World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Greetings everyone! This is my first post on the forum as a blue poster. I’m Chris Kaleiki, a Game Designer on World of Warcraft. I work specifically on Ashran with some guy you may know -- Brian Holinka. I previously worked on class design, notably the design of the Monk.

The feedback you guys are giving is fantastic! Well appreciated. I wanted to respond.

Wall of text inc --

I have feedback on the “Horde and Alliance Hubs” (aka the staging areas)
The Horde and Alliance staging areas are still being worked on by the world team. As for Ashran the world PvP zone, they have very little relevance. You may see some random PvP skirmishes there in the same way you see skirmishes in any Horde or Alliance capital, but they’re not meant to be part of the overall world pvp zone. While we do want your feedback on those areas, the PvP team’s involvement is pretty minimal so I suggest directing them towards the general discussions in this forum rather than this specific discussion.

I feel the size of Ashran is too small.
During Ashran’s early development we debated whether the zone should be larger, but we ultimately landed on its current size after concluding that if the zone were too big your chances of running into the opposite faction in your day to day excursions would be quite low. We want there to be a feeling that you’re sharing a limited resource with the opposing faction, and you have to fight over that resource. The bigger the zone, the less the opposite faction’s presence matters, and the less tension and ultimately the less world PvP will transpire.

That said, it could be possible that the zone could still stand to be larger. And if more players spill out into the side areas to where it gets too cramped, we may have to make changes. Keep in mind we also want to build onto Ashran in patch content.

What is the philosophy behind Ashran?
Ashran is a new type of PvP design. While it does have the spirit of old Alterac Valley, it’s not supposed to be purely an objective based map. Our goal here was to create situations in where players would engage in world PvP. These situations primarily are the outskirts areas, off the midlane.

In beta it is understandable that players are not reward driven. But on live, we expect players to be driven by getting honor and other rewards for their characters. The PvE on Ashran will be the most rewarding in that regard. The idea is that Horde and Alliance will be fighting over completing the side objectives and spawning and that will create interesting PvP situations (especially since you can loot other players currency). Even within the current incarnation of Ashran on beta I’ve experienced small unexpected fights in the outskirts areas.

We feel we’ve delivered on objective based win condition content through battlegrounds, but we haven’t delivered in giving players a sandbox environment where they can experience PvP similar to that of which you may have experienced before battlegrounds were created. We’re trying to do that with Ashran.

One of my most memorable moments of world pvp before battlegrounds were introduced into WoW was when my guildmates were farming for the frostsaber mount in Winterspring. They were being ganked by a Horde guild over and over, so some of our guildies went to help them out. The Horde guild responded by sending more of their guildmates. Then other random guilds joined in. Eventually, there were so many players in that area we crashed the server.

The spirit of that experience is what we’re trying to go for in a zone like Ashran.

What’s the deal with the middle lane?
The middle lane serves as a centerpiece of Ashran. It’s similar to that of Alterac Valley: a push/pull tug-of-war battle. While the road of glory isn’t exactly world PvP, this type of PvP is appealing to a number of players so we decided to include it in Ashran. It’s also nice to know that there is almost always going to be some battle going on there.

The middle lane wont’ really be very rewarding in terms of honor or currency. And we intentionally don’t have a way to “win Ashran.” Storming the enemy base and killing their commander will give you some reward and an achievement, but it’s not the main focus of the zone. If your time in Ashran is within the middle lane and storming the enemy base, you’re mostly doing that for the intrinsic fun of it.

What is the main objective?
We envision that most players will be coming to Ashran to farm honor and rewards. You’ll do that by killing creatures and participating in the side events. Along the way you’ll find items that boost your characters power (such as the class books, scrolls, wands etc.) and we hope you’ll get some PvP fights.
There is no objective like “cap and hold these points, run this flag, kill this guy” like our other objective based maps. We’ve found that more objective heavy maps lead to more predictable gameplay, which lead to less interesting unexpected PvP fights… which defines the idea of “world pvp.”

