Build of the Month
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Limited PvP -> PvE Free Character Transfers
The Cataclysm Classic Pre-Expansion Patch Arrives April 30
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Season 4... Just old dungeons and new ilvl?
What's the state of PvP like today?
Patch 4.0.1 - PTR Build 13156
A new build is being deployed on PTR realms. Also, don't miss today's announcement:
Spell Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Death Knight (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Blood
- Blood Presence now increases threat by 200%, up from 125%.
Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Feral
- Bear Form now increases threat by 200%, up from 125%.
Hunter (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Survival
- Snake Trap, Explosive Trap, Freezing Trap, Ice Trap, Immolation Trap now last 1 min, up from 30 sec.
- Trap Launcher now costs 20 Focus, down from 30 Focus.
- Wyvern Sting now costs 10 Focus, down from 35 Focus.
Pet Abilities
- Acid Spit (Worm) no longer costs focus.
Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Holy
- Divine Light base healing increased by 10%
- Flash of Light base healing increased by 10%
- Holy Light base healing increased by 10%
- Holy Shock base healing increased by 10%
- Walk in the Light (Passive) now increases healing by 15%, up from 10%.
Protection
- Righteous Fury now increases threat by 200%, up from 125%.
Warlock (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Destruction
- Improved Soul Fire effect now has a 15 sec cooldown, down from 30 sec.
- Conflagrate now deals fire damage equal to 60% of your Immolate's periodic damage on the target, down from 100%.
Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Protection
- Defensive Stance now increases threat by 200%, up from 125%.
Costs of Heirlooms in 4.0.1
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Level 80 Balancing in 4.0.1
Here's the deal: level 80 is going to be a little crazy. There is a reason we're going to end the PvP season before the next patch goes live. There is a reason we had to make PvE adjustments, such as Chill of the Throne. Critical new abilities aren't available until higher level. Combat ratings are much higher than they will be once everyone starts leveling, and likely higher than they ever will be again. Health ratios are much lower than they will be with higher level gear.
We're not totally throwing up our hands at level 80, but it's also far less of a concern than level 85. If there is truly broken stuff going on, we'll fix it, but some things will also fix themselves once you can level again.
The "lame duck session" before a new expansion goes live is always a little odd and exciting. My advice is to chill a little, sit back, and watch Deathwing destroy your world. (Source)
Tank Threat buff in latest build
We did recently buff the threat generated by Defensive Stance and its equivalents.
Note that with this change, the threat generated by tanks will be about the same as it is on live, which is that a tank can generate about three times as much threat as a dps class.
On live, remember that classes like rogues have an innate threat reduction, warriors have reduced threat in Battle or Berserker Stance, and mages had talents to reduce threat generated. We removed all of those. Until this recent change, that left tank threat slightly low relative to live. We hoped Vengeance would have made up for the loss of Tricks, Misdirect and (to a lesser extent) Vigilance, but in retrospect we think we were still underestimating how much they were buoying tank threat.
If you never used Tricks or Misdirect, then threat should feel about the same in Cataclysm as it does on live. If you use Tricks and Misdirect on live, then you might need Vengeance stacked before you feel the same, but at the same time Tricks and Misdirect still work just fine for establishing initial aggro before Vengeance has a chance to stack anyway. (Source)
AE Tanking and Crowd Control
it seems like Blizzard wants to take tanks back to the Vanilla days of "Tank 1 mob and CC the rest".
We think doing that sometimes and AE'ing sometimes is preferable to the world of AE'ing everything all the time. If all you are doing is trying to process dungeons as fast as possible to get to the badges, then I can understand that mentality, but it's not one we want to foster. (Source)
Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Retribution and Crowd Control
We think there is a risk that Ret is overly susceptible to spammed snares or roots. One idea we are trying (standard no promises) is to let Cleanse remove snares or roots when a Ret paladin uses it on himself. That implementation would keep one of the most important uses of Cleanse, without letting Ret strip away buffs and debuffs, which is something we're really trying to clamp down on (for everyone).
We also discussed the oft-suggested idea of making Freedom not dispellable when used on yourself, but our concern there was a Ret would never ever Freedom anyone else and face the dispel risk, so something that was once group utility just becomes a self buff. (As I have referenced before, one of our goals around Ret PvP is to make the spec more of a team player and less of a guy who has an answer for everything.) We still think undispellable Freedom, even for Ret only, is just too powerful. (Source)
Single Target/AE Healing
My point, and maybe it was said a little too tersely, is that Pallies are BY DESIGN supposed to have slightly weaker AoE heals than everyone else, with the counter-balance that their single-target (tank) healing is slighly stronger than everyone else. If you don't like that, then you will be much happier in the longer term rerolling a different healer, since Blizz does not seem like they are budging on this viewpoint.
It's not that we want paladins to be single target healers. It's that we felt like we had to give the healers very similar single target spells (a decision that many healers object to, I should point out) so we are loathe to just give paladins Chain Heal or Circle of Healing. Yes, Holy Radiance and Ray of Light (and even Beacon) are pretty unusual spells. That doesn't mean they have to be terrible by definition. We understand that it's pretty common for the community, upon finding something wanting in their class, to look across the aisle at another class and say "Ooh, I want that!" It's a challenge to keep the 5 healing specs unique, but it's also very important to us. The OP calls those gimmicks. We call it trying to avoid homogenization. (Source)
Warlock (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Conflagration change in latest build
We added the dot back when the burst was too high, but it was always kind of weird to consume a dot to cause a dot, and we figured now was a great time to fix that.
