Ra-den Limited Attempts, Isle of Thunder Stage 3, LFR Testing, PTR Class Balance, DLC

So much for surprises. Yes, that is currently the plan.

A few comments on our thinking. First off, I've seen some people quoting a 2010 WoW Dev Twitter chat where we said "Limited Attempts didn't really work out" as one of the WotLK retrospective points. That was true as they were generally utilized in that expansion. In the very same dev chat, we also said "If we do limited attempts again it would probably be limited to optional bosses like Algalon."

Well, guess which boss Ra-den is probably most like?

The actual Algalon approach (or really, if you want to be accurate, the Vaelastrasz v1.0 approach) is not one we're likely to repeat. It definitely adds quite a bit of tension, but a narrow time window ends up being more about frantic racing back to the zone, rebuffing, and rushing to pull again, since it's hard to justify time spent strategizing while the clock is ticking. But even worse, a lengthy disconnect or some sort of server issue can completely ruin the entire week's effort. Having your main tank suffer a power outage 10 minutes into your hour on Algalon was not a happy time.

Now, as for actual limited attempts, aside from using them a bit too widely in Lich King (including on Normal modes in Icecrown Citadel), they also largely failed to accomplish their objective of focusing guilds on quality, rather than quantity, of learning attempts and progression. As many people recall, the cutting-edge guilds that were progressing in ToGC or Heroic ICC would commonly learn mechanics, practice execution, and refine strategies on their lesser-geared alts (and/or on Normal mode), before stepping up to risk precious Heroic attempts. That clearly wasn't the intended experience, and just added a layer of nuisance to the whole affair.

In our entire history of using limited attempts, there was only one boss where I'd say they actually worked out fairly well: Heroic Lich King. The main reason for this was that you couldn't access Heroic Lich King at all unless you defeated Putricide, Sindragosa, and Lana'thel on Heroic difficulty as well. And during the first few weeks of Heroic progression, that was beyond the means of essentially all the alt raids out there. After all, the point of running split main/alt raids is to funnel gear to the mains to maximize their effectiveness for Heroic progression, right? So by definition the alts are less geared than the mains, and if the mains can just barely, barely beat something, the alt group is going to be in for a rough time.

As a result, I don't believe we ever saw a single true alt Heroic Lich King progression raid. Similarly, I don't think we're going to see alt raids on Ra-den. The number 30 is also large enough that while one accidental pull or disconnect is of course still going to sting, it isn't crippling.

I'd also really like to emphasize that Ra-den is a true bonus boss. Lei Shen is the final boss of Throne of Thunder, just as Yogg-Saron was the final boss of Ulduar. Lei Shen offers an epic challenge, and should feel like the pinnacle of the zone as a whole. Ra-den is your reward if you manage to beat the zone on its hardest difficulty -- he's a bonus level. And sometimes the rules are a bit different on those.

The final two LFR segments of Throne of Thunder will be available for the next 72 hours (starting right now), for open testing, since those sections have seen less testing than the front half of the zone. We've made and are continuing to make adjustments to the first two wings based on the last week's LFR testing, and will open those portions up again with the next PTR build.

Please share any and all feedback about the boss and non-boss encounters in the sticky threads for each wing.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• We're worried that we're not going to be able to get the new Seal of Justice on PTR in a good place. We still like the goal of giving Ret more damage outside of their long cooldowns, but Censure just brings a lot of benefits that are going to be hard to reproduce in any kind of "build up to burst" mechanic. When faced with decisions like these where the new design isn't a clear win, we think the right decision is to revert the change. It's possible we could buff Seal of Justice (the 5.1 version) to 20% damage from 16% damage, but overall it would still probably not get much use in PvP.
• However, we haven't given up on the idea of solving Ret's problems of long cooldowns. We are going to try changing the 4pc PvP set bonus to lowering the cooldown on Avenging Wrath by 1 min. This is a set bonus that has worked out pretty well in PvE and would help Ret keep up pressure more frequently without getting to the point of one-shot abilities.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• We are going to make the new Divine Aegis undispellable.

I appreciate the gesture, but i think this still has a problem. Chiefly that PI and Hero don't stack, both being haste buffs.
That was just a bug. Sorry. They should stack.

Blue please clarify if mastery will effect Spirit Shell.
No. It does on 5.1 but will not in 5.2. When mastery affects Spirit Shell it changes the spell from "turn your heals into absorbs" into "use this as a healing cooldown because it makes all your spells stronger."