That said, I would say some goals in the map would be as a faction to maintain the mage portals, warlock gateways, and spawn Fangraal/Kronus. They all serve to help your faction be more efficient in the zone.

Why does Ashran not put you into a group/raid?
Ashran is intended to simulate any other zone in WoW. If we put you into a huge group, that would insinuate that there is some global objective to win… which there really isn’t. We want you to be able to come to Ashran in a small group as you would in any zone to collect honor and other rewards.
That said, I can certainly see the utility of having a raid group if you’re in Ashran to just do some casual PvP in the road of glory. For that, we will just leave it to players to create those groups naturally. It’s a bit anti-social to be forced into a raid group if you don’t want to be in one.

Faction balance
Balancing Horde and Alliance populations is a priority. Current on beta, there is no population enforcement. It’s something we’ll be monitoring and tweaking going forward.

Keep in mind Ashran is still in development. There are bugs, things will change, items will be put in, new side objectives added etc. We hope you’ll revisit Ashran as the builds progress in beta.

Phalanx, as a PvE Guy, one of the things I was looking forward to most was Ashran, but after messing around with it, that intrigue has worn out, I know you guys keep saying you don't want objective based gameplay, but in my opinion the best part of all of Ashran is the Minecart area at the Quarry, all the side areas should be like that, if they aren't already. I find myself there, more than the middle lane. The biggest and most glaring issue besides the lack of things to do out of the "tug-of-war" is the middle lane being what most would call a cluster.... it is not intuitive gameplay to have everyone just stack and spam, it isn't fun either, I get the tug-of-war ability, but if you want that, it needs to be matched with other things to do for people who do not want that and want Wintergrasp and Tol Borad back. As it stands Ashran feels LESS like Alterac Valley and more like Temple of Kotmogu, there is simply not enough to do around the zone (I am sure most of this can be attributed to the fact that it is beta.)
There are "PvP Events" at each of the POIs. The minecart at the quarry, there's a "cap the fires" event at the tower, and a race event at the stadium. The burial ground event isn't live yet. We're glad you like those events, and they're still work in progress. We're going to work to highlight those more in the zone, and of course they'll also have rewards.

I would reiterate that the goal of summoning Fangraal/Kronus could stand to feel more rewarding. Right now a decent tank can solo them given enough time. Perhaps something like a heal debuff aura or random target change timer in combination with a substantial damage increase would be cool to see. I want to see these guys on the field and hope that there is a raid group with me or nearby.
They're going to get beefed up for the next build, and we're going to add to their abilities and correct to their pathing as well. The idea originally was for them to patrol the outskirts areas (since we didn't want to make the midlane the focal point), but it's something that can possibly change.

Clarification on Highmaul/Foundry Boss Kill Order
Highmaul has three completely optional bosses: Brackenspore, Butcher, and Tectus can be skipped if you like (a la Ignis or Razorscale in Ulduar).

Foundry has no optional bosses, but consists of three separate wings that must be cleared to access Blackhand's Crucible (layout is more like Naxxramas). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Garrison Resources Cap
Lots of tuning still to come on resources. Mission cost, cap and general acquisition rate all examples of things that we will be updating. Feedback on this is very useful, thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Creatures

• Kurtok the Slayer's health has been reduced to be slightly less menacing to the denizens of Northshire.

Classes
Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
As a blood DK main, I need to ask, Why remove Heart Strike and Rune Strike, but keep Plague Strike and Icy touch?
Because they were redundant gameplay (with Pestilence/BloodBoil and Death Coil), whereas PS/IT are not. (Celestalon)
Plus removing HS there are annoying gaps. Would love to see that brought back. Currently blood is so slow, boring
You may have missed that you should be using Pestilence (aka Blood Boil) instead of Heart Strike. No rotation diff. (Celestalon)
It's more of a flavor thing for me, I feel using a AOE attack on a single target fight is pointless.
Heart Strike and Blood Boil are in Blood's rotation, and are already AoEs. (Celestalon)

Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Most notable suggestion being having 2 separate eclipse power bars for Lunar/Solar that regenerate in 2 ways
Extremely unlikely that we'd go in a direction that added significant learning complication, such as that would. (Celestalon)

Are you guys still open to change/improve the new Eclipse system to provide more control for the player and depth for the spec?
We have another change coming soon that we think will improve it a bit more. Hang tight for that. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Celestalon are you serious? You seriously want our mastery to only be good during certain situations?
Tons of stats have situational strengths. And the situation where Sniper Training is good is the vast majority of time. (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Why do all energy specs have to be restricted by energy? Already 4 specs that are, why can't WW stay unique and fastpaced(fun)
...because then it's not an energy spec? Energy is pointless if it's not a limitation. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
is there any chance to implement something for fury warriors like the fire mages have?
Bloodthirst fills the same role. (Celestalon)

Ooc, will the new Rend's final burst work like Living Bomb? IE - Refresh before Rend expires, still burst finish when it would?
Yes. (Celestalon)

Art
Are the new remodeled Arakkoa female? They sure have some female look.
The model is used for both male and female characters. (DonAdams)

And then I remembered that the Fem Tauren model isn't updated yet.
oooh yeh she is, we'll get an update out in the next few weeks to satiate bovine curiosity (artofcgrobinson)

I've noticed that the elbows on drakes'/dragons' wings bulge terribly during flight. Can/will this be corrected?
yeh...that's been a sore spot for a while now - hope to fix but no eta (artofcgrobinson)

Warlords of Draenor Stats
Does this imply flasks for secondaries? If so, excitement.
Yes, Warlords flasks give secondary stats: more potential choice. Primary was a no-brainer (except maybe Spi vs. Int for healers). (WatcherDev)

Reputation / Questing
Plan to have her (Yrel) own voice as well Khadgar?
Yes! VO is still being recorded and localized. (DaveKosak)

Garrisons
seriously scared about such restricted Garrison customization.
Customization is certainly cool, but as we have said, it's not the number one priority. Fun gameplay comes first.
It'll be fun to RP in with friends as well, I'm just looking out for other's concerns is all.
Have some customization options in the works: Monuments, garrison banners and racial guards to name a few. (mumper)

With the new follower AI Is it fully implemented in tier 2+ garrisons? They only patrol the garrison now, and nothing else
Nope, still very much a work in progress. Tier 3 Alliance probably furthest along so far. (mumper)

Tech
Any chance the pop-in distance can be increased for npcs?
We get asked that a lot by design. We'd like to, but it's very hard on the servers. The area the server thinks you should see is 100 yards around you most of the time. But area increases with square of distance. So an increase of 50 yards (50%) means more than 2x work on the server. So not very likely in the open world in 6.0. As we continue to improve the code maybe later. (kurtismcc)
Thats not too bad really, and makes sense r/e what I know about it. Would non-circular shapes for render distance be unfeasible?
The math is really nice for circles and squares. We use circles. Considered ellipses for when server not loaded. Other things we can try. I was originally going to investigate some for 6.0, but ran out of time. Spatial hashing and other techniques more understood than when WoW first coded. Also things like update rate scale linearly. (kurtismcc)

At the start of MoP, Chess became IMPOSSIBLE because cpu would take many moves faster than it should. Was actually caused by improving responsiveness of one of our systems, when chess was built assuming that delay. The fix was just to force the delay back into chess, but was hard to anticipate the specific problem. (pedrothedagger)

Forged by the brutal hand of the Iron Horde and tempered by hatred, the Iron Skyreaver is a fearsome blend of beast and machine. This twin-headed terror dominates the sky and strikes fear into any foe who dares challenge it. Take the reins of one of these monstrosities for 40% off this week only, but beware—the Skyreaver suffers only the most formidable masters to ride it.

Do you have what it takes to compete on the big stage in the WoW Arena World Championship at BlizzCon 2014? We’ve got all of the WoW North American Arena Tournament information you need to set you on your path to global domination.

