PvP Rewards, Hunter changes, Blue posts, Blizzcon

[Boubouille]

WotLK Beta - PvP Rewards Upgrade
Today we've got a change I forgot to mention during the coverage of the Build 8770, the PvP cloaks and Trinkets from the honor system have been upgraded. We're still unsure if old items will be upgraded as well or if players will have to rebuy the new versions to get the improved stats.

Trinkets - Battlemaster's Celerity, Battlemaster's Aggression, Battlemaster's Courage, Battlemaster's Resolve
Cloaks - Sergeant's Reinforced Cloak, Sergeant's Reinforced Cape

Official Talent Calculator - Hunter Changes
The official talent calculator has been updated once again with upcoming beta changes for hunters !

Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8781))
Beast Mastery

• Master's Call has been removed from the talents and is now a baseline skill. (Source)
• Pathfinding now increases the speed bonus of your Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Pack by 4/8%, and increases your speed while mounted by 5/10%. The mounted movement speed increase does not stack with other effects. (Old - Didn't increase mounted movement speed)
• Aspect Mastery has been moved from Tier 10 to Tier 3. It is now a 1 point talent and it increases the mana returned from your Aspect of the Viper by 10%, reduces the damage done to you while in Aspect of the Monkey by 10% and increases the attack power bonus gained with Aspect of the Hawk by 50%. (Old version - 5 Points Talent for the same effect)
• Spirit Bond effect changed - While your pet is active, you and your pet will regenerate 2% of total health every 10 sec and increases healing done to you and your pet by 10%. (Old - Didn't increase healing done to you or your pet)
• Animal Handler now Increases your pet's chance to hit by 2/4% and reduces the cooldown of your Master's Call ability by 5/10 sec. (Old - Increases your speed while mounted by 4/8% and your pet's chance to hit by 2/4%.)
• *New Talent* - Separation Anxiety (Tier 10) - When your pet is greater than 20 yards from you or is out of line of sight of you, its damage is increased by 2/4/6/8/10%, and when you and your pet are within 20 yards of each other, you and your pet's movement speed is increased by 2/4/6/8/10%.
  

Marksmanship

• Improved Stings has been changed from 5 to 3 points - Now increases the damage done by your Serpent Sting and Wyvern Sting by 10/20/30% (Old - 6/12/18/24/30%) and the mana drained by your Viper Sting by 10/20/30% (Old - 6/12/18/24/30%). In addition, reduces the chance Stings will be dispelled by 10% (Old - 6/12/18/24/30%).
• Trueshot Aura now affects all Raid members.
• Rapid Recuperation has been redesigned - Reduces the mana and focus cost of all shots and abilities by you and your pet by 20/40/60% while under the effect of Rapid Fire, and you gain mana equal to 50/100/150% of the damage you do under the effect of Rapid Killing over 6 sec. (Old - Reduces the mana cost of all shots and abilities by 20/40/60% while under the effect of Rapid Fire and Rapid Killing.)
• Marked for Death now Increases the damage done by your shots and the damage done by your pet's special abilities by 2/4/6/8/10%, on the marked targets, and increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Kill Shot or Chimera Shot by 2/4/6/8/10%. (Old - Didn't affect pet abilities and Chimera Shot)
• Improved Steady Shot doesn't affect Kill Shot anymore and affects Chimera Shot instead.
• Chimera Shot damage down from 150% to 125% of weapon damage. It now refreshes the current Sting on your target instead of consuming it and trigger an effect :
  Serpent Sting - Instantly deals 40% of the damage done by your Serpent Sting.
  Viper Sting - Instantly restores mana to you equal to 60% of the total amount drained by your Viper Sting. (Old - 30% mana burned and recovered from the target)
  Scorpid Sting - Attempts to Disarm the target for 10 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per 1 minute. (Old - Reduces damage done by the target's next three attacks by 60%. Damage reduction diminished by 20% following each attack.)
  

