Upcoming Class Change Highlights (Part 1), Blue posts

[Boubouille]

Update #2 - Added a few additional blue posts for rogues, priests, warlocks, and an Itemization Q&A, yes this is the last addition, I promise!
Update - Added today's blue posts, a stealth nerf for hunters and a hotfix for warriors. Also a few reports of bugs occuring in raids.

Upcoming Class Change Highlights (Part 1)

We are planning a lot of exciting content for patch 3.1.0, and we are doing a three-part preview series on upcoming class changes. This is the first in the series: Priests, Rogues, and Shaman. Please keep in mind, that this list is not at all comprehensive, and subject to change.

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.
• Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).
• Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
• Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
• Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
• Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
• We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

Rogue (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Hunger for Blood – instead of a self-buff, this ability can only be used when there is a bleed effect on the target. However, it has no stacks and grants a 15% damage bonus.
• Adrenaline Rush – the cooldown on this ability has been lowered.
• Lightning Reflexes – reduced to 3 ranks. In addition to 2/4/6% dodge, this talent now also grants 4/7/10% passive melee haste.
• Killing Spree – while this ability is active, the rogue does 20% additional damage.
• Savage Combat – now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
• Mace Specialization – this talent now grants haste in addition to armor penetration.

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Chain Lightning – now jumps to 4 targets but does less damage. We wanted to make the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning more clear.
• Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.
• Spirit Weapons – now reduces all threat, not just melee threat.
• Unleashed Rage – reduced to 2 ranks, now also increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by 1/2%.
• Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.
• We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.

COMING SOON

• Warlock
• Druid
• Hunter
• Death Knight
• Mage
• Paladin
• Warrior

Blue posts
Interesting blue posts are starting to appear... 3.1.0 release on PTRs is probably closer than ever! Please note that there is a slight issue with the blue tracker and I'll just link the official forums for today. The blue tracker should be fixed within the day. (And most likely before any other announcement comes up)

Differences between classes DPS in raid
There is no such thing as a typical raid or even a typical encounter, so it is tricky to make blanket statements like "X always tops the meters." Overall, we suspect that warriors are too high (largely on double-dipping effects of Deep Wounds), DKs may be too high, and rogues and possibly cats are too low. This should not be news to anyone who follows these forums.

Again, that depends enormously on your actual group. Players are often very quick to ignore differences in gear or skill when claiming their dps is too low. We tend to balance around individual encounters though. There might be certain fights where we think say mages, hunters or shamans are too high depending on how that encounter plays out. I would not try and read too much into my statements above. (Source)

[...] When we say "pure dps classes should generally top the meters" we mean "warlocks, hunters, mages and rogues." However, when we say "generally top the meters" we are refering to players of flawless skill and perfect gear. For almost all raids composed of mortals, a very good player of any dps spec should be able to do the highest damage on an encounter. This was not the case in BC where we kept say Enhancement shamans or Retribution paladins much lower than the pure classes. (Source)

Dual Talent Spec
This is still in the works and we will have more information on it for everyone before too much longer. (Source)

Raids & Dungeons
Sapphiron - Aura bugged / not affected by Frost resist?
We've made no explicit changes to the encounter on the design side to change how the frost aura works. When Sapphiron enters combat, he casts a spell on himself that every 2 seconds casts the debuff players receive, which you see as "Frost Aura". That debuff is a 5 second duration damage over time effect that deals frost damage every second. The only difference between the 10 and 25 player versions of these spells is the amount of damage.

