Cataclysm Follow-up, Blue posts, Comics

[Boubouille]

Cataclysm Leak Follow-up
The week-end has been .... interesting and I guess it's time to clarify a few facts :

You're so wrong!
Tons of people out there won't trust everything they read on the interweb, and I'm totally fine with that. But if you want to discuss about how wrong I am please do it in a nice way, you don't have to be aggressive and a lot of people got banned for that. I will probably clean up the bans from the last days after the Blizzcon but we can't really afford to let the forums get out of control with insults and spams. If you feel that you didn't deserve your ban at all just mail me and I'll try to have a look at it.

Something Awful isn't reliable!
I didn't want to hide the source of the quote posted a few minutes after my news post but I think a lot of people misunderstood that. After I posted the original information, a post appeared on Something Awful with a few extra details and I eventually merged it when it turned out to be ... reliable. The only details added from this post were :

• The "big" changes to the existing lore (I don't want to spoil it again, you know what I'm talking about)
• Gnomeregan possibly retaken by gnomes
• Blackrock Spire eruption.

And I think that's it, everything else was from my own personal work and is data gathered from multiple sources over the last month.

Just lay down the pitchforks for the moment, the Blizzcon is only in 4 days and you'll have the rest of the year to laugh at me if what I posted is indeed wrong, there are enough french jokes in the world to do that. For the moment it's just a pre-Blizzcon leak, we have them each year and you should be used to it by now.

Of course, each year, a lot of sites are wrong and I could be one of them. Nothing of what I posted was confirmed or commented by Blizzard.


Blue posts
No reason to freeze the site until the Blizzcon, we're back to blue posts.

Changes to /castrandom macros
The way we changed ("broke") castrandom was that if it fails, it continues to try and cast the same spell again. This means it will still work as you intend for randomly casting mounts or using different versions of Polymorph since those won't generally fail. We have no objection to using castrandom in that fashion, which was honestly more of the original intent for the macro.

Where we don't like castrandom is when players wanted to use the macro instead of having to pay attention to procs and cooldowns. That's just not the way we really want players playing WoW. There are some great games were part of the challenge is trying to automate your character as much as possible to respond to whatever happens. We just don't want WoW to be one of them.

In those situations where you feel utterly dependent on a macro because our default UI isn't cutting it, please help us to identify them (though don't feel obligated to turn the rest of this thread into that discussion). We'd rather make the class or UI work better rather than balance around the assumption that everyone castrandom macros the ability.

The legendary DK one-button macro is an interesting beast. It tended to work because it defaulted to Icy Touch a lot since most other abilities require melee. At the time, Icy Touch hit really, really hard. (Source)

Death Knight
Stoneskin Gargoyle on Dual-Wielding DK Tanks
Keep in mind that quote was before we decided that Frost could be focused towards dual-wield. We have no problems with Frost DKs tanking with two weapons.

The original logic behind Stoneskin Gargoyle remains though -- there generally are not two-handed tanking weapons, so hitting say the defense cap can be harder. A DW Frost DK can use two tanking swords. Grab one of them Quel things. (Source)

Druid
Druid survavibility
We don't necessarily want druids to be very tanky in all forms. You already get passive defenses in bear, moonkin, tree and to a lesser extent, cat. We want shifting to caster / travel to be a slight risk. It should be a decision you make based on the situation and not an automatic response. More below.

Saris's idea was to move Improved Barkskin to shallow Balance instead of deep resto.
It’s an interesting idea, but we didn’t want to rearrange talent trees especially for a mid-tier patch like this. However, you can see based on my previous response too that Imp Barskin might be a problematic talent in general. On the one hand, we want to get druids (of all trees) shifting more. That should just be a druid thing. On the other hand, we want it to be some kind of decision, and that is generally that caster form gives you more tools but at a hefty survivability cost. Imp Barskin tried to make that cost a little cheaper, but maybe that’s not the right way to go. We need to think some more at a high-level about what we really want the druid strategy in PvP to be.

