Raid difficulty, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

We had a slight issue with the Blue Tracker, it's now resolved and everything should be working.

Dungeon Difficulty

I have discussed the dungeon difficulty issue before, so I will just bulletize it here:

• Naxx is an entry-level raid.
• Many players have seen the encounters before.
• Players were allowed to learn the encounters on beta.

On the topic of hard modes:

• I think a lot of players do enjoy the challenges, especially when some kind of badge of honor is involved.
• We do realize that vanity items like titles and mounts can only motivate people so far and we do have plans to offer better loot for such accomplishments.
• We aren't likely to spend several months of development time on content that less than 5% of players will ever see.
• We do understand that groups like a challenge though. Ulduar will be more difficult.

On dual spec:

• The idea is to let you swap glyphs and action bars along with your talents.
• It will be trivial to do in town.
• You will also be able to do it out of towns, but not as trivially.
• We hope to have this done for the next major content patch, but it's a big feature and takes some time.

Blue posts

Tanking in WotLK and healing mechanics changes

One of the design goals in LK was to make tanking more fun and I daresay a little easier because it could be very challenging. I have tanked and healed A LOT on various classes and I feel pretty confident saying that tanking can be much harder than healing on some fights (on others it is reversed). Challenging the dps classes is harder, but you often see it in the form of berserk timers -- if the dps can't maximize their output, then the raid is going to wipe at no fault of the healers. Repositioning fights often tax the dps characters, though to be fair, they often tax the healers too.

I'm pretty happy with the current state of tanking, modulo polishing up a few bits here and there. Healing is something we have committed to taking a good hard look at now, so threads like this are helpful. Unlike tanking, it is a harder problem to solve, in part because some healers like the way healing works now just fine thank you, and risk walking away from it if we make very dramatic changes. The kinds of dramatic changes that get suggested a lot are things like causing damage to heal, having to heal through the main game window and not the health bars, having combo points and that sort of thing. You may say "That sounds awesome!" but many other players say "Yech."

Others say just having better UI, having more diverse spells to rely on, not having to time things so tightly, or having something to do besides healing will make their game more fun.

We do think the game can handle more diversity in healing mechanics than it can in tanking mechanics. In other words, it's okay for healers to have niches moreso than the tanks. This is largely because raids require more healers than tanks. (Source)

AoE Healing Nerf
I feel the need to post here in the hopes of alleviating player confusion. The first FAQ was a link to my quotes attempting to explain our concerns about Circle of Healing and Wild Growth. This FAQ by contrast is written from a player POV that this is a shaman issue. It isn't in our minds.

We looked at the three main AE heals and found that CoH and WG were being used too much in too many different situations and making AE healing too easy. CH is supposed to be used in more situations, because the shaman arsenal is smaller. It isn't as easy to use as CoH and WG. Shamans are still casting other spells.

Of course we realize not every Holy priest is spamming CoH. That's good -- you all will notice less of a difference after the change.

Some encounters will likely be more difficult with this nerf. Malygos phase 1 comes to mind. We are prepared to make encounter changes if necessary.

We explored several options to nerf CoH and WG and eventually settled on a cooldown. You can use those AEs when needed and then switch to single-target heals to top everyone off.

I'm not going to keep responding to this thread, because we have plenty on the topic already, but I wanted to offer a clarification. (Source)

"Smart" Healing
I'm not sure why we need to keep starting threads on the same issue, but since you seem to have trouble finding our thoughts on the issue of smart healing, I will offer them again.

The old model of targeting a group out of a raid to heal it goes against one of the changes we tried to make for Lich King, which is that the raid structure matters, but the party structure within the raid doesn't. Almost all buff are raid-wide now, so we didn't want raiders to have to structure their groups just around things like Circle of Healing. "Um, can you put the MT and OT in the same group please, so CoH can get them both?" That sort of thing.

One of the things we wanted to do was give players more flexibility in how they set up their raids. This extends to your UI -- if you like to put the tanks in a separate part of your UI, or organize things by class or functional role instead of group, you can do that without having to worry (so much) about who is in what group.

We couldn't get rid of the group concept for every spell - Mana Tide is one example. But we have gotten rid of a lot of them.

We did ask all of the class designers and almost everyone on the WoW team who plays a raiding priest, and to a person they all thought the cooldown was a better solution than removing the smart component of the heal.