Moving Sudden Death back to White swings might be the solution to fixing this problem, but even than it's looking optimal even during CS to use the two stacks of Overpower to reduce Mortal Strike's Cooldown.
We did return Sudden Death to white swings and Strikes of Opportunity (mastery) at a 10% proc chance. Overpower still has a 1 sec GCD and reduces the cooldown of Mortal Strike to avoid the 0.5 GCD hole.

We want Slam to be worth using when you don't have Overpower procs or when you want to maximize DPS during Colossus Smash. We don't want to buff Slam so much that the rotation just becomes MS -> Slam.

When it feels too expensive though, switch to Jab Jab Tiger Palm or just swap to actual heals.
To be technically correct, I should have said Jab -> Tiger Palm. We talk about Jab Jab Uplift so often that it has become a thing around the office. I joked about making our next Arena team name Jab Jab Uplift.

By actual heals, I meant Spinning Crane Kick, Surging Mist or anything that grants chi, assuming you're using Renewing Mist on CD already.

A bug that's been there since PI was put into the game? Wow...
It's really an MoP bug. Previously you cast PI on someone, where the behavior was intended.

I assume it is still going to be calculated as the expected value of the heal cast outside of SS including crits and any resulting aegis? In that sense it is indirectly affected by mastery as mastery buffs the base value of the heal as well as the aegis portion of the crit.
Yes. Spirit Shell on live today doesn't know whether your heal would have crit or not. We're not running a simulation and then intercepting the results and turning them into bubbles -- we're just predicting the average. It shouldn't work any differently. Yes, your crit won't benefit from the bubble part of mastery, but the heal part of mastery should almost entirely offset that.

Metagems
We switched Capacitive to use melee hit/crit instead of spell hit/crit.

Could you explain why Balance Druid dots function differently with respect to Crit than every other class' dots? Currently Crit updates dynamically for Balance Druids whereas other classes get snapshot values.
Good question. We decided to dig into all of the dots and found they worked pretty inconsistently. (Consistency isn't always critical because it does lead to a certain amount of homogeneity, but too little consistency can just be confusing too.) We made a pass at all of the class dots and made them snapshot crit chance. This will have implications in any simulations out there.

However, this has some implications on the Unerring Vision of Lei Shen trinket. We’re tentatively fine with the idea of you seeing that proc go off, and reapplying DoTs which crit for their whole duration, in most cases. There’s a couple cases where those periodic crits cause other effects, which end up being very powerful. For example, a Balance Druid can now apply Moonfire and Sunfire, and pretty much chain instant Starsurges for 15 sec, many of which are extending that Moonfire and Sunfire, probably out to 20-25 sec. That’s extremely strong, but we’re going to try leaving it alone for now.

The one which is simply too strong to leave is for Shadow. For Shadow having Unerring Vision and the PvE set bonuses would mean that every SW:P tick guaranteed crits, so spawns a Shadowy Apparition, which has a 65% chance of extending SW:P and VT. And the VT ticks have a 10% chance of spawning a Shadowy Apparition as well. And both can trigger a mastery tick, both of which can also spawn another Shadowy Apparition. The net result is that the feedback loop is so strong that in attainable gear, it’s net positive, resulting in SW:P and VT lasting forever (or at least until you get very unlucky and get a long string of failed procs, which will probably take several minutes to happen).

Since 100% crit SW:P and VT that never need to be refreshed is a wee bit too strong, we’re building in a failsafe. We’re fine with you getting a normal SW:P/VT duration of all crits, but not forever. When Shadowy Apparition extends SW:P and VT, and that DoT has already lasted longer than its normal duration, it will recalculate its crit chance. The result should be that the trinket procs, you reapply SW:P/VT, and get 18/15 sec of crits, then they drop to your normal crit chance.

When Smite healing mastery is useless…
Mastery increases Atonement healing. Suppose I have mastery such that my Absorbs are increased by 36.33%, and healing is increased by 18.17% (same values we mentioned yesterday). I Smite for 35391, non-crit. Atonement heals the tank for… 35391*1.1817=20910. Now suppose that Smite crits, for 70782. Atonement crit heals the tank for 20910, plus a Divine Aegis for… 20910*1.3633=28506. (Atonement critting is still based on whether the Smite crit).

