Death Knight (
Forums)
Death Strike Healing not Working
There is a bug that prevents Death Strike from healing at all at the moment on beta. This is the kind of thing we should be able to hotfix. (
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Druid (
Forums)
Allow me to play as Balance without looking ridiculous.
We want to clarify a bit more about the Moonkin model update being "in the schedule." Essentially this means that though it is on the way, it is not currently intended to be ready for the launch of Mists of Pandaria. (
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Monk (
Forums)
Monks Aren't Fun to Level
There are apparently some bugs in what levels monks get certain abilities. There should not be big level gaps in any class until you start hitting the 50s.
Overall, classes should still get new abilities at about the same rate they always did. We shifted some around to where they would make more sense (e.g. Shadow priests need some heals, but not nearly as many as a Disc priest) but those gaps are made up for by old talents that are no spec-specific spells. Using priests as an example again, all Holy priests get Chakra instead of having to spend a (no-brainer) talent point on them.
Feedback on specific monk abilities is appreciated. We just didn't want you to blame the talent changes for an apparent lack of abilities. (
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Chi Wave
The design of Chi Wave is that it jumps from hostile to friendly to hostile to friendly and so on. It prefers the closest target, and in the next build will try to perfer players over pets and guardians. The way we use it internally is to cast it on the tanks, which causes it to hit the boss, and then back to the tank and so on. We agree missing is pretty punitive, but I believe Mistweavers don't yet have the Spirit to hit conversion mechanic of healers. (
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Monk Feedback
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Monks are a new class, and we will be iterating on them quite a bit and often we change mechanics a lot faster than we make beta builds. With that in mind, we wanted to clarify our design intent on some of the abilities:
Dizzying Haze -- We increased the threat and lowered the energy. We're not crazy about making it do damage because then it risks competing with other Brewmaster abilities. We really don't want Dizzying Haze used rotationaly on single-targets. We also run into whether or not the ability should break CC if it does damage.
AE tanking -- We agree that monks need a little more ability to cleave.
Missing Jabs -- It isn't intended to lose all Energy on a miss. We will fix that. (
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Paladin (
Forums)
Protection Paladin Design
You shouldn't have to "wait to do things" much. The Protection rotation should include Avenger's Shield, Crusader Strike, Judgment, Consecration and Holy Wrath, with Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory as finishers. You should almost always have a button to push. We don't have a problem with occasional holes in the rotation, so long as those don't occur with frustrating regularity. (
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Shaman (
Forums)
Lava Lash Tooltip Error
Lava Lash does still spread Flame Shock, but the tooltip was, strangely, updated and no longer say it spreads Flame Shock.
Yes, this is just a tooltip error. The design intent is that Lava Lash spreads Flame Shock.
There is a minor glyph that lets you turn the Flame Shock spread off (which is sometimes useful to shaman), but the tooltip appears as if you always have the glyph even when you do not. (
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Warlock (
Forums)
Warlock Tanking
Just to make our intent clear, the Glyph of Demon Hunting isn't intended to turn Demonology warlocks into a tanking spec. You won't be able to queue as a tank for Dungeon Finder for instance and won't have the survivability or tools of say a Protection paladin.
Historically, warlocks felt tankier than other casters and could even off-tank some encounters. We have made an effort in Mists to recapture some of that flavor. A warlock with this glyph should feel like they are about as effective tanking as an Arms warrior who pulls out a shield and swaps to Defensive Stance, or a Feral druid who goes into Bear form. You might be able to off-tank adds or pick up an actual boss for a short period of time if the tank goes down.
To make warlocks an actual tank would take more significant changes. For example, we want tanks to have to pick up separate tanking gear than their DPS gear (this is even true of druids) and want tanks to have to give up some of their DPS potential in exchange for their survivability. In short, it needs to be a commitment, and that's the sort of thing that needs larger gameplay changes than just a glyph.
That shouldn't stop the glyph of Demon Hunting from being fun though. As you can probably tell, we are trying to make even the major glyphs more about character customization and fun.
As some of you have pointed out, the glyph of Demon Hunting in your beta build doesn't deliver on what I described above as the design. The newer version of the glyph, hopefully available in the next beta build, allows a warlock to toggle in and out of the off-tank / survival mode, more like the druid going Bear or the warrior going Defensive.
The new shapeshift granted by the glyph is called Threatening Presence (PH) and adds Taunt and Fury Ward to the normal Metamorphosis toolkit. You still get the damage reduction from mastery instead of the damage boost from mastery while in this form. You can also choose to go into normal Metamorphosis even if you have the glyph. Let us know how it feels.
