World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

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Kil'Jaeden's Cunning Feedback
The simple fact is that the constant, passive ability to perform a complete DPS rotation while moving was never intended to be a core feature of the Warlock class. Those who remember the early days of Patch 5.0 will recall that, initially, Kil’Jaeden’s Cunning actually increased cast time whenever it was triggered. In those days, that extra cast time made the talent so unattractive that very few players actually took it. We decided to try it as only a snare instead, but that has had the opposite effect: in Patch 5.3, virtually all Affliction Warlocks are using Kil'Jaeden’s Cunning. Remember, we want talents to be meaningful choices. If one talent is far and away superior to its neighbors, there’s a problem. There were also some very strange side effects (such as the ability to cast something like Fear while ducking in and out of line of sight).

Now, as I mentioned, the ability to always cast on the move wasn’t intended as a core Warlock feature (otherwise, it wouldn’t have been a talent). However, that doesn’t mean we want Warlock DPS to plummet every time there’s a fire on the ground. One thing that may have gone under the radar is the fact that the new version of KJC is not on the global cooldown, and can be cast while another cast is already in process. So, for example, you won’t have to interrupt a Chaos Bolt to activate KJC should you need to react to something in a hurry.

Furthermore, it’s a change that we’re certainly going to balance around. Remember, we’re very early in what is likely to be a lengthy PTR cycle. There’s plenty of time to tweak and tinker with it. In fact, a recent change made internally allows Haunt to be cast while moving by default. The goal is most certainly not that Warlocks lose out on a ton of DPS or lose viability in raid encounters. We do encourage you to hop on the PTR, experiment with it, and tell us what think once you’ve gotten some hands-on time!

I dont know if this is an issue with implementation on the PTR or bad information, I tried the new KJC on the ptr and it was on the GCD and it did interrupt a current spell cast.
If it's acting that way on the PTR currently, it's just an outdated implementation of the spell. Again, we're very early in the PTR cycle. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 5.4 PTR Class Changes
"Moonkin Form no longer reduces all damage taken by 15%"
This is huge nerf for PvP... You need to compensate or something. Else I'm doomed to play arenas on alts again
We removed these because they were causing a lot of problems in PvE situations. Don't fret though as we intend to balance around this change as we can adjust the damage in PvP to compensate for this in many different ways, such as resilience.

To those wondering why Aspect of the Iron Hawk was only reduced in damage reduction rather than removed, this is because it's a talent and it still needs to have a purpose. We are happy that this change will mean that the other talents in that tier will be more attractive now.

In general I think that gamebreaking effects, such as the Warrior one, do not fit into PvP. Even if the chance of proccing is only <1%, it still feels out of place. I think we would get the "5.1 TBF"-situation
The goal is for PvE set bonuses to not be the best choice possible, but not for them to be worthless either. We don't want PvE-focused players to be afraid to set foot in PvP by deactivating these cool set bonuses in PvP. If a PvE set bonus proves problematic though, we'll adjust it accordingly.

What i do not understand though is why now add it all in a certain rating and not giving em gradually like tbc? As you also said there are no rewards for those below the said ratings which is quite high for many so there is no "within reach" goal that will push certain mindset of ppl to try a lil harder every time
This follows the same logic as that of the Challenge mode armor rewards. Since they're a purely cosmetic reward, it doesn't make much sense to reward items one at a time because having several different items of varying colors would look out of place.

This is overpowered. You'll have to be lower it to 20 - 30% off the CDs. Bubble with 2.5 minute CD and divine protection with 30 seconds is stupid. Can't let it go through or you'll have so much complains on these forums.
The reason that this change is occurring is because we felt that Unbreakable Spirit was weak compared to its counterparts. We’ll be keeping a close eye on it, so be sure to test it out on the PTR when it becomes available.

Now that we have a blue in here, whats the idea of making destru, one of the only speccs that has to cast to do damage, lose the only way to get it off? When you were versing 2 melees or hunter - melee as it is, getting casts off wasnt something easy to do, and now with nerfed mobility, how are you ever going to get a chaos bolt off to contribute to a kill?
The reason for this change is that Kil'Jaeden's Cunning just felt too good and over 99% of Affliction Warlocks were taking it. We weren't happy with the snare effect, but when it had a cast time debuff instead, no one used it. Changing it to just be a snare effect ended up making the talent too good. We have a long PTR cycle ahead, there is plenty of time to tinker with it, and Warlocks will be balanced around this.