Haste, mastery, and crit will all benefit Atonement healing. Yes, when PI and Bloodlust are stacked, you’ll be GCD capped, so haste isn’t helping you during that brief cooldown window, but that’s a small portion of the overall time.

While implementing support for this, I was wondering about a few things:
- Does the damage from this scale with SV mastery? (Assuming yes)
- Do pet attacks proc it? (Assuming no)
- Do dot based abilities proc it on initial application? Do they proc it on ticks? (Assuming yes and no based on the wording, but this is of particular interest to SV with explosive shot and BA)
- Can the lightning strike proc wild quiver?
All of your assumptions are correct. Lightning Strike cannot proc Wild Quiver.

Does Slice and Dice count as haste for the real PPM system?
Yes. RPPM uses the highest of all haste/attack speed/cast speed effects.

Is that a 10% proc chance on just mastery (retaining the 20% we previously had on swing) or 10% on swing and 10% on mastery?
Sorry. It's 10% on swing and a 10% on mastery.

Did I miss a 50% atonement healing nerf somewhere?
Whoops. Atonement heals yourself for half, and that's where our numbers came from.

Correction: Atonement heals the tank for… 35391*1.1817=41820. Now suppose that Smite crits, for 70782. Atonement crit heals the tank for 41820, plus a Divine Aegis for… 41820*1.3633= 57012. (Atonement critting is still based on whether the Smite crit).

Vanilla WoW Nostalgia
Answer can be found in the vid I posted above, game is hardly any time consuming now.
It really depends on which activity are you doing. Sure, if you only do dailies, scenarios, etc, it doesn't take much time. If you want to cap your valor points, you'll have to put some time into the game, though.

If you're chasing Heroic raid kills, you'll have to devote time as well. That's the beauty of the game these days, you can devote as much time as you want (and your reward will probably be comparable to how much time you've spent).

It doesn't matter if you don't get to see an end boss, it tells you hey I need to put some effort into this game if I want to do it, and before I get to see the end boss I have to experience the other fights as well.
For some it does. It was kinda weird for some people to see Illidan on the cinematic in TBC and never get to see him while he was current content because of .

If you don't have enough time well that is a different thing, but allow people that have or find time and put effort to feel awarded for it, don't just let everyone who can press Join LFR see and defeat the boss.
People that have time (and the will) can defeat Heroic bosses and get rewarded much more than someone seeing the content through LFR. And from time to time there're bosses that are exclusive to Heroic raiders (Algalon, Sinestra, and now Ra-den when 5.2 is released).

That's what in my opinion new WoW will never have and why old way of raiding will always be better than the current one, it simply does not feel rewarding enough for people that want to put effort and this has absolutely nothing to do with nostalgia because it's a fact, whoever raided whoever spent hours grinding/gearing after finishing what they started (eg Illidan) they could say I feel proud of myself and get a sense of accomplishment something people today will NEVER feel.
It's your opinion, so you can't make it a fact. I feel as proud of my Arthas kill as I do of my TBC/Wrath/MoP kills. It's just up to you to how much importance you wish to give to those events.

For me Arthas ranks higher than the others. Why? Because I've liked the Lich King character for a really long time and I feel his story (Arthas) was interesting to me.

Anyone saying FOR A FACT that any stage of this game was the best, is a person unable to grasp the simple concept of "subjectivity". What one considers the peak of existence for this game, others didn't even bother coming back to beyond reaching max level.
True. As much as I love those evenings in BRD with my friends, I wouldn't have the time for it today. Time changes.

If you had a good guild with a sufficient array of active people, you had it all. If you didn't? Well, you best get searching! Happened to level on a medium pop server that died before you hit 70? You better transfer!
In fact, I remember some guilds became "feeders" of the most progressed guilds on the realm, so these guys could never really climb through the ranks because they kept losing raiders to guilds with more progress.

Most people are just nostalgic. Nobody remembers the monotonous, the day to day. Everyone remembers the peaks. Do you remember the grind between 55 and 58?
This is true, we tend to forget the bad memories and keep the bright ones. Back in Vanilla, I leveled my first character from 58 to 60 just circling Corin's Crossing because it was most efficient than trying to quest back then. And it wasn't terribly fun...

