Orc Female Running Animation, Tier 18 Set Bonus Changes, Blue Posts, Hellfest

We've made some changes to Tier 18 set bonus power based on feedback and data from raid testing during recent weeks. Any balance tweaks to sets, trinkets, or class abilities, will be documented in hotfix notes alongside the official patch release.

In any case, here are details on what changed:

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Frost 2pc: Crit damage bonus reduced to 6% from 10%; Haste bonus reduced to 3% from 5%.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Balance 4pc: Damage bonus reduced to 6% from 8%.
• Feral 2pc: Bonus to Omen of Clarity proc chance reduced from 133% to 90%

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Arcane 2pc: Damage of all summons reduced approximately 40%.
• Frost 4pc: Water Jet duration bonus increased to 10 sec from 4 sec.

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Windwalker 2pc: Combo Breaker chance reduced to 30% from 40%.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Retribution 4pc: damage bonus reduced to 5% from 6%.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Shadow 4pc: Multistrike bonus increased to 20% from 16%.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Subtlety 2pc: Vanish damage bonus increased to 30% from 10%.

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Enhancement 4pc: Maelstrom damage bonus reduced to 5% from 8%.

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Affliction 2pc: Chance to extend Drain Soul reduced to 10% from 30%
• Demonology 2pc: Demon damage bonus increased to 4% from 3%.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Fury 2pc: Critical strike bonus to Wild Strikes increased to 100% from 50%
• Fury 4pc: Cooldown reduction to Recklessness increased to 25 sec from 20 sec.
• Arms 2pc: Chance to reset Mortal Strike increased to 100% from 60%
• Protection 4pc: Bonus to Shield Barrier reduced from +200% to +100%.

Remember, these are changes to upcoming set bonuses, not pure class balance. The goal is for all set bonuses to be roughly comparable (with some variance given their vastly different nature) in power, and there were clear outliers on both sides of the spectrum. The changes above represent our effort to correct some of those outliers. If you feel your spec is underperforming currently, the answer is not for a specific overpowered set bonus to prop it up, nor is the reverse true.

If you feel that we missed the mark on changes based on your analysis of these specific bonuses, or that we may have overlooked some other bonuses that are also significantly too strong or too weak, we'd love to hear that feedback in this thread.

Game Design and Choices
Too much has been changed based on what people feel obligated to do to keep up with the Joneses.

-People feel obligated to pick certain races due to racial abilities: Change racials.

-People feel obligated to pick certain professions for the perks: Eliminate profession perks.

-People feel obligated to run LFR to complete set bonuses or get other gear to help with progression: Nerf LFR into a snoozefest and remove all semblance of decent looking or interesting loot.

-People feel obligated to have optimal specs and most people follow cookie cutter builds: Remove talent trees.

-People feel obligated to bring certain specs to raid: Homogenize classes and specs.

I'm sure I've left things off the list but I think you get the point. Stop it. Stop catering to peoples' self imposed obligations. Design some choice back into the game. I don't care it that choice is suboptimal. The vast majority of us are suboptimal players. If you're not chasing and achieving world rankings you're probably subobtimal and not picking the talent, race, profession, etc. that the world first player of your spec picked isn't going to hamper your game play. Play for fun, not to obligations.

I'd be happy to agree with you, but in a game where a key component is the inter-reliance on each other to tackle difficult challenges, it in some ways requires players to at least consider what is optimal to ensure they're not letting other people down--or even just to keep from looking bad. Fear of judgment and self doubt are powerful social motivators. It's not as simple as personal choice, because in most cases its not, you're also making your choices based on how they'll impact everyone else you're playing with.

That in no way addresses the point of the OP.
Maybe I was speaking a bit beyond the specific issues the OP was bringing up. I wasn't intending to be so esoteric. My point was really just that suggesting people not care whether they're optimal or not--or that being suboptimal is more fun than being optimal--isn't as simple as personal choice; and that's even completely ignoring that first every player would need to have a realistic view of their own knowledge and skill.

Man, the old talent trees were the worst. The sheer number of people that would complain about class balance, about high end progression tuning, about this or that, and when we'd look into it... it'd turn out they just didn't know what they were doing. They had gone for the ultra rare 16/16/19 build, or whatever, and the reason they absolutely hated the game is because, ultimately, we let them make the wrong choices. I think the cynical response is that it's their fault and they should just know to be better if they care, but it's the game that allowed it.

It'd be real easy if everyone understood when they were making the suboptimal choices and were ok with it. That's just not how it works in practice.

Personally, I'm right there with you. I play the classes I want to because they're fun, not because they're high on someone's list. I make the fun choices I want to make. And I know that I'm only going to be able to see a certain level of difficulty because I make choices for my personal enjoyment rather than my desire to be optimal. I realize all of these things and I enjoy the game the way I want to enjoy it within the confines of the rules as they're defined by its design.

But I am an individual. And millions of other individuals also play this game, and make their own choices, and have their own desires, and realizations.

So the game literally cannot allow someone to fail on their choices?
Actually that's a good point, and of course you can fail, but those failure/learning/growth opportunities are focused on actually playing your character, and not so much on reading a guide to know which powerups you have to choose.

As much as we'd like to reward you for your Googling skillz.
You say this yet with the implementation of crz and lfd, people have gone the downward slope of treating everyone like crap, and there is no recourse. Seems too me you failed at what you just said.

I think you're referring to random people being mean to other random people on the internet, where I was more referring to situations like guild groups, or even PUGs, where people want to ensure the collective success of their group, if not their friends.

Connecting strangers together to tackle group content is, I would think, always going to be subject to some amount of internet asshattery regardless of what that system is. The benefit of connecting people is by and large very positive, so if there any improvements you could recommend to help ease social tensions or ideas to make people nicer to each other, I think we'd be happy to hear them. But that's really a topic for a different thread. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Turn your speakers up to 11 and get ready to rock this Sunday! From 9:35 a.m. to 3:25 p.m. PDT on June 21, you can experience the ear-ringing highlights of the Hellfest open air festival—underway now in Clisson, France— from home via an online stream. Keep an eye on the Battle.net desktop app for more details on how to tune in.

It’s sure to be a great show, but please note that some performances may contain adult content that may not be suitable for younger viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.

You can also make some noise on social media using the #WoWatHellfest hashtag. The Iron Horde is ready for some more heavy metal. Are you?