As you can imagine, things have been pretty busy, so forgive us for not getting to these questions sooner.
We first wanted to update you with several tuning tweaks that we made recently that are not showing up correctly on your client tooltips (either beta or live). We wanted to document these so-called "stealth" buffs and nerfs to aid theorycrafting and avoid any confusion. We hope to get updated tooltips to the client soon (tm).
I should also note that these are very typical of the kinds of changes we make at this stage in development now that everything else has stabilized. We're not making more changes than normal, but just trying to document them better.
AoE damage adjustments:
- Sweeping Strikes now deals 50% of the triggering hit’s damage to an additional nearby target, down from 100%. Arms’ cleave damage was extremely high.
- We reduced the damage dealt by Glyphed Ice Lance to a second target to 40% of normal damage.
- Warlock sustained AoE damage was significantly too high, across the board. We reduced the base damage multiplier on Fire and Brimstone from 45% to 35%, and reduced the damage of Seed of Corruption, Felstorm, Wrathstorm, Harvest Life, Hellfire, Immolation Aura, and Void Ray by 30%.
- We reduced the damage of Divine Storm by 25%. Retribution Paladins were significantly too high on sustained AoE damage.
- Frost Death Knights needed a boost, so we increased the damage of Howling Blast to secondary targets up to 80% of the primary damage, from 50%.
- Chain Lightning now deals 17.5% less damage to the primary target, but chains 80% of the damage to each successive target, up from 70%. This should help spread the damage better, and also reduce the damage against a single target. The total damage remains the same, when glyphed.
- We increased the damage of Hurricane by 7.5%. Moonkin sustained AoE damage was too low, and we also wanted to emphasize Solar’s dominance over Lunar for AoE.
- We increased the damage of Mind Sear by 30%. Shadow sustained AoE was significantly low. It should still be preferable to multi-DoT on a few targets, but this should make Mind Sear a more attractive option against larger groups.
- We increased the damage of Swipe and Thrash by 6.5% in Cat Form. Ferals were a bit low on AoE damage.
- Rogues needed a rather significant boost to their sustained AoE damage. We opted to give that to them in the form of buffing something that was previously primarily there for utility, not damage, by a very large amount, turning it into a major damage button. We increased the damage of Crimson Tempest’s DoT by 700%.
- Beast Master AoE-focused pets were extremely overpowered for sustained AoE. We reduced the damage of Froststorm Breath and Burrow Attack by 50%, and increased their costs from 20 to 50. These pets should still be a sustained DPS gain to use, but not quite so absurdly so.
- We increased the damage of Spinning Crane Kick, Rushing Jade Wind, Crackling Tiger Lightning, and Chi Torpedo by 10%. We also reduced the period and duration of Spinning Crane Kick by 25%, and made it affected by melee haste.
Single target damage adjustments:
- We increased the damage of Ice Lance by 12.5%.
- We reduced the damage bonus to Frost Strike on Threat of Thassarian from 50% to 40%. Dual-wielding Frost was a bit higher than two-handed Frost.
- We fixed a significant bug that was affecting Frost Mage damage. Frostfire Bolt was not benefitting from Frostburn (Mastery). After fixing that, we brought their DPS back down by reducing the damage boost that the Frostbolt debuff provides from 8% per stack to 5% per stack.
- We reduced the damage increase to spells from Dream of Cenarius from 65% down to 50%.
- We reduced the attack power buff of Rabid from +50% to +25%. BM hunters needed to come down a bit, especially in burst.
- We had previously buffed Snake Trap's appalling damage, but it was high enough that hunters might have started using it in single-target rotations, which wasn't intended. We reduced the melee damage of the snakes by 75%.
Tank survivability adjustments:
- We were concerned that Blood DKs were too susceptible to spike damage. Blood DKs rely on being able to take damage and then heal it back, despite taking the largest hits of any tank. This works fine most of the time, but strings of unavoided hits or really large hits in a row might have presented a problem. We chose not to reduce damage taken, but to increase their maximum health instead. The stamina buff from Blood Presence from +8% to +25%.