So if you were only getting damaged every 2 seconds previously in a 10 player raid, and still are only getting damaged every 2 seconds in a 25 player raid, there's some kind of odd bug going on that I'll have to track down. Especially since the data says you should be taking damage every second. (Source)

Once we find out what he bug is and correct the problem, we'll adjust the numbers if needed to closely match the damage that players have been experiencing when WotLK shipped. We're not trying to adjust the difficulty of this fight, but we need to determine what's happening so this bug doesn't cause problems with future encounters. (Source)

Sapphiron - not casting all the Ice Blocks he should
We're also trying to track down why Sapphiron decides to occasionally not cast all the Ice Blocks he should. (Source)

Malygos - bugs in 3.0.8
We're checking into the various issues noted here, including why his cone breath hits targets behind his centerpoint, issues with malygos deciding to attack in phase 2, and trying to make the defense bubble's protection work even if you enter the bubble in between the time a missile is launched and when it lands. (Source)

Malygos - Feign Death not working is "intended"
Feign death not working in actually intentional, but certainly not desired. It was causing a very nasty problem, and we've been trying to figure out a way to handle the particular boundary case without setting the creature flag that ignores feign death. (Source)

Itemization Q&A (Source)
1.) Why homogenize gear so much? Although I could understand the hassle when something like plate aster gear drops and there's no pally, but when you standardize things like stamina and armor, classes that depend on them take a hit.
You answered your own question here. Nobody was going to be happy when the Feral tanking armor or Frost DK plate started to drop except maybe 2 out of 30 specs.

2.) What's with the need for "all specs being viable for everything"? I was perfectly fine with builds that were preferred for PvP and others for PvE, it was how a player was defined (like if they were a raider, or a PvPer). Not only that, now you have to balance every spec to each other (as if balancing wasn't hard enough).
Among other things, we thought it was shallow that every raider of a class had the same spec and every Gladiator of a class had the same spec. For dps classes, that also tended to lead to the PvE spec, the PvP spec and the pointless spec. For classes with very different roles per tree (like shamans) it doesn't make sense at all to have a PvP spec. So Resto shamans are only for PvP?

3.) PvE gear vs. PvP gear. There's nothing that differentiates them besides 2 stats. Hit and resilience. When I switch over to my PvE gear, I lose a whopping 1k HP. 1k. That's barely anything. Why can't PvP gear and PvE gear be more specialized for those purposes so classes that aren't as reliant on resilience don't get a one-up on others like at the beginning of this season? Also, Naxx 25 raiding is so retard friendly that the best PvE 2 hander in the game is about as easy to get as one piece of savage while the Deadly weapons are almost unreachable.
If you compare a PvE and PvP piece of the same item level, the PvP piece has more resilience and pays for it by having its other stats lower. This wasn't necessarily the case in BC when resilience was more of a free bonus stat.

The PvE gear is currently pretty easy to get, but we think that is actually a fine place to be after BC where anyone could get Arena "welfare" epics and raiding scared off a lot of people. The PvP gear in LK isn't all that hard to get either when you consider that you can spend badges or get lucky on Archavon. If we could do it over again, though, we probably would have started the Arena season earlier (or at least let some of the Honor gear be attainable) so that there wasn't so much high level PvE gear relative to PvP gear floating around.

The Ulduar gear, especially the better weapons, will be harder to get, just like the new season of gladiator gear will be harder to get.

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Ebon Plague / Unholy Blight
Can you make Unholy Blight a disease again and Ebon Plague a magical effect?
Not all Unholy DKs pick up Unholy Blight though. One of the benefits of Ebon Plague is it just happens without having to spend that extra GCD. We'll get it fixed.

We also agree that Plague Strike feels underwhelming. Part of the reason is that, unlike Icy Touch, it also has a pretty significant PvP effect in its ability to remove hots. We have some ideas to improve it though. We definitely don't want DKs to ever feel like the right way to play is to ignore one of their two main diseases. As some players have pointed out, there are a few reasons why that is the case.

As a new class, I would expect to see a higher rate of change over time in the DK until they have caught up a little more with the 4+ year history of the other classes. (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Explosive shot hotfixed and nerfed
We made a hotfix recently to lower the coefficient of Explosive Shot. Sorry we didn't get a chance to announce the change ahead of time. We don't typically do patch notes for hotfixes so we don't have a system in place to always broadcast these before they happen.

We are in the process of making some changes to get damage done more in parity (in PvP and PvE). If there are other classes far ahead of you on the damage meters, chances are good they will see some nerfs to their damage soon too.

