Patch 3.3 Background Downloader, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

Update - And PTR testing is done for the moment! See you in a few hours for the US testing! (If I can get any stream)

Patch 3.3 on Background Downloader
The first part of the Patch 3.3 is now available on the background downloader, you can stop mailing me about that. ^^ (But you can mail me about everything else!)

Blue posts

Shadowmourne Quest (The Sacred and the Corrupt)
The quest requires friendly Ashen Verdict rep to begin. It may also only be acquired by Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights. (Source)

Armored Froswtyrms confirmed to be PvE Rewards
There will be a Frostwyrms up for grabs for Icecrown raiders, achievable in a similar way to previous rewards such as the Ulduar proto-drake. (Source)

Icewell "Radiance" (Chill of the Throne)
The "Icewell Radiance" is designed to account for very high avoidance levels. It lets us lower the damage bosses do per hit because their hits will connect more often, keeping boss dps the same but lowering spike damage.

However, I also know what that message says to some people. It says that if I go into Icecrown and wipe on a boss all night that Blizzard lied to me about boss damage. We're just sort of bracing ourselves for the inevitable "I couldn't beat Marrowgar because he hits so hard. I thought bosses wouldn't hit hard."

Bosses hitting less hard does not mean bosses can now be facerolled. It just means they hit less hard. To be fair, most of the folks posting in this thread understand the difference. But it's not uncommon for us to see our quotes misused in other forums where we can't necessarily bop in to correct the misunderstanding. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Feral Tanks in Cataclysm
We talked about druids in bear form also getting AP from strength. Strength won't appear on leather and no piece should have Str and Agi together, so it's not like they would really double dip. That lets us still have tanking necks, rings and cloaks with strength on them that are attractive to all 4 tanking classes.

Almost all the items in the game are going to have to change. In many cases this is just a sweeping pass we can make on all gear, such as replacing the Agi + AP on leather with just Agi. So don't worry too much about what happens with old gear and talents mixed with the new stat system. The gear and talents in many cases must change. (Source)

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Fingers of Frost
The Fingers of Frost issue is really challenging to solve. It it procs on hit then the procs don't get eaten but you may have to interrupt a Frostbolt. If it procs on cast, the procs can get eaten. Those are really the only ways it can proc though. Mixing travel-time spells and instant spells can muddy things up. Things also get more complicated when you have silly amounts of haste, which through no fault of their own, many mages do.

Fingers of Frost seems to work fine so long as you have Frostbite, but due to some technical limitations, the two talents don't play well apart. A long-term solution might be to make Frostbite a prereq for FoF or just merge the two talents together.

Letting Fingers of Frost display its charges is a good idea. We might not be able to get that in for 3.3 but we'll put it on "the list."

Our thanks to Lhivera and others among you who have explored these issues so throughly. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Rogue Weapon Swapping Addon
We also killed the addon, but we didn't want to do it without also trying to fix the problem it was trying to fix. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Elemental Tier 9 Nerf
We don't want players to stick with older tier sets when new pieces become available. (It's one thing if it's a really good trinket -- it's another if it's your entire set..)

We balance some things around absolute values (we're shooting for a target) and other things around relative values (how X looks compared to Y). A lot of shaman were saying they weren't going to upgrade to tier 10 despite the, frankly, gratuitous stats on the new gear. We concluded that was because the T9 set bonus was too good and the T10 set bonus was too weak. We suspected the T9 was too good for some time, but didn't want to nerf it while the T9 was all that was available. We did the same thing with a few other sets (or relics).

We try to pick interesting set bonuses, but that means that they will sometimes end up being over or under-budget once players figure out the best ways to optimize their play style around the bonuses. A little of that is okay -- it's interesting when a new set changes your spell rotation a little bit. But when an older set is so good that players feel like upgrading is a bad thing (ignoring the pain of having to get new enchants and gems or whatever) then we think we have a problem.

From a player point of view, I can understand why the attractive answer is always just to buff the new stuff. But continually buffing an outlier instead of bringing the outlier back into the pack is a good way to lead to power inflation on gear. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Soul Shard System in Cataclysm Q&A (Source)
I can't answer Q&As like this all the time or even very often. I probably won't be able to keep coming back to this thread to answer follow up questions. Understand that when I do answer some questions and it drives expectations that everyone is entitled to have *their* questions answers, things get complicated. Sorry for all of the caveats, but I've kind of learned what to expect.

1. Will it be implemented in Cataclsysm or faded in through patches considering the seemingly huge gap in content?
Cataclysm.

2. Even with the new system will warlocks be given a secondary defense to fall back on, on a long CD should fear become useless?
You mean like Demonic Circle?

3. Are there plans to link the system to a warlock pet? I know fel domination is one of them, but popping soul shards for more power for the pet are being considered? Example- Refreshing CD's?
Sure. We don't have a lot of details we can share yet.

4. What is going to happen to those spells that required soul shards?
They won't. Some of them may change though. Perhaps the un-enhanced version will be weaker than the current shard version. Stuff like summoning (people and demons) just won't cost shards.

5. Are there plans to change hellfire to an AoE knockback snare like a secondary defense warlocks can fall back on or will it be outright removed?
No, there are no plans.

6. Are there plans to extend Inferno's duration similar to before where we have to enslave him, but with no capping prohibitions?
As I opined recently, IN-FER-NO probably just needs a different mechanic. The trade-off for getting the demon can just be the cooldown.

