Blizzcon 2010 - Classes Q&A

General
Q: How do you avoid the slipper slope of designing classes based around roles rather than a unique feel for each class?
A: We try to make the resource systems for the classes feel unique, so even though you do the same thing, picking up a class feels different.

Q: Are we ever going to be able to change our class? I've been playing a Warrior for a long time and have wanted to switch to a Paladin. (insert Paladins are OP QQ)
A: Not really. We don't want to add quests so that when you feel Rogues are doing better than you that you just switch your class to a Rogue. We want the classes to be balanced instead so you feel like sticking with your class.

Q: Racials are a trainwreck right now. Haste vs underwater breathing. Are you ever going to get to the point where we have a consistent useful activated ability, a passive for each, and whatever else? Right now they're all over the board.
A: To be honest, probably not. If you take that troll mage with activated haste into the arena, and you get feared, then you wish "Aw man I wish I was undead again".

So, no, they're not going to be the same. We're mindful of keeping the relative power balance the same though. Like how we changed the worgen 1% damage bonus because it was very powerful as a passive.

Q: Can we give the Alliance goblins and worgen and we get murlocs?
A: Murlocs are special to all of us. We can't give them to anyone.

Tanking
Q: Are you happy with Vengeance right now for tanks? It punishes survival gearing especially.
Gearing for survival vs threat has always been a tradeoff to an extent, block and expertise vs dodge and parry gear. Having to make that tradeoff is interesting, but when Vengeance falls off it does feel crappy.

Vengeance is a rolling average over time, so a few dodges and parries shouldn't hurt you. That said it shouldn't feel mandatory. It's to help tanks feel like they're scaling more with DPS.

With Wrath you had Misdirect and Tricks, and we want that to be more on the tanks shoulders to generate more threat and do decent damage at the same time.

PvP
Q: Why do we have to take PvP talents now to reach the 31 point talent? Like the Shaman talent to take less magic damage?
A: Well isn't that useful in PvE too? I mean if you're not tanking most of the damage will be magic based. So that's really something that helps your healers use less mana.

That's part of the reason we changed things is so you could take these "utility" talents to help your healers, increase survivability, etc.

Well I play a mage, so I shouldn't be taking damage anyway.
Right, in a perfect world something like Combat Res wouldn't be needed either because no one would die. But that isn't the case.

Death Knight (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
As a DK, I've experienced a lot of prejudice as a tank. A lot of people kick me out of the raid. Are you going to make them more viable?
My guild used a DK tank. It had a bad rep because you could start at 55, so people that didn't know what they were doing could get there. And you'd be competing with them. But we think they're viable. We also tried to make the tree fun and unique compared to the other tanks, like with the DK mastery.

How are you going to make sure Runic Empowerment doesn't become overpowered like original sword spec, Windfury, etc.
We don't think it will ever have that kind of balance problem. It mostly is designed to give you extra resources to spend.

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Q: Wild Mushrooms, currently it does a lot of damage if you stack 3 on top of each other. It has a small range though, and the targeting makes it a bit hard to stack on them. Are there any plans to change it at all?
A: I don't think players have grasped the best way to use it yet. In beta we see Ferals putting mushrooms where adds spawn, then detonate when they spawn. That's a pretty good use of it.

The gameplay though is that you have to stack them if you want to do good burst damage.

There are two groups of druids on the forums right now. Those complaining about the new tree, and those curious about the change to Nomnomnom.
We introduced a new glyph to let you use the old Tree of Life model. Personally, I loved Nomnomnom, but these guys all told me we had to change it.

But why the change?
It's an internet meme that will be less funny in a year, and will embarrass us in 3 years.

Hunter (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Q: Are Hunters ever going to get a fun "melee" enchant or are we going to be stuck with the same enchants?
A: For now you're going to be stuck, but we're going to be evaluating the scopes to make them more interesting. So if you get that cool proc enchant, it will come through that.

Q: Hunters are the only class in the game with a minimum range. This hurts us a lot in raids. They can stand directly in front of you, they can repeatedly stand in front of you and use a ranged attack, why can't Hunters do the same thing and stack near the boss?
A: It's a theme for the class. Larger hit boxes on bosses cause a problem, and that's something we'd like to address.

Well is there something to be done to give us an advantage for that?
You can shoot while moving for one, mages can't do that. Rogues can't really do anything while running from spot a to spot b, but you can. Different classes, different situations.

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Q: Can Grand Crusade be changed to proc other effects so it's not worse than Reckoning?
A: We definitely want to tweak it so that it's not weaker than Reckoning, but that is mostly numbers not adding more effects.

