Dev Interviews, Isle Participation, Oondasta Hotfixed, Blue Tweets, The Daily Blink

Update: Mage and Warrior buffs, Warlock and Priest nerfs, and Death Knight changes are here!

Upcoming Hotfix to Arcane Power on Crit, Demon Hunter Fan Art, Heart of the Swarm is Live!

Isle of Thunder US - Stage 2 Unlocked

Patch 5.2 Dev Interviews
Another day, another interview. Tonight we take a look at an interview with Dave Kosak, Lead Quest Designer by Buffed.de.

Future
  • There are no more five man dungeons planned for Mists of Pandaria. (Discussion)
  • Garrosh and Varian will show up again in Patch 5.3, with another chapter of Varian's story.
  • The rewards from the daily quest factions in patch 5.2 were intended to make daily quests feel less mandatory, with the best rewards coming from raid reputation.
  • More scenarios are coming in future patches. We may see very challenging three player scenarios with pretty good rewards.
  • Future patches won't make dramatic changes to Azeroth when the war comes back, but there will be small changes to reflect the war going global.
  • The story of the last Pandaren emperor that cloaked the continent in mists will be revealed at some point in the future.
  • An animated ebook is coming that tells more of the story of Pandaria and the last emperor, Shaohao.
  • The story of the Zandalari isn't over yet!


Patch 5.2
  • Isle of Thunder unlocking is faction based and participation based. The unlock speed is based on participation percentage, not population. Doing just one quest is enough to count as contributing for the day.
  • Most realms will fully unlock the Isle within six weeks, with some doing it slightly faster or slower.
  • The Isle of Thunder has things like the summonable bosses, rare spawns, chests, Lorewalker objects, and other things to make it more than just a place to go and do daily quests. More things like these will be experimented with in Patch 5.3.
  • The Tiller's farm worked out well, and we may see more places to interact with every day in the future.
  • The Troves of the Thunder King scenario is intended to be easy to find a key for at least once a week, with a small chance to find another.
  • Outdoor bosses, rare spawns, and the Isle of Giants are all ways to encourage players to group up, and we will see more in the future.
  • The solo scenarios added in Patch 5.2 allow players to experience the Isle of Thunder unlock events even if they were unable to play for a few weeks, but we won't see a lot of these in the future. They are better for special events or skill challenges, such as the final part of the Patch 5.2 legendary quest chain.


Isle of Thunder Participation
Dave Kosak shared what the percentage of participation for your faction actually means. Some time towards the end of last week US realms stopped unlocking at the same exact rate, so be sure to encourage your faction to do daily quests if you want to keep up!



Oondasta and Nalak Hotfixes
Groups of 80 to 200 players have been forming cross realm raids to kill Oondasta, which occasionally caused some realm stability problems.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We’re in the process of implementing a hotfix that will remove players’ eligibility to receive loot from Oondasta and Nalak, The Storm Lord if they’re not on their home realm.

We think it’s great that encounters like Oondasta have been able to bring back some of the excitement of massive spontaneous outdoor raids. However, with cross-realm groups giving the ability to play with friends on each other’s realms, the amount of people concentrating on a single realm to try to zerg these bosses down can unfortunately cause a number of stability issues, impacting the availability of the game for everyone.

While Nalak isn’t available yet, we want to preemptively address this so that the first realm to unlock it doesn’t then become the single focus for the rest of the region.

Here’s the hotfix note that’ll be added to the blog shortly:

  • Players visiting a different realm are no longer eligible to receive loot from Oondasta or Nalak, The Storm Lord.

Patch 5.2 Hotfixes: March 11
Tonight's hotfixes address several issues, such as the 5% drop rate of the Zandalari dino pets, Throne of Thunder tuning adjustments, AQ exploits, and Blacksmiths making Lightning Steel Ingots too early.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Classes

