Challenge Modes, Cloud Serpent Colors, Mod Recruitment, Blue Posts, Weekly Roundup

[...]Our internal testers who run challenge modes exclaim that they use every single ability they have to survive and to shave off time. Challenge modes are a great opportunity to use some of those mechanics that don't normally get used in raid boss fights.

Ghost, this is another question I've been meaning to ask: Will you continue to work on the Pet/Minion AI? Despite improvements over the years, it really leaves much to be desired. I'll provide some examples from a Death Knight perspective, but I'd welcome any input from classes or specs that have had a similar experience.
AI is a really tricky thing to design, because what players really want (usually) is for the pet to read their mind and do the appropriate thing. Since science hasn't made computers with great decision-making ability in general yet, you're certainly not going to find it in a game. I hate to drag this out as an excuse, because it sort of shuts down the conversation, but I've been doing game design long enough to know that AI is never just as easy as "Well, it should just do this and this and then it will be perfect."

Instead, we try to err on the side of very simple behavior so at the very least it's predictable. Your pet or guardian may be stupid, but at least it will be consistently stupid instead of trying to say pick the right target and always picking the wrong target.

That said, if you can describe specific situations where you think a pet or guardian are doing the wrong thing, please let us know. (The bug thread would be a better location for that feedback than this one.)

As an aside, several of the situations you describe are encounters were the peculiarities of the fight make a pet less optimal than on others. We are totally fine with that -- it's along the same lines as not every single boss is going to be backstab-able. We don't want every spec to do identical DPS on every fight. We think that would be boring. If pet classes did sub-standard DPS on a whole lot of fights, then we think it would be a problem.

Is it worth us double checking pet scaling now (specifically FE & PFE as it appears that Primal Elementalist has some scaling issues as Elemental gears up)?
I would wait about two builds to be honest. We appreciate players going through the effort for stuff like this and don't want to waste your time.

Long story short, if you're hit/expertise capped as appropriate to your class, your pets will be too. If they didn't split it like that, then warlock melee pets would have twice as much hit as what they need, and no expertise.
Yeah, Strawberry has the right of it. If you cap, your pet should be capped. My apologies, as that seemed to cause some confusion. Another way to write it would be:

Pet Hit = 50% of Master Hit + 50% of Master Exp
Pet Exp = 50% of Master Hit + 50% of Master Exp

For Hit: Do they get 50% of our hit and 50% our Exp to calculate just hit? and then calculate it again for expertise? Or are our pets not going to be hit capped if we are hit capped. The wording confuses me.
They get 50% of your Hit added to their Hit, and 50% of your Exp added to their Hit. Same for Exp. That means that Hit and Exp are effectively combined into one communal pool for pets. That will make them hit capped if you’re hit capped. Don’t forget that Expertise grants spell hit now.

Do pets have any sort of base crit or crit from their own base intellect/agility, to which the inherited crit from their owner is added, or do they simply get the owner's crit chance directly, overwriting any base crit that may otherwise have been there?
No, these scaling values overwrite the base stats of the pet.

Is PvP intended to follow the same model of no mandatory glyphs?
That's a goal but it's definitely much harder to deliver on. When we say we don't want mandatory glyphs for PvE, what we're actually saying is we don't want a glyph that generally provides a DPS increase in most situations (if you are a DPS spec). In PvP, sustained DPS is only slightly valuable. On the other hand, a glyph that provides burst damage at the expense of sustained damage, or a glyph that provides extra CC or CC immunity looks awfully attractive for PvP. We'll still try and make sure there are no cookie-cutter talent or glyph builds though.

Just ignore the armchair moderators. If GC doesnt like the direction the thread has gone, he will tell us and get on back on the topic they want to discuss.
The topic hasn't changed. I don't have the bandwidth to make this a "defend every class design decision discussion," as much fun as that might be. The most useful questions are when you don't understand how something works (possibly because of a bug), which makes it hard to determine how rotations should work, which makes it hard for theorycrafting. I have been guilty of straying into design philosophy, because that's dear to my heart, but I recognize that can be frustrating when I respond to post A but not post B, as it always is, which is why I try not to do it very often.