Survival

• Savage Strikes doesn't affect Counterattack anymore. (Probably a typo)
• Deflection has been moved from Tier 2 to Tier 3. It now increases your parry chance by 2/4/6%. (Old - 1/2/3/4/5%)
• Survival Instincts has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 2.
• *New Talent* - T.N.T. (Tier 2) - Your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Explosive Shot have a 5/10/15% to stun targets for 2 sec when they deal damage, and increases the critical strike chance of your Explosive Shot and Explosive Trap by 5/10/15%.
• Survivalist now increases your Stamina by 2/4/6/8/10%. (Old - Increased your Total Health by 2/4/6/8/10%)
• Trap Mastery has been moved from Tier 4 to Tier 3 and is being redesigned - No details yet.
• Improved Feign Death has been renamed to Survival Tactics and moved from Tier 4 to Tier 3. It now reduces the chance your Feign Death ability will be resisted by 2/4%, and reduces the cooldown of your Disengage ability by 2/4 sec. (Old - Reduced FD Resist by 2/4% and damage during FD by 15/30%) Important - Disengage now causes the Hunter to jump back instantly 10-15ish yards to gain distance. 30 second cooldown. (Source)
• Deterrence (When activated, increases the chance to dodge and parry all melee and ranged attacks by 25%, and resist all spell attacks by 60% for 10 sec. ) has been removed from the talents and is now a baseline skill. (Source)
• Surefooted now increases hit chance by 1/2/3% and reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 16/25/50%. (Old - reduced the duration of movement impairing effects by 10/20/30%)
• *New Talent* - Lock And Load (Tier 4) - You have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target and a 5/10/15% chance when you Sting a target to cause your next 3 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.
• *New Talent* - Hunter vs. Wild (Tier 5) - Increases you and your pet's attack power and ranged attack power equal to 10/20/30% of your total Stamina.
• Counterattack damage has been reverted to its old value. (This might be a typo, the damage increase is still here in Build 8788)
• Potent Venom has been renamed to Noxious Stings - If Wyvern Sting is dispelled, the dispeller is also afflicted by Wyvern Sting lasting 16/25/50% of the duration remaining, and increases all damage done by you on targets afflicted by your Serpent Sting by 1/2/3%. (Old - Increases your damage done to targets afflicted by your Wyvern Sting or Serpent Sting by 1/2/3%, and reduces the mana cost of your Serpent Sting by 10/20/30%.)
• Hunting Party now gives your Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot and Steady Shot critical strikes have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to restore 2% mana, 10 energy, 4 rage or 10 Runic Power to all members of your party. (Old - Affected all critical shots and had a 20/30/40/50/60% chance to restore mana/energy/rage/runic power)
• Explosive Shot has been redesigned - You fire an explosive charge into the target, dealing 416-486 Fire damage to the enemy target, and an additional 104-121 Fire damage to all enemies within 5 yards of the target every second for 2 sec. (Old - You fire an explosive charge into the target, dealing 410-480 Fire damage every second for 2 sec to all enemies within 5 yards of the target.)

Blue posts

"Lesser" heal spells after downranking nerf
If we find that any of the healers is now missing a critical tool from their toolbox (specifically an efficient heal that is good for e.g. topping of a rogue), then that is something we will definitely consider. (Source)

Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King
We've talked about this a lot, and I'll admit that it may not be the best way to go (designing tanks for certain bosses). Currently we are talking more about HOW classes tank, not WHAT they tank. Potential examples: The warrior tanks by having a shield, a lot of mitigation and avoidance. The druid tanks by having a huge health pool. The paladin tanks by using passive reactive abilities. That is a gross simplification, but perhaps you get the idea. This would naturally lead to some tanks being better at some fights, but it should leave more flexibility to the individual. Players won't count up all the bosses and say "Only 4 hit for magic damage, so we don't need a death knight."

[...]

You shouldn't feel like you need a warrior. I wrote some of those comments trying to reassure warriors that the changes they saw weren't an attempt (on purpose or accidentally) to phase them out of being awesome tanks. But in retrospect I see my comments were a little misleading and just made non-warriors more concerned. Making all tanks viable needs to come first, and the flavor / niches (while still important) need to be second. (Source)

Blacksmithing - Epic Weapons not requiring any skill level / Bind on Equip ? (Titansteel Bonecrusher, Titansteel Destroyer, Titansteel Guardian)
It was actually an oversight. However, I'm open to leaving them BoE if people feel it makes for better gameplay. The scenario you describe sounds like a pretty fringe case though. (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8781))
Suggestion - Class Bar for aspects.
Not a bad suggestion, I'll think about it. It does have issues with it though (You'd have to maintain a bunch of different hot bar setups). (Source)

Intimidation / Disengage / Aspect of the Cheetah

• Intimidation - We'd like to make this instant instead of relying on the pet's next attack.
• Disengage - This is being changed in a future build. What it will do is cause the Hunter to jump back instantly 10-15ish yards to gain distance. 30 second cooldown.
• Aspect of the Cheetah - The daze is there so Hunter's can't infinitely "kite" monsters or players. Sprints and movement speed bonuses is something we are very weary of giving the Hunter class.
  