For me, BC had its perks (I cleared everything but SWP before the great nerf). I enjoyed it overwhelmingly, and believed there was nothing greater than THAT era, even in WOTLK or Cata. Come Mists, I can now appreciate the range of content, the ease, the beauty of choice, etc. that was not there in BC. As mentioned before, I would like the sense of a community back and not just the current XBOX live crowd, but if that requires removing LFD/ LFR, then I'd rather stick with ignoring people.
But even these days, you surely have your community, right? I mean, your own circle of friends (perhaps your entire guild, perhaps just some guildies and a couple friends on the realm).

We're all part of the same community. If anything, I'd say now we have the luxury of deciding when and how we want to participate with strangers. Before it was your only way of accessing to certain content (5-man PuGs or more progressed raiding guilds) and as with everything else in life, at times you'd have wonderful experiences and at times absolutely miserable ones.

So, was that better than being able to stick with your friends and try to go as far as possible? It's really up to each individual. Some people love to make new friends, some would rather stick to their circles.

WoW was better because the community was far better. All this LFG/LFR stuff ruined the community, but certainly brought in the big bucks.
The community wasn't really better. Perhaps what happened was that the interaction was more limited? Through the Finder tools you can literally encounter hundreds of players every single day, it's hard to not come across a rotten apple every so often. Back then we didn't even have a Raid Finder, so most experiences with large groups were on PVP, and I'm fairly sure we all have memories of how heated the BG chat would be at times, as well as players from the opposite faction shouting text that was offensive for your team.

The bad apples were already there, but our exposure as individuals... I'd wager it was much smaller, since even arranging a 5-man group (a pure PuG, that is) was a rather lengthy process.

It's human nature, we naturally dislike change. I guarantee if you go on any popular game forum you'll see how terrible people think that game is now compared to how it used to be.
Oh, but this happens even on games that are yet to be released... There'll always be people hoping for something that is not what they feel they're getting.

When questing you had to read the quest and understand where the mobs are or what to do for it, now you get the quest and look at map go where the circle is, so stupid, and nobody quests in the old zones anymore the world is empty, the world is dead.And there are many other things but ill stop here.

As far as I remember, many players would read the quest name, go to Thottbot, type the name of the quest, note the coordinates and then, with their addon, and then go there and get it done. Leveling guides from 1-60 were also popular because many players felt lost on their way to max level without them. You might feel that was epic, but it was truly confusing for the people that really didn't know where to go next or how to get to maximum level.

i love this blue poster, he dumps on vanilla all the time
Vanilla gave me very memorable experiences. I enjoyed the discovery of Azeroth, the trek with my first character all the way to level 60. My first Molten Core, UBRS, WSG, you name it. But looking back, that doesn't prevent me from seeing the flaws it had in many regards.

Vanilla was good in some aspects and bad in others. And every expansion since then has had its own lows and highs.

Except back then your reputation mattered and helped to keep people in check. With no server transfers or name changes people couldn't afford to continually be idiotic in their interaction with others. That really any better?
There were plenty of ninja looters, gankers and PVP griefers back then. It wasn't any different to today. Reputation and helping others was important only to those that cared about it, just as (surprise) today.

There's always been the choice of sticking with friends and progressing as far as you could. Now, if friends just aren't cutting it you can leave them behind without a seconds thought and jump into the anonymous world of LFD/LFR.
Quite the opposite, you can actually go with them onto LFD/LFR if for some reason they can't go through normal modes and you'll get as far as you can. Back in the days, you had to leave them behind if you wanted to go kill, say, Kil'jaeden, and they weren't cutting it.

Playing the devil's advocate here, but basically The game now is just this
1)ACCEPT QUEST
2) OPEN MAP
3) COMPLETE QUEST BY GOING TO THE NUMERS ON YOUR MAP
4) VIEW ALL MAJOR PVE CONTENT IN LESS THEN A DAY BY PRESSING QEUE (FEEL FREE TO AFK IN LFR)
5) THE PEOPLE YOU MET IN CROSSREALM ZONES, DUNGEONS, RAIDS, SCENARIOS, PVP YOU'LL MOST LIKELY NEVER SEE AGAIN
Back then it was something like this...
1) Accept quest
2) Minimize WoW, check in Thottbot (for example) the quest(s?)
3) Complete quest going to the noted coordinates.
4) Minimize WoW, go to youtube, view all major PVE content in a couple hours by pressing "play" (Feel free to kick back and relax)

Point 5 doesn't really apply here because we didn't have Cross-realm zones, dungeons, raids, scenarios back then, but it did apply on PVP however.