- Brewmasters were proving extremely strong because they could maintain Shuffle as much as they wanted and Purify a very large amount of Staggered damage. Additionally, despite being very avoidance-heavy, they also were taking very smooth damage, since Stagger blunts so much of the attack’s damage. We reduced the base Stagger amount from 30% to 25%, and reduced the bonus energy regen provided by Stance of the Sturdy Ox from +30% to +10%.
Miscellaneous adjustments:
- We increased the duration of Glyph of Mind Spike from 6 sec to 9 sec.
- We increased the healing of Chi Torpedo by 25%, but Chi Torpedo and Expel Harm no longer cause Eminence. As mentioned before, the general principle here is that spells and abilities which do both damage and healing are balanced around the healing they do, and don’t need to do additional healing through Eminence.
- While we feel the damage of the warrior's Dragon Roar is balanced with the other two talents, the length of the stun feels gratuitous and helps prevent targets from being able to use defensive abilities. We're reducing the duration of the Dragon Roar stun to 0.5 sec, but changing its diminishing return category to the random / proc stun.
- Finally, we were worried about mage mana regeneration at level 85. Arcane in particular works better when it has the advantage of the level 90 talents. Once Mists is released, Arcane will be able to perform fine while leveling up and running the occasional dungeon. However, we're in this rare "lame duck" period where players are still actively running what will very soon be lower level content (i.e. Dragon Soul and the 4.3 dungeons). As a temporary measure, we've doubled mage mana regen across the board to 2% per sec up until level 85. This bonus will start scaling down by 20% per level between 85 and 90.
There may be additional band-aids we need to apply (to any class) to account for the fact that the game is now largely balanced around level 90. The game systems need to function at all character levels, and they will, but most players will care a lot less about level 85 balance in a few short weeks.
If you believe any of these buffs, nerfs of changes to be inappropriate, you're welcome to share your feedback, but you will likely need stronger evidence than a link to the latest output from Simcraft or other simulations.
Secondly, we posted details on several weapon enchant procs previously, which seemed particularly useful. With that in mind, here are some more:
- Lord Blastington’s Scope of Doom – 1 PPM, no ICD.
- Vision of the Predator – 15% chance on direct/periodic spell damage dealt, 105 sec ICD.
- Carbonic Carbuncle – 15% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell landing, 105 sec ICD.
- Windswept Pages – 15% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell landing, 65 sec ICD.
- Searing Words – 45% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell crit, 85 sec ICD.
- Light of the Cosmos – 15% chance on periodic damage, 45 sec ICD.
- Essence of Terror – 15% chance on harmful spell landing, 105 sec ICD.
- Terror in the Mists – 15% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell landing, 105 sec ICD.
- Darkmist Vortex – 15% chance on direct white/melee/harmful-spell landing, 105 sec ICD.
- Relic of Yulon – 20% chance on direct/periodic spell damage, 50 sec ICD.
- Relic of Xuen (STR) – 20% chance on white/yellow melee landing, 45 sec ICD.
- Relic of Xuen (AGI) – 20% chance on white/yellow/ranged crit, 55 sec ICD.
- Killing Machine – 6 PPM on white melee landing, no ICD.
- Sudden Doom – 3 PPM on white melee landing, no ICD.
- Fangs of the Father
- Assassination: 23.139% chance on white/yellow melee landing, no ICD.
- Combat: 9.438% chance on white/yellow melee landing, no ICD.
- Subtlety: 28.223% chance on white/yellow melee landing, no ICD.
- These chances are multiplied by 0.9 for lvl 89 targets, 0.8 for lvl 90 targets, 0.7 for lvl 91 targets, 0.6 for lvl 92 targets, and 0.5 for lvl 93+ targets.
- After adding a stack, if you have >30 stacks, you have a [1/(51-stacks)] chance to proc the Fury buff.
A few more trinket procs. We probably won't go through every quest and dungeon trinket unless that information is really needed.