Go hop on the PTR. Cast Conflag. You should be happy. (Source)
Conflagration scaling
Conflag behaving a little differently with regard to haste is cool, and certainly better than the alternative, which is that it doesn't care about haste at all.
So then the question is whether it does too much damage with high haste. It might at level 80 and probably won't at level 85. (Source)
Shadowbolt
He's been doing that a lot to us lately.. "Shadow Bolt will be affliction's filler when not refreshing dots etc." But it has been proven that DL is indeed better than SB as afflictions filler on the ptr/beta.
Again, in this case, my information is more up to date, and I predict you'll be using Shadow Bolt. (Source)
Here's the deal: level 80 is going to be a little crazy. There is a reason we're going to end the PvP season before the next patch goes live. There is a reason we had to make PvE adjustments, such as Chill of the Throne. Critical new abilities aren't available until higher level. Combat ratings are much higher than they will be once everyone starts leveling, and likely higher than they ever will be again. Health ratios are much lower than they will be with higher level gear.
We're not totally throwing up our hands at level 80, but it's also far less of a concern than level 85. If there is truly broken stuff going on, we'll fix it, but some things will also fix themselves once you can level again.
The "lame duck session" before a new expansion goes live is always a little odd and exciting. My advice is to chill a little, sit back, and watch Deathwing destroy your world. (Source)
Tank Threat buff in latest build
We did recently buff the threat generated by Defensive Stance and its equivalents.
Note that with this change, the threat generated by tanks will be about the same as it is on live, which is that a tank can generate about three times as much threat as a dps class.
On live, remember that classes like rogues have an innate threat reduction, warriors have reduced threat in Battle or Berserker Stance, and mages had talents to reduce threat generated. We removed all of those. Until this recent change, that left tank threat slightly low relative to live. We hoped Vengeance would have made up for the loss of Tricks, Misdirect and (to a lesser extent) Vigilance, but in retrospect we think we were still underestimating how much they were buoying tank threat.
If you never used Tricks or Misdirect, then threat should feel about the same in Cataclysm as it does on live. If you use Tricks and Misdirect on live, then you might need Vengeance stacked before you feel the same, but at the same time Tricks and Misdirect still work just fine for establishing initial aggro before Vengeance has a chance to stack anyway. (Source)
AE Tanking and Crowd Control
it seems like Blizzard wants to take tanks back to the Vanilla days of "Tank 1 mob and CC the rest".
We think doing that sometimes and AE'ing sometimes is preferable to the world of AE'ing everything all the time. If all you are doing is trying to process dungeons as fast as possible to get to the badges, then I can understand that mentality, but it's not one we want to foster. (Source)
Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Retribution and Crowd Control
We think there is a risk that Ret is overly susceptible to spammed snares or roots. One idea we are trying (standard no promises) is to let Cleanse remove snares or roots when a Ret paladin uses it on himself. That implementation would keep one of the most important uses of Cleanse, without letting Ret strip away buffs and debuffs, which is something we're really trying to clamp down on (for everyone).
We also discussed the oft-suggested idea of making Freedom not dispellable when used on yourself, but our concern there was a Ret would never ever Freedom anyone else and face the dispel risk, so something that was once group utility just becomes a self buff. (As I have referenced before, one of our goals around Ret PvP is to make the spec more of a team player and less of a guy who has an answer for everything.) We still think undispellable Freedom, even for Ret only, is just too powerful. (Source)
Single Target/AE Healing
My point, and maybe it was said a little too tersely, is that Pallies are BY DESIGN supposed to have slightly weaker AoE heals than everyone else, with the counter-balance that their single-target (tank) healing is slighly stronger than everyone else. If you don't like that, then you will be much happier in the longer term rerolling a different healer, since Blizz does not seem like they are budging on this viewpoint.
It's not that we want paladins to be single target healers. It's that we felt like we had to give the healers very similar single target spells (a decision that many healers object to, I should point out) so we are loathe to just give paladins Chain Heal or Circle of Healing. Yes, Holy Radiance and Ray of Light (and even Beacon) are pretty unusual spells. That doesn't mean they have to be terrible by definition. We understand that it's pretty common for the community, upon finding something wanting in their class, to look across the aisle at another class and say "Ooh, I want that!" It's a challenge to keep the 5 healing specs unique, but it's also very important to us. The OP calls those gimmicks. We call it trying to avoid homogenization. (Source)
Warlock (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Conflagration change in latest build
We added the dot back when the burst was too high, but it was always kind of weird to consume a dot to cause a dot, and we figured now was a great time to fix that.
Go hop on the PTR. Cast Conflag. You should be happy. (Source)
Conflagration scaling
Conflag behaving a little differently with regard to haste is cool, and certainly better than the alternative, which is that it doesn't care about haste at all.
So then the question is whether it does too much damage with high haste. It might at level 80 and probably won't at level 85. (Source)
Shadowbolt
He's been doing that a lot to us lately.. "Shadow Bolt will be affliction's filler when not refreshing dots etc." But it has been proven that DL is indeed better than SB as afflictions filler on the ptr/beta.
Again, in this case, my information is more up to date, and I predict you'll be using Shadow Bolt. (Source)
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