Update: 11.10.2009

• Druids: Gift of the Earthmother note clarified
• Paladins: Sanctified Light (changed reverted based on update to Lay on Hands)
• Rogues: Murder
• Items: Glyph of Victory Rush note corrected

Druid
Restoration

• Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.

Paladin

• Sanctified Light: This talent now also has a 33/66/100% chance to prevent Lay on Hands from causing Forbearance when Lay on Hands is used on others.

Rogue
Assassination

• Murder: This talent now provides a flat damage increase of 2/4% against all targets, instead of only targets which do not appear in Icecrown.

Warrior

• Glyph of Victory Rush: This glyph now increases the critical strike chance of Victory Rush by 30%, regardless of the percentage of the target’s remaining health.

A few months ago, we unveiled the Battle.net account, our new way for players to log in to World of Warcraft and future Blizzard games, sign up for upcoming beta tests, shop the online Blizzard Store, and more with just one username and password. This was just the first step in the rollout of the brand-new Battle.net; in the future, players will be able to use Battle.net to participate in cross-realm chat in World of Warcraft, create real-life friends lists, communicate across different games, and a whole lot more.

In preparation for the launch of these new features, on November 11, 2009, all current World of Warcraft players will be required to merge their World of Warcraft accounts with a Battle.net account in order to log in to the game. As our way to say “thanks” for taking a moment to go through the process, existing World of Warcraft accounts that upgrade to Battle.net (including those that have already switched over) will receive a brand-new penguin in-game pet. Starting on November 11, all World of Warcraft players will need to log in to the game using a Battle.net username and password, and anyone who wishes to create a new World of Warcraft account will need to start with a Battle.net account.

Creating a Battle.net account is simple and free. To merge your existing account with a Battle.net account, visit http://us.battle.net . For more info, check out the Battle.net site or read the FAQ: http://us.battle.net/faq/index.html

Account conversion: http://us.battle.net
FAQ: http://us.battle.net/faq/index.html

Random Dungeons and Heroic Lockout
It's not that you don't get saved to a Heroic dungeon when using the Random Option in the tool; rather, the Random Option will ignore your Heroic lockouts if you continue to use it, though it will attempt to weight the chance of being randomly selected for a Heroic dungeon to which you've been saved lower than those to which you have not, provided there are enough people in the queue to fill a group for an alternate instance without making you wait an excessive amount of time for a dungeon you have yet to do. (Source)

5-Man Dungeons Loot Quality
We tend to provide better loot for forward progression, not the other way around. So you'll see better loot in the three Icecrown Citadel five-player wings (which will include the chance to embark upon the epic quest line to obtain Quel'Delar) given that the dungeon is tuned for higher gear levels than Oculus, just as you see better loot in Trial of the Champion than existing Wrath of the Lich King dungeons today. I'd prefer it if you didn't call it an act of laziness either, as there are plenty of new items with unique art being added in the 3.3 content update.

In any event, given that Oculus will award Emblems of Triumph in patch 3.3, two Emblems of Frost if it's your first Heroic dungeon of the day run via the Random Dungeon option in the Dungeon system, and two additional Emblems of Triumph if you complete the Heroic dungeon via the Random Dungeon option each time after that, you're technically provided access to better rewards -- and a faster accumulation of emblems -- than you are today. (Source)

Oculus difficulty
It's funny. Last week several community managers, developers, encounter designers, and quality assurance folk logged in to the test realms to try out the Dungeon tool by playing in pick-up groups with players via the Random Dungeon option. One of the encounter designers was hit with Oculus first. In jest, we all had a good laugh at the choice provided him for his first go. No one left the group and they cleared it in a flash, I believe getting the 20-minute achievement as well. This was before creatures and bosses were tuned down a bit, and vehicle gear-scaling improved on the test realms.

It's anecdotal to be sure, but players certainly didn't shy away from enjoying the time running the dungeon with a Blizzard employee; and they had little trouble clearing it. It's one of the faster dungeons in Wrath if done right. Maybe we should implement a system where, every time Oculus is selected for you in the Dungeon tool, a Blizzard employee is put in your group. :p

[...] This might not fully address your question, but part of the reason the changes were made to Oculus was due to the fact that players were shying away from that dungeon while testing the Dungeon system more often than they were from other dungeons. This is the type of data we're watching on the test realms, particularly when features such as this come along.

Are the test realm players a typical sample audience? Perhaps not. But in the grand scheme of our World of Warcraft player base, I wouldn't even say those regularly running Heroic dungeons are a good sample audience. This is a large game and people enjoy many different aspects of it, some more so than others. (Source)

Vault of Archavon Difficulty
The vault bosses are designed and meant to be very puggable so pretty much anybody can do them (within reason of course). The problem this brings about is what gear they can drop. If we put tokens on them then they are guaranteed loot for everybody in a very easy way - when gear is this easy to get we generally wouldn't want it to be as good. By making it so it's basically a lottery on what drops/what you get we feel we can put some top notch gear on the bosses and it doesn't cause any big issues. (Source)

Rogue
Weapon Swapping
Let me put it this way....

Fine: A rogue changes targets so needs to swap weapons to get a different poison on that target. This is more of a strategic thing -- something you only do a few times per fight.

Not fine: A rogue swaps weapons constantly on the same target in order to get lots of poisons on that target. This is more of a hassle, not an interesting decision the player is making. This is more in line with a caster switching weapons to maximize a proc and then swapping back. It's not fun and it feels like you have to do this annoying and unintuitive (unless you read the forums a lot) trick to maximize your dps.

Now like someone said above, you could make a weapon swapping mod for say Feral druids and few people would feel the need to use it. It's not the existence of a mod that's a problem. Mods do lots of crazy things. It's a problem if it feels mandatory to raiding rogues. That however is a very subjective call and one that's ultimately up to us to make. We're keeping an eye on it. (Source)

The solution is very easy (conceptually) - when Deadly Poison procs and a 5-stack is on the target, cause your other hand's poison to proc. This effectively replicates the effect of weapon swapping, works for all specs, and slightly buffs rogue PVE DPS beyond where it's at right now - something which rogues are in dire need of, looking at the parses coming out of 3.3 so far. Additionally, it ensures that raiding rogues will use Deadly Poison, as Blizzard has worked so hard to make it attractive to us.

We've heard that suggestion a few times and it might be something we explore. We'd certainly rather make swapping not necessary rather than just be mean and prevent it.

Some of you are posting that rogues will use anything that maximizes their dps and this maximizes their dps. That's not really the point.

Our original comment on swapping was that it appeared to provide a marginal dps increase and we knew that some rogues who tried it weren't happy with how it worked because the risk was high of screwing something up. So while it theoretically maximized dps, it was risky enough and the gain low enough that we weren't sure it would become mainstream.

Now things are trending that the dps increase is significant and Adrine's mod is written so well that it takes a lot of the risk away, even in PvP. That weights things more towards doing something about it, though judging from Adrine's posts, I don't think he'll mind. (Source)

Rogues aren't getting nerfed
Agreed. We're not interested in nerfing rogues here, just making an annoying mechanic less attractive. (Source)

Warlock
Soulshatter hit chance
As far as we know, Soulshatter always hits. It isn't tied to any other talent, such as Suppression. It would still hit if you had zero +hit on your gear. This was changed at some point after LK launched. (Source)

Fel Armor healing threat
Fel Armor causes no healing threat in 3.3. This was a relatively recent change though. (Source)