Quests

Creatures
  • Players visiting a different realm are no longer eligible to receive loot from Oondasta or Nalak, The Storm Lord. A forum thread discussing the reasoning for this change have been created.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause Oondasta to not award loot to some players.
  • Fetid Meat Pile now properly lets players that are sufficiently far away to drop out of combat.
  • Zandalari Dinomancer now have a much lower chance to drop the Zandalari Anklerender, Footslasher, Kneebiter, and Toenibbler.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
  • All raid bosses now drop the appropriate number of tier tokens for Raid Finder, 10/25-player normal and heroic modes.
  • Fixed an issue where Luck of the Draw would sometimes be incorrectly applied to Challenge Mode groups.
  • Throne of Thunder
    • Combustion now deals 100% of the player’s damage to Primordius while the player is under the effects of Fully Mutated.
    • Reduced the health of The Council of Elders for 10-player normal and heroic mode.
    • Fixed an issue with Durumu the Forgotten where Life Drain's stun was not transferring correctly.
    • Reduced the health of the Gurubashi, Amani, Drakkari, and Farraki adds on the Horridon encounter.
    • Iron Qon for 25-player normal and heroic modes had the following change: The amount of damage dealt by Unleashed Flame and number of people needed to trigger Unleashed Flame had been reduced.
    • Iron Qon for 10/25-player normal modes had the following changes: Shatter damage have been reduced by 20%, damage from Arching Lightning have been reduced by 10%, and Rising Anger stacks more slowly.
  • Scholomance
    • Fixed an issue where Lilian Voss' Dark Blaze was invisible.
  • Temple of Ahn’Qiraj
    • The Prophet Skeram and any illusions created during the encounter no longer drop loot or provide reputation when killed. This is a temporary change to address an issue with the encounter.

Battlegrounds
  • Fixed an issue with latency near the beginning of a Battleground.

Professions
  • Blacksmithing
    • Creation of Lightning Steel Ingots now requires at least one of the factions to have unlocked the Thunder Forge.

Items

Bug Fixes
  • The Skin of the Saurok disguise in Ihgaluk Crag will no longer cancel Druid Moonkin and Tree of Life forms.
  • Fixed an issue where Worgen were unable to use Two Forms after crossing into a coalesced zone while in combat.

Blue Tweets
Be sure to read these carefully, as they make note of upcoming class changes.
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
Also considering buffs to warrior and DK tank DPS. Possible nerfs to dot classes. Nothing extreme. DPS looks good overall (but only 1 week). (Source)
DK tank DPS Really? If that's the case please look at Prot Pally.
Prot paladin DPS looks good overall. Is there a specific fight you're referencing? (Source)

How do you feel about absorbs always being chosen over other heals in battle and making Paladin and Priest always on top?
It's just a trait of absorbs. Hots also tend to "heal snipe." It's one reason meters aren't a great indicator of healing power. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Sims aren't end all be all, then are you seeing in practice unholy being much higher than frost? Why more frost specific buffs
Yeah Unholy ended up on top and the goal isn't to make every Frost DK swap. Should be personal preference for 95% of players. (Source)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Can we get the LOS requirement dropped from Dismiss Pet? Would help out when terrain in boss rooms traps them
That seems like a reasonable request. We'll discuss it. Counters a PvP strat, but that strat is mostly annoying. (Source)

But the Silencing Shot nerf IS noticed in PVE, especially with any rares/elites that cast heals. How to interrupt now?
There is no encounter in PvE balanced around every player needing to interrupt that often. (Source)

Confused by Diziet interview and hunter class review. Hunters needed a nerf a la spriests but were in a good place in pvp?
Fixing the Stampede bug after launch and nerfing Silencing Shot a little in 5.2 are the only nerfs IIRC. (Source)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
To clear up some confusion, Critical Mass is a 1.3 modifier on live. There is a tooltip bug that makes it appear to be 1.2. Our apologies. (Source)

After a few more days, we now think mage DPS is low. We want to keep parity among mage specs so the buffs will likely be fairly passive. (Source)
When will these changes happen? I love arcane, raid leader has me going frost for tomorrows raid. Thank you again for all u do
The intent is before the raid reset / heroics unlock. (Source)

You overdid it destroying Fire & redid it in 5.2 to Arcane. It's galling to see Blizzard surprised Frost is over-represented.
That's not what I said. We like Frost vs. Fire vs. Arcane. We think all 3 are low compared to say lock and hunter. (Source)

I seem to be spamming scorch because of movement issues with the new bosses on ptr, anything new on the way? ;/. Sry to bother
Quickly moving then stopping to cast is generally higher performance than moving all the time and spamming Scorch. (Source)

Speccing Flameglow is boring, there's no visual (and its called flameglow, huh..) It could atleast have a little visual..
It's a passive. The visual would be up 100% of the time. (Source)
Can we get an aura to flameglow pls?
It's on always. Do you just want an icon to remind you or do you want to see a visual 100% of the time? (Source)

