Dev Interviews, Aug 19 Beta Notes Update, Beta Class Feedback, Blue Posts, Fan Art

Death Knight
Frost Changes

• Icy Talons now increases attack speed by 35% (down from 45%), and haste by 5% (up from 0%).

Blood Changes

• Glyph of Rune Tap has been redesigned. It now reduces Rune Tap’s recharge time by 10 seconds, but reduces the damage reduction it provides by 20%.

Druid
Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Starfall no longer cancels when mounting. However, it can no longer hit stealthed or invisible targets.
• Wild Mushroom no longer become invisible.

Guardian Changes

• Guardian Druids' Mastery (Nature’s Guardian) has been replaced with a new Mastery: Primal Tenacity.
  
  • Mastery: Primal Tenacity causes the Druid to gain a Physical absorb shield equal to 12% 16% of the attack’s damage when they are hit by a Physical attack. Attacks which this effect fully or partially absorbs cannot trigger Primal Tenacity.
• Soul of the Forest (Guardian) now increases Mangle’s Rage generation by 5 (down from 10).

Restoration Changes

• Incarnation: Tree of Life no longer enhances Lifebloom. Instead, it also enhances Rejuvenation, increasing its healing by 50%, and reducing its cost by 50%.
• Heart of the Wild (Restoration) now increases healing done by 35% (up from 25%).
• Soul of the Forest for Restoration Druids has been redesigned.
  
  • Soul of the Forest (Restoration) when casting Swiftmend, the Druid gains Soul of the Forest. Soul of the Forest reduces the cast time of the next Healing Touch by 50%, or increases the healing of the next Regrowth, or Rejuvenation, or Wild Growth by 100%, or increases the healing of the next Wild Growth by 50%.

Hunter
Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Thrill of the Hunt now has a 20% chance to trigger (down from 30%).

Mage
Talent Revisions

• Presence of Mind is no longer a talent, and is now learned by only Arcane Mages.
• Evanesce is a new Talent available at level 15, replacing Presence of Mind.
• Alter Time is now a level-30 Talent, replacing Temporal Shield.
  
  • Alter Time now lasts for 10 15 seconds (up from 6 seconds), has a 90-second cooldown (down from 3 minutes), and no longer affects the Mage’s mana, buffs, or debuffs.

Frost Changes

• The Brain Freeze effect now increases Frostfire Bolt damage by 15% 25%, and can now stack up to 2 times. It also no longer triggers from the Bomb Talents, and instead has a 10% chance to trigger from Frostbolt casts. Each Multistrike of Frostbolt increases that cast's chance by an additional 25%. (Total of 60% on double-Multistrikes).

Monk
Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Power Strikes now triggers every 15 seconds (up from every 20 seconds).

Mistweaver Changes

• Chi Brew now grants 1 charge of Mana Tea (down from 2 charges).
• Ascension now increases maximum Mana by 20% 10% (up from 15%).
  
  • The Monk gains Eminence, causing all damage dealt to also heal nearby allies.
    
    • Eminence now causes a nearby target to be healed for 50% 35% of all damage caused by the Monk and includes auto attacks.
    • Stance of the Wise Serpent no longer provides this benefit.
  • Blackout Kick causes Eminence to heal 5 allies instead of 1, but heals for only 20% 15% of damage dealt instead of 35%.

Windwalker Changes
For Energy-based gameplay to function well, the primary limitation on ability usage should be Energy, not time. That breaks down when a rotation becomes limited by available GCDs, rather than by Energy. Windwalkers were hitting this “GCD-cap” too easily, causing scaling problems as they geared up, and removing rotational choices. To solve this problem, we’ve made a few tweaks that will Slow down their rotation slightly; but still allow Windwalkers who enjoy the GCD-capped playstyle to have options available to focus on Haste and Energy regeneration. Individually, these may sound like significant nerfs, but Windwalker damage has been adjusted to compensate for these changes. The goal is to address the issue with GCD-capping while not reducing DPS.

• Jab now costs 45 Energy while in Stance of the Fierce Tiger.

There are a couple of additional changes for Windwalkers. Storm, Earth, and Fire, got buffed to make it smoother to use. We also buffed Fists of Fury because we felt that the ability wasn’t giving a strong enough damage boost given its restrictions and impact on the Monk's rotation.

• Stance of the Fierce Tiger now increases all damage done by 20% now also increases Jab’s energy cost by 10.

Brewmaster Changes

• Elusive Brew now increases dodge chance by 45% 35% (up from 30%).

Paladin
Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Selfless Healer no longer causes Bastion of Glory to apply to Flash of Light. However, it now increases the healing of Flash of Light on others by 35% per stack (up from 20%).
• Sword of Light now increases damage by 25% (down from 30%).

Priest
Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Borrowed Time’s effects have been merged into baseline Power Word: Shield for Discipline Priests.
  
  • Borrowed Time has been redesigned. It now increases the Priest's stat gains to Haste from all sources by 40% for 6 seconds.

Talent Revisions

• From Darkness, Comes Light has been split into two abilities depending on the Priest's specialization.
  
  • Surge of Darkness (Shadow) now has a maximum of 3 charges (up from 2) and can now also trigger its effect from Devouring Plague, but its chance to trigger has been reduced to 10% (down from 20%) to compensate.
  • Surge of Light (Discipline, Holy) activation chance has been reduced to 8% 10% (down from 15%).

Miscellaneous Changes

• Enlightenment is a new passive ability for Discipline Priests.
  
  • Enlightenment increases the critical healing chance of Prayer of Mending by 10%, and increases stat gains to Critical Strike from all sources by 5%.

Rogue
Ability Consolidation and Refinement
Rogues received several mergers of passive abilities. There's also additional cooldown thinning with the change to Tricks of the Trade.

• Assassin’s Resolve now increases damage by 15% (down from 20%).
• Deadly Throw no longer has a minimum range.
• Garrote now ticks every 2 seconds (up from every 3 seconds). Damage has been adjusted to compensate.