Q: Other classes have multiple types of schools, Paladins holy only. And there's nothing to allow you to resist it. Why is that? It makes them feel like a steamroller.
That's why we've changed it over time for Ret to have more physical abilities than holy. We can't really give them another school because they're... holy. As a quick followup, holy doesn't really have as much of an advantage anymore, because we don't really make gear with resists anymore. If you're losing to a paladin it's probably not because of holy damage.

Q: Why did you add Holy Power? Where did it come from to give Paladins combo points?
We decided mana feels good until it runs out. It's dependable over short periods of time then it goes away. The idea was "Oh the mana bar constantly goes down, then it gets filled again." You were playing off of cooldowns, playing whack-a-mole.

Ultimately they needed a real resource. Sort of that build up and then hit really hard kind of deal. It's not really like combo points, you can kind of ignore it where a Rogue can't. It's a new resource though where we'll have to iterate, but we wanted to get away from the cooldown whack-a-mole gameplay for Paladins.

Q: Paladin healing is not as potent at 85 as the others but they have a lot more mana.
A: We've tweaked that a lot and Paladin healing is a lot more potent now at 85.

Q: Holy Power generation is gimped for generation of threat overall. Do you have any plans to give Judgment a guaranteed proc for Holy Power? Or maybe a chance to proc free Holy Power? Do you have any ideas to fix this problem?
A: One trap we want to avoid is that you can keep Inquisition and Holy Shield up at the same time. We don't want you to have both of your "finishers" that buff you up at the same time.

But one problem is warriors are generating too much threat. We fixed that last week.

We changed it so Divine Plea will generate 3 Holy Power when used so you can start with Holy Power on the pull.

Q: Zealotry clashes with Ret's mastery and the Divine Purpose talents. It's sort of reducing how many Crusader Strikes we can generate (wat?). Do you feel it's clashing, or that you'll reevaluate it as a talent?
A: We're looking at it. Some people claim it's not a dps increase at all, but we're confused by that. We might change it so Divine Purpose procs 3 Holy Power while Zealotry is up.

Priest (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Q: How do you feel about the Shadow Priest mastery balance?
With mastery we're trying to really give each spec that feeling of awesome for their specific style of play. We want to change your gameplay up with mastery. Shadowpriests have been known for being these incredibly bursty casters, in PvE we want you to capture that vibe, that explosion of awesome. We're going to be tweaking the numbers over time to get it right obviously. We want to make sure to control the burst damage potential as much as possible.

Q: Healing through Smite isn't much better than healing from a Shadow Priest. Are you happy with that?
A: Yeah we're happy with it, it isn't compelling on live because healers still have unlimited mana, but it's working well in beta.

Q: As Disc, Power Word: Shield feels too powerful right now. Are you planning to diversify it so I don't have to just spam Power Word: Shield?
This is probably on live? It's a numbers thing, really. In beta you're not supposed to be able to sustain chaining Power Word: Shield. It's not reflected on live currently, which kind of sucks.

Rogue (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Q: Are there plans to add a disparity between the weapons for rogues so that we can have something other than a fast dagger in the offhand?
A: We might be changing rogue mechanics a bit so you don't care quite that much about having a fast offhand. Or we could change weapons a little, but we like having a variety of weapons for rogues to use.

Q: The dps for rogues, Mutilate is great but Combat and Subtlety are way behind right now. Especially Combat, where's that at?
A: Combat needs help. Next beta build, the mastery for Combat is being roughly quadrupled. One of their passive damage spec bonuses will be brought up too. We want it to be up there with Assassination.

The overall intended design of Combat is the macro specialization, paying attention to Bandit's Guile in conjunction with trinkets, etc.

Q: What is the intent behind Bandit's Guile? The damage is kind of low with Rupture so you only really Eviscerate still.
A: The intent is that when you're on a single target for a long time, it's cyclical damage, it rises then stays there for a while, then resets. It's so you can use your trinkets or cooldowns when it's at its peak.

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Q: Right now Demon Soul seems like a trinket, and doesn't feel fun, why did you think warlocks needed an ability like that?
A: The design intent for pretty much all the classes, we didn't want to give anyone another "Frostbolt" ability. We wanted to give players stuff that they used in specific situations because of how many keybinds people have already.

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Q: Inner Rage, why did it change from a passive to an active?
A: Inner Rage was a solution to the problem of a warrior that generated too much rage. We think it could be useful for protection where you turn it on. If it becomes a problem where warriors won't need it, we can change it. We have to see all the scaling and how it works out with haste, higher gear levels, etc.