Blizzcon Tomorrow, Blue posts

[sardokar]

Dwarf Mages.. I just can't see them getting interested in the Arcane.. not necessarily lore breaking, but needs a good reason

Tauren Paladin/Priest Lore breaking without a very good explanation.
Gnome Priest Lore breaking without a very good explanation
Troll Druid Lore breaking without a very good explanation

What's interesting is dwarves could be mages in wow beta (I'm sure there's still screenshots of them floating around) but were taken out. There's a new quest in the game now that's kinda setting up the holy cows thing. There are gnomes that spam heal eachother in gnomregan, and there are a lot of shapeshifting trolls out there...all this is already in the game really.

[LanceDH]

What's interesting is dwarves could be mages in wow beta (I'm sure there's still screenshots of them floating around) but were taken out. There's a new quest in the game now that's kinda setting up the holy cows thing. There are gnomes that spam heal eachother in gnomregan, and there are a lot of shapeshifting trolls out there...all this is already in the game really.

[Amgyn]

remember when people doubted deathknights? or bloodelves joining the horde?...

lore is blizzards toy.

[ryonavin]

What's interesting is dwarves could be mages in wow beta (I'm sure there's still screenshots of them floating around) but were taken out. There's a new quest in the game now that's kinda setting up the holy cows thing. There are gnomes that spam heal eachother in gnomregan, and there are a lot of shapeshifting trolls out there...all this is already in the game really.

Just because it was in Beta doesn't mean that it was good for the lore.. I'm sure the reason dwarf mages got pulled was because it just didn't make sense for thier particular race. They've always been a race of crafters and warriors and paladins. I keep hearing about the druids of the sun as being the explanation for tauren paladins and I just need to see more information on that before I'm convinced. As far as the spam healing gnomes.. bandages rather than actual heal spells? I mean Blizzard has come out and said gnomes are more scientific then religious, so they'd never go for the light

As far as shapeshifting trolls.. there's more to being a druid then shapeshifting. What is there in troll lore that indicates that they would be one with nature and follow a druidic path?

[Nozuka]

Again, this isn't confirmed by Blizzard yet but I really do not doubt most of my information at this point. Let's say that ... at least 90% of it should be accurate, I just couldn't get the Thrall/Garrosh thing 100% confirmed, even if it's very very likely.

love your confidence.

[ryonavin]

remember when people doubted deathknights? or bloodelves joining the horde?...

lore is blizzards toy.

Yea and they are treating it like the kid with an action figure and a magnifying glass

[Zortorai]

great 90% true, I was scared of trusting it, but if cairne doesn't die and the garrosh thing aint true, then I'm happy and believe it.

That will make me happy, as a lore nut, pretty much that would ruin it because that would mean Saurfang is dead before Garrosh gets control because Saurfang would never let Garrosh start killing off political opponents who happen to be leaders of allied races.
Plus Thrall is too kick ass to let leave.
Oh, and that thing about Thrall being the next guardian, hope thats false too. Just saying, otherwise, I like the idea of the Horde getting a punting bag, I mean Goblins.

[chubbs27]

Ah, that SS brings me back to the days of running clear across zones in the looting position...good stuff, good memories.

[Bassdude]

I hope that you don't back out on your bet now Boubille

[Creptius]

i know this is probobly the wrong place to ask and i havent looked through google enough but i havent slept for 48 hours so is blizzcon starting at 10 PDT or normal time would make more sence if it was PDT but someone needs to help me here

[Avantha]

Just because it was in Beta doesn't mean that it was good for the lore.. I'm sure the reason dwarf mages got pulled was because it just didn't make sense for thier particular race. They've always been a race of crafters and warriors and paladins.

There are dwarf mage NPCs all over the world actually. There may not be an overabundance of regular dwarf mage NPCs, but there are plenty of Dark Iron Dwarf mages, Earthen mages, and Iron Dwarf mages.

[perera]

Ah, that SS brings me back to the days of running clear across zones in the looting position...good stuff, good memories.

I won't post it directly because it's a big image...
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3272/lagwow.gif

i know this is probobly the wrong place to ask and i havent looked through google enough but i havent slept for 48 hours so is blizzcon starting at 10 PDT or normal time would make more sence if it was PDT but someone needs to help me here

It doesn't start today dude, it starts tomorrow... so do get some sleep
Also, wow.com is the place for Blizzcon coverage... they'll tell you even if they put matching socks in the morning.

[Laserbeast]

I haven't logged into this site in over a year, but I did today to say this:

Boubouille, stop doubting yourself on the front page. If you get a scoop from a source, legit or not, you hold your ground. That's journalism and news reporting 101.

This "I really do not doubt my information" stuff makes me puke. Just stop, report the scoops, if they're bullshit deal with the flamewars later.

Love,
Chris

[ItachiZaku]

imo the only thing holding varian back from capturing thrall is Jaina. could be "something" happend to her in IC.