We appreciate all the feedback and passion on this topic. We expected this glyph would serve a pretty niche community and were surprised at how many players were excited about it. We are still in beta and are still very much experimenting with what kind of gamplay we can deliver in glyphs. (
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Warlock Fire
So we’ve obtained some additional insight about what exactly lies behind the use of the word “hope” in regard to our efforts to achieve green fire for warlocks. Essentially, we want this updated information out so that we can better manage expectations, especially as the announcement created such a flurry of excitement.
Unfortunately, dear warlocks, those of you who retained a modicum of skepticism were right to, as it would seem that the chance of green fire for warlocks is even less as likely as the wording of the original information indicated.
Since spell effects are not as simple to change around as — for example — druid forms are, we need some additional technology implemented in order to allow the use of red or green fire to be a player choice and not a permanent change that is put in place for all warlocks.
Also, technology aside, we want to do the introduction of something like green fire in the right way. Implementing it in “a quest” doesn’t really explain our stance here. We want something as substantial as this change to be an epic accomplishment for you.
So though we have definitely heard your thoughts on the matter, and we’ve explained what we want to do from our side, green fire will not be available with the launch of Mists of Pandaria. And we haven’t a timeframe to commit to, or communicate about, at this stage.
It is with regret that we were unable to clarify these details more when we first mentioned our intent — “our hope” — and we wish we hadn’t caused such excitement and raised expectations for those that didn’t instantly take the news with an “I’ll believe it when I see it” pinch of salt. It seems, as many of us said at the time here and on Twitter and fansites, the proof of the (green fire) pudding really was in the eating. (
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Warrior (
Forums)
Protection Warrior Design
We wanted to clarify a little the direction we are trying to go with Protection warriors and ultimately all tanks.
You generate rage through auto attacks. You also have some sources of rage more under your control, such as shouts, Charge, and in particular Shield Slam (the same is true of MS or BT if you are Arms or Fury). You no longer generate rage from taking damage, because we found that it basically meant Prot warriors always had infinite rage, so the resource wasn't relevant to gameplay. We think classes are more fun and interesting when they have to manage, even to a small extent, some resource.
For Protection, we expect you to spend most of your rage on Shield Block. Shield Block is not an emergency button. It generally won't save your life. But this is a good thing. Emergency buttons with resource costs aren't reliable. On the other hand using Shield Block (or Shield Barrier for magic damage) will make a difference over the course of a fight. It will help your healers out. It will slightly blunt spikes. Shield Block has no cool down, allowing you to use it more frequently when you have lots of rage, but also letting you play a little with when you use it. If you know a big hit is coming soon, you can delay the block for a few seconds. Otherwise, you can use it, knowing you'll have rage soon for another one.
One of the changes for old time Prot warriors is getting used to not spamming Heroic Strike. Think of HS (and Cleave) as an alternative to Shield Block for times when you don't need to worry about blocking, such as when you are soloing, off-tanking or doing easy content. If you use too many Heroic Strikes, you won't have rage for Shield Block as well. Your other attacks, Devastate, Revenge, Shield Slam and Thunder Clap, should fill in most of the holes in your rotation and should be sufficient for holding threat without HS spam.
As I mentioned recently, Prot warrior damage is probably 50% of where it needs to be. When we have that adjusted, your threat will be higher and those Shield Slam and Revenge hits in particular should feel meatier.
If you are a Guardian Druid, there are a lot of analogues. Notice what costs rage, and don't spend it on the wrong things. If you are a Prot paladin, spend your Holy Power mostly on Shield of the Righteous (in this case for damage and mitigation). If you are a Blood DK, your rotation isn't that different than it is on live.
We will ultimately balance all of the tanks around their suite of survival mechanics. Just be aware that we balance based on typical group situations and not how long a tank can go without getting a heal. If a tank can be two shot by a boss (assuming appropriate gear and skill), it's a design problem. If a tank is getting four or five shot, it's a healer problem.
P.S. Standard caveat that our design intent here is to make things more fun overall, not to nerf anybody. (
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Thunder Clap
TC's attack power scaling was removed. It is gone.
That doesn't sound like something we would document. Do you remember where you saw it? In any case, it isn't accurate. Thunder Clap has a 0.456 attack power coefficient. We cleaned up a lot of melee tooltips to remove "scales with attack power" because it is pretty much always true. We don't say for Flash Heal "scales with spell power." It's just superfluous.
There is a general problem where Protection warrior damage is much too low across the board. That is something we are working on. (
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