Eight of the top 3v3 Arena teams from around the globe will compete for a chance to face off in the World of Warcraft Arena World Championship, taking place November 7 and 8 at BlizzCon 2014 in Anaheim, California.

If you’re an Arena competitor, it’s time to hone your skills and get ready to fight hard for a spot in the event. We’ll be holding online qualifiers for North America* in the months to come—in order to be eligible, teams need to have an individual 3v3 Arena rating of 2,500 on the live realms by August 25, 2014 at 10 a.m. PDT.

The North American Arena Tournament will use a double-elimination format to determine the top 3 teams. Beginning in the Nagrand Arena, each match will be played in a best-of-five format, with the losing team deciding the next map from the remaining pool of eligible maps. Each game will last until one team is eliminated or until 15 minutes have elapsed. When the dust settles, only the top 3 teams will move on to compete live at BlizzCon 2014.

Eligible countries for the North American Arena Tournament include the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina.


For complete prizing and WoW Arena World Championship information, visit our earlier post.

If you’re a spectator, you’ll be able to catch all of the action live online even if you can’t make it to BlizzCon in person—stay tuned for more information.

Click here for the complete rules.

*Information on tournament sign-ups to follow in the coming weeks.

Raid Utility Balance

• Hunter
  
  • Aspect of the Fox is a new ability for all Hunters.
    
    • Aspect of the Fox: Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells for 6 seconds. Only one Aspect can be active at a time. 3 minute cooldown.
  • A minor Raid utility ability (to-be-determined) will be added for Hunters.

Death Knight
Miscellaneous

• Conversion no longer has an initial tick, and now costs 15 Runic Power/second for Blood, 10 20 Runic Power/second for Frost, and 20 10 Runic Power/second for Unholy.

Druid
Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Thick Hide has been removed and its effects have been incorporated into Bear Form for Guardian Druids.
  
  • Bear Form now increases armor by 600% 330% for all Druid specializations, and no longer increases Haste and Critical Strike from items by 50%, but instead causes Haste to reduce the global cooldown
  • For Guardian Druids, Bear Form now also reduces magical damage taken by 25%, reduces physical damage taken by 12%, reduces chance to be critically hit by 6%, and reduces chance for attacks to be parried by 3%.
• Tiger’s Fury is now usable during Berserk.

Summary of changes to Balance:
That's the basics of the new Moonkin rotation. There’s room for improvement beyond that, learning to optimally maintain both periodic damage effects while maximizing their damage with the strongest Eclipse effect, timing Starsurge to optimize the benefit of its buff, make use of Starfall and Hurricane for area damage, and taking advantage of the strengths of each side (such as Moonfire and Sunfire having significant differences now). Here are the full details of the changes.

Details of changes to Balance:

• Eclipse has been redesigned.
  
  • The damage of damage-over-time effects changes dynamically as Eclipse changes.
• Moonfire now has a base duration of 20 seconds (up from 14 seconds), but is no longer extended by Starfire and Starsurge critical strikes. Upon reaching 100 Lunar Energy, the next Moonfire deals 100% additional initial damage.
• Sunfire is no longer its own spell and replaces Moonfire on the action bar whenever Balance Energy is on the Solar side. Sunfire now has a base duration of 24 20 seconds (up from 14 seconds), but is no longer extended by Wrath and Starsurge critical strikes. Enemies may still suffer from both Moonfire and Sunfire’s periodic damage components simultaneously. Upon reaching 100 Solar Energy, the next Sunfire deals 100% additional initial damage.

Restoration Changes

• Omen of Clarity (Restoration) can now only be triggered by the most recently applied Lifebloom, and now causes the next Regrowth to be free.

Mage
Talent Revisions

• Ice Ward was changed to make it more competitive with the rest of its talent row. Ice Ward now causes the next 3 attackers (up from 1) to trigger a Frost Nova.

One of the most problematic Talent rows in the game has been the Mage level-90 row. The primary theme of the row was mana, which only Arcane Mages actually cared about. Bonus damage was added in, making it functional for all Mages, but muddled in its goals. Additionally, some of them just weren't fun to play with. We've revised the row to be purely about damage, and made them have less maintenance cost. Arcane Mages will have enough mana regeneration without these Talents to perform well.

