Gaining XP in battlegrounds
It's something we're very interested in doing. I'm confident you'll find out more soon. (
Source)
Mount Skills
We're looking at the whole mount and skill system currently. We may make some changes in the near future, but I doubt that making mount skills account wide will be one of them. Still, we agree that some changes may need to be made. We will have more information on this in the future. (
Source)
Badge System
We have some new things in store for the badge system to help with the current end game progression curve that exists (as you noted: Heroics > Naxx > Ulduar > 3.2 > Icecrown ). We're looking to put together this information for you and will provide it as soon as it's ready to go. (
Source)
New PvE Gear in the Coliseum
In patch 3.2 the coliseum will hold new 5, 10, and 25 player challenges, so gear has to come with that especially since Arena Season 7 will start and we can't introduce new PvP gear without PvE gear. (
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Arena representation and game balance
There is a correlation between representation and balance, but it's not 1.0. Certain classes are more popular than others because players like the idea of that class or the play style. Certain classes are in low representation because they are countered by others who are higher. Certain classes maintain a high representation just because they counter other classes that are high.
It also matters how you measure representation. Are you comparing Arena representation to representation of the class at level 80 overall? Are you looking at all brackets or just 2s? Are you looking at all Arena teams, just the high ranking ones, or just the top 100? Or top 10? Those all give you different answers.
Some classes require more player skill than others. What you see in a situation like this is that among lower ratings, the class isn't effective because some of those players lack the requisite skill. Then you see at very high ratings, the class comes into play again because in the hands of an expert it's deadly. Does this mean the class is unbalanced because only experts can make it work or balanced because at the highest echelons where skill matters the most, it is in equal representation?
As the OP points out, being able to hard counter someone in very strict rock-paper-scissors style may be balanced but it's not fun. We don't actually go out of our way to make sure X is a class that beats Y. Certain classes will have advantages over the others just because of the way the class mechanics work out. We're okay with that to a point because it keeps things interesting, but we don't want you to feel you've lost when the doors open and you see who is on the other side. (
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Giving a Mortal Strike debuff to casters
It's an interesting question that comes up a lot. Would caster comps be more viable if they just brought MS? Would things feel more even if MS was a 20% debuff instead of 50%?
One of the things we've noticed from feedback is that players who feel like they just can't stop healers often lack MS on their team. On the other hand, teams that feel like they get clobbered be melee nearly always have the MS debuff on them.
We experimented with giving the debuff to shamans early on Lich King, but ended up backing off of that because it just felt like we were homogenizing classes too much. But you can make the argument that it's such a game changer that it's almost mandatory in Arena. (
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Death Knight (
3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Druid (
3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Cat form models next week
Trust me. I'm confident you'll be pleasantly surprised with the tauren cat update. Stay tuned! It's coming next week. (
Source)
Hunter (
3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Hunters in Arena
We want hunter representation in Arena to be higher than it currently is. (
Source)
Warlock (
3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Green fire effects?
I can't say, "yes green fire is coming" and I can't say "No, never." The most I can say is that we're aware of the request and it's always a possibility for the future. Anything more than that, we couldn't say. (
Source)
Warrior (
3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Bugs with rage generation? (
Source)
We investigated this issue and found it was not true – the rage generation formula has not changed anytime recently. So we looked into it further to figure out why this was being brought up and here are some of the problems we came across:
- In the formulas people are using, there is a constant value which is labeled as ‘c’. At some point in the past, someone calculated a formula for determining c based on their level and that formula is not correct past level 70 as this value needs retuning from time to time like when a new expansion comes out. The value listed for c is 320.6 when it is actually 453.3.
- We modified the system for displaying power bars in Wrath of the Lich King to have the client display its best guess of how much power they have, which is very deterministic for mana or energy, but not so much for rage. This most likely results in the displayed rage being off slightly at times, making the data collection more difficult. The client displays its best guess and the server validates the power usage against the value it knows they actually have - the two can be out of synch occasionally which throws the data off.
- Some of the testing was done with ungeared characters hitting for very small amounts. There is a component to the calculation we haven’t previously mentioned that will make the rage gained from those attacks sometimes not match the formula. Basically, the normal formula is Rage = (7.5d/c+f*s)/2. However, that result can never be larger than (7.5d/c)*2. This essentially means that very low damage attacks have a limit on how much they can be averaged up by the f*s component of the equation.
To try and clarify things for the number crunchers, conceptually, here is the formula for rage generation:
- 1) Determine rage based on damage done divided by a level constant (7.5*d/c)
- 2) Determine how much rage would be 3.5 rage per second when factoring in the hit made and the weapon’s speed (f*s)
- 3) Average the two of them together (the divided by 2 part).