The problem with that comparison is that other tanks generally don't have a whole lot of abilities they want to use on the same resource as their active mitigation.
Think about it.
Things that use Holy Power other than SotR/WoG: (nothing)
Things that use Rage(Bear) other than SD/FR: Maul
Things that use Rage(War) other than Shield Block/Barrier: Cleave/HS (with no proc)
Things that use Frost/Unholy runes other than Death Strike: Death & Decay (with no proc), Plague Strike/Icy Touch (only used if you let diseases fall off between Outbreak).
Things that use Chi other than Purifying Brew/Blackout Kick: Guard, Level 30 Talents, Rushing Jade Wind, Breath of Fire, and indirectly (via energy) Dizzying Haze, Path of Blossoms, Transcendence: Transfer, Healing Sphere.
It’s true that monks have many resource-consuming "fun buttons," but they’re not unique in that regard. Bears, for example, are limited by both rage and time (which converts to rage). They have
Maul to consume rage (at a very poor rage to damage conversion rate, but stackable), and many fun/utility abilities which are on the GCD, so effectively cost rage, or require shifting out of form, which can’t be done while actively tanking, and reset your rage. Paladins can continue using SotR and drop WoG completely for more damage, and are somewhat GCD limited. DKs have Army of the Dead, Chains of Ice, Control Undead, Dark Simulacrum, Glyphed Death Coil, Necrotic Strike, Path of Frost, Raise Ally, and Strangulate.
For Monks, you mention
Guard, which is just as important as Blackout Kick and Purifying Brew, not some auxiliary fun/utility button, and Rushing Jade Wind, which is effectively free because it replaces a Blackout Kick. Breath of Fire and the level 30 talents are available to use for more damage, similar to Maul or SotR or Heroic Strike, or for group healing. If Healing Sphere were free, it’d replace Tiger Palm rotationally, and make them defensively GCD-limited. Dizzying Haze, Path of Blossoms, and Transcendence: Transfer are intended to be used at range, or to get to range.
As a Brewmaster, you shouldn’t be using the level 30 talents rotationally, other than perhaps against sustained magic damage, or where their group healing utility is more useful than your own survivability. We fully intend you to maximize your survivability and damage reduction while actively tanking, unless the utility provided by them is especially useful.
The TLDR of all this is something we try and state frequently: you can't just compare classes without evaluating the entire package. Lists of "these all work this way so my thing should work that way too" usually don't present super compelling arguments (for us at least).
One of the healers for that run, a shaman, was really frustrated last night because she had constant low-on-mana issues that she simply wasn't having before.
There is a two part answer here, and it's a big discussion. First, mana might feel tighter at 85 than it will at 90. As I said above, we spend most of our effort making sure raiding at 90 feels good because after a few more weeks, the number of raids below level 90 will be a very small number. Part of the reason we made sure Dragon Soul was good and nerfed was so that nobody's progression would be unduly affected by the level 90 numbers.
Second, mana was a non issue for many raid healers, especially those in heroic gear due to the way Intellect provided so much longevity by increasing the mana pool. Those healers who didn't pay a lot of attention to Spirit (say you had Power Torrent instead of Heartsong) might definitely notice lower regen. So I don't want to suggest that you'll soon be back up to endless mana. Our goal for Mists was to make mana when undergeared not as punishing, but to make mana when well geared not as trivial. We just needed to reign in both extremes.
We didn't see healers struggling with mana on the level 90 raids to the point that we'd worry about it, but those characters weren't wearing the actual gear they'll acquire in Pandaria, and despite the many volunteers we had, it's still a small sample size.
So, we'd like to see how it feels at 90 before making any regen changes. If the next few weeks are unbearable for healers, then we'll do some sort of band-aid the way we did for Arcane mages above.