• Mirror Image is now a level-90 Talent, replacing Invocation. Mirror Image now inherit 100% 50% of the Mage’s Spell Power (up from 5%), last 40 seconds (up from 30 seconds), and have a 2 minutes cooldown (down from 3 minutes).

Paladin
Ability Consolidation and Refinement
There were a few mergers of passive abilities, and some tweaks to a couple of abilities.

• Redemption’s mana cost has been reduced by 95%.
• Selfless Healer no longer causes Bastion of Glory to apply to Flash Heal.

Protection Changes
For Protection, we tweaked Eternal Flame in order to reduce its massive self-healing amount, and provide better balance between talents on that row. We also added a new passive, Shining Protector, in order to give defensive value to the new Multistrike stat. Holy Wrath’s damage and cooldown were also increased, and Sanctified Wrath changed to buff it further, in order to give Protection Paladins more burst threat and damage, while retaining its core damage-splitting identity.

• Holy Wrath’s damage has been increased by 100%, and its cooldown increased to 15 seconds (up from 9 seconds).
• Sanctified Wrath for Protection Paladins has been redesigned.
  
  • Sanctified Wrath (Protection) now increases the damage of Holy Wrath by 100% and causes it to generate 1 Holy Power.

Warlock
Demonology Changes
We were unsatisfied with Grimoire of Sacrifice for Demonology. Fundamentally, it did not fit Demonology’s theme to sacrifice their pet, full time. We had toyed with ideas where it acted as a temporary cooldown for Demonology, but have decided to replace it with a new talent, which is more theme-appropriate, and fits well against the competition in that talent row.

• Grimoire of Sacrifice is no longer available to Demonology Warlocks and has a new talent, Grimoire of Synergy in its place.
  
  • Grimoire of Synergy: When the Warlock or their demon deals damage, there is a chance to trigger Demonic Synergy, granting the other one 15% increased damage for 15 seconds.

Warrior
Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Thunder Clap now costs 15 30 Rage, and also reduces the movement speed of nearby enemies by 50% for 6 sec.
• Ultimatum’s effects have been merged into baseline Shield Slam.

Fury Changes
Fury Warriors received a few additional changes. In particular, Heroic Strike has been removed for Fury Warriors, and modified Wild Strike to fill the role of quick excess Rage dump. We also made a revision to the Critical Strike chance of Bloodthirst to make them less crit-dependant. A new glyph has been added which gives Fury Warriors a choice for a notably different playstyle. Auto attack damage had become too high, so we also moved some damage from that into Execute (which has been changed to deal damage based on Weapon Damage, instead of just Attack Power). In order to make sure that you’re able to spend all of your resources within each Colossus Smash window, we added an extension to it onto Raging Blow. Plus, we've updated some to spell alerts to improve usability.

• Raging Blow now extends the duration of Colossus Smash by 2 seconds, and has a spell alert on the left and right slots.

Curse of Naxxramas: A Hearthstone Adventure

• Curse of Naxxramas offers a new single player campaign to play Hearthstone against challenging NPC adversaries. Curse of Naxxramas can be unlocked with gold or real money and can be accessed by players that have unlocked all 9 heroes.
• Defeat 15 fearsome bosses to unlock a total of 30 new Hearthstone cards for your collection, including Legendary cards! Naxxramas cards can easily be searched for within My Collection using the search function.
• An all-new interactive Naxxramas-themed game board awaits you within the Adventure! Discover the surprises that lurk inside the slime pools, the quivering masses of spider eggs (spoilers: It’s spiders), and more!
• Surmount 9 diabolical Class Challenges that test your skills with each of the unique classes of Hearthstone!
• Defeating all of the bosses within a wing unlocks the extremely challenging Heroic Mode of that wing. Defeating all of the bosses of Naxxramas on Heroic mode unlocks a new card back for your collection.
• Five unique wings await those brave enough to venture into Naxxramas. The first wing, The Arachnid Quarter, will immediately be available to play for free for a limited time. The remaining four wings are immediately available for players to unlock with real money or gold, and will become accessible over a period of time once unlocked.
  