Subtlety Changes

• Hemorrhage’s periodic damage is now based on attack power (instead of the initial strike's damage), and ticks every 2 seconds. Damage has been adjusted to compensate. has rolling periodic behavior, meaning that remaining damage from the previous application is added into the newly-applied periodic-damage effect.
• Sinister Calling now increases Agility by 15% (down from 30%), and the amount of Multistrike bonus received from all sources by 5% (in order to act as Subtlety’s Secondary Stat Attunement). And finally, when the rogue Multistrikes with Backstab or Ambush, they also twist the blade, causing all Bleed effects to advance by 2 seconds, triggering an instant tick instantly tick an additional time.

Shaman
Ability Pruning

• Ancestral Vigor has been removed.

Restoration Changes

• Chain Heal now heals each chain target for 10% 15% less than the previous target.

Warlock
Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Seed of Corruption and Soulburn: Seed of Corruption can no longer both apply to the same target.

Warrior
Stance Changes
Warriors have always had stances; they’re very important to the feeling of being a Warrior. In order to make stances more meaningful, and ease keybinds, we made stances have their own action bars, and re-added stance restrictions on abilities. However, we also made it so that you’ll automatically be shifted into the appropriate stance if you try to use an ability that isn’t usable in your current stance. One important difference between this and previous Incarnation of Warrior stances is that these abilities are rotational, not utility cooldowns. Stances are now more for different gameplay modes (dealing damage vs. tanking). There shouldn’t be cases where you find yourself swapping stances, use an ability, and then immediately swapping back.

• Colossus Smash now requires Battle Stance.
• Recklessness now requires Battle Stance.
• Sweeping Strikes now requires Battle Stance.
• Activating Defensive Stance now puts Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, Slam, Raging Blow, and Wild Strike on a 6-second cooldown.
• Devastate is now available to all Warrior specializations (was Protection only) and requires Defensive Stance or Gladiator Stance.
  
  • For Arms and Fury Warriors, Devastate has a 30% chance to reset the cooldown of Revenge.
• Revenge is now available to all Warrior specializations (was Protection only), and requires Defensive Stance or Gladiator Stance.
• Shield Barrier is now available for all Warrior specializations (was Protection only) and requires Defensive Stance.
  
  • For Arms and Fury Warriors, Shield Barrier can be used without a shield.
• Taunt now requires Defensive Stance or Gladiator Stance.

Talent Changes

• Staggering Shout has been removed and replaced with 3 new talents that vary by specialization.
  
  • Fury: Furious Strikes: Wild Strike costs 15 10 less Rage.

Fury Changes

• Bloodsurge’s effects have been merged into baseline Bloodthirst and no longer reduce Wild Strike’s global cooldown. Its spell alert has moved to the top slot instead of the left and right slots, and now has 2 charges (down from 3 charges).
• Bloodthirst now replaces Heroic Strike for Fury Warriors.
  
  • Wild Strike now has a 0.75 0.5 second baseline global cooldown, and costs 45 Rage.

Class Design Theorycraft Results
As I mentioned over in the Class Design Status thread (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/13839984558), this build (and the next one, for healers) should be solid enough for theorycrafters to start really tearing into. We'd love to see the results of that effort; it helps us identify tuning problems better, and more precisely tune things.

Things we're specifically looking for:

• Simulation result summaries
• Stat weights
• Talent comparisons
• Spec comparisons
• Rotation comparisons

In all cases, gear used (primarily ilvl) matters a *ton*, so please provide that as well.

As with the theorycrafting question thread, this thread will be heavily moderated. This thread is for posting results, not discussing things; please help keep it pure. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Class Design Status
Our goal with this first round is getting the vast majority of specs to be “close” to right, as far as overall performance.

Would it be possible for you guys to give us a rough idea of what kind of scenarios you are really looking to accomplish this for?
Sure. This first round was primarily single-target focused. We'll get into AoE (of varying sizes) soon.

Regarding people feeling ignored: It's not some case of ignoring you. I just don't usually have the time to spend on this. I usually respond to easy things on Twitter, because it's small bite-sized chunks that I can respond to while waiting for a build to compile, or a change to save, or a game to launch, or someone to answer a question, or whatever.

However, I'm planning to spend the remainder of my evening here on the forums, responding to feedback. Wish me luck! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Death Knight Changes
Hey DKs. I've responded to a lot of DK questions on Twitter, but finally am getting time to pop in here to the forums and respond on the forums. Frost in particular has has gotten some significant changes, and frustration from that is totally understandable.

-Why is Critical Strike deprecated by (at last calculation) around 20% for Frost DKs? In an expansion with bonus loot and no more reforging, it would seem that we are much more at the mercy of RNG when it comes to loot pieces. While I am aware that we have some flexibility in the form of enchants and some consumables, is this deprecation really necessary in the first place?

-Continuing on the theme of stat valuation, Mastery's valuation for 2h Frost has also proven to be pitifully low in our early simulations.
Loot changes actually have very little impact on this. However, we do want secondary stats to be close in value, and these are just a tuning issues that we want to improve upon. Please post your theorycrafting results over in the Class Design Theorycraft Results thread.

-Necrotic Plague is currently simming at a DPS loss for multiple DPS specs. Other Level-100 talents also show a very minimal gain. We realise that there is probably room for significant improvement in how we're coding them, but these results also appear to be reflected in actual tests.

Could you please tell us if there is a margin of gain which we should expect (both ST and multi target) with these talents? I'd particularly appreciate if you could comment on Festerblight and Unholy Death Knights.
I'd hope it'd be obvious that in a row of throughput talents, one that reduces your throughput is not intended. Yes, we'll tune the whole row to be a significant but not huge damage gain. Something similar in power to most of our other throughput increasing talent rows.

-Could you please comment on Unholy AoE and Frost Runes? As mentioned earlier in this thread, it is incredibly frustrating to transition in and out of AoE/Single-target priorities due to Frost Runes doing nothing for Unholy AoE. I realise that you intend for pre-planning to be reward, but the reality of the situation translates very differently in raid situations where we switch priorities frequently. It also pushes us quite strongly towards the Blood Tap talent.
We see it as a minor annoyance. We haven't found a solution that we're happy with that doesn't have negatives that outweigh the positives. Ideas are welcome, though the problem isn't impactful enough to warrant a mechanic change at this point for 6.0. It's something we'd be interested in addressing in a future patch.