I will say again, if one spell (talented at that) is what makes the difference between you A) having fun, B) being able to heal competitively, or C) being brought to a raid at all, that is a much bigger problem than anything CoH itself does. (Source)

Crystallized Fire, how can it exist?
Magic. Problem solved. Next. (Source)

[EU] Queue on the new Chamber of Aspects realm
The cap was actually set below the regular value. This will be corrected shortly. (Source)

Hunter / Warlock - Pet tanking
We have heard some reports of hunter pets tanking say Nexus, which doesn't have a lot of movement required of the tank. Really though, as others have suggested, the goal is more for them to be able to OT large pulls or group quests. Now pet threat generation (Voidwalkers too) is something we are looking at right now. (Source)

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Death Knight issues and upcoming changes
Death knights are a cooldown-based class. They can't count on abilities being there and ready to the same extent other classes are. In return though, they have an unlimited resource that neither goes away over time (mana) or is dependent on doing damage or taking damage (rage). While a DK may struggle a little more when things get out of control (because of cooldowns) they are also fantastic in other situations -- you can actually battle rez a fallen DK tank and have them get back in the fray because they don't need to build up rage or mana first.

The rune system definitely has some strengths and weaknesses and that is by design so that the DK actually feels like a different class using different mechanics. Cooldowns won't appeal to everyone, just as drinking to restore mana doesn't appeal to everyone.

Now, that said, we do hope to be able to post some more definitive changes to DKs soon (putting numbers on the rune strike nerf and all that) and one of the things that comes up a lot is removing the cooldown from Pestilence. (Source)
Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Chain Heal
We don't think Chain Heal needs a nerf at the current time.

Unlike CoH (and to a lesser extent WG) it isn't used to the exclusion of other shaman healing spells. It also has some pretty severe drawbacks compared to CoH -- cast time for one.

But if after we add a cooldown to CoH and WG, we find that CH is making AE healing too trivial or if we find that shamans are being invited to heal raids at the expense of priests and druids, then we will absolutely nerf CH too. (Source)

[LavaDuck]

There are no limits to what players will cry about.
They said from the start that Naxxramas was an entry level raid dungeon. Yet people cry it's too easy.
Circle of Healing and now Wild Growth made raid healing a breeze, I agree with the cooldown. People cry about that too.
Ulduar will probably be challenging enough, but they want players to defeat their content, not bang their head against a wall or their desk.

[Nezoia]

We aren't likely to spend several months of development time on content that less than 5% of players will ever see.

See, the problem with this statement is, how can they know only 5% of the players will reach it?

How could they know that 95% of the raiding community would be to incompetent to kill Illidan Stomrage over a 10 month period? And thus wouldn't be able to continue in Sunwell Plateau, since it did require the previous skills plus a little more -- a challenge for the competent players.

Brutallus was never a gear check, M'uru was. And Kil'jaeden was a far more worthy expansion finisher than Illidan Stormrage ever could have hoped to become.

So is this the new path? To design dungeons so easily that everybody will get to see them, even it means the top 10000 players (aka. the players who cleared Sunwell Plateau before 3.0) will clear the said dungeons within the first week of release ?

Is challenge only a option for those in poor gear and with no skills ?

[Raynhard]

So is this the new path? To design dungeons so easily that everybody will get to see them, even it means the top 10000 players (aka. the players who cleared Sunwell Plateau before 3.0) will clear the said dungeons within the first week of release?

Not for everybody. But also not for only 5 out of 100, who pay 13€ a month. Whats so difficult to understand about it? oO

I'm sure that even today - one month after release - not even 25% of the wow players either defeated saphiron or malygos.

Just because some 24/7 "professionals" have beaten this game after a few days doesn't mean it's easy as sleeping.

[atrx]

Well, you can be sure that they will add things similar to the adds of Sartharion.

[Kapira]

So it's still going to cost oodles of gold to respec back and forth?

Soloing as resto is kind of balls.

[Korah]

We aren't likely to spend several months of development time on content that less than 5% of players will ever see.

Isn't that why they introduced 10mans?

I don't see why they can't just keep 10mans trivial

and make the 25mans with scaling difficulty up to being as hard as SWP was...



As for the warlock change's tbf I don't care about my pets tanking abilities just fix the rest of us before worrying about the pets, heck VW can do fine against 5man group quest's, Already did all the 5man group quest's in icecrown by two manning them - Warlock and Priest with VW tanking :S

[Sarevokcz]

We aren't likely to spend several months of development time on content that less than 5% of players will ever see.

See, the problem with this statement is, how can they know only 5% of the players will reach it?

How could they know that 95% of the raiding community would be to incompetent to kill Illidan Stomrage over a 10 month period? And thus wouldn't be able to continue in Sunwell Plateau, since it did require the previous skills plus a little more -- a challenge for the competent players.

Brutallus was never a gear check, M'uru was. And Kil'jaeden was a far more worthy expansion finisher than Illidan Stormrage ever could have hoped to become.

So is this the new path? To design dungeons so easily that everybody will get to see them, even it means the top 10000 players (aka. the players who cleared Sunwell Plateau before 3.0) will clear the said dungeons within the first week of release ?

