World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Number of Changes in Patch 4.3
As we mentioned in the Rate of Change blog not long ago, we feel like we have reached a point where too many changes can do as much damage as not enough changes. It shouldn’t be too surprising to see lots of requests (or demands!) here on the forums for balance changes, whether those are small numbers tweaks or larger ability redesigns. The risk of the echo chamber effect can be strong though. A great majority of players don’t participate in forum discussions at all, and even among those who do, it tends to be those with a grievance who make a post. Indifferent players don’t often post to say they are indifferent, and many players won’t expend the effort to publicly state that they disagree with your idea. (When they do, they also risk igniting some exhausting flame wars.) But you have to remember that even if it seems like “everyone” is rallying for a certain change, you’re not seeing the majority and you have no idea if they would agree with the necessity of the change.

When asked directly, they might not even disagree with the their character getting buffed or a mechanic smoothed out. But over time these seemingly “no brainer” changes can build up into an intimidating list. Class changes, especially in between expansions, and especially when hotfixed in between two patches, can be exhausting for many players. They don’t want to have to figure out if their rotation or gear strategies have changed overnight. They don’t want to have to devour all the latest theorycrafting and wonder if they’re supposed to respec every time they log in. That sort of thing may be fun for a lot of you guys – the active forum community. Heck, it’s fun for the kind of people that end up being game developers. But that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for the game. We have to weigh very carefully whether a seemingly innocuous change is worth making, because those changes are not “free” in the sense that they do burn some political capital with players. We have definitely been getting the message lately that the design churn in the last few patches has been too great, so we’re trying to be more cautious.

It's the kind of topic that is worth discussing though. It may be that small changes to passive abilities, like the hunter, warlock and DK tweaks in 4.3, are small enough not to bother people. On the other hand, it could be that some players may be still living under a fear of change and we haven’t scaled back enough.

We didn’t say we weren’t going to make balance changes when we feel they are justified, and we have made many for 4.3 already. We just wanted to point out that too many changes, even with the noblest of goals, can be as unhealthy for the game as failing to make changes that are necessary. We don’t want to hit either extreme. Some players seem to be looking for near constant balance adjustments (weekly or more often), and while the designers would be thrilled to do it, they also believe it would have severe long-term consequences. You may not know the kinds of players who get weary of constant design noodling, because they might not post on the forums, but there are a lot of them out there. Our strategy will continue to be: make most changes in expansions, some changes with patches, and the occasional change via hotfix. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Is Cataclysm the final expansion?
Cataclysm is absolutely not the last expansion. We have plenty of vigor left in us yet. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
No Word of Glory through Beacon?
Word of Glory definitely triggers BoL. That was an oversight in the patch notes posted 90 minutes ago. We apologize for the confusion. We have updated the notes to read:

Beacon of Light is triggered by Word of Glory, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Divine Light and Light of Dawn at 50% transference and Holy Light at 100% transference. It does not transfer Holy Radiance, Protector of the Innocent or other sources of healing. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PTR: Holy Paladin Changes
The 4.3 design is that Holy Radiance generates Holy Power if you have the Tower of Radiance talent. This is the only way it has ever worked for 4.3. In a nutshell, we did not want Ret and Prot paladins using Holy Radiance on cooldown just for the Holy Power benefit. It looks like some bad data-mining may have led to the belief that Holy Radiance would always generate Holy Power even without Tower of Radiance, but that was never the intent. The quote “Holy Radiance no longer grants a charge of Holy Power,” [post 1] is likewise incorrect and confusing. Before 4.3 there was no connection between Holy Radiance and Holy Power. After 4.3, the Tower of Radiance talent provides the Holy Power. We will let you know if the design changes again, but do not anticipate that being the case. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

General
New Dungeon & Raid Content

• Dragon Soul is now available for limited 10-person testing. Your participation and feedback is appreciated. For the latest testing schedule, please visit the PTR Discussion forum here.

Guilds

• Guild Standards are again useable in Firelands. Duration has been increased to 15 minutes, the effect has a 100 yard radius, and now affects dead players.

Items

• Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest: The chance for this item’s effect to be triggered has been reduced.

Classes: General

• Spells which have an effect broken by taking damage past a threshold (Entangling Roots, Fear, Frost Nova, etc.) now count damage that was prevented by damage absorbs or other damage reducing effects.

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Hurricane has a new updated visual effect.

Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Monstrous Bite now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.

Beast Mastery

• Widow Venom now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Holy

• Beacon of Light is triggered by Word of Glory, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Divine Light and Light of Dawn at 50% transference and Holy Light at 100% transference. It does not transfer Holy Radiance, Protector of the Innocent or other sources of healing.

Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Wound Poison now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Arms

• Mortal Strike now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.

Fury

• Furious Attacks now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.

User Interface

• Added a feature to interact with NPCs, game objects (mailbox, mining nodes, etc.), and corpses on left-click as well as right-click. There is now an option under Interface:Controls to turn this feature off.

Today and tomorrow we're going to try and test the remaining bosses in Dragon Soul on 10 player difficulty.

Oct 18
10:15 PDT – Ultraxion (10 Player)
11:45 PDT – Warmaster Blackhorn (10 Player)
14:30 PDT – Spine of Deathwing (10 Player)

There will be additional testing scheduled in the upcoming weeks including 25 player and Heroic difficulties, both in the morning and afternoon. There will not be any testing during Blizzcon.

As always, the scheduling for PTR testing will be VERY fluid. Tests can be announced, canceled, or rescheduled at a moment's notice depending on build and server status, outstanding bugs, etc. I will try to give as much advance notice about tests, but that is not always possible. Also note that these encounters are all works in progress.

[EDIT - Oct 17 15:02 PDT - Removed the Madness of Deathwing from the schedule. We found an issue on the current PTR build that would be a showstopper for that encounter.]