World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

A Lack of Cloth Healing Gear in Dungeons
Our item designers spend a lot of effort making sure there is gear for everyone, so if you haven't seen a specific piece you might have just gotten unlucky.

Note however that healer cloth is any cloth without hit on it. If you are expecting Spirit on every single piece, you might be disappointed. If you did manage to get Spirit on every single piece, you might find that your regeneration is higher than you really need for level up content. We know we can't make the level up dungeons super challenging, or players will just skip them and quest instead (given that even the most awesome level up dungeon gear won't last very long, so it's not possible to offer high reward for high risk).

As you are nearing level 90, and start gearing for end game content, stats for healers and survival stats for tanks start to become more important and you should find more of them.

Also, don't neglect the vendors. Their gear isn't best in slot by any stretch, but can be useful to fill any holes if you missed a piece or have just been unlucky. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hunter (Forums)
Hunter Feedback
A few points on hunters, gathered from several threads:

We don't want for dots just to ignore crowd control. It's a test of skill for players to decide when to dot and when to CC. However, that's not a fair requirement for attacks that you can't prevent, such as Piercing Shots and MM mastery. Those probably do need to pause or do no damage to CC'd targets.

We're still tweaking focus regen. It does feel a little slow right now.

Stampede needs to appear at the target or you lose too much of the brief duration with the pets moving to the target. It also needs to have a long cooldown and short duration, because it's an awful lot of DPS to have so many pets out. The alternative would be that the extra pets do a lot less damage each, but we didn't feel like that really delivered on the fantasy of "opening the stable."

We want traps to be good CC. Traps are one of the signature hunter mechanics, and we'd rather make them good than just let players ignore them and do all their CC with shots. Improving CC in this way will also give hunters better synergy with other classes in PvP, rather than the hunter's viability being determined by how awesome their burst damage is.

We're still looking at expertise, dodge and running a lot of PvP tests right now. We do think it's a bit disingenuous to argue that melee are always behind their targets in PvP. Just ask any Backstabbing rogue or Shredding druid. Overall, we're still comfortable with the idea of ranged attacks able to be dodged. It's a little weird to argue any of this stuff based on "reality" but heroes so awesome that they could dodge arrows or bullets certainly exist in literature and cinema. If you can leap through the air towards your foe (or backwards in the case of a hunter), shield block a giant, or cast a fireball, then being able to dodge a shot shouldn't be the thing that breaks the suspension of disbelief.

(As an aside, when I was working on historical RTS games, I read that there was some evidence that Native Americans had some skill in dodging arrows, which may have been one of the things that led to their adopting firearms, given that firearms at the time were pretty inferior to arrows or javelins in most other ways. That still doesn't settle whether dodging arrows in a fantasy game with paladins and mages is reasonable or not.)

If it's an undue burden for PvP, then that's another thing (though we think the jury is still out on that), but arguing it's not realistic is a bit... er... dodgy. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums)
Rapture Must Retire
We don't think Rapture is "fundamentally flawed." We also added it back because so many Disc priests asked for it. It's challenging for us to present a design when some players want something and some don't want it.

Discipline would struggle if the spec was designed around flawless Rapture use, but it's not. Meditation is still there and in fact a Disc priest with flawless Rapture use would have more mana return than other healers. A priest who totally ignored PW:Shield would have lower mana return, but why are you playing Disc if you ignore PW:Shield? For many Disc priests who say benefit from Rapture every 20+ sec instead of the minimum 12, their sustainability should be comparable to other healers. Keep in mind what I said in the other thread about considering the entire package; the only real measurement of sustainability is how long the various healers can cast in average (low HPS) and scary (high HPS) situations without going OOM. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Discipline Feedback
In the (hopefully) next build you receive, Discipline again has Greater Heal, Strength of Soul, and Power Word: Shield with no cooldown. We are also trying something really different with Spirit Shell. Let us know how it feels. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warrior (Forums)
Warrior Feedback
Here are some warrior comments from various threads. I know there is at least one very long thread, but in my experience players are less likely to read huge threads. I mean no disrespect to any other posters by posting here.

1) We want rage to be a mechanic. We don't want rage to be something warriors ignore because they can just hit all of their buttons whenever they want. That tends to lead towards the class being cooldown controlled. It's fine for some classes to work that way (Enhance shaman are pretty close), but that's not our vision for warriors.

2) We think the rate of rage income in Battle Stance is currently about right, but we knew that warriors could totally ignore Heroic Strike and Cleave, so we've been tweaking things like Enrage providing more rage, so that being rage capped is more of a risk (allowing smarter warriors to bleed off that rage with HS).