-Speaking of Blood Tap, there seems to be little to no reason for Unholy DKs to take Runic Empowerment thanks to the way in which it interacts with our Rune setup. Other specs are not much better, as they have to game it to get the most out of it. This talent has proven unpopular for a reason, not the least of which is that macroed Blood Tap can mimic its functionality, but provide even greater flexibility due to it generating Death Runes.
This is another case where what is there works, and we think we could do better, we just are still trying to find the right solution. I'd say that the goal we're looking for is to make the payoff of Runic Empowerment stronger (perhaps just a numbers tweak would work here), and to make Blood Tap not macroable (but just putting it on the GCD has some significant downsides).

-Runic Power generation for Blood Death Knights feels quite spiky. With Necrotic Plague for instance, it becomes overwhelming in any sort of AoE tanking situation- making the talent feel quite mandatory. With high levels of Multistrike, we appear to go from 0 to 50 Runic Power in barely a global. Is there no way to standardise the generation so that it doesn't feel quite as "Feast and Famine"-esque?
Indeed it does. Currently, the issue is that we need to get X total RP out of Y multistrike, and so the tuning is as such. However, that makes it spiky. You could argue that that's OK, since you can spend it in big chunks, and the defensive value of it is heavily smoothed. Because of that, we're tentatively OK with it for now, but would be interested in iterating on it in the future.

In closing, similar to what I've said to a few other classes tonight, I'd like to discuss this further with you all, but please make that easy for me to do, by keeping the hyperbole and anger and useless sarcasm and generally destructive behavior out of this. Thanks.

Any thoughts on how necrosis is playing for unholy? So far it hasn't had much impact on stat weights, though it is a close second and I will be posting results in the theorycraft thread. Adjusting the AP scaling provides great progress and it raises multi above anything else by as little or as much as desired.
Precisely. It sounds like it's undertuned at the moment, but the point is that it's a tuning knob that we can use to bring up the value of Multistrike for Unholy. When we get into more closely balancing the secondary stats, I expect that it's a knob that we'll tweak.

Necrotic Plague appears to do less damage than normal diseases, even for a Festerblight rotation.
As mentioned above, Necrotic Plague used to be massively overpowered, and we just turned it way down to avoid tainting feedback from it. We'll tune it back up to the right spot.

Necrosis, I'd guess more like the 2-5% range.

Death Coil... Remember that it grows in % with gear (Mastery). It should probably be in the 15-20% range to start with, single-target, and raise to 20-25% over the course of the expansion. Those are just off-the-top-of-my-head numbers, from this current point in time; tuning goals can always change (thus why we rarely give out hard numbers in that realm).

Breath of Sindragosa makes out play our class the exact opposite we've been playing since day 1. It's weird, and even when pulled off correctly, doesn't give a decent payoff. Not good. I don't see anyone seriously using this talent for any spec.
Breath of Sindragosa has been a challenge. It's been sort of halfway between being a rotational AoE RP dump, and a pool->burst cooldown. We decided that we should push it one way or the other, more convincingly. So, in the next build, it's having its damage *and* cooldown considerably increased (2min CD, 2.5x the dmg, though dmg tuning is still quite rough). Considering going higher still (3min CD). The goal here is that it becomes purely a cooldown that you pool resources for. It should only be affecting your rotation for some pooling time before it comes off CD, and then has the "keep it going as long as you can" gameplay while it's running. But, that should only cover a fraction of your actual gameplay time (whereas currently, that whole pooling->burn process covers nearly half your time). And yes, it, just like the rest of the row, should be worth using on single targets.

I've said this one a few times before, but I would like to see DnD be worth casting for Blood; right now it's less damage over the duration then Blood Boil, meaning it's almost never worth casting except in edge cases, since DnD competes directly with Blood Boil on Death Runes/Crimson Scourge. Would like to see a change to this in the next few builds.
Agreed. We buffed Blood Boil's damage significantly at some point, and caused it to eclipse Death and Decay. I believe the next build should fix that.

Lichborne is a sad, sad joke even with Resolve scaling. I legitimately tried to use this talent on a few bosses, and it heals for NOTHING and doesn't last long enough. Should really get buffed in the leech % or something. Right now this talent is only there to break/immune fears.
We'll get that tuned up, if it's as bad as you say.

Rune Tap plays very well, even outside of bosses with obvious 'Rune Tap here' burst mechanics. However it really should lose the Blood Rune cost; having it cost DPS is a little much, esp on AoE. It would still retain all of the current gameplay; it's main cost is the cooldown. The problem with picking between DPS and Mitigation is that either Blood will be OP on damage when picking DPS, which isn't fair to the other 4 tanks, or Blood will be too weak when it doesn't, which isn't fair to Blood. This also applies to BB vs DS, but that one isn't really easily fixable on aoe, only single target.

To elaborate more: RT works well because it is different from Death Strike AND does not share the same resource. Systems like Shield Block vs Barrier fail because you just pick the best one for the situation and spam it. RT + DS play well because they are both very different in functionality AND can be used in tandem, meaning you pick your moments to use each one independently. So generally speaking, good job on the new RT. Far better then the old RT which was basically DS on steroids, and actually adds something to the spec now.
Sounds like it's working out well, mitigation-wise. The cost is something we're considering, but are unlikely to change at this point. It adds a bit of depth, where you want to save a Blood Rune for emergencies. Using your resources on damage instead of mitigation is an option that most tanks have to some extent or another, but is indeed something that complicates balancing.

General comment on boss damage; feels tuned pretty well. Bosses hit hard enough to make DS timing matter about the same as on live (people way overstate how much you actually time DS on live on anything but the hardest hitting bosses). Would definitely rather see bosses that hit hard then bosses that hit so weak that nothing you do matters anyways. Also bosses hitting hard means that Shadow of Death extra HP actually matters, which is generally a good thing (if max HP doesn't matter because bosses don't hit hard enough, Multistrike loses much of it's defensive benefit outside of rune regen talent returns) But we will have to see post mythic testing; I am sure a lot of this stuff is getting retuned anyways.
Great. Here's some potentially interesting commentary on Shadow of Death to add: The stat attunements are not hard and fast rules, and this is one of the most evident places (and that's fine). Different secondary stats have different situational values to tanks, more so than DPS or healers. Multistrike for Blood is primarily an increase to max health (as far as defensive value goes). It is tempered by giving you a few more Death Strikes too through rune regen talents, but the majority of its value is in max health. And this is an expansion where how much healing you need really matters. That means that sometimes, that extra health is going to be less valuable than simply taking less damage. However, how spiky you are, especially as a DK, matters too. It's an interesting balancing act that Blood DKs will navigate. How much is right for you varies by your content, your gear, your skill, and especially your healers.