This isn't the appropriate thread to get back into the discussion of whether healers should ever be mana limited, or whether static mana pools are a good idea, etc. Feel free to bring those up in other threads. In this thread, the most helpful responses on the topic would be along the lines of the degree of the change. How much sooner are you using Mana Tide? Are there some fights you could defeat last week that just feel impossible this week? Is it something healers will adjust to after another week of Dragon Soul?
Is it intended for DK CDs like, Army of the dead and Empower runic weapon not to reset after wiping to an encounter b/c other lengthy CDs from other classes are being reseted after a wipe. It would be great to know if that behavior is intended or just an oversight.
Is this happening to you on live? My doomguard wasn't resetting last night on live after a few wipes so it might be something we get at 90. Does AotD reset work for you on the beta? (I'm assuming AotD would reset because it's 10 minutes, but not Empower Rune Wep since it's 5)
Most long-term cooldowns are not reset when a raid encounter ends. The ones we specifically wanted to hit were the battle rezes and the big, raid-wide cooldowns like Bloodlust and Alter Time. The question we asked ourselves was: would a reasonable, progression-oriented but not world-first guild delay their next pull by several minutes to wait for X to come off of cooldown? For Rebirth or Bloodlust, we concluded the answer was yes. For Army of the Dead or Empower Rune Weapon, we concluded the answer was no.
I agree. Guilds may just end up waiting the 10 minutes anyway. But at least now we know.
Alright, this post caused a knockdown, drag out in my office. Weapons were recklessly pulled down from walls, etc. I mumbled something about how I'm the boss and what I say goes, but that didn't work either.
After the dust cleared, we decided that we would allow any cooldown that lasts 5 minutes or longer to be reset on raid encounters. The one exception is shaman Reincarnation, because we don't want to have to include it as a true battle rez, but think it would be too valuable if you could use it every single attempt. Most fights (we hope) aren't planned around the shaman dying.
We'll implement this change as soon as we're able.
Never mind theorycrafting this and that heres hard fact.
Stating that your opinion is fact does not make it so. This is largely a theorycrafting thread. It's fine if that doesn't interest you, but then neither should the thread.
Just to check: It sounds like the intent is that every class generates roughly the equivalent of one proc-capable event per GCD (plus or minus half a second or so)?
To testers: My very-rough mental estimate based on the above description is putting spriests and afflocks (afflocks in particular) at a slight disadvantage compared to casters, and casters at a significant disadvantage compared to melee - how is this working out in reality?
That’s pretty much accurate. Note that we aren’t trying to get Stormlash exactly balanced between classes, just that it’s within the same order of magnitude. (
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Hunter (
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The mechanic changed, but it's no longer affected by Master of Beasts.
Bug.
Murder of Crows should also benefit.
Mostly I'm focused on the numbers, but I do want to comment on the AoE pet nerf. The particular thing I want Blizzard to focus on is that BM hunter AoE should be balanced around normal pets, beast cleave, etc. and not around the assumption that a BM hunter would bring an AoE pet (no hunter I know of does).
That’s exactly how we feel as well. We had been balancing BM AoE with Beast Cleave as the primary AoE method, and were thinking that the AoE pets would be a small boost on top of that if you went with them. However, as we recently noticed, the AoE pets over doubled your AoE DPS. The sheer damage that a Stampede of five Rabid Chimaeras were able to put out was, in a word, absurd. These changes should bring them back in line with where we intend them to be; a small boost over the other pets for AoE damage.
Additionally, we’re going to revert the more expensive focus costs of Froststorm Breath and Burrow Attack and instead go with 10 focus +5 focus per sec, and change Froststorm Breath to scale with the pet’s melee haste and crit, instead of spell haste and crit.
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Has anyone figured out (or could a blue just tell us) how the mistweaver mastery proc rate works with AE heals? Does the chance apply evenly to every effective heal from soothing mist to SCK in the middle of 25 people, or do AE heals have the proc chance reduced? If so, by how much?