Varian would need an army greater than that which takes out the Lich King, to "capture" Thrall, especially with Saurfang around. Thrall ain't no ones bitch.

[Grayem]

I haven't logged into this site in over a year, but I did today to say this:

Boubouille, stop doubting yourself on the front page. If you get a scoop from a source, legit or not, you hold your ground. That's journalism and news reporting 101.

This "I really do not doubt my information" stuff makes me puke. Just stop, report the scoops, if they're bullshit deal with the flamewars later.

Love,
Chris

Thing is this isn't a news site nor is it journalism. It's a fan site. It's a blog. Journalists can't just go out and print whatever stories they want regardless of it being legit or fake. Care to guess what else is news reporting 101, not printing unconfirmed information. Then again journalists and news sites have consequences for printing fake news. This is all speculation on MMO's part. He could be 90% right or 90% wrong, but it doesn't matter because he can print whatever he wants to.

[ent0mbed]

Thing is this isn't a news site nor is it journalism. It's a fan site. It's a blog.

Hmmm... definition of news: Information of any kind that is not previously known to someone. The forum section that these posts on the front page go into... it's titled "News". Journalism: the profession of reporting or photographing or editing news stories. Try again.

News on television or in print form regularly relies on sources (many times anonymous). It's up to the person reporting that news to determine just how reliable their source is and whether or not to use it. Apparently Boubouille feels confident in using the source he did. We have no reason at the time being to think otherwise (short of simply not wanting to believe which is totally fine... but pretty irrational considering Boub's track record and the fact that we have no information pointing to these items being false).

Mostly I think it comes down to people not liking the information for some reason and that is causing the negative reactions. Not much else going on here.

[Rtgiant]

Blizzcon Tomorrow!
The Blizzcon starts tomorrow, the Cataclysm expansion will be announced during the opening ceremony and I already have a nice preview up :

• World of Warcraft - Cataclysm

Again, this isn't confirmed by Blizzard yet but I really do not doubt most of my information at this point. Let's say that ... at least 90% of it should be accurate, I just couldn't get the Thrall/Garrosh thing 100% confirmed, even if it's very very likely.


Blue posts

Disparities between tanks
Are you struggling on hard mode raid encounters because your guild picked the wrong tank? I understand that some of you are, but according to our data, it’s a pretty small minority of players trying those encounters. If you’re just offended that the health pools are not identical, then your argument isn’t going to carry as much weight as a guild that hit a brick wall because they didn’t have the best tank for an encounter.

When druids couldn’t apply the Thunderclap debuff, that was considered a big problem. The fact that a druid can’t interrupt as well as a warrior is still considered a big problem by some. We used to let abilities such as Berserker Rage, Spell Reflect or Intervene play big roles on some encounters, but that inevitably leads to one tank being massively better on one encounter than another. None of the deltas are massive in the current game in our opinion, and we think that the number of cases of players who state with certainty that they can detect a difference is overstated. (Source)

[...] I’ll attempt to explain this at a vision level. In my experience, the community tries to approach game design too often with “laws.” They know “Any tank class can be MT” is something we want to accomplish, but then they take that to trump all other concerns and expect identical tanking classes to be the only possible outcome. That’s not how game design works. Player flexibility (bringing who you want) is a big concern. But so is class distinction. So is making the game approachable. So is making sure all the classes are fun. It may seem like an inherent contradiction when you have two design goals heading in opposite direction (simplicity vs. depth may be the most obvious one). But that doesn’t mean all other concerns can get swept aside. You have to take everything into consideration when you make changes. (Source)

Death Knight
Primary strikes inferor to disease builders
That was a direct response to the diseaseless rotations that just spammed strikes. Because DKs use a pseudo combo point system (in that they can use their "finishers" whenever they want), things have strayed into ignoring the finishers or over-utilizing them from time to time.

I suspect it has more to do with the difficulty of keeping diseases up in a PvP environment coupled with the benefits of ranged attacks. The IT glyph is probably a little generous.

Scourge Strike falling behind Obliterate seems to be largely a function of armor pen (a problematic stat these days in many respects). It's not at all ideal, but we don't have a great plan yet to fix it that didn't involve just buffing Scourge Strike (and possibly leading to diseaselessness again). (Source)

Obliterate vs. Scourge Strike
I don't think that's the whole issue. If Obliterate just beat Scourge Strike, then Unholy DKs might be using Oblit in PvP. Instead they're going to Icy Touch and Death Coil. Death Coil is supposed to be a bonus, not the centerpiece of the class. (Source)

Mage
Mages concerns
My point was that we don’t want Fire / Frostfire to have to worry about mana to the extent that Arcane does. Arcane is more about pacing. Fire is more about responding to what is going on in the fight. That is not to say that Arcane should run OOM constantly or that Fire has an unalienable right to infinite mana. Try not to take my comments to illogical extremes.