I still don't understand why you guys can't bake the rune regen tier into other options instead of taking up an entire talent row that is completely passive. How about making them glyphs, turning them into perks, baking them into frost strike & death coil. There are just so many other options that don't involve forcing us to choose three completely boring passive talents that could be replaced with more interesting and interactive ones.

When you compare a DK talent tree to another class' like a mage or priest there is just so much more interaction and satisfaction that comes with them. I mean for goodness sake Gorfiend's Grasp still doesn't even have a real animation.
One of my previous posts here touches on where we'd like the rune regen talents to be. They shouldn't be boring and passive; they should matter, and be a gameplay choice.

We view classes as complete packages. Yes, some classes may have more interaction in their talents, but they may have less baseline, instead. Grass-is-greener syndrome is easy to suffer from with talent trees. Not sure what you mean about Gorefiend's visual.

DKs having no spec-specific talents is not an oversight. Spec-specific talents are just one tool in our toolbox. We don't have to use them everywhere. We also just make the same talent work somewhat differently for each spec instead, which happens sometimes for DKs.

I think that this is where there is a disconnect with some parts of the playerbase.

Gameplay choice, I think, is often interpreted by some to mean that there's big differences in numbers depending on the situation. As you've probably seen, DK theorycraft (at least for DPS) currently suggests that the talents sim within a very small margin of one another- leading some to claim that it doesn't matter which talent you choose.

Now personally, I could care less if there's a 0.5% difference between Runic Empowerment and Blood Tap for Unholy- taking one feels FAR better than the other. The same is true (probably to lesser degrees, but still true) of other specs/choices. Is this the ultimate goal with these talents- that they end up coming down to personal preference more than anything else?
Yeah, "gameplay choice" and "big dps difference" are not even remotely the same thing to us. It's a preference of how you want to play.

EDIT: The fact that they're tuned so close together right now is one of the contributing factors to why we're hesitant to toy with them too much right now. Tuning-wise, they're in a good place.

The bold is a bit alarming for me as a DW frost DK. Simply because I will be wasting KM on Obliterate and with this most recent patch I have noticed Frost Strike being much more worth pooling resources for. The main problem I see of it is, if it doesn't consume the KM then we can't touch our FS even by accident. Then we end up wasting KM to a degree. I guess it will more so be a trade-off while it's running. The next issue is cost, with the way we are generating RP, we will be lucky to run it for ten seconds. While obviously that will change as we get less downtime over the expansion, I still feel as though the trade-off of making your rotation clunky while it's running for however long you can keep it up will make playing with it very awkward. I feel having a reliable(50-60RP) cost usable every 15-30 seconds could be a better trade off, we will still pool resources for it, however it will be a lot less awkward to use. Would love to hear feedback on this.
I'm glad you notice that it's worth pooling resources to spend KMs on FS. That's good. But yes, you'll want to use KMs on Oblit during Breath of Sindragosa, and it'll be tuned around that assumption. Ultimately, it's a talent, so if that gameplay isn't attractive to you, there are alternatives. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Just wondering if mages will be getting portals to Draenor, and If so where will the destination in Draenor be?

Yes, to Stormshield and Warspear. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Paladin Changes
Random clarifications:

Hand of Sacrifice is indeed now off the GCD.
Execution Sentence is reversed for the heal only. That makes it useful, whereas before it was not.
Final Verdict was nerfed because it was overpowered, especially with Empowered Divine Storm added. Yes, it was a huge nerf, because it was very overpowered. If you have theorycrafting data suggesting otherwise, please post it in the Class Design Theorycraft Results thread.

The goal is absolutely for Ret to be strong DPS, just as strong as a Fury Warrior, or Enhancement Shaman, or Combat Rogue (just to pick some random examples). These nerfs occurred (and more will occur) because they were stronger in our testing. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Discipline Priest Changes
Hi Disc Priests! I'm running out of time tonight, but wanted to stop by at least one healer spec before I go, and Discipline is arguably in most need of discussion at this point. Disc has seen a fair bit of change, especially surrounding Atonement, so some frustration is expected. Lets have some constructive discussion, shall we?

Disc was quite overpowered by the end of Mists for a few reasons. The first of which was that they had a couple spells (Divine Star in particular) that bypassed the AoE cap. That was a huge mistake, and has been solved. I think that's pretty clear to everyone.

The second is that they did most of their effective healing through absorbs, and absorbs were extremely powerful in general. Things have changed in Warlords to make this not the case: Damage has become much more 'high sustained' and much less 'high burst', meaning that no longer does everyone sit at full health and absorbs snipe all the effective healing. And on top of that, we've toned down how much of Disc's throughput comes from absorbs in general. They're still by far the heaviest on absorbs (that's their specialty, after all), but it's not *so* skewed in that direction.

And finally, Atonement. It was tuned strong enough that it wasn't much of a healing throughput loss to use, while being an easy and significant DPS gain. And the fact that it smart-healed made it very effective healing. I think we still have some tuning work to go through to reach this, but our goal is that Atonement is like splitting your attention between damage and healing, something like 60/40. It's something you do during lulls in healing need, or when you've got more healers than you need (which may be or not be the case on a phase by phase basis, in raid encounters). This phase easy on healing? Switch to Atonement for a while, contributing about 40% of a damage dealer's DPS, at a loss of about 40% of your healing. And when you do go back to full healing, you have Archangel to help smooth your transition back into healing. You can also weave Atonement+Archangel into shorter lulls in healing requirements, to min/max. As I said, I believe the tuning is off from that vision, currently, but we'll get there.

Also, why is holy nova still doing damage? You removed all those from level 90 talents, I understand for finding rogues in pvp it's useful, or prevent flag cap but that could be a glyph. I know for a fact after playing my monk that getting aggro from spamming your aoe heal isn't really fun. (Rushing Jade Wind killed me a few times)
Holy Nova does no threat, either from its damage, or its healing. Just a neat little perk of Holy Nova. Always been that way.