  • The Arachnid Quarter – A web choked maze filled with many-legged minions.
  • The Plague Quarter – Necromancers brew deadly plagues while a fungal monstrosity lies in wait.
  • The Military Quarter – Tireless undead knights perfect their deadly arts within these chambers.
  • The Construct Quarter –Abominations stitched together from the Scourge’s victims stomp through these slime soaked halls.
  • Frostwyrm Lair – Chilly abode of Sapphiron and the arch-lich Kel’thuzad himself. (A curse upon my air conditioning bill!)

General

• Marking yourself as “Busy” within the Battle.net desktop app will suppress incoming chat messages and toasts for friend requests.
• The Shop interface has been updated to include Curse of Naxxramas.
• Cards available within each wing of Naxxramas will become available in the Arena when that wing becomes available to play.
• The order in which Deathrattle abilities resolve has been updated to be more consistent.
• Additional music tracks have been added.
• Players that appear in “Players Near Me” now appear more prominently within the Friends List.
• Overall organization of the Friends List has been improved.
• Sounds and graphics that occur when Mass Disenchanting now take less time to complete.
• Cards can now be searched for using the artist of the card art in the Collection Manager.

Card Changes

• Eaglehorn Bow now reads “Whenever a friendly Secret is revealed, gain +1 Durability”.

Practice Mode

• Practice Mode is now entered through the Solo Adventures button on the main menu.
• The AI in Practice Mode is now better at Hearthstone.

Bug Fixes

• Improved various tooltips.
• Resolved various issues regarding audio, text, animation, and display.
• Resolved various issues that could cause cards to get stuck on the battlefield.
• Actions should now be accurately represented in the play history.
• The red targeting cursor will now properly track where you mouse cursor is pointing for your opponent in Play and Arena Modes.
• The turn timer in a Friendly Challenge now calculates time correctly.
• All Soulbound Common cards can now be properly found when searching for “Common� in the Collection Manager.
• Disenchanting will now properly update the amount of Arcane Dust you have.
• The side of the board is no longer visible on the Arena screen in specific resolutions while in windowed mode.
• The XP bar for max level heroes no longer appears empty.
• You are now able to properly select a friend by clicking on their Play Mode medal.
• An incorrect version of the Hero Power icon will no longer appear when switching between golden and non-golden heroes while the Choose Opponent menu is displayed.
• The Friendly Challenge button will now properly appear next to friends who have recently logged in or have been added to your friends list.
• The Shop window no longer incorrectly closes when clicking within the Shop UI.
• The scroll bar will no longer jump to the top of the Friends list when moving the cursor over the Last Played area of the Friends list.
• Clicking the End Turn button at the very start of your turn no longer prevents the End Turn button from flipping back.
• Resolved an issue where conceding can cause the client to crash.
• The resolution time of certain spells has been shortened.
• Resolved an issue with Brawl where the last minion to enter the fray was always the victor of the ensuing battle.
• Resolved various issues with the Sword of Justice.
• Resolved an issue with Shield Slam where it was being unaffected by Spell Damage if the Hero had 0 Armor and now has Spell Damage sparklies.
• A weapon that is equipped on your turn will no longer have the attack value appear on the sheathed weapon on some resolutions.

Mac

• Improvements were made to stability.

Level 1 Garrison Mailbox
I went on the horde side and they have a mailbox. Yeah we definitely need one on alliance side.
A mailbox has been added to the Tier 1 Alliance Garrison. Thanks for the feedback! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Garrison Followers in the Garrison While on Missions
When I send followers on a mission, I still see them wandering around in the garrison.
We agree, working on a better sell for this. They should be disappearing at the very least, that part is a bug that we will get fixed. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Missions and Outposts
You can interact with your followers from all the zone Garrison outposts. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Tuning PvP without PvP stats?
It's a challenge, for sure, but one that we're going to a lot of lengths to make sure we get right. Many of the changes we're making in Warlords are intended to improve the parity between how the game operates in PvE and PvP, so we don't need to rely on PvP-only tuning mechanics as often. The increase to player base health is a fine example of one of those changes, as it (hopefully) allows us to remove Resilience and let players deal the same amount of damage in both PvP and PvE.