Overall, we are trying to make changes in a more timely manner so that players won't feel like they are stuck with a bug or other issue forever. We won't be able to get every issue fixed overnight, but it's a start.

Ok where is the un nerf for BM then since you want to fix issues in a timely manner.
Soon. I can't tell you a date, but it won't be long. (Source)

Developer Q&A (Source)
1. You said you are happy with the dps a MM hunter can pull. I have been playing in a competitive raid environment for 4 years and when I spec marks I fall 1000 dps behind ele shams, 800 dps behind the moonkin and 700 dps behind the arcane mages. We also then see you stating that you feel arcane mages are performing well in pve. Do your internal tests have MM hunters and arcane mages near each other or are we reading too much into what you are saying?
What I said before was that players tend to look at relative numbers while we look at absolute numbers. All the players saying "SV is not too high" justify that by saying "because I am not topping the meters." And in some cases, SV is topping the meters.

You want all ferocity pets to feel viable in PVE but pets like wasps, wolves, tall striders and carrion birds have utility specials instead of damage specials. The only way I can see balancing the pets would be to give them 2 unique specials, one utility and one damage oriented. What ideas have been brainstormed at the table?
There is a trade-off between damage and utility. We specifically gave some hunter pets raid buff / debuff options in case your group, esp. a 5 or 10-player group, has trouble having access to that bonus. I have seen a lot of wasps out there lately.

But as I also said, more parity among pets is something we want to pursue. Currently most of the hunter discussions on the forums are about SV-MM-BM differences or PvP however.

3. 41 point survival talent was due for a buff coming out of beta but we have seen no further discussion on it; last patch it even received a nerf! What are your plans for this?
We hope to be able to announce some 3.1 changes soon.

5. MM is still crippled by Chimera shots ~580 mana cost. Any chance we could see some arcane shot glyph inspired solutions to this? Possibly make rapid recuperation like shamanistic rage?
We will be adding more glyphs over time, especially for newer abilities. We didn't want to add them all right away for fear that players would just assume the glyphed version of the spell was the way the spell worked rather than realizing what a benefit the glyph itself brought. If that makes sense.

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
The Role of the Priest (Source)
This is an experiment. One of the things that has confused me a little are all of the posts from players who say they don't understand the role of the priest class. It is unclear to us why there is so much confusion about this particular class, which seems to us to be fairly straightforward.

We are often reluctant to lay out our design goals very clearly, because frankly some players tend to use those statements to attempt to lawyer us into changes ("I'm supposed to be the master of AE damage") or would rather argue about the design instead of providing feedback on how the class actually works.

Nevertheless, because players have asked for it so often and in the interest of trying to foster the discussion, here is what we think of as the role of the priest class.

The Role of the Priest
The priest is a caster class that uses Holy and Shadow magic. Priests can only wear cloth armor and have a limited selection of weapons, but do most of their damage and healing from range. They make up for their low armor with spells that offer protection and healing.

• Discipline -- this is a healing tree that emphasizes survival and single-target healing. Discipline specializes in damage absorption and prevention rather than restoring health, although they are very capable in that department too.
• Holy -- this is a healing tree that has a spell suited for every situation. Holy priests can heal groups, heal individuals, heal tanks, or do all three in a single encounter. They are better at group healing than Discipline priests, but don't have as many damage prevention capabilities.
• Shadow -- this tree sacrifices healing for damage. Shadow priests can restore health and mana to their group while casting their spells. Like the Shadow damage of warlocks, Shadow priest damage tends towards drains and damage over time spells.