Master's Call and Deterrence are now baseline skills
We'll be making Master's Call and Deterrence both base. (Source)

Chimera Shot and Shot Rotations
The disarm will work on bosses. Well, bosses/NPC's that can be disarmed, anyways.

Every spec should be using a sting and a shot in their rotations (along with Steady). Beast - Arcane, Marks - Chimera, Survival - Explosive. None of those shots should reset your swing/shot timer (aka clip). There may be some issues with the mana cost of the shot and if it's worth using, that's what we're working on now. (Source)

Serpent Sting
Bumped up the coefficient for Serpent Sting. With the mana cost changes, I think it's come out lower than what it was before too. The other stings I think are fine. (Source)

Survival Restructuration and ranged oriented talents
Sniper Training is in Survival because Hawk Eye is in Survival. To be honest, you can make an argument for a lot of talents and spells to be in Marks instead of Survival. Survival needs to be about more than just traps and melee. An upcoming build will have a big Survival restructuring.

Some other stuff from your post....

• We'll change Silencing Shot to be a proper interrupt (PvE).
• Trueshot Aura will now be raid wide.

Wild Quiver, Rapid Recuperation are both changing in an upcoming build. Though, I like the design of those two talents and think they just need some tweaks.

Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8781))
Retribution Paladin excessive DPS in beta
The point I was making to the death knights was that some of their abilities might feel "fun" because they were incredibly broken and doing insane dps. I compared them to the Ret, because I assumed everyone knew how broken Rets were at the time.

It's impossible to get a really good sense of whose dps is too high or too low until we get the egregious bugs tamped down.

Retribution Paladins in endgame raids
While the people that participate in forums like this tend to be pretty up-to-date on class abilities and balance, trying to keep track of the status of so many classes, spells and abilities can be overwhelming for a lot of players. The community at large can be slow to change. Retribution Paladins didn't have a lot to contribute back in the day, and while I think they are a good contribution to a group even today on live, some people didn't get the memo. Lolret, yanno?

We want Ret to fill a role in a group. We want *everyone* to fill a role in a group. Even the talent tree as it currently stands (meaning on Beta) could have a lot to offer if those abilities were polished up: mana or health battery for example. I can't tell you fore sure what it's going to end up being until we've finished our big buff stacking pass.

Personally, I'm feeling really good about the changes to the class as a whole. It's a big change, so it's going to take even more time than other classes for the dust to settle and all the talents to get balanced out. But I like the direction. (Source)

Priest (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8781))
Yes, that is something we talk about. The design for the Discipline priest in PvE is using shields and similar damage prevention techniques and it sucks (and is unintuitive) that those are bad to use on warrior and bear tanks. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8781))
1) Heroic leap and Bladestorm are very awkward to use, especially in PVP, nigh unusable right now. Are there plans to make these stronger, or at least more user friendly?
Totally. We like the basic talents, so the rest is just getting the tuning right and fixing all the bugs. Heroic Leap will probably be trickier just because it has to handle physics and obstructions. (Source)

2) Titan's Grip is mathematically pretty terrible right now and severely devalues attack power for a fury warrior using it. It does almost universally less DPS than a one handed weapon fury build.
The design is for Titan's Grip to be a dps increase. It's easy to make it too much of an increase, and we may be being too cautious with the numbers at the moment. But when we talk about Lich King, we are assuming most Fury warriors are using two-handers. It's not supposed to be hard decision. (Source)

3) Most talents beyond Tier 3 in arms are staggeringly bad for PVE right now, with the exception of blood frenzy. Is this intended to balance blood frenzy? Will we see any improvements here? Do you intend to go the route of feral with arms and build multiple effects onto talents to give them PVP/PVE usefulness the way feral gets DPS/tanking talents?
Given plenty of time, we would love to sprinkle PvP, PvE and tanking talents all throughout the trees. There are definitely some lame talents at the moment (some old, some new), and we are going to try to get to them all. Blood Frenzy itself is going to be on the back-burner until we resolve how we're going to handle raid stacking. It isn't the intention that Arms gets to raid and Fury goes home.

