Dev Interviews, PTR Class Balance, OpenRaid Events, Curse is Hiring, The Daily Blink

Here are some recent changes:

• Renewing Mist - mana cost reduced 10%.
• Healing Rain - mana cost reduced 15%.
• Beast Cleave - damage increased from 30% to 50% of original damage.
• Critical Mass - nerf reverted. It's back to 30%.
• Pyroblast - direct damage reduced 10%.

The mana changes were to help less well geared healers. The Beast Cleave change was because we felt Survival's multi-target damage was too far ahead. We don't mind good AE as a spec niche, but it shouldn't be so high that you feel like an absolute idiot for not swapping to that spec. (This is the same mentality we used when trying to tone down without destroying Combat rogues being good at cleaving.) The Fire changes were because we needed to nerf Fire to keep other mage specs competitive in PvE in 5.2, but we agree that nerfing Critical Mass unfairly targets less well geared players, and that the spec is just less fun if it crits too rarely. (Long term, we might investigate some of the non-linear percent scaling suggestions players have made.)

Greetings Champions!

Tomorrow on the PTR Blizzard employees are going to be storming the Battlegrounds. We're going to be doing some stress testing in preparation of the upcoming 5.2 patch.

For your chance to match steel and spell with some of Blizzard's finest sign on to the PTR realms Friday 3/1/13 from 4:30-6:30pm PST and queue up for Random Battlegrounds.

We'll be queuing as teams, you'll be able to distinguish us by our guilds "Blizzard Horde" and "Blizzard Alliance".

See you on the fields of honor!

PvE
Why would tapping be "worse" than griefing?Player gets occasional benefit of a tap, so what?
Because you stand around waiting for the mob to respawn angry that there are other players of your faction nearby. (Source)
during dailies it was annoying...now they can grief. It will prove to be disastrous. Please revert this
We had orders of magnitude more complaints about competing to get the first tap. (Source)

Have you considered showing the entire raid what everyone is winning in LFR? It won't fix the problem, but might reduce rage.
Yeah. Initially we were worried about spam + players not understanding system and getting mad that someone took "their" item. (Source)

Would it be so hard to program per-player safeguards against too much bad luck ?
The programming isn't hard. The design is a little harder to prevent weird exploit behavior but is something we're working on. (Source)

If I have 5.0 LFR loot bags in inventory, will waiting until 5.2 to open them give me a chance at extra stuff?
No, you should go ahead and open the bag. Only new ones will benefit. (Source)

will 5.0 normal mode drop rates be buffed in 5.2? Would help organized groups with catch-up.
Drop rates are already 100% in N and H. We are buffing LFR rates and bonus roll chance in all difficulties for 5.0. (Source)

I just enjoy the irony - you design a boss for cutting edge progression guilds, yet tell us it's not part of progression.
I don't honestly remember the conversation any more. Ra-Den is hard. If players complain, imagine us cackling (ominously). (Source)
Oh, it's great to throw hardcore raiders a bone like this. Just remember there's no such thing as an "optional" boss to us.
Just don't ask us to nerf it so that you can be a 13/13 guild. (Source)

And that's not my standard. That's standard.
The intent of Ra-Den is to be insanely difficult. Most heroic guilds should not consider him a part of progression. (Source)
Those two statements conflict with each others. Also, just because you say people "shouldn't" doesn't mean they won't.
They can consider whatever they want. I'm just stating our design intent and clarifying it publicly. The next move is theirs. (Source)
From Ian's blue posts: "Of course I know there's no such thing as an optional boss in progression..."
He and I don't disagree. But we'll probably see a lot of 11/13 guilds because Ra-Den and heroic Lei Shen are very hard. (Source)
Still, if one guild kills Ra-Den first and another Lei Shen, which guild will be considered "World First"? My guess: Ra-Den.
That's always an issue. Who wins, the guild who kills the first 3 easy H bosses or the one who skips to the 4th hard H boss? (Source)
Shouldn't this not be possible? I thought Ra-Den required killing LS on Heroic (which required a full H clear?)
Yes, that is correct. My point was that I am confused by this weird "Is Ra-Den part of progression or not?" conversation. (Source)
Feel like some saying “We’re a HC guild, ergo we consider Ra-Den part of progress, ergo you have to nerf him to be accessible.” Huh? (Source)
Both you and Ian suggest that Ra-den is "optional" to progression, when the raiding community thinks otherwise is gist of it.
We just don't want less hardcore heroic guilds to be sad if they can't beat him. He's not designed for them. (Source)

PvP
what happened to 5 man queues to rbg you talked about in the pvp blog?
Still in the plan, just not for 5.2. It's a lot of work, but work we want to do. (Source)

It takes 29 wins to cap conquest in reg bgs. At 50% win ratio that is 58 wins per week, too much?
The idea is really to do RBGs or Arenas to earn Conquest. (Source)

Why is honor gear in next season worse than conquest gear in this season? It was the other way around before. Why the change??
So it isn't the most attractive gear for new 90s to skip over all the PvE content. (Source)

The proliferation of untrinketable CC (RoP, Solar Beam, Fists of Fury...) is a dangerous trend in PvP.
Agree. (Source)

i mean 1 team tied to rating. make more than one team or make another system please so i can play with others too
Yeah, that's what I meant with my tweet a few weeks ago. Teams can be a barrier to playing with friends. (Source)

That new rare technology to increase health per player attacking: possible for Alterac Valley NPCs? Would solve so much.
Potentially, yeah. And then AV is perfect, right? Right? (Source)