Currently I believe, say, an orc dual wielding an axe and a different weapon will have 1% more expertise attributed to the swings of the axe but not to those of the other weapon, from the axe specialization racial. (If this is not how it works, please correct me.) Will pets inherit (50% of) this expertise at all? If so, is it decided by whether the owner is wielding an axe in the main hand, or in either hand, or what?

Also, what about the Draenei racial, Heroic Presence? I believe we've tested this and found it not to affect pets - can we assume this will be fixed?
The draenei racial should transfer to the pet. The expertise racials should use the higher value of MH or OH.

Death Knight (Forums)
Also, is the Unholy Ghoul supposed to receive attack speed benefits from Unholy Presence and Improved Unholy Presence?
Yes. Again, I would wait a build or two before attempting to verify though.

Death and Decay: There seems to be a bug regarding this spell. The in game scrolling combat text shows that it hits 1 target 11 times, however, the combat log shows only 8 hits. Is it intended to hit 8 times or 11? And are the devs ok with the ability being in the DK single target rotation, assuming it is?
Yes, it’s fine to be in a single target rotation, and the bug where it only ticks 8 times instead of 11 will be fixed.

One thing to note about dancing rune weapon is that it currently is not copying the effects of death siphon and soul reaper. We don't want it to take a while to update the new abilities into dancing rune weapon like cata did.
That sounds like a bug. We'll get it fixed.

In that case, let me rephrase a question we've already been asking amongst ourselves for some time now: How do YOU see us using Soul Reaper in a sub-35% situation?

For every theorycrafted result we've simmed/tested so far, we've estimated that its gain is so strong that sitting on a Death Rune just to match with the cooldown is more than worth it. Not using it off cooldown is a loss. Thus, it dominates our rotation completely and frankly makes for rather unenjoyable gameplay, given how antithetical holding back runes feels.

As such, we're also getting numbers higher than your stated 7% for Unholy and 4% for Frost- far higher.
This is one of the primary reasons why we're so slanted towards generating and maintaining Death Runes as constantly as possible, and thus why we say talents like Blood Tap and Plague Leech being mandatory. Is there something radically different we're doing than from what your internal numbers show you?
Give us some time to take another look at Soul Reaper. We certainly hear the concern, and I don't want to dismiss it, but without doing some research, I wouldn't be able to add anything new to the conversation.

Actually, sitting on runes for 6 sec to fuel Soul Reaper during an execute phase isn't a problem. It's an execute, and it should dominate the execute phase. A warrior would do the same thing with rage and Execute itself. I was more referring to the concern about whether Blood Tap and Plague Leech are mandatory because more Death Runes during execute are so important.

For the sake of clarification, does this mean you would examine the functionality of Blood Tap and Plague Leech? Or re-examine abilities which cost a Death Rune cost?
The last time we ran a test, choosing Blood Tap was within 1% DPS of Runic Empowerment and Runic Corruption (and was actually the lowest). Since your sims suggest otherwise, we'll have to figure out the source of the discrepancy. It could be the sims have bad numbers somewhere or it could be you are using a different (more optimized?) rotation than we are. Actual dungeon and raid parses will help, since most players care a lot more about those than theoreticals.

Is it really meaningful to compare Rage to Runes? Because they aren't the same...at all.
Classes are designed to be different from each other, true. The assertion was that it was bad to sit on resources to wait for a big attack. We don't think that is a problem.

This is the total opposite of how Death Knights have been played since Wrath.
I don't follow. You would use Icy Touch any moment a Frost Rune became available rather than wait for an Unholy Rune?