5.0 fire, 5.1 arcane, 5.2 frost. I feel that when i am comfortable with one spec i have to change every patch since mop releas
My advice overall is to play that you enjoy and not swap constantly based on what some website says. (Source)

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Whats the reasoning behind monk fierce tiger hotfix nerf? I understood the 5.2 nerfs but isn't this too many at once?
We found a last minute bug with our testing related to the lvl 30 talents. It as our mistake unrelated to any performance on live. (Source)
Does this mean the 10% damage reduction on stance will be reverted? *Puppy Eyes*
No, we had to add that nerf because their damage was 10% higher than we wanted. My apologies. (Source)
Any chance of fixing the bug and reverting to 20%? Could cause problems layer. Balancing around bugs = bad.
The bug was in our testing, not the WW. We caught it too late. You were doing +10% DPS than we intended. Sadface. (Source)
The excuse doesn't make sentence, dude. How does lv 30 talents affect dps?? Chi wave?
Try measuring your DPS with and without Chi Wave. What is the difference? (Source)
How do want to make WW viable? their dmg is lower than in 5.2! srsly people are massabandoning their monks
Mass abandonment after 2 days also seems like a bit of an extreme reaction. (Source)
Maybe, although I'm sure it's crossed the mind of several after your such amusing understanding of balance in 5.2.
Are you saying you have a crystal clear picture of balance after 3 days? Hmm. (Source)
I just find the explanations for this "10%" reduction a bit reduntant. But im a fighter and so is my monk!
It's not this simple, but imagine Fierce Tiger had a bug that made it do 10% more DPS than intended. The hotfix was to fix that. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Why the change to the paladin 4pc pvp set to not work with eternal flame?
We wanted to cut down on Holy instants, so we changed the bonus to work with WoG/EG to Flash. (Source)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Disc feels functionally much better. Coming back with the DA change is tough but adaptable. Overall, great work.
Glad to hear it. Let's see how it feels in a week or two once everyone has wrapped their head around all the PvP changes. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Using totems while silenced is annoying ok but to be blanket silenced every 15 seconds isn´t?
The point of silences is to counter things, especially heals and defenses. We don't like uncounterable things. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
As an Affy Warlock, having Haunt tied into the Soul Shard system feels clunky. It felt better as a cooldown.
We like Haunt. Concerned that Soul Swap consumes all available shards though which means less for other things. (Source)

Just curious, how's the reaction to the Warlock quest been? I've spent about 20 hours wiping on Kan, feels overwhelming atm
Overall, I'd say it was this. Players who can't beat him: Please nerf. Players who managed to beat him: Please don't! (Source)

Any worse on whether Kanrethad might receive some kind of nerf? I've given all I've got, and I just can't do it as-is
Maybe someday. For now, the fight is more about execution and using all your tools than DPS. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Why did warriors get such a nerf in 5.2? Why is deadly calm gone? Why such a hate for dps warriors?
Did you really find Deadly Calm fun? I felt we added it in a weak moment. (Source)

Did you guys just not care to put a prot war explanation in the class reviews?
We made almost no changes. We adjusted their scaling a little to avoid high Vengeance craziness. (Source)

The Daily Blink - Donate, and Buff a Mage in Need
The Daily Blink came up with a new way to help out mages after the devastation brought by Patch 5.2. Let's just say it has a quick effect...

If the whole puppy commercial torture thing doesn't pan out, we'll pool all the money and buy pre-made Hunter characters on eBay.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Dev Interviews, Isle Participation, Oondasta Hotfixed, Blue Tweets, Comic, Comic started by chaud View original post
Published on 2013-03-12 03:44 AM
70 Comments
Comments 70 Comments
  1. Alixie's Avatar
    In the aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarmmmmmssss of the angels
  1. LogixTN's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Papamidnyte View Post
    Boo Hoo, a lil nerf and you get a comic strip and yet mages is still on top the DPS simulation and rankings. there Many REAL ISSUES regarding other classes that has gotten more nerfed than you lot. So Toughen the hell up and make more food and port me home.
    A lil' nerf?

    Tier 6 spells got destroyed, an already nerfed 3 times spec (fire) got a pyro nerf wich means less ignites - less combustion = BIG nerf and on top of that, LB spreads are gone. Arcane is just unusable unless some mages don't care about progress and they just roleplay or stuff like that. Also, what simulations have you done that showed mages as top DPS? Just curious.