1) No baseline CC: I miss psychic scream so much that I would never take another level 60 talent (even if the root worked) . Every other healer has some kind of baseline cc, some have multiple baseline ccs and talents and interrupts.
I believe Holinka has mentioned this on Twitter, but we're considering giving Silence to Disc, because it has no baseline CC. Not a promise, just something we're considering.

2) Holy Fire: Don't get me wrong, I like this spell in concept. What I don't like is that too much is tied to it now. With a talent it's mana. With a glyph it's a cc break. Regardless it's how you build up evanglism stacks and have a pseudo hot. Oh but it has a cooldown so if you build evangelism you can't break a poly. Oh and if you get locked out of holy you can't defend yourself from one either.
It's indeed a very multifaceted spell, especially in PvP. However, the Atonement healing it provides should not be a huge factor in that case, so is lessened.

3) Archangel: So much of our healing is tied to a short cooldown that has to be charged through atonement. Only atonement healing is now intended to be a real trade off. With a 30 second cd, archangel requires smite or offensive penance and you can't keep it up with just holy fire on cooldown.
I think Archangel may actually be too strong; it's not intended to be a rotational thing during periods of high HPS need.

4) Fade: Similar to Holy Fire, fade now does too much. It is the threat drop, the glyphed cooldown, and potentially the talented cooldown. That's too much baked into one button and makes it a non-fun button. That said, unless something changes I don't think I'll ever take phantasm.
This answer is similar to Holy Fire, but we see all of those potential customizations as a good thing. All of the things you mentioned are talents/glyphs that can be swapped in/out based on need. That kind of customization is generally good.

5) Saving Grace: This ability is too good, and I don't think a numbers pass will ever get it to a realistic point. A stacking MS is not a real tradeoff for a no cooldown NS. It only lasts 10 seconds you spam it till full and then kite for 10 seconds.
One thing that may not be obvious (or may be bugged) is that it affects its own healing. If you spam it for 10sec, the last half of that is doing some pretty weak healing. Then you're doing none for 10sec... And now you're spending 2/3 of your time doing no healing. I don't expect that it'll get much use the way you describe.

6) Spectral Guise: Also too good. It is also on the healing tier when it is clearly not a heal. I guess it's not so much a too good, as a "this talent is clearly better in a lot of instances." It works too well with fear, and with saving grace. The only other talent I'd consider is bulwark but a tuning pass might make desperate prayer worth using again.
Indeed, that's something that's on our radar. Keeping an eye on it.

7) Holy Nova: Numbers aside: Visuals aside. Having this be the spell you spam when kiting looks bad visually. This is more a factor of it being a 0 cooldown instant, than that it is the aoe heal. I am not a fan of it as an aoe heal either, given that it gets rid of aoe healing during the all important losely spread out mechanic fights. We already have a talent that pushes us to clump the raid in barrier. This just feels too much.
Different healers have different strengths and weaknesses. This isn't a particularly restrictive one, all things considered, and is similar to other healing classes in effect.

8) Too many mandatory glyphs: If you want mass dispel, inner focus, and death you have eaten up your three glyph slots. Tough luck if you wanted anything else fun. What makes me dislike this even more is that at the start of last expansion this would have meant 0 glyphs and I could take some fun option things like glyph of smite.
We actually want *more* mandatory glyphs, not fewer. That creates better tension, and makes glyphs feel meaningful. Interesting choices, etc.

9) Too many interrupts: Mobility and instants were taken away from casters. I get this, it had gotten ridiculous. The only issue I have is that those interrupts that got scattered didn't go away. As a disc priest, I open up my primary school with penance. This means that if I want to take advantage of that new perk to snare an enemy with it, I have to be prepared to be locked out. Everything I would ever want to snare has an interrupt. Interrupts are so common now that every dps, every tank, and half the healers have access to one now.
This is getting more into Holinka's territory than my own, but the prevalence of interrupts is something that's strongly on our mind right now.

This post ended up more PvP-focused than I had hoped, but I gotta run, so will try to post more soon.

As I've said to other specs tonight, I'd like to have further discussions with you all about Disc, but please make that easy for me to do, by keeping the hyperbole and anger and useless sarcasm and generally destructive behavior out of this. Thanks. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Elemental Shaman Changes
Hey Eleshams. I'll start this off similarly to how I have with other specs tonight... Frustration is understandable, given the changes happening in Warlords. Lets have some constructive discussion.

First, I'd like to comment on the nerfs today. Nerfs can be troubling, I get that. But this is beta, and these nerfs are just number changes. They are not a bad thing. They're simple number reductions because your DPS was too high. DPS tuning will happen, and this is the first step in that. Especially on beta, it can be very hard to have a good sense of how you compare to other specs. And with the squish changing how numbers are perceived in general, most of you probably had no clue that you were a little overpowered, and that's fine. Let me reiterate that the goal here is for you to be on par with all of the DPS. You should be equal with everyone, from the Arcane Mage to the Destruction Warlock.

1. Healing Talents need immediate love/attention. Make a decision - Either boost our Single Target to match us with other Specs, or give us our Hybrid Utility back. My use in MoP raiding revolved around the power of Shaman Utility. I'm starting to worry about my impact when the entire level 75 talent line is garbage.
Simply put, we want Elemental Shamans to be brought for their strong DPS, not their poor DPS and strong offheals. We're reducing *everyone*'s offhealing capabilities, and Shamans had some of the most of anyone.

2. Level 100 Talents are filler? I'm feeling lost here about the goal to this tier. Obviously you want it to be a DPS tier but right now I see it as:

A. Shocks - always bad. B. Storm Totem - oh joy another 5 min CD that does very little damage. C. Interesting AoE Fire totem...lots of potential here but why doesn't it work with Fire Elemental?!!!
A. Won't be bad. Needs tuning. B. Won't be bad. Needs tuning. C. Will continue being not bad, and the bug where it doesn't work with Fire Elemental will be fixed.

3. Earthquake
OK. Earthquake is a big topic, so lets go for it. Earthquake has been around for a long time, but it's been almost as long since it's actually been used significantly. And Elemental has one of the most fun, visceral, cool AoE spells in the game: Chain Lightning. So why are we trying to force Earthquake into the rotation now, instead of just cutting it? That's a totally fair question.