It’s worth noting that the new Kil'Jaeden's Cunning is off of the global cooldown and can be cast while another spell cast is already in progress. For the Affliction Warlocks worried about this change; one recent change on the 5.4 PTR is that Haunt is now castable while moving.

why rather not worry about the fact that 80% of the arena team above a certain rating are hunter-oriented? And there are changes coming for Hunters as well as the recent hotfixes that stopped pets summoned by Stampede using abilities and giving Blink Strikes a 20 second cooldown. Don't forget also:

We have a long PTR cycle ahead, there is plenty of time to tinker with it
There will be more changes to come, so keep your eyes on the patch notes blog and test out the changes when the 5.4 PTR comes around. Don't take all of these changes as the final ones, there are more to come and those that we have made can change as well. As Ghostcrawler said; "The PTR is our Petri dish and not every experiment works". (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Tier Set Pieces
We currently do not have any plans to remove tier sets from LFR. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Stromgarde Scenario
Just to avoid any further confusion, there is no Stromgarde scenario in patch 5.4, and what you’ve seen datamined is little more than a developer experiment with a stand-in name.

This happens quite often; developers will put something quick together to test out some new tech or functionality, and the remnants occasionally slip through to the PTR files where dataminers can get ahold of them.

So, just to be clear, there is currently nothing related to Stromgarde in production. That’s not to say it’s a location we’ll never revisit, but should that happen, it will not be in 5.4, and the recently datamined files will not be part of it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Golden Lotus Daily Quests
The world does and will change from time to time and this change is no exception. You'll still have a variety of ways to get Golden Lotus rep, but yeah things won't be the same in the Vale. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Legendary Quest Catch-up
There is no way for the gap to ever be closed as by the time they get the gem - patch 5.4 is out.
By the time they get cloak(which they will have to do old LFR for) everyone will get what i assume is an op weapon and the content will prolly be complete...

When Patch 5.4 is released, the legendary quest items from 5.0/5.1 will drop in Throne of Thunders for players that are on that step of the questline. The developers don't see much value in keeping Tier 14 relevant once Tier 16 is available.

However, in 5.4, if you decide to run Tier 14 raids for those items, you will see a dramatically increased drop chance. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Flexible Raid System Clarifications
Will the lockout be similar to LFR where you can run it again (with only 1 chance per week for loot) or will it be like normal, where you can only kill a boss once per week?
Right now, the idea is to have FR lockouts work very similarly to lockouts in LFR.

You will be able to repeat bosses, and that will actually still be somewhat rewarding, you’ll be able to use additional bonus rolls, earn Valor Points, and potentially loot some shinnies from trash...

There’s something unique about FRs though, I’ll explain it with an example:
Let's say you join a 12man and kill the first boss, leave the raid, and join a 20man, you might have to repeat the first boss.

"Might", so how does that work?
If everyone in the new 20man raid has already killed the first boss just like you did, then that boss will not spawn.
But even if only 1 of the players in that 20man has not killed the first boss, he will spawn again and everyone else will have to repeat the encounter. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Classes

• Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • General
    
    • Arcane Shot now deals 10% more damage. [Requires a realm restart]
      
    • Cobra Shot now deals 10% more damage. [Requires a realm restart]
      
    • Hunter Pets summoned by Stampede now only use auto-attacks against their target. [Requires a realm restart]
      
    • Steady Shot now deals 10% more damage. [Requires a realm restart]
      
  • Talents
    
    • Blink Strikes now has a 10-yard minimum range, and the teleportation effect cannot happen more than once every 20 seconds. [Requires a realm restart]
      

Quests

• Destroying the Altars: Master Summoner Zarod should once again drop Master Summoner's Staff, allowing players to complete the quest.
  
• The Might of Three: Buffs from the four celestials should now continue to work properly for players entering the Big Blossom Excavation area. [Requires a realm restart]

Creatures

• Bleeding Hollow Tormentor no longer summons a Bleeding Hollow Worg.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

• Throne of Thunder
  
  • Durumu the Forgotten
    
    • Elixir of Detect Lesser Invisibility will no longer allow players to see fog beasts while they are invisible.
      
    • Fixed an issue where Azure Fog may incorrectly trigger Flash Freeze at the end of the Light Spectrum phase.
      
  • Ji-Kun
    
    • Fixed an issue where players intercepting food globules were not properly gaining stacks of Slimed, preventing them from obtaining higher stacks of the Primal Nutrient damage buff.
      
