World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Greetings, travelers!

In the next beta build you’re going to see a familiar ability in your spellbook: Carve! The ability is in a pretty raw state at the moment and we’re going to continue to iterate on it if this version doesn’t feel right. We’d love to hear about your experiences on Beta after playing with it.

• Carve: 30 Focus cost. 6 second cooldown (reduced by Haste).
• A sweeping attack that strikes all enemies in front of you for Physical damage. Reduces the remaining cooldown on Wildfire Bomb by 1.0 sec for each target hit,
  up to 5.

Please be aware that Carve doesn’t yet have full talent support. In a future build, things such as Birds of Prey, or Shrapnel Bomb from Wildfire Infusion, will interact with Carve. Butchery will likely be a Carve replacement, and get tuned accordingly.

We want to give Survival a clear path to take when there are many enemies, whether that’s a group of raptor hatchlings, or a double-pull of trolls in Atal’dazar. Serpent Sting and Wildfire Bomb don’t quite fill that space -- applying Serpent Sting to more than ~3 enemies (without Hydra’s Bite) is often more frustrating than it is fun, and Wildfire Bomb’s cooldown prevents it from being “the AoE button”.

Survival has a variety of AoE tools through talents, and Carve should add a better foundation for those talents to build around. By reducing Wildfire Bomb’s cooldown it gives you enough to do that spreading Serpent Stings to numerous targets is far less necessary. It also interacts strongly with the Guerilla Tactics talent, so all of the level 30 talents have a similar level of impact on how you AoE. The short cooldown is there so that your AOE rotation becomes weaving in your other buttons – Serpent Sting, Kill Command, Wildfire Bomb, etc – in between Carves, instead of just pushing it repeatedly.

Separately, we have a quality-of-life change for Hydra’s Bite that will arrive in an upcoming build. With Hydra’s Bite talented, Serpent Sting will prefer to select additional nearby targets that are not already affected by Serpent Sting. This should make it far less frustrating to try to apply Serpent Sting to a whole pack of mobs.

Again, we’re still iterating on the specifics of Carve, and we greatly appreciate your feedback on how this version plays. Thank you!

In the next Beta build, you'll see a few changes for Arms that should address the Rage economy issues pointed out in threads like this one. The baseline pacing is slightly lower than intended, and talents can cause too big of a swing in either direction (slowing down or speeding up the pace).

• Rage generation from auto attacks is increased by ~16%.
• Tactician's proc chance is increased to 1.4% per Rage spent (it was 0.9%).

This adds more button presses to the rotation regardless of your talent build, and pushes Overpower more than other abilities to avoid creeping too close to "Slam-spam" territory. The moment we’re trying to eliminate as much as possible is the, “I have enough Rage to Slam right now, but I don’t know if I’ll have enough to Mortal Strike afterwards unless I have a swing timer.” These changes add enough Rage, and enough Overpower procs, to make that a rarer occurrence.

However, pumping more Rage into the rotation doesn't solve the problems with certain talent setups that have been highlighted here. There are a handful of Rage management talents that have big impacts on the spec's feel and flow, but it is easy to accidentally put together a build that is either starved or flooded.

• Avatar and Fervor of Battle swap places (Avatar to 90, Fervor to 45).
• Trauma removed, and replaced with the new Massacre design: "Execute is now usable against targets below 35% health."

This makes the purpose of each row clearer. 45 is all about spending more Rage. The row will have a more predictable impact on total button presses over time, while each talent still has a distinct impact on moment-to-moment gameplay.

Similarly, the 90 row is now all about cooldowns. Putting Avatar and Deadly Calm against each other limits the pacing swing between different talent setups, as well as lowering overall burst potential (something at which Arms already excels). Having strengths is important, but pushing them too far can lead to feeling like you’re a one-trick pony.

Finally, two more related tweaks:

• Skullsplitter generates 20 Rage (was 30 Rage).
• Anger Management no longer affects Deadly Calm. It now only affects Colossus Smash/Warbreaker, and Bladestorm.

Skullsplitter was adding too much activity, relative to the other options on the 15 row. Even with this change, it is still the most active choice for players who enjoy being closer to GCD-locked.

Rather than adding Avatar to Anger Management, we've opted to keep it simpler on the surface while still having all three 90 talents interact with it in different ways: In For The Kill is directly buffed, Avatar feeds extra Rage into Anger Management, and Deadly Calm makes it easier to set up for the more regular Colossus Smash windows.

Oh -- we're also trying out a different animation for Overpower.

As always, thanks for the feedback and discussion!

World of Warcraft Storytelling: Bringing a Robust Universe to Life Through Different Mediums

• Steve Danuser, Sr. Narrative Designer – Blizzard
• Terran Gregory, Project Director – Blizzard
• Christie Golden, Sr. Writer – Blizzard

Join members of the World of Warcraft team as they break down the tricks to bringing the World of Warcraft universe alive through story. From books, to video, to in-game storytelling, the rich narrative of WoW unfolds for fans across multiple forms of media as the team expands on the personalities that fans have come to care about. Whether you are for the Alliance, or for the Horde, stop by to get insight on the story that is still wowing people even after 14 years.