There are a few reasons. Chain Lightning is great, but it can also get monotonous, spamming a single button for all AoE situations, and basically nothing else. We want to add a *little* spice to that. The vast vast majority of your AoE/cleaving should still be Chain Lightning spam, and we don't want to step on that. But we think that adding one different spell every ~10sec or so adds a fine bit of texture rotation.

Another reason is that we feel like we've failed on fulfilling one aspect of the Elemental fantasy: the elements. Fire (check). Air (check, lightning falls under this). Water (that's more of Resto's thing). And Earth. Where was the Earth? Ele shamans were feeling too much like the "Fire+Lightning Wizard", and not enough of the "Master of the Elements". That led us to including Earthquake, and adding Molten Earth.

And finally, skill. Here's where we get into why it has all of those so-called "QoL problems". It may be hard to see this vision, because AoE DPS tuning hasn't happened yet, but here's our vision for Earthquake: You won't be able to use it in every situation. It'll take a lot of skill and planning to use effectively. It may even require some cooperation from your tank, depending upon the situation. When all of those criteria aren't met, it's fine, you still have Chain Lightning to fall back on, and you'll still do totally solid DPS that way, and it's incredibly easy to use, in virtually any situation. But when all of those pieces *do* line up, the payoff should be extremely strong.[i] It's an additional bonus [i]on top of your expected AoE DPS.

Don't think of it as "that spell I'm forced to use and is so hard-to-use". Think of it as "that niche spell that I sometimes get to use skillfully for great gains".

4. Echo of the Elements - I like this move but it needs a few clarity fixes. Right now its Impact is minimal. I believe it's only Lava Burst that's affected? Maybe you can attach it to Elemental Blast and Earth Shock (Which again would make our AoE/CLeave more engaging if we could ES more often). I get the concept of wanting to make Multistrike it's own thing, but since Ele Shaman's foundations were built on Multistrike - I feel the class is losing out on what made it special. (Edit - while making this post I saw that EQ is affected by EotE. Again..I hate EQ so I could care less. Also Frost shock...but I'm focused on PvE - not PvP).
Yes, it's primarily for Lava Burst (single target) and Earthquake (AoE) in PvE. We tried having it on several other abilities, but the downsides outweighed the upsides, we found (ie, you accidentally use it on Earth Shock, when you wanted to use it on Lava Burst).

5. Molten Earth - Hopefully we see tuning on this mastery to make it do more damage. Yes...It's a passive - but I like the idea of dumping a lot of my stats into mastery for progression on a Movement heavy fight. Right now though...it's a waste of stats not to mention it's secondary effect is to buff EQ (which I rather not cast).
Tuning will happen. I don't think it's far off from right, currently, though. I think it's a little weak, but not much.

6. Level 45 Talents. At least Blizzard agrees that this line is not fun and weak. What's sad though...is that it makes it the 2nd of worthless talent lines for Ele Shaman in PvE. So many ideas have been thrown around I don't need to add mine, but it would be nice to see some fixes before the release.
While I'd say that it's uninteresting in PvE, not worthless, that's not exactly the point. Across the specs, many talent rows are of limited value if you focus on only a single section of the game (ie, raiding). We don't see that as a problem, as long as it's only a 1-2 per class.

As I've touched on before, we feel that the level 45 talents are functional, and not causing any problems, so have bigger fish to fry at the moment. But, we'd be interested in revisiting them at some point in the future.

I'd be happy to discuss any of these topics further, as long as we stay constructive (and pending my available time, which is quite limited, as you may be able to guess). The frustration is understandable, but please leave the hyperbole and anger and useless sarcasm and generally destructive behavior out of this. Thanks.

Current numbers don't support this; Earthquake is very high damage now and on mastery to boot. Should we expect Earthquake to be tuned down, and Chain Lightning tuned higher in upcoming patches?
Probably, yes. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Fury Warrior Changes
I just posted over in the Arms thread, but most of what was said there applies to Fury as well, so please read that first: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...442?page=8#143

Today's build includes a few important changes for Fury, which actually line up with many of the issues raised in this thread.

First, Wild Strike. Same damage per cast time, same damage per rage, just in 0.75sec chunks, instead of 0.5sec. Damage, Rage, and GCD all increased by 50%. This should help with latency issues.

Second, Ignite Weapon. Obviously, Ignite Weapon didn't work, since the ability it replaced was removed from the rotation. This new build will finally add a replacement; a fairly straightforward damage/utility button, Siegebreaker.

Third, Recklessness. It's back to 30% crit chance, to feel more impactful. And a perk now adds the 15% crit damage back as well. Straight buffed. I believe that replaced the Heroic Leap perk, which was quite lackluster as so many of you so eloquently put.

Fourth, Enrage. This isn't actually in today's build, but will be in the next. We raised the duration of Enrage to 8sec, so that there's a bit more overlap, especially so that it can cover Bladestorms and Colossus Smashes.

Also, not a change, but commentary on a previous change: The Colossus Smash extension mechanic is far from superfluous. The problem before was that you didn't have time to spend all of the resources that you saved up for a Colossus Smash, and this solves that handily. It makes a big difference, and we're pleased with how that turned out.

As I said to the Arms Warriors as well, the Warrior community has been clearly frustrated lately, and I'd like to discuss this further with you all, but please make that easy for me to do, by keeping the hyperbole and anger and useless sarcasm and generally destructive behavior out of this. Thanks. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Arms Warrior Changes
Well, lets dive right in. Arms Warriors have gotten some pretty huge changes in Warlords, and that's going to upset some people who are used to the current version, or imagined something else. That's totally understandable. There are a many different points of view involved here, so let me share ours. Then, if you'd like to have some constructive discussions, we can go from there.

Arms was a spec that did not fulfill its fantasy very well. The defining characteristic that we focused on was "big, heavy hits". That is in stark contrast to the fast and furious hits of Fury. This is evidenced by the prominence of Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash, their new Mastery, and non-spammy rotation.

One of the biggest complaints we see here is about the complexity of the baseline rotation. However, from our point of view, the *baseline* rotation hardly matters; nobody actually plays with the baseline. It acts as a platform to build upon, primarily through talents. And the Warrior talent tree provides a *ton* of potential changes to the rotation, to support a wide variety of playstyles. What matters is the whole package, with talents.