Certain other changes will have similarly beneficial side effects. For example, we've significantly reduced the amount of crowd control available in PvP situations in Warlords, largely in response to (and agreement with) the sentiment that extended CC chains weren't fun to sit through, and were putting too much reliance on certain classes and comps.

However, when players have control of their characters more often, the obvious side effect is that they can spend more time healing or doing damage. When you can reliably keep up a decent amount of sustained damage or healing, PvP balance becomes less focused on burst, which, in turn, makes it fall more in line with PvE balance.

That said, we're fully aware that things will never line up exactly perfectly (and it might honestly not be all that great if they did). So, we're still very much prepared and able to implement PvE- or PvP-only tuning mechanics where necessary. We're currently experimenting with a debuff for Tank specs, for example. Should they become necessary, we can easily bring back mechanics like Resilience or the healing debuff from Battle Fatigue -- though they wouldn't need to be nearly as strong thanks to the other changes in Warlords. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlords of Draenor Theorycraft Discussion
Questions about Riposte, Tooltip says you gain parry equal to your crit %, which I assume means that if you have 15% crit from gear that you would get 15% parry chance before DR (thats whats listed under the crit tooltip). but what's actually is happening is the crit rating is converted into parry rating then into parry% so you end up losing ~1/3 of the % from crit (i.e. 1% crit = ~0.67% parry), is this the intend, or just a bug? Also trinket and enchant procs aren't included in riposte.
Intended; you gain Parry (Rating) equal to Critical Strike (Rating), not Parry % equal to Critical Strike %.

Noticed that most of the armor enchants were marked as deprecated and the flasks seem to be as well, are the potions and food the only armor buffs left? (sorry if this isn't theory-crafty enough)
Yeah, where you're intended to have a choice between secondary stats, such as on food/flask/enchants/gems, we're not doing Spirit or Bonus Armor, since that takes away the choice.

lastly a clarification on Shield slams tooltip both wowhead and wowdb both say 3.83 AP but its closer to 3.08 AP at lvl100 in game.
It's 3.08. That may yet change in tuning though. Fixed the tooltip for now. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Beta Testing
Honestly, if you aren't willing to accept the risk of a Beta raid test failing due to bugs/servers, wait for the live release. (Watcher)
Stress testing and raid testing at the same time honestly just makes development look rushed and incredibly behind.
We want the game to advance technically, too. Beta instability is no fun; server team pit was a zoo. Load testing is going particularly bad this time around. MoP, for the most part, went particularly well. (kurtismcc)

Classes
why do I have to create a macro to /stopcasting and /use windshear. shouldn't this be the default was interrupts work?
Yes. We changed them to work this way. (Celestalon)

Problem: A talent is slightly underpowered, but perceived as completely useless.Risk: Buffing it enough to satisfy will make it very OP. (Celestalon)
Solution: Scrap it and come up with something new.
That's actually a totally valid answer in some cases. (Celestalon)
I would just trust in the math and buff it to where it should be and not worry so much about satisfaction/feedback.
I think it's actually more than the competing talents are perceived as mandatory, in this case. (Celestalon)
If something's perceived as "completely useless", that means the alternatives are so good they eclipse the "useless" talent.
Indeed, very astute observation. Something being called "weak" vs "useless" is usually dependant on its competition. If it has... (Celestalon)
...strong competitors, its value drops from "less than I'd like" to "zero". (Celestalon)
"Buff the perception" is a shorter & snappier way to say it though
Right. A good solution is to buff it in a way that *sounds* like way more of a buff than it actually is. (Celestalon)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
When Soul Reaper is applied below 25%, can the extra damage be procced with multistrike or just the initial damage?
Explosion can MS. (Celestalon)

