More changes to ammos and shards later
This upcoming patch will be the largest one we've ever done with tons of new content and a lot of class changes. However, we still have to pick our battles. We can't get pursue every idea we have and still complete the patch in a reasonable amount of time, and I know I'm getting pretty impatient myself for Ulduar.

These are small steps. If we like the way they turn out, there will be larger steps in time to arrows and shards. I'd love to share our ideas, but they need to bake a little longer and we need to make sure we can actually deliver so players don't feel like we broke any promises. (Source)

"Bring the player, not the class" in PvP


We definitely want to get more specs into PvP. However, one of the coolest parts of Arena is building comps with certain synergies. I'm not sure it would be a good design goal to say almost any 2, 3 or 5 classes can form a good team together. And yet the roles in PvP are quite different than in PvE. There are some Arena teams with no healers and some with several. We can't just tell players to pick up a healer and you're good to do, because the healer you get can change things dramatically.

Let's get a little more parity in Arenas first and get in those classes and specs that have historically been underepresented, and then we can start thinking about how much sense it makes to give players more flexibility on how they form their team. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Heart of the Wild nerf in 3.1
In order to keep our goal of having all 4 tank classes capable of handling Ulduar, we need to get tank health pools a little closer together.

While I won't hide that this is a nerf for bears, we also don't want to get to the point of having a "mana sponge" tank, now that we are making mana more of an issue for healers.

If druids slip behind as a result of lack of mitigation, avoidance or cooldowns, we will buff them. (Source)

Lifebloom changes in 3.1
Rolling Lifeblooms on 2-3 tanks is just hands down one of the most -- probably the most -- efficient heals in the game. We didn't want to nerf the amount Lifebloom heals, but we were concerned druids would jump to the top of the healer stack pretty quickly with the recent mana changes.

We added the bonus to the bloom to improve its use in PvP, where you can't always keep 3 stacks rolling, and for say throwing a single spell on a rogue where you don't plan on keeping it rolling.

Keep in mind that yanking the hot removal of DKs is also a druid buff for PvP.

Edit: I meant to add that we discussed getting the same effect by having the 2nd or 3rd application of the spell on the same target increase in mana cost. But that becomes pretty complex to explain in a tooltip and might be too mathy for quick calculations when deciding whether you want to roll blooms or not.

[...] We think rolling is a fun part of the spell. It's just too efficient and makes Lifebloom the best heal per second and heal per mana. We don't want you to change the way you use the spell, at least in terms of single tank healing. The bonus on a bloom or dispel is just supposed to be a bonus.

If the numbers aren't right, we'll continue to tweak them. It may be that the cost needed to go up by 75% instead of 100% for example. (Source)

Resto druid role
Someone asked whether we were intending to change the Resto druid's role. We aren't. All of these changes fall, in our minds at least, into the realms of balance or polish.

Fixing mana regeneration and Lifebloom efficiency are balance problems. Both were too good. Separating the roles of Nourish and Regrowth a little is a polish issue. They were too close together.

One of the things I still feel works the best about the Resto druid is in how different players can heal using different strategies and still be succesful. We have a long way to go with some classes and specs to give them that level of variety. (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Explosive Shot
Yes, we did nerf the damage of Explosive Shot a little more. After many of the changes to locks, DKs, warriors and the rest, we felt SV hunters were too high. MM may still be a little too low. BM seems on target at the moment, but we had a few bugs in new pet abilities especially that was making it hard to get accurate numbers.

I'm not sure what you mean about Survival compexity. Are you talking about the shots themselves or the organization of the tree? I think some players are still thinking they are supposed to trap dance in PvE. (Source)

Quiver removal in 3.1 and effects on Steady Shot
We just wanted to remove the quiver without losing its haste bonus. Except for inventory changes, you should not notice a difference. (Source)

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Viper Sting
Yes, that is pretty close to how we feel. Poisons are a weakness of the priest class. We don't want to remove that weakness. However Viper Sting exploited that weakness to a very punishing degree. Poison removal, as many other classes will tell you, does not solve "the rogue problem" and I'm not sure there is "a rogue problem" any longer. (Source)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Unleashed Rage adding 3/6/9% Expertise in the patch notes
It is 3/6/9 expertise. Not sure where the % came from. It isn't in our tooltips at the moment. (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Drain Soul and Soul Shards in 3.1
Drain Soul will produce enough shards that you should never be without them. Even if you are learning a boss through repeated wiping, you should be able to get the new shards you need each attempt.

In fact, it produces so many shards that we figured you'd end up having to delete them constantly, which would be annoying. The 32 limit will fill up your largest bag (which only holds shards anyway) without spilling over into the rest of your inventory. We figured very few locks carried around a lot more shards than that, and like I said, they are easy enough to replace now for those of you who do manage to go through them quickly. (Source)

Pandemic and Resilience
Yes, I believe this was true. Shadowform was affected by resilience, but Pandemic was not. It was not out intention that the talent let you skip around resilience. Making sure the talent is an appropriate damage increase is important to use, but we won't do it by letting you avoid the damage reduction that resilience is designed to impart. (Source)

DoTs crits in 3.1
I think we can all agree that when dots crit and when direct damage spells crit, they are affected the same way.

So these arguments basically come down to "It is unfair that dots that don't crit are affected by resilience when direct damage spells are not." But this is arguing against the way resilience has worked for some time and the way it works for warlocks and priests without the talents in question is unfair. You are essentially arguing dots are too weak in PvP on live today, and have been too weak since we first made resilience affect them. Adding a talent that lets them do more damage in some situations should not change the rules for what happens to them normally, at least in our opinion.

You can also argue that warlocks and shadow priests are too weak, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the resilience rules on dots are the problem. Our main goal is that resilience should be something all classes need to contend with regardless of how they do damage.

Now, there is another way to go. We could just say that dots always can crit (i.e. remove Pandemic et al.) and resilience affects them the same way as direct damage spells, and then readjust all the numbers to make sure dots are not too powerful when they don't crit. That would be a valid approach, but aside from being a ton of work, it's just not the direction we want to take the feature.

I agree with the posters who said that the problem with saying "double dipping" and similar phrases is that you risk confusing players who think that dots that crit are reduced twice by resilience, which doesn't happen. They ARE reduced by resilience whether they crit or not, which is our intention and apparently working correctly. I do agree that the mechanics here are fairly technical for players not well versed in them.

We do appreciate the numbers though. It is nice to be able double check our own calculations. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Rage generation while shielded
Our plan is to allow warriors (probably druids too) to generate rage when being hit while protected by an absorption shield AND also while hitting a target with an absorption shield.

We think we can get this in, but I am reluctant to use the word "promise" ever. (Source)