    Hope this gets fixed otherwise there is no point in having a mage in a 10 man setup. and I can't see how this is balance for blizzard.
  1. Eliandal's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pacster View Post
    And there goes the last chance for dead servers to ever see an Oondasta kill. On my server he ist still standing after 2 days...
    Pretty much this! On a tiny - RP server no less. We sure as hell don't have 40 heroic raiders. Seems like Blizzard wants us to transfer to actually kill this boss ;P!
  1. Granyala's Avatar
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Possible nerfs to dot classes.
    Great. But expected. Shadow doing good damage obviously isn't intended design. Ah well, At least We had fun for one ID.
  1. tjanson's Avatar
    It's nice to know that all those years of utterly blowing Blizzard every few days finally paid off for the Daily Blink.

    I mean, um... Grats, mages.
  1. Ryme's Avatar
    Mages are middle of the pack, exactly where GC himself said we should measure ourselves. Now they get buffs to put them back ahead of everyone again? I'm getting mixed messages.
  1. Scinder's Avatar
    The nerf to mages was so dramatic, they went from having two specs in the top 4 dps spots to two specs in the top 5. What. A. Travesty.
  1. Ferrouswheel's Avatar
    I swear Blizzard is run by mental midgets. Don't want dungeons being a catch up? Make them drop 463 loot. Problem solved. Having only 4 dungeons while leveling is sickening. Only having 9 dungeons to run every single day for vp during the whole expansion is even more disgusting. Stop being lazy and give us dungeons. I want more variety when I run my daily. Your retarded player base (me) can figure it out in two seconds so you can too.
  1. ihyln's Avatar
    haha world of dailycraft. thunder island is a joke. no new 5 mans but lets keep adding boring dailies.
  1. Strafer's Avatar
    Yay, more Garrosh and Varian.
  1. Granyala's Avatar
    Your retarded player base (me)
    Hey there, fellow retarded player.
    I agree with your statement.

    New 5mans >>> boring zerg scenarios.
  1. Skippy88's Avatar
    No not Sarah Mclachlan (And I'm a Canadian too). I am a Rogue and I am giving all my gold to this very worthy cause.
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Korru View Post
    Blizzard got lazy, they have found scenarios to be a lot easier to make.
    Blizzard got smarter, they found scenarios and LFR to be a lot more useful to make. Honestly? you really want to run 2 troll 5-mans for the next 6 months? Even on their best patches, they released only 3 dungeons which got boring very fast. I would rather have a large number of different things to do to get VP rather than faceroll the same 2-3 dungeons every day. Now I can do some scenerios, LFR, dailies or heroic dungeons for VP.
  1. Granyala's Avatar
    you really want to run 2 troll 5-mans for the next 6 months? Even on their best patches, they released only 3 dungeons which got boring very fast.
    Add new dungeons but don't put them in a separate pool for LFD.
    I know, these obvious anti-burnout solutions boggle my mind too at times.
  1. Spirillum's Avatar
    I'll wait and see how much they buff mages before passing judgement. They were overnerfed, so a correction is in order. Let's see if they get it right or overdo it.
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by grexly75 View Post
    As Far as I can tell new dailies should be coming once the big gate is open, not sure why no new dailies but spose since in the same area as stage 1 just from another point on the map then who knows.. But a minimum of six weeks to unlock it all wow that is a long time..
    Why would they rotate already. We have only done these for 6 days. It will probably be 2-3 months until the next non-raid patch.

    ---------- Post added 2013-03-12 at 04:04 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Ferrouswheel View Post
    I swear Blizzard is run by mental midgets. Don't want dungeons being a catch up? Make them drop 463 loot. Problem solved. Having only 4 dungeons while leveling is sickening. Only having 9 dungeons to run every single day for vp during the whole expansion is even more disgusting. Stop being lazy and give us dungeons. I want more variety when I run my daily. Your retarded player base (me) can figure it out in two seconds so you can too.
    Who the heck runs dungeons every day? Not sure if you noticed, but there are a LOT of ways to earn VP, if you choose to do only one thing, then that is your decision. I cap VP on two toons every week and I only run maybe 4 heroics per week total, and that is only if the CTA bag is up for tanks. LFR, scenarios, dailies, weekly quests (150 VP for the new one).. any of those things ring a bell? But thankfully there are still people who think heroic dungeons are the only way to get VP, otherwise I wouldn´t be getting my CTA bags for carrying them.
  1. Reforge's Avatar
    Finally mages wont get sat hopefully, WTB more utility as well!
  1. Buffybot's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by LogixTN View Post
    A lil' nerf?