3) The Berserker Stance redesign is still pretty new and something we're adjusting. If we are successful, then warriors will use Battle Stance much of the time, but would consider Berserker for PvP or boss fights with an excessive amount of raid damage. We aren't looking for warriors to constantly stance dance, nor do we want them to be in Berserker all of the time.

4) Your entire class doesn't need to revolve around having X amount of crit. We will balance warrior damage around whatever stats are available at various character and gear levels. We like the fact that warriors will have more Enrage uptime as they acquire more crit. Mechanics like that are the kind of thing that make gearing up more fun, because it can actually impact your rotation a bit rather than hitting the same buttons the same way as you did when you were level 86. Warriors (especially Fury) need some amount of crit and Enrage uptime to function, but giving them too high a crit rate early on leads to devaluing the stat in later tiers of gear. (This goes for a lot of stats on a lot of classes.)

5) We run DPS tests all the time both at level 85 with starter gear and level 90 with end-game gear. The numbers are in a pretty good place, though we'll continue to adjust them as we make class changes and refine rotations. I offer that because saying "My DPS is terrible," doesn't really give us much information. What is your DPS? Who are you comparing it to?

6) Target dummies are great for learning your rotation. They are terrible for trying to predict how your rotation will feel in scenarios, dungeons, raids or PvP, and that is one of the reasons we went so long before adding them. Please try to get a feel for how your class plays in a group setting before coming to conclusions about whether you have enough buttons to hit or are waiting around too long. (Again, this is not a warrior-only consideration.)

7) I probably sound like a broken record here ("What's a "record," GC?"), but we don't want warriors or any class to be able to just pick DPS talents and forsake all others. If you are a DPS dude choosing a damage talent instead of a tanking talent, then you probably don't really have much in the way of a choice. If you focus on relatively easy content where you never need a survival button, never need to help out an ally, and never need crowd control, then I can understand why the talent choices may not be as interesting to you. On the other hand, try some of those 2-3 pulls in Townlong or run a scenario without a tank before you cement those opinions.

8) For tanks, the goal of active mitigation is to let you translate your resource (rage in this case) into survival. If you use Shield Block or Shield Barrier frequently, you'll be a better tank. If you spam them whenever possible, you'll do fine for scenarios and Raid Finder. To do more challenging content, you're going to want to use them at the right time, which may mean delaying them a few seconds for when a big hit is coming. Shield Block isn't designed to keep you alive all by itself -- fortunately you have plenty of emergency cooldowns. We also don't want players just learning the class or running easier content to crumple just because they failed to keep Shield Block up as much as possible. Many factors go into making you an effective tank -- watch a video of some of the world's best tanks if you don't believe me. Spamming Shield Block isn't going to cut it. Using Shield Block intelligently will help some.

9) I know it's fun to brainstorm new abilities. Just understand that such feedback is much less useful to the designers than commenting on how existing things feel. The frustration of missing a Mortal Strike in PvP and having that shut down your entire rotation (just to use an example) is great feedback and the kind of thing we can easily address. "Hey, I came up with a new ability or resource, what do you guys think?" is cool and all, but less likely to lead to an action item for our team.

10) Please don't expect or demand regular posts like this. The team has a lot to before we're ready to ship this expansion. We will read and take seriously all of your feedback, but we just can't afford to spend hours making forum posts. Just because I made a warrior post today and not a warlock post doesn't mean your feedback is being ignored or that we don't love you.

I don't use mathematics, which seems to be the devs' lingua franca; but I can work with spatial/systemic concepts instead, so that's how I communicate.
It’s not necessary to use numbers if you want to give feedback on how a rotation feels. (Though the community in general would benefit from finding more adjectives than “clunky.”) It is necessary to use numbers if you want to claim your DPS or survivability aren’t competitive, because otherwise you’re just guessing.

We put literally freak, freaking HOURS into trying to help him and his team out for no benefit with only the intent of making their awful, low depth designs work better and he disregards it? Forget that, I'm going to play Tera. At least THEIR idea of AM is actually engaging.
You're going to get disappointed a lot if you're hoping to see developers incorporate your ideas. That’s just no a realistic goal with a player base the size of ours. The reason I took the time to try and address some of the feedback in this thread is to make sure players understand our design intent. The players out there who are trying to turn “active mitigation” into “I have a ton of cooldowns that don’t cost resources” are working at cross purposes with the class designers. It’s not an invalid design by any stretch, but we also feel it’s essentially the design we had in Cataclysm where tanks would spend all of their resources on threat that was all just overkill. Spending resources on defense gets more to the heart of tanking and we think will be more enjoyable in the long run. In the short run it may feel different and weird.