Since Mistweavers heal from such a significant variety of spells, some of which tick very fast, it’s not purely a raw chance per heal event. The chance displayed on your Mastery tooltip is the base chance, but there’s a multiplier on ticks from various overly frequent sources:
Excellent, thanks a lot for that. Since they're not on the list can we assume surging mist, chi wave, chi burst, ZS: D, and Uplift are all at 1.0 multipliers per target?
Updated Gift of the Serpent proc scalars:
- Renewing Mist: 0.15
- Chi Wave: 0.25
- Zen Sphere (Periodic): 0.25
- Zen Sphere (Detonate): 0.15
- Chi Burst: 0.15
- Soothing Mist: 0.3
- Soothing Mist (Statue): 0.15
- Enveloping Mist: 0.2
- Uplift: 0.25
- Revival: 0.15
- Eminence (Self and Xuen): 0.2
- Eminence (Statue): 0.1
- Chi Torpedo: 0.15
- Spinning Crane Kick: 0.1
We said MULTIPLE times that if you limit how much chi we can have, what we are going to do? trim the fat and focus 100% of our chi on shuffle and purefying brew. Christ we been there at least half a dozen times on beta.
Every. Single. Time you guys mess with our energy regen, we left our other skills out of the rotation and focus 100% of our effort on shuffle/PB.
Great, then we’re on the same page. Other than niche situations, Shuffle, Purifying Brew (and Guard, which I assume you also are including) should be where you spend your Chi, just as a Guardian Druid uses nearly all of their rage on Savage Defense or Frenzied Regeneration, or a Protection Paladin uses nearly all of their holy power on Shield of the Righteous or Word of Glory.
The thing that has changed significantly since you last tried 11 (or 10.4) energy/sec base, is that Tiger Palm is free, so you have something to do with the extra time.
- 100% uptime on shuffle for 5 mins require 50 BoK uses or 100 chi.
- that leaves us with 55 chi to spend on other things.
If we use PB every 8 seconds that would cost about 38 chi, leaving 17 to spend on other things.
Long story short we can produce 155 chi and need 138 to keep shuffle up 100% and use PB very often.
You shouldn’t need (or usually want) to keep Shuffle up 100% of the time. You should have a limited amount of resources, that you need to intelligently distribute between Guarding, Shuffling, and Purifying. It shouldn’t be as simple as “Everyday I’m Shuffling”.
Having no wiggle room on Chi generation makes expertise HARD CAP our number one secondary stat. This is a problem. No serious tank I know is concerned with having hit/exp being valuable, but having a exp HARD CAP be number one is a little ridiculous. Before the energy change a minor tweak could have changed it.. now that a missed/dodged/parried Keg Smash is even more detrimental to survivability this quirky the hard cap will have to be met.
Can you provide a source for this? We’re skeptical that hard-capping both hit and expertise is optimal for Brewmasters.
So we've been discussing your changes.. you mentioned dropping stagger by 5%, but the new beta build is at 10%.
Yes, you are correct. We ended up reducing it all the way to 20%, not 25% as I said before. I mentioned in another thread that we're looking a lot at tank survivability and will have some more changes for you soon (tm). These are numbers adjustments, not mechanics changes.
The new rotation keeps about the same optimal usage of Purify - 85%. The difference is instead of 80% uptime of Shuffle with that, you have 75% uptime and simply never use anything but PB and BoK. Level 30 talents are never worth using for self-healing purposes, since you would be better off pushing back to 85% shuffle uptime given additional chi.
Sounds perfect. Thanks! We want Brewmasters to use the level 30 talents, but they shouldn't be rotational as they are for Mistweavers.
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Now that Crimson Tempest’s DoT actually does some dmg could we get the rolling dot mechanic put in this? It currently works like hemo (could we get that on this too) if you use it again with a smaller one it overwrites the bigger dot. Both dots already can't crit just like ignite I would hope they could at least get the rolling mechanic it has.
It’s currently intended to not do that, though it’s something we’re considering.
Are these accurate? I only ask because since the hotfix sub is proccing as slow as combat now and you didn't say anything about it in your hotfix updates post.
Which hotfix? Nothing has changed with this recently.