4) The changes to windfury and sword specialization have destroyed the slam rotation for arms in terms of DPS viability. Arms warriors simply don't have the rage for a full rotation without them, even specing to endless rage and anger management. We're in a very similar state now to ret paladins live, enough or close to enough skills to provide powerful damage output but hamstrung by resource limitations, are there any plans to fix that? Judgments of the wise was a brilliant fix, any chance we could see something similar in arms to improve PVE DPS?
Slam is intended to be an attractive button. I think it just needs a little attention now that the extra attacks are under control now. (Source)

5) Fury's top end talents ignore PVE DPS almost entirely in their current form, TG while cool is a spec for burst over sustained damage and has the same rage issues that arms does only more severe with reduced attack speed and increased miss chance. Heroic leap does very little damage and the stun effect is not useful in dungeon or raid settings so its almost exclusively a PVP talent (its targeting issues not withstanding). Bloodsurge and Furious Resolve are workable but the other new talents don't add a lot to fury and quite honestly you'll likely see fury raiders as 16/47/8 or something similar, keeping their exact old build plus bloodsurge or furious resolve, taking advantage of the better impale/deep wounds placements and grabbing improved bloodrage, tactical mastery, and Incite out of prot. Is that intended? Do the devs thing fury was in a good spot in TBC? Do they think we need a step up? or a step down?
There were certainly Fury warriors doing fine dps in BC, but that might have been in spite of and not because of the tree. I don't think anyone here would disagree with your analysis. We're working on the talents. The feedback from the warrior community, while occasionally (and sometimes understandably) bitter, has been helpful. (Source)

I think a 20% down to 0% haste penalty for TG will make it a stellar talent at high end gear with better returns coming from one handers until a fair bit of hit rating and haste are acquired to smooth out the rage, 21/50/0 seems like a good raid build with that change, maxing out TG and picking up impale/deep wounds and 2 hander spec out of arms.
It's still a little odd that 1 talent point gets you the dual-wielding and the others just improve it, but maybe that's workable. We'll know soon enough. We love the idea of the talent though. It is one of those that gets noticed a lot by someone just coming to LK. (Source)

6) you've mentioned balancing blood frenzy in arms against the personal DPS of fury. Have you considered adding a buff of similar magnitude to deep fury? Something like 3% crit or haste added to battle shout, or similar? Such that you could equalize the personal DPS potential of the two trees without making arms warriors clearly superior in raids.
Yes. We wanted to make Arms as attractive as Fury for raids, but we probably tipped the scales too far. We're currently discussing whether it's okay for any class or spec to bring no real synergy to a group other than mad dps. But granting buffs to traditional high dps classes might also mean their dps needs to come down a little in proportion to everyone else. (Source)

7) Can we add prot's passive expertise talent back on incite to help out DPS warriors even more by letting them pick up some expertise for a minor prot splash? (sorry, I have to bring up the expertise in every thread, it being gone really bothers me)
We weren't trying to screw anyone out of Expertise by removing Defiance. It was intended to just be a buff. We'll see if we can work Expertise back in somewhere. (Source)

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8781))
Chains of Ice Diminishing Returns in PvP
It's a bug. It should not diminish. (Source)

Death Coil and Frost Strike Runic Power cost changes
Death Coil and Frost Strike are 40 runic power again. I hoped that would make it into this build.

We're still not sure if runic power generation is too high or not, but ultimately 40 is just a better number. Since you often do 5 abilities before using all your runes, that leaves you with 50 RP. If every Death Coil drained that, you are kind of static. With a 40 cost, you build up a little more RP over time so the Death Coils come at different moments. (Source)

Blizzcon Tickets - Statement from Mike Morhaime
I already mentionned that in the Build 8788 post but it wasn't very visible. I suppose it's not a bad idea to mention it again on the front page.

Blizzard Gamers,

On behalf of everyone at Blizzard, I want to apologize for the challenges and frustrations you experienced while trying to purchase BlizzCon tickets on Monday and Tuesday. BlizzCon is about the positive experiences you all have had with Blizzard games. As a result of this week's events, the excitement that many of you felt about the show has turned into dissatisfaction and disappointment.

Due to these circumstances, we've reevaluated our convention hall space and come up with some solutions that will allow us to offer 3,000 more tickets for sale. We know this will not be enough to satisfy the very high level of demand for tickets this year, but we want to ensure that BlizzCon remains a great experience for those of you who are able to attend. To avoid the issues many of you faced this week, we'll be selling these 3,000 via a lottery. We'll post further details once our plans are finalized. Please note that the lottery will only be open to those with an active Blizzard Account as of 9:00 PM PDT on August 12, the time that the “Sold Out” notice was posted.

I, and everyone else at Blizzard, share the frustration and disappointment that many of you have expressed as a result of this process. We'll do what it takes to avoid this type of situation in the future.

Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime

[bbr]

We'll see these in patch 3.0 i guess? Would be rather pointless. Or is this planned for the 2.4.x PTR?
Basically they're basically the same items with more stats. Looks like you'd have to re-buy them.

http://www.wowhead.com/?search=Battlemaster%27s

[Jubeithar]

I like the hunter changes, thumbs up!

the battlemaster trinket changes are pretty odd, the cloaks came also pretty late. I feel it's pretty pointless that this will be added so close to end of TBC.

[Brickwall]

Nice. I love the fact that developers are aware of issuses with arms and fury trees. Was starting to lose hope there. But still, they implement new talents, the KNOW they are crap and still they came up only with "It's easy to make it too much of an increase on TG." Yeah, make it gimp instead from begining.

Anyways this blue post got my hopes up for warriors.

[Azain]

the pvp items seem like a way for blizzard to have level 70 players dump all their honor at the end of a season when making runs for gladiator so that we aren't carrying the max honor/arena points over to lvl 80. perhaps this is an indication they are going to allow us to keep some portion of honor/arena points while leveling to 80.

[bbr]

Blizzard has never deleted honor or arena points at the change of any season or patch....
They're not going to start doing it now either....

[Roshar]

Hunting Party now gives your Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot and Steady Shot critical strikes have a 20% chance to restore 2% mana, 10 energy, 4 rage or 10 Runic Power to all members of your party. (Old - Affected all critical shots and had a 20/30/40/50/60% chance to restore mana/energy/rage/runic power)

It's actually 100% with 5/5 Hunting Party now. Reverted to the original iteration with the internal cooldown removed.

[Azain]

Blizzard has never deleted honor or arena points at the change of any season or patch....
They're not going to start doing it now either....

while they haven't deleted it they have capped it, and given how significant it was to get honor/arena gear early in season 1 even for pve i think more people will have it saved for level 80 to be instantly geared.

[El_Vaughn]

hunter changes sound fun, too bad my hunter is stuck at 60 on my old server.

[tino]

Blizzard has never deleted honor or arena points at the change of any season or patch....
They're not going to start doing it now either....

Now you are comparing Apples and oranges. You cant say what blizzard will do from what they have done before. since nothing even compares to what they have done before.

[bbr]

So they'll just increase the cap again like last time.
Just like players at level 80 will give more honor than they give you at 70.

[FailedCRC]

Now you are comparing Apples and oranges. You cant say what blizzard will do from what they have done before. since nothing even compares to what they have done before.

I don't think you understand the basic principles behind an RPG if you believe 'stuff' would ever get taken away from players.

[Arael]

They allso remived the 8 second cooldown from hunting party so its actually lot better then before now.

[Marvdatboi]

"Lesser" heal spells after downranking nerf
If we find that any of the healers is now missing a critical tool from their toolbox (specifically an efficient heal that is good for e.g. topping of a rogue), then that is something we will definitely consider.

It seems they do listen. lol now find an effective tool for finding stealthed players for mages and an effective kiting tool and lets call it a day.

[huth]

Blacksmithing - Epic Weapons not requiring any skill level / Bind on Equip ? (Titansteel Bonecrusher, Titansteel Destroyer, Titansteel Guardian)
It was actually an oversight. However, I'm open to leaving them BoE if people feel it makes for better gameplay. The scenario you describe sounds like a pretty fringe case though.

The linked thread is about weaponsmith specific weapons, not about the epic weapons.

[Azain]

It seems they do listen. lol now find an effect tool for finding stealthed players for mages and an effective kiting tool and lets call it a day.

why do you need to find stealthed players? the fact that you know they are there and are prepared when they open should be enough. the fact that a level 8 - 10 spell can defeat one of the defining abilities or a certain class/spec/race is incredibly overpowered. kiting/movement is coming along for mages, but i agree it could use some help.

[Jeffemming]

why do you need to find stealthed players? the fact that you know they are there and are prepared when they open should be enough. the fact that a level 8 - 10 spell can defeat one of the defining abilities or a certain class/spec/race is incredibly overpowered. kiting/movement is coming along for mages, but i agree it could use some help.

You have trouble getting through r1 AE spam? =\

Also, I'm going to be really disappointed if they make us re-buy the trinkets. They're not a new name, didn't come at the release of a new season, and it would be really out of place. If you think 40k is an "honor dump" for wotlk you're crazy. 40k is 2-3 days of honor farming, just 2-3 days I'd rather not spend.

[Octopus]

Hunters really deserved these great changes. Grats hunters!

[Amgyn]

wow.. now i will actually use disengage!

[Neverend]

FIX TITANS GRIP you f**king retards.

From what the blue said there he doesn't seem to realize 2x 1handers > 2x 2handers. This is worrying.