The players posting on this forum do not represent the majority of the warrior population and are practically meaningless to you ('the vocal minority').
The players who post are ALWAYS a minority. By far, most of our players don't post. Some of the most skilled and informed players out there don't post. Does the posting community represent the feelings of the majority? It’s hard to know for sure. That’s why we pay more attention to intelligent argument than we do to any kind of invocation of how "most players" feel. We do read all of the feedback though. We’re not always going to act on all of it. That’s just the reality of game design. We don’t want WoW to be designed by committee, and you probably don’t want us to either.

There are still other issues not addressed regarding our rotation...
Execute is a great button, but it’s not available much of the time. Slam and Wild Strike are better than Heroic Strike. You should always go to them first. If you have so much rage than even several Slams in a row will leave you with excess rage, then you break out the Heroic Strikes as well, since you can Heroic Strike AND Slam in the same GCD. You’ll have to make the call about buttons like Overpower depending on the situation. Overpower won’t help you with rage management if it’s time to Slam, but on the other hand, Overpower is free, and the ultimate goal is to do deliver as much damage as possible. Managing rage isn’t the goal itself; it’s just a strategy to deliver the damage.

The Protection warrior was fun, required rage management and had active mitigation.
There is no active mitigation on live. You can define active mitigation your own way if you’d like, but using our definition, active mitigation is mitigation costing resources. On live, all mitigation is cooldown-driven for warriors, druids and paladins. Resources are for gaining threat (which isn't that hard to generate) or delivering DPS (which usually isn’t very valuable for tanks except on very tightly tuned fights).

Alright, you don't want suggestions on how to fix the many, many problems?
Suggestions are fine and often useful. We are seeing some players brainstorming new abilities or resource systems, which aren’t as valuable to us, and can actually be a little risky to the process when players can get overly attached to their own ideas and end up disappointed or bitter when we don't use them.

Perhaps it would help to increase the rage cap to 200, so Shield Block would only be a third of our red bar, and warriors can pool enough rage for 2 or 3 Shield Blocks. Or make the first Shield Block less expensive, and later ones more expensive (like Arcane Blast).
I don’t think we’d increase rage to 200, but we could get the same effect by making Shield Block cheaper. The reason we haven’t yet is we were concerned it might lead to feeling like you can realistically have 100% Shield Block coverage. Once you can afford to push Shield Block constantly, then it feels like it’s a maintenance buff (more like Thunder Clap) and not a button with any kind of timing component. It might be worth trying just flooding Protection with rage to see how it feels. Likewise, we could see how much rage it takes before Arms and Fury are using Heroic Strike constantly instead of situationally. Also remember that warriors will get more rage with better gear -- we still want that to occur because it feels fun, so long as it doesn't become a big scaling problem (meaning warriors are weak with bad gear and unstoppable with good gear, which has often been a problem in WoW).

Can warriors get an offensive benefit to strength, much like agi and int gives to the other classes? Defensive benefits do literally nothing for me, considering how negligible they are. It's been a long standing issue of mine that warriors get Parry, while Agi users get crit, and int users get crit and spell power bonuses.
We balance around the stats you have. If warriors received crit from Strength, then we’d have to lower the damage of your abilities as a consequence. We don’t like Strength providing crit, because then it just feels like Agility. There are potential scaling risks if Agi users do more damage as they get more Agi than Strength users do as they get more Strength. With warriors though we usually have the opposite problem because they do so much more damage as they get better weapons (as well as more rage from better gear as well). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Spell Reflect - Why Was It Nerfed?
Spell Reflect is one of those mechanics that always feels weak to the warrior and overpowered to everyone else. We ran a bunch of internal BGs and Arenas and it was pretty universal that the casters were constantly having everything reflected if there was a warrior in the area.

We're still tweaking the Mass Spell Reflect talent. We want it to feel awesome, and we think that is a good way for warriors who want to be great at reflection to be able to make that commitment. Our current thought is that Mass Spell Reflect is a new ability (meaning that you'd have both spell reflects) and doesn't require a shield. We like that seeing the warrior strap on a shield signals to the caster that reflection is a risk -- the alternative is that sometimes your spells just bounce back at you, seemingly at random. That logic works for the core Spell Reflect, but already doesn't work with Mass, because you don't see the shield for the warrior's allies. Decoupling the two spells also lets us individually tweak their durations and cooldowns. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)