When I say we want Fire to be about cooldowns, I meant that lining up your spells at the right time is the hallmark of a great Fire mage. I know a lot of players will say either LOL mages just spam one button, or else LOL mage dps is entirely RNG. I don’t believe either to be true, and the evidence supporting this conclusion is that there are mages who can do much higher damage than other mages, consistently and with similar gear. This suggests there is a much higher skill component to mage dps than even some mages want to acknowledge. A lot of that skill component for Fire / Frostfire comes in doing things at the right time (which we hope to contrast with Arcane and ultimately Frost).

What those things are you are supposed to manage come in several tiers: first are Scorch, Living Bomb and Hot Streak. Yes Hot Streak has an RNG component, but not entirely so. Players still have some control over it.

Second are things like Icy Veins, Combustion, Molten Fury, trinkets and even things like Flame Caps. Yes, I know that both Fire and Frostfire mages don’t always take all of those talents. A note on Combustion in a minute.

Third are more external cooldowns like say Bloodlust and Power Infusion. Yes, other classes benefit from these too. But mages can inflate their damage dramatically when they line these up with their other cooldowns. In the BC days, a mage who really focused on that last 20% of a fight could see their dps nearly double. (I acknowledge this was a bigger factor when Combustion was a bigger contributor.)

Fourth are factors that have less of an effect overall. I’m talking about things like PoM and Firestarter (not included in most raiding builds), and Focus Magic and Torment the Weak (not trivial, but generally up nearly all the time too).

Combustion isn’t good enough right now. We get that. Fire used to be more about cooldown stacking when Combustion meant more. The problem is that we’re happy with Fire damage. We don’t generally like to nerf a spec in order to buff a talent unless things are really, really off. We’ll eventually (3.3?) fix Combustion, because it’s a fun talent. But we aren’t going to do it in such a way that just grants some “free dps” unless of course mages need it at that time. If you disagree that Fire is performing well, then I can understand how you’d disagree with our course of action here. (Source)

Priest
Mandatory talents
No. We're no longer in the business of giving specs a talent or ability that is so awesome that you just have to get brought to a raid. A raid should be able to function without a Shadow priest. They should want you because you're a good player, not because your presence passively makes everyone else better regardless of your individual skill.

Now we don't want you to be a liability, which is why we want Shadow damage to be proportionately higher than it was in BC and why we want Shadow to have great utility, including Replenishment and Vampiric Embrace. No, VE is not mandatory. Yes, other specs can bring Replenishment. That's so not every raid needs an X before they can enter the instance.

Do we see Shadow priests in raids, even in very uber guilds attempting hard modes? Yes. All the time. (Source)

Warrior
Rage generation scaling with gear
When you get better gear, you do more damage. That’s progression. Assuming things scale reasonably well (though we tweak things so often now, I think scaling is less of a concern than it used to be), you should be at the same relative position to other classes as you progress. It’s a bad model that warriors start out weak but get stronger relative to other classes with gear.

[...] Rage isn't an unalienable right. It's a resource. It has advantages and disadvantages. While you won't ever flame out the way a mage might run OOM in a long fight, you won't always have enough rage to do what you want at any given second (while the mage will probably have mana). Learning to manage that is the difference between okay warriors and great warriors.

But suffer, suffer, suffer then explode with great gear isn't a great design. Why haven't we changed it yet? Because as with many changes of this level if we were to do it tomorrow it would feel really harsh to a lot of warriors. We do care about how our changes feel to the community, even if we sometimes decide to make unpopular calls when we think they're necessary. (Source)

Giving Warriors more way to generate rage
While that might be too dramatic a change, I agree that giving warriors more control over getting rage when they needed it might be a good idea. Imagine (I am totally waving my arms here and not announcing changes) an off-the-GCD Bloodlust with a much shorter cooldown. (Source)

Man....I completely trust you and I truly hope that thrall becomes the new guardian and garrosh is the new warchief...that is something the horde needs to return to savage blood hungry a faction. I know i'm a minority here but as a horde player I have always liked and been a fan of garrosh, as well as saurfang and thrall...garrosh is an ignorant violent bastard. As for cairne dying..well I like him too so maybe something else gets to happen. but oh well bye bye cow king.

[toychristopher]

I'm kind of excited.

In other news, I think it is cute how you always say The Blizzcon.

[Ham on Rye]

i know this is probobly the wrong place to ask and i havent looked through google enough but i havent slept for 48 hours so is blizzcon starting at 10 PDT or normal time would make more sence if it was PDT but someone needs to help me here

Pacific Time IS "normal time" for many of us.

[Surnda]

I'll lol when(if) they announce that Cataclysm and isn't rly a wow expack. It'll be starcraft... or diablo... or not wow... BUT SOMETHING! :