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When I use the Unleashed Elements attack with Frostbrand Weapon and the Unleashed Fury talent, I go up to 150% speed (according to my character sheet). However, when I switch to Ghost Wolf while in this form, there is no additional speed increase; it stays at 150%, and then after 4 seconds it goes down to 130%. They don't stack. Is this intended?
Is Ghost Wolf's speed increase intended to stack with anything?
This should be fixed soon.
Ghost Wolf should stack with other speed increases.
Echo of the Elements appears to duplicate Unleash Flame casts, but not Unleash Frost. Intended?
This should also be fixed soon.
Unleash Frost should be able to Echo.
Searing totem is still a 35yd range for Elemental. Could we please see it bumped up to 40 yds? Thanks!
Sure. We recently changed
Searing Totem to 25 yard range base (so 40 for Elemental).
Healing Stream and Healing Tide totem pulse speed is based off of only spell haste right? or does it vary by spec?
Only spell haste.
Also is Fire Elemental's attack speed based off of spell haste or melee haste?
Only melee haste.
I'd really like to know exactly how Stormlash functions.
There is a quote from Bismark or Saxe or someone about how laws are like sausages and it's best not seeing them getting made. I used to work with Bruce Shelley, and he said the same thing about game design.
Stormlash is complicated. You do not need to understand or remember all of this to benefit from the spell. We're just sharing the insides of the sausage because it was asked for theorycrafting purposes.
Stormlash. Chapter One...
- The base damage is 20% of AP or 30% of SP, whichever is higher.
- That amount is multiplied by 0.2 for normal pets, and by 0 for guardian pets.
- Next, if it’s an autoattack (or spell that we count as an autoattack such as Wind Lash or Shadow Blades or Tiger Strikes), then it’s multiplied by 0.4, and then by WeaponSpeed / 2.6. And if it’s an offhand attack, it’s then multiplied by 0.5.
- If it’s periodic damage, it doesn’t Stormlash, unless it’s Mind Flay, Malefic Grasp, or Drain Soul.
- For all other spells, it’s then multiplied by BaseCastTime / 1.5 sec, with a floor on the BaseCastTime of 1.5 sec.
- And then there are multipliers for certain spells: 2x for Lightning Bolt, 2x for Lava Burst, 2x for Drain Soul, 0.5x for Sinister Strike.
- Finally, that’s the average damage it deals. It will actually deal that +/- 15 %.
- It also has a 0.1 sec ICD on triggering, and can miss based on spell hit.
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Quick point of interest. Succubus and Grimoire of Supmremacy talent: shivarra, for Warlocks. Tooltip says that Seduction/Mesmerize will be applied to target who stun/silence/fears the master. noticed that as a rogue stealthed, sapping a warlock causes the seduction/mesmerize to occur and pull the rogue out of stealth.
Bug, or Working as Intended?
Bug. The Succubus and Shivarra were autocasting
Seduction /
Mesmerize on the CCer, without bothering to check if they could actually see the target.
Fix the pet aggro issues! Let me at least raid as Demonology using Grimoire of Supremacy!
Should be fixed now. There were some issues with threat from pets in Dragon Soul specifically.
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cleave is its not worth using cleave at all as SMF as the damage of heroic strike is 17645 and cleave on two targets is 17643 which is 11 damage difference, although it isn't much at all it still isn't worth using cleave at all, maybe add the do more damage when using one handers like heroic strike has.
We recently made
Cleave do 1.4x damage when using a 1H weapon, just like Heroic Strike.
Does heroic throw reset the swing timer anymore? If not, please make it do that again, or attach a very minimal rage cost to it. Due to the ability costing 0 rage and not resetting the swing timer (So we think.), it has snuck its way into our single target rotation to fill up empty-gcds.
We purposely left
Heroic Throw (and
Storm Bolt) not resetting the swing timers for warriors who absolutely can't stand to have idle GCDs. As long as Heroic Throw doesn't push other abilities out of your rotation, we don't have a problem with it.