Looking back at the other 4 points. We could argue the first three now have reduced hassle. And I don't know about you, but I'd rather take part on viewing all major PVE content and achieve it by myself (no matter if its on LFR, Normal or Heroic) than see some random pixel heroes go do it while I'm left trying to figure out what's going on. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Darker Nights Suggestion
So, in the original thread we mentioned we'd make sure the devs knew that many players out there (not just here in EU, but also on US forums) want to have darker nights in WoW...

While there's nothing to announce, what we can tell you is that they'd like to see a depper day/night cycle brough back into the game.

Some of you have speculated about why nights were made brighter and we just wanted to let you know the change was purely an art decision.

If it does come back at some point in the future, it wouldn't be as dark as some of you have suggested through screenshots (pitch black, or very close to pitch black) because it's very important to see mobs in dark environments, though. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Player Proposed PvP Changes Feedback
- Strip classes off their CC. Some classes should not be able to CC at all. Warriors did perfectly fine throughout Vanilla, TBC and WotLK (bar S5) without any form of stun, same with many other classes that lacked CC. Rogues and Paladins were the only classes that had a form of stun and it should remain like that.
Warriors had mace stun in BC, Mages had Deep Freeze in WotLK and Impact stun in both WotLK and BC, Druids had both Bash and Pounce, even hunters had a form of stun in BC. Many more classes than just rogues and Paladins had a form of stun.

Stating that you feel some classes should not be able to CC because that is how it was back in the old days is not an appropriate argument, because it's not true. Since the beginning of WoW all classes have had at least some form of CC, be it roots, snares, interrupts, disarms, fears, stuns, incapacitates or disorients. However, saying you feel that every class has too many CC's now is understandable, but do note that we are not going to simply remove every single CC from the game.

If we were to remove all crowd control from the game, then everyone would simply run at each other and just mash buttons, with all things being equal whoever got the first hit would win. We definitely understand that there are legitimate reasons for why some players just don’t like CC, but when it comes to designing an interesting and interactive combat model for PvP, there are many more reasons for CC to exist.

- Make Blue PvP gear (Not the crappy Contender's set, but stuff as Dreadful) completely craftable. I'm getting sick of losing games against opponents I know I can win against just because they bought a RBG boost. World of Warcraft being a MMO (jk LFR) doesn't justify the huge gear gap this game currently has.
We are addressing gear disparity in patch 5.3, we know that catching up part way through a season where you have fallen behind in gear is frustrating. You can find out more about the upcoming gear changes for PvP here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/6994181

- Bring back CLASS UNIQUENESS! Every class has everything now. It's just plain boring. You might aswell remove classes because they are all copies of each other. Why did Paladins get an interrupt AND an AoE blind? What do Monks lack that no other Melee has? Why did Rogues and Mages get a heal?
Yet one of the key arguments that you see quite regularly here is, "Y has the ability to do Z. Why is it that my class, X, cannot also do Z?"

This is not to say you are wrong or that the above argument is in any way valid. The abilities a class has is just one of the things that makes them unique, you have to also think of their intricacies and how each one operates using their own mechanics and/or resources. Just because the game has moved away from more clunky systems such as Aura/Aspect twisting and stance dancing doesn't mean that all classes have become the same. We have been implementing new systems to the game that keeps making classes feel and play uniquely, like Holy Power and many others.

While it's not immediately evident, crowd control abilities are also unique to every class. In the end a stun ends up doing the same thing for all classes, but the how its used and what is done to use it is generally unique to each class. Saying that there are no unique classes because they can all CC is the same saying every class is identical because they can do damage (I understand that this is a hyperbole, but you get my point). The above reasons are why you see a great variety in classes played, because they are all different, if each of them were the same then why would there be classes?

- Make casters actually have to cast again. The current state of the so-called "casters" is completely retarded. They're basicly Melee DPS but from Ranged. It's just stupid.
I made a post about this a while back, we understand that the amount of instant casts is quite frustrating right now and we are looking into this. We wish to start not only moving many of the crowd control spells back to having a cast time, but also other spells as well. You can already see some of this shift in the 5.2 patch notes, such as the cast time on Blinding Light and an arming time on Ring of Frost when used with Presence of Mind. You can see the old post on this topic here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...365?page=6#108 (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)