Hunter (Forums)
Anyways, the main theorycraft question I have is in regards to stampede mechanics and intent as it relates to the extra pet's abilities. Obviously there are two styles of abilities of note that I would love to see addressed, those are the party buffs and the target debuffs.
The pets will indeed use their special abilities, using whatever autocast settings they had last. The buffs/debuffs they apply will persist as long as they normally would.

Based on feedback, we are going to try an implementation of Stampede where the pets have more uptime (some combo of lower duration and shorter cooldown) but are weaker than they would be individually.

I am praying that the "lower" duration was a typo and what you meant was "longer" duration.
Yes, I meant longer duration on Stampede. Sorry.

Mage (Forums)
Is the health of Mirror Images being looked at? As I understand it they are considered Guardians not Pets. Currently they look to be 10% of the mages Hp's at level 90 (for me that is 26,628), and that is not enough to survive a single blow from a mob where we would be interested in using Mirror Images to buy us the time to kill said mob.
Each Image has 10% of the mage's health. Basic level 90 mobs (such as a Bluehide Mushan, for comparison) hit a level 90 green-geared mage for just over 10k damage, and the Mage has a bit under 300k health. The Mirror Images have 30k health, so can take 3 hits each, not 1. We just tried it, and the Mushan took 18sec to kill all 3 images. Obviously, harder hitting mobs are going to kill them faster.

Current: Raid/Dungeon: DPS cooldown, sometimes used in emergencies to prevent wipes since they can take 2-3 hits each (6-9 swings)

Maybe in a dungeon. In raids, Mirror Images take about 1 boss hit to die even in Cataclysm. The fact that you have 3 will buy you a little time, which should be about the same in Mists.

Paladin (Forums)
Is the Healing from Light's Hammer supposed to scale with Inquisition? The other 2 L90 Talents' damage scales with Inquisition but not the healing, is this intended?
Light's Hammer is built a little unusually. It probably wouldn't hurt if it benefits from Inquisition as long as that doesn't make it the go-to choice.

Also, some Hand spells are now 40 yards, while some are still 30. Is this intended as well, or an oversight?
IIRC, we made Salvation and Sacrifice longer so they would match heal ranges. The others are probably shorter for fear that they become too good in PvP, but my suspicion is they would all be fine at 40.

Glyph of Immediate Truth... where to begin...
It's intended to be a DPS loss in sustained combat (else what would be the point of the ramping?) It's intended for burst scenarios, perhaps in PvP or while solo when Censure won't always stack up.

What is the design goal for Hand of Salvation?
We removed it originally in Mists, but it does get situational use, such as say a fight like Alysrazor that has huge DPS buffs. It won't get a lot of use and we're fine with that.

What is the design goal for the Battle Healer glyph? The only spec that is in "Seal of Insight stance" is typically Holy.
It's intended for Holy paladins who like or are able to stand in melee or for Ret or Prot paladins who like to do a little off-healing, such as in PvP. It shouldn't be a very popular glyph for raid boss encounters.

Is there a reason Light of Dawn absolutely has to retain the beacon transfer?
No. It might be worth trying at the same 15% as Holy Radiance. We made it transfer through Beacon long ago when it was a cone-shaped spell that was tricky to use. Some paladins were not even choosing the talent, so we kept buffing it both in power and ease-of-use. It's a different spell in Mists.

One other change I'm concerned about and find frustrating is the cooldown on cleanse. This serves no PVE purpose that I can come up with, and seems to only serve to limit encounter design and raid composition. I've found a couple places (admittedly in 5 man instances) where mobs put dots on the group more frequently than the cleanse CD, which forces me to heal through the remainder until cleanse comes off CD. It's not difficult in these cases, so it's not a question of it being game breaking, but it's frustrating being forced to spend more mana to heal through something I could cleanse if it wasn't for a CD which serves no PVE purpose. It feels like I'm being forced to play suboptimally, especially coming from a situation on live where that isn't the case.
We think it’s more fun gameplay to use a dispel at the right time rather than be asked to spam it. Since healers can’t spam dispels any more, the encounters won’t be designed with that intent. That doesn’t always mean you’ll remove a debuff the second it is applied.