  • Lei Shen
    
    • Lei Shen will now always drop a Titan Runestone or Secrets of the Empire for players that are on the legendary quest line. [Requires a realm restart]
      

Brawler's Guild

• Ro-Shambo should now properly display the UI for Rock, Paper, Scissors! if the character was casting a spell at the time.

Bug Fixes

• Rocketway rockets in Azshara should no longer be despawning too quickly after being summoned.
  
• Mac
  
  • Fixed an issue where changing the resolution settings could cause hot corners to not work correctly on Mac OS X 10.8.
    
  • Fixed an issue where binding a modifier key to a mouse button could cause the modifier key to become stuck.
    
  • Fixed an issue where certain circumstances could cause the cursor to become smaller than intended on the Retina MacBook Pro.
    

Virtual Realms
can someone explain how this works, and which realms will be linked together etc? Will I be seeing people from WRA etc in Stormwind?
We're working on an article currently that will explain more about Virtual Realms in detail. We're hoping to have it out to you all soon and will do our best to answer as many questions as you have as possible.

Keep in mind, we've only released the PTR notes at this point and still have testing, refining, more testing, gathering constructive feedback, testing, and then... when we think it's actually ready, releasing this live. While we have an idea of when we think we are going to have the patch go live, it's no guarantee that everything will go as expected (*crosses her fingers*). This isn't something that's going to be out in a week or anything.

You mean listening to the complaints of the players and then promptly spitting in their faces?
I've never "spit" in anyone's face in my life, I assure you.

Ghostcrawler said it yesterday in a tweet, consider the PTR like a petri dish. We're going to put things on there from time to time to test out how they work. By doing this, we get to see the results without having to commit them and affect a larger population of players in a "permanent" way. Constructive feedback from testers is always a valuable commodity as is just having people go in to the PTR and playing like they normally would so that we can see the effect of the changes.

As I also said, Virtual Realms will not be releasing overnight. There's still time before we go live with them and we still have more to do to make sure they work in a way that makes sense and adds value to the community they serve. Again, I think once we get more details in front of people, and are able to answer more questions about it and what it will do, the more likely many of the concerns I've seen here will be addressed. And if they're not, we'll work to address them as much as possible.

Area 52 currently has queues as high as 1300 just to get on. Are these super high pop realms going to be merged with other super high pop realms? A52 is mostly horde, but if we merge with a mostly alliance server, we're looking at double the queue if we have another 1300 alliance also trying to get on. That's the major concern I have, is population and massive queues, especially with everything being 50% off and more people coming to our already flooded server.
I can't answer about specific realms or how they will be connected (or not) currently, but I can say that we're very aware of the need to balance between a having a healthy population and ending up with queues. We will want to make sure that people can get in and play when they want to and still have people and resources they can rely on to have a great play experience. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 5.4 Set Bonuses
I don't think these will go live in their current state in rated PvP.
You're correct, the numbers on set bonuses are actually just place holders for the moment. At this time try focusing your feedback for set bonuses around the actual mechanics rather than the tuning of the numbers. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

LFR and Flex Loot Restriction
Our very own “Crabby” recently tweeted (#1 #2) about loot options in Flexible Raids. Just in case some of you missed it, we’re considering the possibility of having certain pieces of loot drop only in Flexible, Normal and Heroic raids.

We know that Tier and Legendary items are both very appealing to all types of raiders, but removing either of those from LFR at this point in time would tamper with the consistency of this expansion, there are a lot of players that rely solely on LFR to get those items and they are expecting LFR to continue to have the same sort of philosophy and design until at least the end of the expansion. Drastic and unexpected changes that impact negatively on parts of the player base is something we should try to avoid as much as possible.

So, for now, instead of making tier pieces exclusive to F/N/H raids, we’re considering the possibility of giving exclusivity to F/N/H on certain valuable pieces that don’t belong to any Tier. We know this isn’t exactly what some of you have been asking for, and that is doesn’t solve the issue of players going into LFR for a chance to get a piece of Tier, but it does provide more value and exclusivity/prestige to raids other than LFR without undermining players that have been relying exclusively on LFR as their main endgame progression experience since the start of the expansion.

I’d also like to point out that LFR content has always been staggered, and FR follows that same pattern but at an accelerated pace; that will probably make it less likely for raiders to run LFR in search for Tier drops, unless of course, they still prefer the accessibility of LFR over Flexible raids. I know that being time efficient is what drives many players, and having tier bonuses at the cost of a lower ilvl might still look like a better option than having to organize a Flexible raid. In the end we like to give players more options, and despite what some might say, I don’t think they will be overwhelming with the addition of Flexible Raids.