Is challenge only a option for those in poor gear and with no skills ?

all bosses in SWP were beaten pretty rapidly by top guilds anyway. only thing that was stonewalling them were gates, which opened after certain ammount of weeks. in fact, raiding progress was alot slower when guild were competing about vashj and kael firsts, those dungeons took more time to clear. BT was joke for those guilds, mother, council and illidan, all were killed in 3 days. there are no more cockblocks like old 4h were, get over it.

also, if you didnt read carefully, GC stated they are still going to make "hard mode" encounters. i would certainly like to see, how u managed to beat up sartharion with all drakes alive, . if you didnt, then stop QQing and try to do it. and when you manage it, do it in 10man version. and then show us some actual proof that you did it, and THEN you can come and say "everything is easy".

[Qwios]

Isn't that why they introduced 10mans?

I don't see why they can't just keep 10mans trivial

and make the 25mans with scaling difficulty up to being as hard as SWP was...

No, they introduced the 10mans for folks that don't want to interact/guild with more than 9-14 other people. Not saying it's a good idea but really that's the theme they're running with and not a 10man = "scrub"-mode.

[Korah]

No, they introduced the 10mans for folks that don't want to interact/guild with more than 9-14 other people. Not saying it's a good idea but really that's the theme they're running with and not a 10man = "scrub"-mode.

Dam well should be "Scrub" - mode!!! hehe

[Name0]

I really do not think chain heal is OP at all it's the shamans main heal in a way

[anyaka21]

This nerf could effectively kill off tons of healers not unlike what happened to elemental shaman.

That said though, this is going to make Malygos tons different. Raids will either need to stack priests so that they can "chain" CoH one after another or more likely most priests will just go disc or shadow, resto druids will go back to lolbloom rolling hots.

If the change inevitably stays, then Blizzard will have to re-tune tons of encounters and nerf the AE damage because that's the way they designed a lot of bosses.

[Mordiceius]

This nerf could effectively kill off tons of healers not unlike what happened to elemental shaman.

That said though, this is going to make Malygos tons different. Raids will either need to stack priests so that they can "chain" CoH one after another or more likely most priests will just go disc or shadow, resto druids will go back to lolbloom rolling hots.

If the change inevitably stays, then Blizzard will have to re-tune tons of encounters and nerf the AE damage because that's the way they designed a lot of bosses.

I'm still sitting here on my paladin spamming my "try to heal the whole raid at once button" but the button is still broken. :-(

[Lissia]

Crystallized Fire, how can it exist?
Magic. Problem solved. Next. (Source)

Ahhh, just like my D&D group.

Player "What?? Theres a flying castle? Thats impossible!! And this Ley line creating some kind of magical field that lets the mosters fly without wings, impossible! Also, this crystalized fire, IMPOSSIBLE!!"

DM "Wizards did it."

[nemesisevil]

Raids too easy discussion number 50...

[memento]

That is exactly why I was always happy with the BC philosophy of "release hard mode, then nerf to the ground".

The hardcore players had their challange when new content came. It was incredibly hard for decent raid guilds and impossible for casuals. 1-2 month later comes the nerf bat and it is only a challange now for decent guilds and hard but not impossible for the casuals. The hardcore players were through with that instance anyway. They just cried because they felt their achievement was also nerfed - they circle of people who had beaten that boss became less exclusive over time.

In my opinion that was a much better way than just making everything easy from release on.

[Lokholar89]

To those who think that 10 man should be "scrub" mode consider this: I work 2nd shift and cant make normal raid times and there aren't many other competent players with the same schedule. It is hard enough to find 9-14 other competent people let alone 25-30. And transfering to a different server isnt that appealing either, why should i have to play with other people who dont speak english well.

[Xombo]

Blizz is getting angryyy...hahah.

[ohsnap]

Hah that's funny. Seems like they're saying that shaman's CH is fine the way it is and they have no problem with it but priest's CoH is OP so it's going to get a nerf. But if CH proves to be too useful over CoH it's going to get a nerf too to bring it into line with CoH. What if they feel that after the CH gets the nerf CoH is looking too good again so they nerf it again but then CH is OP now as compared to CoH so it gets another nerf, etc... until what we have is a bunch of different classes stopping and bandaging each other because the two healing classes are no longer raid viable and everyone respecs enhancement and shadow respectively.

[ibnalail]

Mordiceius, when you find it, youtube it and let me know. I can't get it to work on my paladin either.


Lokholar89, I couldn't agree with you more. Almost all of my guild is 2nd and 3rd shift people. We like the challenge of raiding. We don't like the challenge of guild drama. 10mans allow us to play together the way we want to play with people we like to play with, instead of requiring us to play nice with people we don't like just so we can do something other than 5mans until we're blue in the face.