Can you please rename the new Pestilence to Blood Boil?
We talked about this recently, and decided to go with the name/icon of Blood Boil instead. Helps preserve the Blood flavor (Celestalon)
And makes its rune cost more intuitive as well. (Celestalon)
Will the animation/sound effect also be preserved?
Unchanged from current beta build. (Which is to say, BB visual, plus Pest between targets.) (Celestalon)

Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Feral damage seems pretty low on beta.2-3k below other classes i ran with last night.Im guessing feral will see future changes?
We haven't done much tuning yet. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Just tested it in beta, ate a full warrior fear which wasn't broken by Bestial wrath. Bug or intended?
BW doesn't break/immune Fear on live either, if I recall correctly? (Celestalon)
breaks all effects which cause loss of control of your pet. and just used BW on live when a lock feared me.
Oh! You actually mean on the pet. I thought you meant on the Hunter; my misunderstanding. Sounds like a bug; it should trinket pet (Celestalon)
Just tried it against a warrior fear, and BW did break the pet out of the fear. Could it have been something else? (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Casting RJW in single target is a degenerate dps increase for BrM. What has motivated legitimizing single-target RJW for WoD?
It's not being legitimized.It's a DPS increase because it's hard to make weaker than Jab. However, still big defensive loss. (Celestalon)
On beta, RJW currently generates Chi in single target. That's unquestionably superior to Jab in every aspect.
Oh, no, not intended. (Celestalon)

Are the level 30 talents for monks going to be tuned to be competitive with one-another? Chi Wave is too good to pass up on live
Yes. ZS is underpowered on live, but I wouldn't say that CB is. CB is strong AoE burst, and bonus raid healing. (Celestalon)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Why is the Paladins Light's Hammer so expensive? 50% Mana for a Ret is too much and the benefit isn't worth it. No costs on live
Cost was added for Holy. We'll fix it to be Holy-only. (Celestalon)

PvP
did u ever thought about bringen rating requirements back from wotlk? good players had better gear and alts were on the same ilvl
Get this question a lot but we really don't like putting better gear behind a rating requirement. (holinka)

echoed thought i've been having for months. Besides popularity, no reason to keep something inherently broken: aka 2s
2s is a much easier first experience for those new to arena. Two less people to keep track of. (holinka)
Is the hope with base resil and pvp power gone in WOD, it will return to a more balanced bracket? Or keep dreaming?
The hope is to get numbers closer together throughout different parts of the game. (holinka)

Lore
Hey! On my RP server there's fierce debate over whether it'd make sense for Shado-Pan to be in Draenor? Could we get an answer?
With the sha menace dealt with, Shado-Pan heroes could definitely take up arms to help fight in Draenor, yes! (DaveKosak)

Reputation / Questing
I didn't even notice the jumping puzzles. Is there one for SMV?
One or two. We keep them few and off the beaten path. I love them, but that doesn't mean I inflict them upon others. (craig_amai)

So, what does a quest designer really do? Is it more "story writing" or more "technical stuff where to put an NPC"?
Storytelling more than "story writing." NPCs and the things they do, objectives, presentation, and all the little bits on the side. (craig_amai)

Garrisons
Is the 2 large buildings only set in stone or can feedback change it?
L4Feedback on: speed to get to T3, feelings on T3 choices/alternatives (opportunity cost). Will be in beta soon. (Muffinus)

When you say we can "bulldoze & change bldgs as much as we want," I'm assuming that includes the Barracks we have build first?
Yep! (Muffinus)

Can you explain what you meant by "Garrison Capacity System" please??
You can start several shipments at once, so instead of picking up mats daily (farm), you can wait and get multiple days worth (Muffinus)
Sounds awesome, thanks! Also, are work order limits (5 at the alchemy lab for example) account wide or character specific?
Character specific, at the moment. Would like feedback on this when beta profs get fully up and running. (Muffinus)