7. Are there plans to reduce slot problems with curses? Like CoT and CoEx being merged?
Yes to the general question, no to the specific example.

8. Are there plans to add dispel resistance to curses through talents?
Probably not. We'd rather tone down the potency of dispels in general, not require everyone to stack more defenses for them.

9. Will CoD be modified to be castable on players? If so will you modify the damage/duration/CD on it or will it remain the same?
We haven't talked about it.

10. Do you plan on fixing the debuff problems to pets. The fact the duration on debuffs remain the same until the pet is out on the field while buffs continue their duration course regardless of the pet being summoned or not?
This isn't really a soul shard question is it? That is more of a technical limitation and not a design goal. The answer has more to do with prioritization than intent.

11. Will soul link be removed from the demon should it despawn/dimiss?
Don't know yet.

12. What are the plans for drain soul in the new shard system?
Don't know yet. One idea is an emergency backup system for long fights or situations where you screw up. Ideally we don't need this though so we haven't resolved it.

13. Are there plans to make enslave demon a little more viable for PvP and example is the doomguard and inferno?
If you're talking about warlocks stealing each other's demons, I'm not sure that will lead to those demons getting more use. It might make you giggle when you steal one though.

11) Will the soul shard system allow you to empower our primary nukes chaos bolt/soul fire for increased damage on a short cd?
Yes. The example we used at Blizzcon was some kind of duration-limited or "your next spell" limitation. We haven't set this in stone yet.

12) What will happen to soul fire? Will it still require a shard to use? Could it find more acceptance in our normal rotation considering its potentially our most powerful nuke
It won't require a shard. It might require a shard to make it something you want to cast though (imagine a PoM - Pyro).

13) How will the soul shard change work in regards to different trees?
No idea yet. The talent trees aren't done. One thing we threw out at Blizzcon was maybe Demo gets an extra shard, but that's just hand-waving at this point.

[Nyuun]

Mine started about an hour ago in the EU, madness. Expect 3.3 soon!

Also the Ele T9 nerf makes me sad

[mmocfd1b0ab5a3]

Come on patch!

[Hugecool]

A Frostwryms!

[Xacez]

Ghostcrawler - Killing addons since 3.0

[Asur]

Interesting warlock Q and A

[Velzira]

Can't wait until the first guilds start to get the achievement and get the frostwrym...nothing is more lovely then seeing them sit at Krasus Landing on their mount trying to impress people! Did I say lovely? I meant annoying. Nobody cares about your mount.

[CaspianRoach]

any solution to background downloader just sitting in proccesses not downloading nothing? .torrent file is 0 byte also.

[tialol]

http://de.xfire.com/live_video/whus/

ROTFACE 10 MAN HARDMODE TESTING

(Instance should be up soon)

[Octaviax]

Interesting warlock Q and A

Indeed.

It's going to be interesting - seeing the Warlock community somewhat divided between those who have Cataclysm or not.

[LavaDuck]

Guess most textures and models are done.

[Swizzle]

so they have no idea what to do with FoF and it took lhivera to show them they programmed it poorly? interesting indeed...

[Arondight]

SUCK IT PVPERS

*readys chalice to collect PvPer's tears*


c|___________________________________________________________|


I am prepared 8)

[ralphie]

GO GO PATCH!

[Kraftwerk]

A whole expansion later, and Frostwyrms are only available to elite PvE and PvP'ers.

Thanks, Blizzard.

[Revitalize]

Elemental Tier 9 Nerf
We don't want players to stick with older tier sets when new pieces become available. (It's one thing if it's a really good trinket -- it's another if it's your entire set..)

We balance some things around absolute values (we're shooting for a target) and other things around relative values (how X looks compared to Y). A lot of shaman were saying they weren't going to upgrade to tier 10 despite the, frankly, gratuitous stats on the new gear. We concluded that was because the T9 set bonus was too good and the T10 set bonus was too weak. We suspected the T9 was too good for some time, but didn't want to nerf it while the T9 was all that was available. We did the same thing with a few other sets (or relics).

We try to pick interesting set bonuses, but that means that they will sometimes end up being over or under-budget once players figure out the best ways to optimize their play style around the bonuses. A little of that is okay -- it's interesting when a new set changes your spell rotation a little bit. But when an older set is so good that players feel like upgrading is a bad thing (ignoring the pain of having to get new enchants and gems or whatever) then we think we have a problem.

From a player point of view, I can understand why the attractive answer is always just to buff the new stuff. But continually buffing an outlier instead of bringing the outlier back into the pack is a good way to lead to power inflation on gear.

Biggest bullshit I've ever heard.
Nerfing elemental shaman dps through tier even though their DPS isnt even that huge.
What a fucking joke.

[Revitalize]

A whole expansion later, and Frostwyrms are only available to elite PvE and PvP'ers.

Thanks, Blizzard.

You expected to be given a Frostwyrm on a silver platter?
That's the point of releasing these mounts.
To reward people from the feats they complete.

[Master Guns]

Whoever the blizzard employee was that answered those question sounds like a real smart ass.

[Saberoy]

I was foreseeing a later release of the patch, Dec 8th or 15th. But with them announcing that they won't necessarily be releasing all the icecrown bosses immediately, and the extremely polished feel of the 5-mans and new LFG system, I feel like with just a little more stress testing of the first few ICC bosses, it could be released as soon as next week.

[str4jo]

SUCK IT PVPERS

*readys chalice to collect PvPer's tears*


c|___________________________________________________________|


I am prepared 8)