, and I am positive that it will be great if you can get it to work properly, but there is no indication that it will be fixed by 5.2
Until a time comes when I say "Sorry, we were not able to get it to work," then you can safely assume our plans have not changed.

Not 30% DR. I made the same mistake by reading it too fast. Read it again, and pay attention this time. It's a flat damage reduction (aka a number such as 3000, 2746, etc.) based on spell power, capped on a maximum 30% reduction. So if a hit would deal X damage, it deals X minus that number, but it cannot reduce the overall damage by more than 30%.
This is correct. Apologies if my initial description was insufficient. The rate of incoming damage is important here.

Thank you for additional feedback from everyone on various topics, though I am of course unable to comment on it all. Also recall my initial post in this thread: we're only interested in 5.2 (not 5.1) DPS comparisons for purposes of this thread, and also, no whining.

Until a time comes when I say "Sorry, we were not able to get it to work," then you can safely assume our plans have not changed.
In fact, I posted this too soon. We have now completed rebuilding Power Shot and Glaive Toss. Both abilities always hit their primary target and are much more responsive to secondary targets in our initial testing. Once these abilities have been subjected to a QA pass, you can try them in a future PTR build and let us know how they work. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
World PvP and CRZ
The evil side of me wants to just reply and say something along the lines of "PVP is Death. There's no escape, your character will eventually be killed, ganked, roflstomped and massacred over and over again. The only question is 'when'".

On the other side, though, World PVP is not fair, there'll rarely be an equal number of forces, or at the same level... and so on. If you can push through it, at times you'll find yourself at the opposite end of the experience (revenge is a dish best served cold, isn't it?), as well as move to a different zone to continue your leveling.

But, if the notion of other players being able to disrupt your gameplay at some point is something that you just don't want to deal with, then the best option is to reroll on a PVE realm, where you can decide when and how to flag yourself for PVP.

Translation: Another benefit of CRZ is the money we make, we knew this would happen.
There're unscrupuloous players that use unrespectful tactics to fight others and then escape unpunished. PVP realms were designed with the intent to be a place where wild PVP could take place, so... a player on CRZ killed you.

Ganking is ganking, no matter if the player comes from another realm or not, this has been happening since the dark ages of WoW... (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

LFR Feedback
Looking at people with epic gear should be a motivator to get yourself into raiding, and if you don't have the time for it, then to bad for you. Get over it.
You can't control people's motivations. For many players out there, gear is not the objective, just the mean to an end (defeating more difficult foes).

Having LFR as a tool for those who cannot commit to organized is fine (all thought I dont agree to it), but why do they have to get gear from it? It's not like they're gonna need it if they're not gonna start in normal/HC modes. They get to see the content anyway.
We all log in to progress our characters, so removing gear from the Raid Finder because "they're not gonna start in normal/HC modes" is not really fair. Also, there are players that do take the gear they get from Raid Finder to normal/Heroic modes, as they use this venue as just another way to gear up and get something better in those slots than the blues/greens from the leveling experience and 5-mans.

I wish there was an LFR for every raid mode i.e normal etc...
It wouldn't really work though. 25 strangers that have never played together would not be able to defeat Garalon (just look at the changes his Raid Finder version went through shortly after being released on the live realms).

I've been an active raider from Molten Core to Dragon Soul, but nowadays I've grown a bit tired of adhering to the schedules of organised raiding guilds. Now I prefer raiding on my own terms, whenever I feel like it, and LFR grants me that. It's what keeps me subscribed to this game. I wouldn't mind a bit more ilvl disparity between LFR and normal/heroic (I think 5.2 is doing that already?) but I'd like to keep the ability to see the raids and improve my character please.
This is something I've seen around myself (and I guess I'm not the only one that can relate to this experience?) as we get older, and schedules, real life, work and other things get in the way, some friends had to become more casual in order to keep playing.

Just as a reminder, next Monday, WoW will turn 8 in Europe, just think about how much your life has changed in 8 years, even if you weren't playing back in Vanilla.

If you don't have a time for something. Why should you as a game creator make it easier for those who doesn't have time to play your game? I don't get it!
The opposite would be having raid content be seen by a minimal amount of players, which is not good, particularly when it comes to how the developers can better spend their time designing content.

So basically, because I'm 30 years old and married with a child, i work 9-11 hours per day and can not commit to my guild raiding time, I'm not entitled to the option of seeing raids or getting some gear, I do not pvp, I never had, used to be able to raid in vanilla and BC, but now I can't and lfr is perfect for me
Not so long ago (12 years ago?) it was believed that the average gamer stopped playing videogames at some point on his mid 20s due to real life constraints and would stop playing altogether.

If you think about it, and the games we had back then, it kinda makes sense. Most of them were still rather hardcore and not accessible to what we consider today a casual gamer, so it's not entirely surprising to see people out there that think that because you're 30 years old you shout put gaming down and move on. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Future
During MoP beta there was an achievement for visiting all 1001 (IIRC) waterfalls in Pandaria. Will that be brought back?
Would love to, but there wasn't a clean way to implement it. (Source)

What is the reasoning behind not being able to queue for multiple LFR-dungeons at the same time? Wouldn't it make sense?
Yeah, it would make sense. We've never had 5 LFRs at once, so the idea just slipped through the cracks. (Source)

Saw the rogue pvp glove change. It helps and I like it. Can we test the sets on PTR?
Being able to try out all the sets on the PTR is a goal. It won't be in the next build or so, but we'd like to get there. (Source)