May I ask what the reason is for the stagger in Flexi? Makes sense in LFR, but not so much for Flexi imo!

You didn't exactly say the reason for flexi, only LFR, but maybe its one and the same?
Same reason as LFR I would say. We want to make a distinction between Normal and Heroic from the rest, players shouldn’t feel very compelled to go into LFR or even FR if they’re into more serious raiding, it’s still ok if there’s some appeal to them just as long as it doesn’t feel absolutely mandatory, especially a few weeks after LFR has opened.

I don’t like to generalize that much and I think that sometimes I inadvertently fall into the trap of extreme generalization. What I mean is, not all raiders are the same. There’s players raiding normal at a very slow pace, others that clear content as fast as it opens, so I can’t really say FR or LFR will be appealing to normal or heroic raiders, I can only imagine that guilds with slower progress will probably go into FR and LFR to help with their progression much more often than a guild that clears all normal content in a week, so I suppose we can say that FR and LFR shouldn’t be very appealing to anyone at a moderate to fast progression rate, but it’s ok if others that are struggling a bit more or those that can’t commit to guild raiding schedules for more than 1 or 2 days a week feel more inclined to try FR and LFR. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The changes we have coming for Blink Strikes are intended to assist with the regular complaint we hear about peeling Hunter pets. The change will mean that Hunter pets will only be able to Blink Strike once every 20 seconds and there will be a 10 yard minimum range to avoid the pet using it off cooldown when it's already close to the target. We hope that this will help with Hunter pets utilizing large amounts of glue to stick to their targets.

Our plans for Stampede are actually quite simple to explain; we are removing the ability for the pets summoned through Stampede to use any abilities. The end result of this change should be that the pets a Hunter summons from Stampede will only be able to auto-attack. As you are all aware, these changes will result in a quite the reduction of net damage for Hunters, because of this we have also done a minor 15% buff to the damage of Arcane Shot.

So we asked for hunter nerfs since their damage is ridiculously overpowered and instead they're pretty much getting buffed? Not sure if I'm catching your drift.
The damage gained from the buffs you can receive from using Stampede is no longer possible, which lowers Hunter damage. The pets summoned by Stampede can no longer bite/claw/nibble/tickle, they can only use auto-attacks, lowering damage during Stampede. Blink Strikes now has a 20 second cooldown making the pet easier to peel instead of them blinking all over the Arena to their target. These are all nerfs which are heavily targeted at pets which mainly effects Beast Mastery Hunters.

In regards to the "triple trinket" that BM hunters have; we have no plans to remove Bestial Wrath from Readiness at this time. Please continue to present your feedback on these changes though as we're always interested to hear your opinions on them. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We’re aware that the latest round of hotfixes caused some confusion for many Hunters, and want to offer some insight into the logic and reasoning that led to these particular changes.

Patch 5.3 resulted in Hunters feeling a bit stronger in PvP than in 5.2, where we feel they were in a much better place overall. Stampede in particular has been proving troublesome. We originally designed it with an “empty your stables” theme primarily for flavor–we wanted you to be able to see all of your favorite pets. In practice, it turned into more of a “deck building” mini-game, where Hunters were managing their entire stable to bring as much crowd control, raid buffs, etc. as possible. That’s opposite of our intentions with the Mists stable redesign; we want you to be able to pull out whichever pet you feel is ideal for your current situation. If you’re instead filling your stable based on whatever’s ideal for Stampede, you lose that entirely.

Furthermore, this min-maxing led to Stampede being a bit stronger of a DPS cooldown than we’d really like, especially for Beast Masters (who are already quite bursty in PvP). The hotfix lets us tone Stampede back just a little, and once again allows Hunters to keep whichever pets they like in the stable.

With Blink Strikes, our goals with the original 5.3 changes were to reduce Hunter burst for PvP as well as give them a passive talent option. Generally speaking, we prefer active talents to be slightly superior to passive talents in the same tier. No one will choose an active talent if it requires more work for the same reward. So, we wanted Blink Strikes to be DPS-neutral. Instead, it ended up being a PvP buff, hence the hotfix.

Regarding the changes to Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot, and Steady Shot, we had originally only buffed Arcane shot, but there was some risk that it would change Hunter rotations, which wasn’t our intent. We simply wanted to compensate for the Stampede and Blink Strikes changes. Ultimately, our goal with all of these changes is simply to tone back some of the outlying behaviors that were causing Hunters to feel a little too strong in PvP in 5.3, without much impact elsewhere. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)