I'm not so sure that "druid out of form = death" is actually a strong design.
Yeah. But I’m not sure that druid forms are just an extra button* you have to use before you use another button is a great design either. To be a little self-critical, I don’t think we have nailed the right balance of shifting for warriors, Shadow priests or DKs either.

* - In before "GC don't know druids." I realize using a spell from caster form will pop you out, but the fact remains that either shifting is a no-brainer or it isn't. We have been sending some mixed messages on that of late I fear. (Source)

Paladin
Nerfing threat in 3.2.2
We don't think "high threat tanks" is a fun niche for the game. We don't mind some variation depending on the specific situation, but paladin OTs were accidentally pulling off of MTs an awful lot. That isn't a L2P issue. That's just the numbers being off and frustrating everyone.

We didn't want to nerf threat until community perception had turned around that paladins could survive while tanking hard modes.

Try out the hard Coliseum fights (once available) or the tougher ones in Ulduar and let us know how it feels. (Source)

Seal of Command changes in 3.2.2
The idea was always that Seals were a choice. We have just iterated on them so much this patch that one of them kept coming up as the only real Seal. Hopefully this latest design will work out.

If an attack procs a seal of command then that seal of command can chain onto up to two different targets.
That is correct, with one clarification. It must be a single-target attack. If the attack is already multi-target like DS, then only the damage procs, not the cleave. (Source)

Rogue
Fan of Knives nerf in 3.2.2
We sat on a change for awhile because we hoped FoK spam was a flavor-of-the-month thing. We thought there was a chance the community would come up with a way to counter it, and since it's pretty much a one-trick pony, there would be no reason to keep trying it. The community absolutely comes up with counters on its own -- the answer to every new strategy should not immediately be for us to nerf it. We also hoped the resilience changes would chill out the damage enough that rogues would stop pursuing FoK spam. That doesn't seem to be happening.

It is a nerf in PvE, but honestly it's probably a nerf that was also needed. We wanted to give rogues some AE damage, and we were okay with the big numbers for a long time because they were big when fights were short, but not as good over longer AE fights. (Protip: AE doesn't just equal trash these days.) Few people would argue that rogue single-target dps on most fights isn't amazing ("jaw-dropping"? ). As long as rogues can still contribute meaningfully to AE fights, which they will be able to do, they shouldn't be in any danger of being sidelined.

It's possible some select fights, notably Yogg 0, may be too difficult without the interrupt, but the encounter designers are prepared to make changes accordingly, and everyone will have access to better gear in the new raid tier anyway.

I asked a rogue in our guild if she thought Blizzard would nerf Fan. She said "They probably need to, but it was fun while it lasted."

The greatest casualty is probably the loss of so many FoKing puns. (Source)

Comics
Dark Legacy Comic #201 and Teh Gladiators #87 are out. Also added one more comic this week, Foxtrot did a Blizzcon-special.

[Zellery]

I love DLC so much! Can't wait for Blizzcon this weekend. I for one am excited about all the hype around the new Wow expansion.

[Draxinusom]

I hope you are wrong with all of this so we can have this awesome video of you running naked in the streets of Paris ;D

[felix8024]

Bibi even you, feel now how the wow community is corrupt. I can joke, to see you naked if you are wrong etc . But ppl are very aggresive novadays. Behave like only they are right.
If you wanna predict the future and write something which is possibly wrong, you get 50 replays in 10 min.
But if it turns out that you were right and you predicted true fact, 3 or 4 month before official statement you know what happen??? NOTHING. You get no attention at all if you are right, but you rise hell when you are wrong. Sad but true.

[Direfen]

*Phew!* glad that Cataclysmic tsunami of Speculation has been laid to rest for now.

Means all of us can read our favorite comics in peace and play the game we all know and love without all the previous stuff crossing our minds. ;D 8) (Yay for excessive smilies)

[bbr]

BlizzCon in 4 days!