(I agree your life would be easier if you could dispel whenever you want to. Your life would also be easier if you didn’t have to dispel at all, but we want our encounters to have a variety of challenges.)

I definitely would love to use it in PvP as well as certain areas in PvE, but do you think there's some room for making it attractive to Holy paladins even in raid scenarios as well, akin to Atonement and Telluric Currents or even the Mistweaver melee healing style? Because of the way we've been designed, I know most people are more comfortable in the back healing, but there have been a niche of players who would be attracted to that playstyle of Paladin, myself included.
Ultimately, that's the niche we're trying to carve out, but it's tricky to make things like that optional. Telluric Currents started out optional but because of the way mana pools grew, it reached the point where it was considered a mandatory mana management mechanic (say that 5 times fast) for shaman. We think Telluric Currents will work as intended in Mists, but we don't want the Battle Healer glyph to become the new mandatory mechanic.

My other question is, are the weird cooldowns for our offensive CDs intended? After playing around with two minute cooldowns in Cata, it feels so odd working with a three minute cooldown with Avenging Wrath (as Ret/Prot at least, Holy iirc has it at 2 minutes) and two minute Holy Avenger (although Sanctified Wrath kinda justifies the AW CD). The Tier 14 4-piece bonus adds to that confusion, not to mention propels Sanctified Wrath to the forefront.
We don't really like having cooldowns all line up neatly. When they do, there is such a strong incentive to blow them all at once (often timed with Bloodlust) that it feels like they should just really all be one cooldown rather than requiring separate buttons (or more likely macro lines). When cooldowns have different timing, you have to think more about when to use them.

Priest (Forums)
Just a question about the healing Priest 4-piece PvP bonus, Diamond Soul: Is the resilience bonus supposed to apply only to the Priest when cast on oneself or is it supposed to extend to any eligible player target?
Any PW:S target.

In doing the raid testing over the past few weeks Disc priest feels like it is slacking behind the other healers. To me it is feeling rather weak in its healing to mana cost ratio. Also aoe healing for Disc seems to be quite lackluster. PoH throughput to mana cost just seems out of proportion. It was nice to get PW: Solace but at the same time to get the mana back you have to be not healing which seems rather counter intuitive as a healer in a raid. The other talents in the tree Mindbender and From Darkness, Comes Light just don't seem to restore the mana that Solace gives back as long as the downtime to cast it is there.

The question I am asking you is, do you feel that Disc is at a point where it is balanced compared to the single target and aoe healing that the other healing classes can throw out when considering throughput and mana cost as well as mana regen downtime?
Dungeon and raid tests are ongoing, but we haven't seen any real weaknesses in Disc compared to the other healers thus far. The level 45 tier is intended to provide different ways of getting back mana or being mana efficient. Solace may seem more desirable on fights where you have long periods of not healing, but those fights probably can't stress your mana that much anyway.

Shaman (Forums)
Can we get shaman elementals and fire totems to count as pets then?
Elementals do count as pets now. Totems are kind of a special unique snowflake. They’re not pets, but they do use their master’s stats directly for some things. It’s currently intentional that Searing Totem doesn’t cast faster with Haste, but we agree that that’s odd and inconsistent, so will likely keep that in mind if we find that shamans need more value from Haste (we think they are probably fine at the moment).

I read these two comments where one says that R Shaman have a niche (stacked up healing), and the other comment that no healers should have a niche. I'm bringing this up specifically regarding 10 man spread raid healing, 25 man spread healing for Shaman is not really an issue. There were plenty of fights outside of Dragonsoul that were absolutely painful to heal through as a Shaman, and nothing has been done to help us spread heal AoE raid damage that is coming out regularly. It seems to me that class balance is significantly lacking with regards to 10 man spread healing.Thanks again for the feedback you've been dishing out
My first comment was that we don't want healer specs to be "I'm the tank healer guy" vs. "I'm the AE healer guy." These days nobody freaks out if you ask the paladin to heal the raid or ask the shaman to heal the tank, which we think is good. My second comment was that it's fine for the different healers to have different strengths and weaknesses and mechanics. We think Resto shaman fall squarely into the second category.