Like procs? Take Sudden Death. Want to fill every GCD? There are like 5 different talents you can take to fill GCDs; I don't think any other class has that many. Etc.

Remember, not everyone plays the same way that you do. Most especially, remember that anyone posting here is on the extreme end of game knowledge and hardcoreness.

The Warrior community has been clearly frustrated lately, and I'd like to discuss this further with you all, but please make that easy for me to do, by keeping the hyperbole and anger and useless sarcasm and generally destructive behavior out of this. Thanks.

Important note about today's build: Slam nerf didn't make it into that build, but it will be nerfed similar to how Mortal Strike was, in the next build.

EDIT: And nor will it be viable to use Defensive Stance as part of DPSing. Please point out tuning issues like that, but don't give mechanic feedback on them.

The talents you gave us to add some depth to the rotation have mostly fallen flat. Sudden Death has gone between way too strong and way too weak. I haven't logged on tonight for the new patch to see if it's still bugged, but last build SD was using the wrong execute spell ID, and was hitting for the bonus rage damage (625%) instead of the base execute damage (150%). If that gets fixed, when combined with the nerf to Execute, we'll be looking at a 1-2/minute proc for 100% weapon damage, which is abysmally low.
We'll get the bugs and tuning issues solved. Just because something has those doesn't make it bad. With so many changes involved, bugs are inevitable, which surely taints your feedback, and that's just something we have to filter out.

Slam is a talent idea I really liked at the start, and was super enthusiastic about, but the more I play with it, both in practice and in the sims, the less of the intended depth it seems to offer...Rather than giving a breadth of depth to the rotation, it adds needles complexity. In actual play, the way its set up tends to lend itself to you having a 0 stack slam available when you're at high rage, thus rage capping frequently by accident, and then when you do have the 2 stack available, your rage is lower and you can't use it again even if you wanted to. This is a talent that had so much potential, but the implementation leaves us with so little control that it just doesn't feel right, and doesn't offer any meaningful depth.
Slam's goal is to fill GCDs, and provide min/max rotational gameplay. Note that being able to right click it is unintended and will be fixed; don't test with that. I'd argue that it does provide you quite a lot of control, but it's easy to misuse. But, you're not severely punished if you do use it improperly.

The new mastery was already a weak stat unless we took Slam. With Slam no longer being affected by Mastery, Mastery falls really low. Add in the huge nerfs to MS and Execute, and it's even worse. Once Collision gets the sims updated, I'll get you some hard numbers, but right now as of this build it seems like the "Big Heavy Hits" Arms is dead. Seeing as we lost all of our depth to support that vision, we really need something back.
Again, this sounds like simply tuning issues. Slam being affected by Mastery briefly was simply a bug left over from the previous version of Slam.

General point on 'nerfs': Getting nerfed at this point is not a bad thing. It's just numbers, and they were off. Simple as that.

What I want to know Celest, is should arms be competitive dps? It was clearly overpowered, but a large nerf like the ones we saw today, including the upcoming Slam nerf you mention seem to put Arms quite a bit lower on the totem pole. No one wants to be bottom of the barrel no matter how optimally you play the spec and I can't say for certain we are as there is more tuning to be done.
Yes, absolutely. Arms is far from low on the totem pole.

I'd like to know why you removed Ignite Weapon. I'm rather upset by this mostly as Fury but Arms too. When you guys added it you gave us two things. One, an active on use ability without a cooldown, and two most importantly, a playstyle that doesn't depend on Colossus Smash as much. The pooling factor of CS is something MANY warriors hate. Ignite Weapon helped to make it so we didn't need to anymore. You might say well there's the CS glyph for that, but we both know it won't see any use because it's going to come at a significant DPS loss. And any warrior who does take it will be made to look the fool. Many warriors begged you guys to just move CS to a talent, but since you didn't do it we at least had Ignite Weapon to look forward to and now that's gone. In it's place we get an ability that looks at first glance to be mainly for PVP. This leaves us with two talents and only one is engaging. And that's only for AoE. I really think if you wanted to add in Siegebreaker it should have replaced Ravager instead. We don't need Ravager at all.
Ignite Weapon was designed as a replacement for Heroic Strike. Without Heroic Strike, it made very little sense. See the first post in the Fury thread for a good example of why. If you took it as Arms, or as Fury without Unquenchable Thirst, it basically ate up all your rage, while filling no GCDs, leaving you with some extremely anemic GCD utilization like 30-40%. And if you took Unquenchable Thirst as Fury, it did the opposite extreme, requiring you to be both GCD capped *and* spam Ignite Weapon off the GCD, more spammy than any rotation we've ever had in the game, I believe.

But okay, I'll bite, if Arms mastery was already low pre-MS/Exe nerf, and these nerfs will hurt Mastery more than other stats... what options do you have in tuning to bring Mastery up without bringing us back to "omgwtfhitme" levels of damage on those two abilities?
Mastery is the easiest stat to tune of them all. It has a built-in tuning knob. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Interview Feedback
Listening to your interview ... you really worried me. And I'm a fan. I'm a big fan of Warlords. But man ... your interview really put some fear into me. How do you guys have so many things that are unknown about the future of Warlords this deep into the cycle? And what do you mean when you say you will let the community decide whether you build new dungeons or scenarios? How exactly does that work and isn't that normally something that is well into development at this point? I reiterate, I'm a fan and I'm looking forward to Warlords ... but that interview definitely confused me ...
Those are fair questions, but I assure you we have a clear direction and development pipeline for Warlords of Draenor. What you're referring to is the space we leave in our development plans to respond to popular community desires, concerns, etc. Raids, and to a lesser extent dungeons, require quite a bit of advanced preparation and production. They often contain unique boss models and environments, and new tiers of content introduce a lot of player progression that takes time to properly develop and test.

Scenarios are a little different. They don't require a ton of unique assets or itemization. What Tom was suggesting is that it's possible we'll have room in Warlords content patches to develop max-level scenarios, if the community strongly feels like they're lacking from the level-100 experience once we're deeper into the expansion's lifespan.