Jack of all trades?
I'm pretty sure "jack of all trades, master of none" is something the community came up with, not us. All I have ever said is you can't be "jack of all trades, master of all." You can't be "the best healer in the game." We have no problem if Disc priests can equal Holy paladins or if Holy priests can AE heal as well as Resto shamans. Priests just can't AE heal so well that Resto shamans become pointless. A group that takes all Holy priests for its healers should feel like it is missing out (though it should still be possible). I would say the same thing about every class in the game. (Source)

Shadow Priest DPS and survavibility
We think Shadow priest damage is good in PvE and PvP, minus a few annoying bugs. We think the problem is that Shadow priests just can't survive long enough to do damage. That is a combination of some classes doing too much damage, but also Shadow defenses being too weak. (Source)

Prayer of Healing
Yes, we think the cast time is everything. It’s not a good spell for emergencies (like CoH is). It’s a good spell for a group with several people who are low, but who aren’t in imminent danger of dying. Ideally, we still want the group distinction to go away when you are in a raid, but we aren’t quite there yet. Until we can reach that point (and who knows when that will be) at least you can heal a group with PoH instead of having to worry about who is in your group.

Our plan is not to make PoH a smart heal. We went that direction with CoH because the instant cast made it possible to just go heal multiple groups quickly. We don’t think there is a danger of that with PoH. So yes, you would target the rogue and it would heal her and the 4 others in her group. But we'll see how things stand when more players have a chance to try it out. I've already healed Ulduar. /gloat (Source)

Rogue (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
3.1.0 Killing Spree
Just imagine it is exactly like the current Killing Spree except that your dps goes up while Killing Spree is active. (Source)

3.1.0 Hunger for Blood
The idea with Hunger for Blood is you will probably have bleeds available from other classes in a raid setting (and even if you didn't you can add them yourself). But in PvP it will require an extra step to really benefit from HfB and thus tone down Assassination burst damage a little.

There are more related changes, some sooner and some in 3.1. We didn't want to list every single change, just a sampling. (EDIT: To prevent a lot more posts from saying the same thing, we know HfB is not popular in PvP now. We don't want to change that as a consequence of these other changes. (Source))

3.1.0 Hunger for Blood (Continued)
The idea with Hunger for Blood is you will probably have bleeds available from other classes in a raid setting (and even if you didn't you can add them yourself). We are making several changes to rogue talents and abilities. Some are coming before 3.1. Some of them are definitely with the intention of toning down PvP burst. If we buff HfB and change some other rogue abilities, there is a risk that HfB will end up getting used for PvP. The extra bleed requirement should help discourage that and thus still satisfy our goal to tone down Assassination burst damage a little. (Source)

Rogue burst damage
We are reducing it. These changes are not all of the changes. (Source)

Can we expect any more PvE Buffs?
These changes are not all of the changes. (Source)

Vanish
"Working as intended" gets used too broadly. With Vanish, the issue is more like: we think there are probably some bugs with it still somewhere, but whenever we sit down and try to replicate those bugs so we can get to the bottom of the problem, the dumb spell works perfectly. (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Pet scaling, more warlock changes in 3.1
I don't want to ninja a rogue thread, but the buffs to demons went beyond fixes to scaling problems. The Infernal and Doom Guard were already scaling correctly, and even they went up. I was mostly joking with my comment anyway. And yes, more love for locks in 3.1. Stay tuned. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Deep Wounds hotfixed
We have been working on fixing the bugs with Deep Wounds so that we wouldn't have to just nerf it across the board. Some of those hotfixes may have gone in.

Fury in particular was doing too much damage on many encounters solely because of these bugs. We think Arms pve damage is probably too low, but we don't want to adjust that by having a buggy Deep Wounds. We also want to make sure prot warriors do not lose too much damage or threat. (Source)

1.) The weapon damage got all the modifiers (Enrage or Death wish, Two handed spec.)
2.) Then the bleed got those same modifiers (Enrage/Death+Two handed spec).
This is the change we made: Number 2 will no longer happen. Instead Deep Wounds will just be a percentage of the damage calculated in number 1. (Source)

[PowerHacker]

buff resto druids plox

edit frist!

[Rykimaruh]

Yay, shaman buffs!!
Now, let's see those DK, pally and warrior changes!

[Fuzzzie]

Upcoming Class Change Highlights (Part 1)

• Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.

Love this change! Can't wait to read more.