    Tier 6 spells got destroyed, an already nerfed 3 times spec (fire) got a pyro nerf wich means less ignites - less combustion = BIG nerf and on top of that, LB spreads are gone. Arcane is just unusable unless some mages don't care about progress and they just roleplay or stuff like that. Also, what simulations have you done that showed mages as top DPS? Just curious.

    Hope this gets fixed otherwise there is no point in having a mage in a 10 man setup. and I can't see how this is balance for blizzard.
    So you're basically in with us hunters now. Where's our comic strip? And we sure aren't getting a buff.

    ---------- Post added 2013-03-12 at 10:31 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Scinder View Post
    The nerf to mages was so dramatic, they went from having two specs in the top 4 dps spots to two specs in the top 5. What. A. Travesty.
    Well I've learned that if I post comics and whine, I will maybe finally get buffed. So here goes....
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Add new dungeons but don't put them in a separate pool for LFD.
    I know, these obvious anti-burnout solutions boggle my mind too at times.
    So you want them to create new heroics. but put them in the same pool as the ones we have.. which means they are going to drop 463 ilvl items and be built for players having ilvl 440ish?

    yeah, that will be fun and exciting for players who have ilvl 502 from LFR. Why even build them, they will get destroyed so fast nobody will be able to tell they are new dungeons at all.

    Not to boggle your mind, but the ´separate pool´ was required because the newer heroics were more difficult than the older ones. ie.. players with ilvl 440 wouldn´t be able to handle the new ones.

    So pick your poison..... you either have the newer dungeons be a challenge for players with ´todays´ gear, which means they are separate queue... or else you have the new heroics in the same queue as the older ones, which means they must be doable for people at 440 ilvl, and therefore absolute faceroll for people with 500ish ilvl.

    here is a better solution.. sprinkle in scenarios, LFR, daily quests, weekly quests in order to get your VP.

    ---------- Post added 2013-03-12 at 04:58 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Spirillum View Post
    I'll wait and see how much they buff mages before passing judgement. They were overnerfed, so a correction is in order. Let's see if they get it right or overdo it.
    They weren´t overnerfed.. they are fine now. The problem is that now you have a bunch of bad players who jumped on the bandwagon last tier not being able to get close to the theoretical numbers they should be able to do..... because they are bad players.

    It has happened that way in the past. It appears that Blizzard overnerfs something, but after a few weeks those FOTM mouthbreathers will jump to a new class and then mages will magically start to pull higher dps simply becasue the bad players are no longer playing that class.
  1. Buffybot's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Azrile View Post
    So you want them to create new heroics. but put them in the same pool as the ones we have.. which means they are going to drop 463 ilvl items and be built for players having ilvl 440ish?

    yeah, that will be fun and exciting for players who have ilvl 502 from LFR. Why even build them, they will get destroyed so fast nobody will be able to tell they are new dungeons at all.

    Not to boggle your mind, but the ´separate pool´ was required because the newer heroics were more difficult than the older ones. ie.. players with ilvl 440 wouldn´t be able to handle the new ones.

    So pick your poison..... you either have the newer dungeons be a challenge for players with ´todays´ gear, which means they are separate queue... or else you have the new heroics in the same queue as the older ones, which means they must be doable for people at 440 ilvl, and therefore absolute faceroll for people with 500ish ilvl.

    here is a better solution.. sprinkle in scenarios, LFR, daily quests, weekly quests in order to get your VP.

    ---------- Post added 2013-03-12 at 04:58 PM ----------



    They weren´t overnerfed.. they are fine now. The problem is that now you have a bunch of bad players who jumped on the bandwagon last tier not being able to get close to the theoretical numbers they should be able to do..... because they are bad players.

    It has happened that way in the past. It appears that Blizzard overnerfs something, but after a few weeks those FOTM mouthbreathers will jump to a new class and then mages will magically start to pull higher dps simply becasue the bad players are no longer playing that class.
    And see this is the only reason I kibitz and whine. Hunters were overnerfed but no one cares because hunters. We got a minimal buff to one spec and mages got nerfed back to earth with the other classes and now its being considered too much that they are only topping the rest of us DPS by a bit?
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