Does Blizzard have any plans to help low pop servers? I've seen EU servers get Character Migration recently.
Not for me to say and not over Twitter, but we do want to address the problem. (Source)

is Thunderforged the new announcement? I like!
Thunderforged is the controversial idea I mentioned weeks ago, not the cool unannounced feature. (Source)

I hope you realise what you've started with your "we haven't announced it yet" comment.
Sorry. I'll just say I had a specific feature in mind and wasn't just trolling. Some will love it. Some will say: this is it? (Source)

Misc
what do you feel you are doing to try keep players who are "burned out"?
That is one of our biggest challenges. If we mix things up too much to keep them interested we risk turning off other players. (Source)

make it so that heirlooms are mailable then!
Not a fan of cross-realm AH. The other things you mention are technical not design limitations. (Source)

I would love to start playing WoW again, but I hate aoe looting - any chance of an interface option/mod support to disable?
Can you explain what you hate about it? Is this a Skinning issue? (Source)

Again GC you are ruining gaming! Games were supposed to be epic and difficult you can't beat it keep trying, not make it easy
Some players will keep trying. I am that kind of player personally. Others will just quit the game. How to balance that? (Source)

greetings warcraft 3 were an amazing game why blizzard isn't going 2 make warcraft 4 ?
We're kind of busy at the moment. Agree that it would be awesome to see. (Source)

Most unappreciated guy in MoP is "Tong". Poor guy always fetching Wrathions food an things. GG
Or maybe the smartest considering who he backs? (Source)

i think you belong to the forums. You express yourself better with long posts than short tweets.
I agree but I can't do as many long posts, which drives players crazy. (Source)

what do you think about elder scroll game for singal and for online? is it give small "fight" to wow or to blizzard games?
Personally, I love Elder Scrolls series. Wish them all the best. (Source)

I wonder why was included in the Starcraft 1 credits when he didn't join Blizzard for another 7 years.
True story. I offered a lot of feedback on the mission editor. (Source)

I quit this game, it will never be what it use to be. I've come to this realization. Casuals ruined it.
Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players? (Source)

DLC #375 - Gold
DLC #375 has been released and is worth a read!

This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 5.2 - Horridon Preview, New Darkmoon Faire Hats, Blue Posts, DLC Comic started by chaud View original post
Comments 65 Comments
  1. Duster505's Avatar
    [/COLOR]
    Quote Originally Posted by chrth View Post
    Unless they're actually bots controlled by Blizzard, it's the players' doing. They have a choice.
    They had a choice to roll on servers that had community. They are now stuck on PVP server SHARDS with no communities and endless line of low lvl gankers.
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Duster505 View Post
    The thing is... the MOP expansion is much more than just 13 ilvls... and the gear will continue to scale abilities and make them more and more unbalanced. What was 10% over 13 ilvls - becomes 100% over 130 (we are already at 100 ilvls now after patch 5.2).

    Blizzard will not do anything this expansion to fix the problem gear scaling is causing. To do that they need to change every spell in the game to scale exactly the same and that simply will not happen. And again - THAT is why the extra amount of ilvls are the WORST thing Blizzard can be adding to the game.... but its the ONLY thing they are doing at the moment.

    ---------- Post added 2013-02-05 at 04:23 PM ----------



    The scaling is and always will be a problem. You talk about the 5%. BLizzard is now all of a sudden talking about 10%... over 13 ilvls of gear.... Scaling is STILL a major problem and even tho its not as big of a problem as in Vanilla - it will still do alot of damage when Blizzard is adding so huge ilvl inflation into the game as we are now seeing.

    The real issues we will start to see now is with the healing classes since they will have more mana regen than before. This leads to the big expensive spells to become better - and some specs have the abilities to have both hots and casts spells at the same time - while others dont.

    But before you go claim scaling is fine... We have yet to see ANY public tests with 5.2 gear. What we do know is that we can NOT trust Blizzard when all of a sudden the start talking about 10% change in 13 ilvls ... when we were expecting REAL balance over the entire expansion.
    I get your point of the entire expansion, but Blizzard does rebalance during each patch.. so if the devs balance something at the beginning of a patch, you only really have 3 months or so (ha) for scaling to cause things to unwind. I am sure it is with that in mind that GC asked someone to prove to him that scaling would be an issue. If the devs only balanced classes at the very beginning of an expansion, and then you had 100 ilvls of gear changes, then definitely I could see classes become very unbalanced.

    And that is what GC is asking. Show him a spec that because of haste or spirit (primarily) gained within a tier, that spec will go from balanced at the start of the tier, to more than 5% OP at the end of the tier. Is there a certain crit, or haste threshold that will drastically alter the rotation of a spec to allow them to do something new that gains them that much of an advantage. Is there a mana-regen threshhold at which point a healing spec can drastically alter what spells they are casting to the point where they are now drastically better than the other healers who also have gotten similar upgrades?

    That is what GC is asking.. show him the mechanism for a spec that allows gear to create those type of drastic changes in gameplay within a tier.
  1. Tybudd33's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    That daily blink legitimately made me laugh out loud.
    Which? I didn't see any, what was it about?
  1. Xaxxor's Avatar
    Yeeah all these changes for mage and still the lvl 90 talents remain.
    I think I'm bailing this sinking ship once 5.2 hits. Mage looked so promising when MoP came out.....
  1. Kalcheus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Duster505 View Post
    They had a choice to roll on servers that had community. They are now stuck on PVP server SHARDS with no communities and endless line of low lvl gankers.
    I'm talking about the gankers, not the gankees. The post I was quoting tried to make it sound like Blizzard was responsible for people being a-holes.

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