[Venara]

w00t holy priest buffs inc, nice

[dakkuuan]

Is it just me, or do most of the rogue changes seem to help non-dagger specs, where clearly daggers is in need of the most help. Call me stupid or whatever, but I like to have all my abilities at my disposal, not the abilities my weapons tell me i can use. Few other classes (if any) work by these kind of rules, why should rogues? And don't bring up Shield Bash, you kinda have to have a shield for that to make sense lol.

[Lifestream]

what about IMP DS?

[Tal]

The changes to Shaman look to be good, particularly to Unleashed Rage and Spirit Weapons, which were long overdue.

Disc Priests are gonna be even more interesting to play. Most likely Power Word: Barrier will come with a healthy CD. Can you imagine how good it would be if you could get it off on all groups prior to a Malygos Vortex, for example?

Not a fan of the Mace Spec change though! As an Enhancement Shaman I already have too much competition for Maces! More slow one-handed weapons that are NOT fist weapons or swords, plz!

[Hokuto]

buff resto druids plox

• Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.

Can't get much better than this.

And yeah, priests are back to the "BC shamans" throne.

[Stabumz]

gg blizz your changes are awesome, I wish I could hug every single developer in your headquarters. However I think the changes you did to Hunger for Blood are a bit extreme.

Edit (Boubouille): Edited with more love and cuddling. Next one is a ban sir.

[Chiper]

Great, so of the dozens of excellent suggestions that people gave to improve totems, they took one, and probably the easiest to implement.

Gee, thanks blizz.

Frankly I dont see why rogues need more damage buffs. All our rogues are topping the meters at 3-4k, even on AoE they're out doing our mages. I just dont see where all the rogue QQ comes from.

[illusin]

ya they are nerfing assasination spec to bring it more inline with combat? instead of making it a buff that you click every 10 or 30 minutes which would have been better.

[PowerHacker]

Great, so of the dozens of excellent suggestions that people gave to improve totems, they took one, and probably the easiest to implement.

Gee, thanks blizz.

Frankly I dont see why rogues need more damage buffs. All our rogues are topping the meters at 3-4k, even on AoE they're out doing our mages. I just dont see where all the rogue QQ comes from.

the ppl you raid whit clearly are doing alot of things worng if they cant beat rogues atm

[illusin]

Great, so of the dozens of excellent suggestions that people gave to improve totems, they took one, and probably the easiest to implement.

Gee, thanks blizz.

Frankly I dont see why rogues need more damage buffs. All our rogues are topping the meters at 3-4k, even on AoE they're out doing our mages. I just dont see where all the rogue QQ comes from.

ROFL if rogues are topping your meters your dps is horrible

[PowerHacker]

gg blizz your changes are awesome, I wish I could hug every single developer in your headquarters. However I think the changes you did to Hunger for Blood are a bit extreme.

Edit (Boubouille): Edited with more love and cuddling. Next one is a ban sir.

lol nice ninja eidt there =)

[Chiper]

ROFL if rogues are topping your meters your dps is horrible

That may be, considering we actually still find Naxx to be an enjoyable challenge. Guess we're just not uber enough to deal with you super players problems.

[DarkZero]

gg blizz your changes are awesome, I wish I could hug every single developer in your headquarters. However I think the changes you did to Hunger for Blood are a bit extreme.

Edit (Boubouille): Edited with more love and cuddling. Next one is a ban sir.

I like your edit as much as I liked the changes, Boub!
Can't wait for lock love

[Bainz]

At least they did something with Totems.

And to all the people yelling and whining about changes, l2Read.

[illusin]

That may be, considering we actually still find Naxx to be an enjoyable challenge. Guess we're just not uber enough to deal with you super players problems.

No but rogues get outscaled with the top gear, hence why rogues need to get buffed instead of nerfed .

http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat/1462168#damageout thread from a standing fight

[gortz]

Am i right in thinking this means we'll still be using HfB for 30 energy but rupture will only be active for 20 seconds (glyphed) ? Even though the damage is increased if it works that way its only a slight increase in dps and definitely not enough.

Imo, not enough buffs to mutilate and way to mess up HfB :/