Is there a reason why Healing tide doesn't scale with mastery and is there a reason why healing stream doesn't scale with haste or crit ?

It just seems strange that Healing tide works with haste and crit but not mastery and healing stream works with mastery but not haste and crit.
Those are both bugs.

Warlock (Forums)
When you say "Melee/Ranged/Spell individually", do you mean my (warlock) pets get my melee crit chance, of which I have very little? If so, is it really intended that my caster pets crit much more than my melee pets just because I'm a caster myself?
Correction: Your highest crit % (of melee, ranged, or spell), is given to your pet as all 3 kinds of crit. So a warlock with 5% melee crit and 30% spell crit will have a Felguard with 30% melee and spell crit.

Warrior (Forums)
Another thing I noticed was the first tier talent Double Time. Reading it, I was under the impression that I could charge someone, they immediately use an escape (blink/disengage etc), then I can immediately charge again, and after the second charge the cooldown is incurred. However, at this point in time I charge something, and it is not available for use for another 10-12 seconds as it 'recharges'. This goes against what the talent reads "You can use charge twice before incurring it's cooldown". Is this intended?
Charge with Double Time should work almost exactly like monk Roll. Imagine you have Charge A and Charge B. Each has a 20 sec cooldown and you can use Charge B exactly 1 sec after you use Charge A. If you use them back to back, then Charge A comes off cooldown in 20 sec and Charge B comes off cooldown in 21 sec.

(As far as your other question goes, I feel like we have addressed that: we like the shield requirements on Shield Wall and Spell Reflect. We added Die by the Sword and Mass Spell Reflect for warriors who just can't bear to use them.)

Scenario Rewards are Not Impressive
Rewards for scenarios are not complete. You should see a grab bag with a chance for a random dungeon quality blue coming soon. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Alliance Kites are faster than Horde Kites
You most likely saw another player with the new guild perk "Ride Like the Wind". It increases flight path speed by 25%.
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Nat Pagle Reputation
If you go speak to him, he has a rep bar in his dialog box. The flavor text seems to indicate that you can increase it by bringing him rare fish, though I don't fish so I'm not sure how you would do that.
Sounds like you might be onto something! (MMOC Note:You can become friends with Ella, Farmer Fung, Chee Chee, Fish Fellreed, Gina Mudclaw, Haohan Mudclaw, Jogu the Drunk, Old Hillpaw, Sho, Tina Mudclaw, Nomi, and Nat Pagle.) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Scenario Available for testing!
We just enabled the Crypt of Forgotten Kings on the beta realms and we are anxious to get your feedback on it! A new sticky thread is here for your posts.

We also made individual sticky's for each of the three existing scenarios on the beta. Please post your comments to these specific threads, it really helps us sort though the feedback faster.

Brewmoon Festival
A Brewing Storm
Unga Ingoo

Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Monk (Forums)
Spinning Crane Kick Chi
So why is it that 3 friendly targets being healed by SCK doesn't generate 1 Chi as well?
It will. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

On Tuesday, July 3, we'll be testing two encounters; on Thursday, July 5, we'll test two more.

Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below for all Beta Test Realms, regardless of suggested geographical region.

Tuesday, July 3
Elegon (Mogu'shan Vaults) - 10 Player Normal
10:30 PDT (13:30 EDT, 19:30 CEST)

Blade Lord Ta'yak (Heart of Fear) - 10 Player Normal
16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)

Thursday, July 5
Protectors of the Endless (Terrace of Endless Spring) - 10 Player Normal
10:30 PDT (13:30 EDT, 19:30 CEST)

Tsulong (Terrace of Endless Spring) - 10 Player Normal
16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session or cancel it entirely, due to bugs, builds, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.