SA is mostly a site for fun+stuff.
We don't expect everything to be accurate, but there's plenty of background data to prove that a LOT is about to change with the cataclysm.
Naysayers there will always be, the rest of us just wait and anticipate while speculating for more :>

The greatest casualty is probably the loss of so many FoKing puns

They went there ^^

I hope you are wrong with all of this so we can have this awesome video of you running naked in the streets of Paris ;D

That only needs him to be wrong about the worgen and goblins :P

[LavaDuck]

Stupid slow loading page on DLC


edit: Hahahahahaha!! Awesome edition of DLC! (as always)

[Boltenstein]

BlizzCon in 4 days!

"I can get it back! I can get it back! I think.."

[jiggler]

DLC is awesome

[wadark]

I was one of the ones with pitchforks about how this info seems sketchy at best.

I would seriously be happy with just a small bit of info about the sources, not necessarily specific persons or organizations, but a general idea of "how close to Blizz" this info is coming from.

As of now, I've lost a little bit of the trust and respect I had in this site, and something like that would give me back a lot of what I lost.

[Zellery]

BlizzCon in 4 days!


SA is mostly a site for fun+stuff.
We don't expect everything to be accurate, but there's plenty of background data to prove that a LOT is about to change with the cataclysm.
Naysayers there will always be, the rest of us just wait and anticipate while speculating for more :>

They went there ^^

That only needs him to be wrong about the worgen and goblins :P

Wow, I missed the FoKing joke! XD

[MC4l]

<3 DLC

[bbr]

I was one of the ones with pitchforks about how this info seems sketchy at best.

I would seriously be happy with just a small bit of info about the sources, not necessarily specific persons or organizations, but a general idea of "how close to Blizz" this info is coming from.

You have to understand that it's not always possible to give sources without compromising them.
Some people have a written contract (NDA - non disclosure agreement) which prevents them from stating anything. Yet, still stuff leaks at times. Much like last year WotLK had several leaks even though everyone in the pre alpha was bound by a NDA.

If BB had the original source up, but the source didn't want to be publicized then obviously BB would have to remove it or face repercussions. Both from blizzard to the source, and possibly said source.

So, yeah, lay down the pitchfork and wait it out.
It's only 4 days after all.

[perera]

I don't doubt Bibi because I've been around for a while, but if I had started coming here recently I don't think I would take that leaked info seriously

[Barky]

looking forward to the announcements posted after this weekend, have fun everyone going to blizzcon :P

[wadark]

You have to understand that it's not always possible to give sources without compromising them.
Some people have a written contract (NDA - non disclosure agreement) which prevents them from stating anything. Yet, still stuff leaks at times. Much like last year WotLK had several leaks even though everyone in the pre alpha was bound by a NDA.

If BB had the original source up, but the source didn't want to be publicized then obviously BB would have to remove it or face repercussions. Both from blizzard to the source, and possibly said source.

So, yeah, lay down the pitchfork and wait it out.
It's only 4 days after all.

Oh, I've laid down my pitchfork already. I was in a fervor of posting for an hour or two after the news post hit, after which I decided to just lay off and see what Blizzcon brings.

But more on topic, I understand completely about not being able to fully disclose the source due to possible repercussions and NDAs and all that good stuff. But just because he can't say WHO the source is, can he not at least give a general idea of WHERE the source is in relation to the design/development team? (There's no sarcasm there, the question is in earnest)

[bbr]

That might still compromise it.
Just wait the 4 days, we'll see :P


And, hope blizzcon gets uploaded to youtube often and frequently.

[Djolisimo]

All very reliable sources ofcourse.

[wadark]

That might still compromise it.
Just wait the 4 days, we'll see :P


And, hope blizzcon gets uploaded to youtube often and frequently.

Already bought the stream ^_^...wanted my murloc marine! I'll be carting that everwhere, along with a healthy supply of:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=35223

[Korah]

Who cares who the source is, theres no point in QQin asking boub to release the name of the source or which dept. the source is in he obviously cant release who it is due to the NDA. The source has to be a good reliable one because I'm sure Boub has used him/her in the past and what has been said in the past must have been a little true so yeah if its not true no big deal.

Really looking forward to hear information about Blizzcon! Prays for some uber warlock shard system OPness >.<