It's hard to fully anticipate how the community at large will feel at level 100 until people get there and spend some time doing max-level content. We always want to have some degree of flexibility to react to player sentiment at that stage. A good example of this would be the daily quest design introduced in 5.0. Our intent wasn't to add severe gating and mandatory daily chores for players of all types, and whether or not we should've foreseen that, it was certainly made clear to us once a large number of players reached level 90 and were starting to dive into raid progression.

To that end, there were many elements of Mists endgame that were adjusted over time as a result of player feedback, even though we still had a solid plan for each patch to move the story forward and introduce new tiers of content. But one piece of common negative feedback we saw was concerning the lack of new 5-player dungeons in Mists patches. That was something for which we didn't plan, and couldn't sacrifice art and design resources at the time to give those players what they wanted.

I don't want to put words in Tom's mouth, but his statements indicate our team's general recognition that a lot of players want new 5-player dungeons at max level deeper in the lifespan of an expansion.

In short, we've mapped out the road ahead for Warlords and know where we're going, but some of the pit stops we make along the way will be determined by popular community feedback once everyone is on the journey with us.

So, essentially, this leeway is for Blizzard to go ahead with their plans, regardless of player feedback (because please, don't try to insinuate that you didn't receive MOUNTAINS of feedback about how VP gear being gated behind dailies was counterintuitive).

Then, once people continue to complain and give feedback, you can make changes (like the Timeless Isle) and then proclaim "See, look, we listened!"

...sure you did. Just months after the fact.
As was stated during patch 5.4's development, the Timeless Isle was something of a test for offering open-world PvE content in a more open-ended fashion, less tied to questing and daily limits. Our goal wasn't to pretend that it was the answer to concerns about VP gates, but rather to make small strides in evolving the system while considering what leveling and endgame in Warlords could look like. And we've learned a lot from the Timeless Isle, both in terms of positives and negatives of its design, after watching people experience it and paying attention to their reactions over time.

Are scenarios easier to develop than just changing the world? If they're meant to replace dungeons, they're not very good at that. If they're meant to introduce lore, why not just put the NPCs and lore out there in the game world?
That's essentially what we've done with the story-driven solo scenarios you'll come across while questing through Draenor. In Mists the 3-player scenarios don't work as well for story devices when most people queue up and want to blast through them like any other dungeon.

how does Blizzard collect customer feedback Tom and you say will be used?
A number of different ways. Analyzing game data gives us some degree of information, but then we also collect feedback from a number of different channels, including these forums. A big reason for community managers existing is to listen to, and engage, players wherever they're talking about the game, and advocate for them when talking to the development team.

So i am just curious if you even read this. Do you guys really need to wait for the forums to get flooded with negative feed back about no flying at max level from level 100 players before you start to see maybe we want that option? Or is it really not painfully obvious to you all now?
Don't mistake my statements to mean we design by democracy. We've been over this many times. Draenor content is specifically tailored to gameplay on the ground and flying mounts negate that. We understand a lot of people are really vocal in their disgust with the mere idea of not being able to fly once they reach 100. That doesn't mean we're automatically going to cave on our desire for players to experience the content as it's intended by design.

I guess it means that you have ZERO dungeons or scenarios planned for after the launch of the game. We only get new ones if we complain a lot. Kind of sad since we have so few dungeons at launch.
No, that's not what I meant either, but I'm not going to announce our patch content plans before the expansion is released just to provide some extra reassurance one way or the other.

Just an FYI, your in- game data shows I participated in TI frequently. I did if for the frequent gear drops that I could mail to all of my alts, not because I enjoyed TI, because I did not like the TI format. Participation does not show like or dislike for any given aspect of the game.
We definitely recognize that, and that's why I said it provides us with some degree of information. If our content is designed such that a player is pretty much forced into a specific type of content in order to get what they want/need, we can't look at that data, say, "look how popular it is!" and call it a day.

But we can parse data in a lot of different ways to get certain types of information that we can then investigate further through other means.

The devs need a bi-monthly podcast or something. They have done several things close to this in the past but never for very long. I always enjoyed them very much.
We do agree, although it's not always easy to take developer time for regular installments. Their time is very valuable and they're very busy people. That said, we recognize the importance of keeping the community informed through direct communication and interaction, beyond even doing the promotional press and fansite interviews with each patch cycle.

The CM team has been working on a number of different initiatives to make this more of a reality. You've maybe already seen similar efforts toward this end from the Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone teams. WoW is just a bigger beast that has been around for a lot longer, so it takes time to adjust to new communication plans and mediums. We're committed to the challenge though!

Now, what clarity can you lend to this gem that surfaced earlier today?: “We really don’t know if it will grow again,” said lead game designer Tom Chilton. “It is possible, but I wouldn’t say it’s something that we expect. Our goal is to make the most compelling content we can.”
It pretty much speaks for itself. After a certain period of time and threshold you start to tap out your potential audience. While our top concurrent subscriber mark was somewhere above 12 million, so many tens of millions more have played the game at one point or another. We'd love to attract new players to the game and will continue in our efforts to do so, but our focus at this point is more on keeping our current subscribers happy and reacquainting former players with the game. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Interview Feedback
I am still of the opinion that saying "I don't know" on anything is unprofessional. Say "We cannot discuss that yet" or "We are still working on that." "I don't know" should never be acceptable. Period.
We always leave room for adaptation and iteration. We have a plan of the patches and content we'll be seeing, but all of the specifics are kept purposely malleable as we respond to the current climate of those playing the game.

We embrace our ability to develop based on player feedback and how the game progresses as people play it. If people are enjoying a particular feature, we'll pour more resources toward that feature. If people really dislike something, like say dailies, we can change course and develop future content based on that response. "Will people like how dailies play out? We don't know, we think so. Oh, they didn't, let's not do that again."

Knowing exactly what we're going to do with every single feature for every future patch and being absolutely sure of ourselves sounds confident, sure, but our confidence as developers comes from our ability to adapt and iterate content and direction to create the best game possible.

We don't know how people will react to each specific feature or piece of content in the game once it's released. Beta tests are helpful but a released game is a completely different animal. We make best guesses, take testing feedback, and go on gut and our own outlook for what we think could be fun, but it's ok to say "I don't know" sometimes.

People in general would probably do well to say it more often, instead of believing they have the right answer all of the time. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)