Faction Capital Changes, Lorewalker Story, World Boss Preview, Blue Posts, MMO Report

[chaud]

Game-Limits Now Live, 1.0.4 Developer Blogs, Diablo III Profiles - More Info, Ugly As Sin: Azmodan Brought to Life, Curse Weekly Roundup

Pandaria Faction Capital Changes
The last patch added some of the things that people have been requesting since we originally previewed the new Faction Capitals. You can now find a Void Storage and Transmogrification NPC near the Reforging NPC. Training Dummies have also been added outside of the city and the Horde city now has the 60% speed buff to help you get around quickly. Finally, all of the NPCs have dialogues and sell the items that they are supposed to!

Lorewalker Story: Between a Saurok and a Hard Place
In Mists of Pandaria there are several extra lore related achievements to go with the regular zone exploration achievements.

Once you have found all of the objects for an achievement, Lorewalker Cho will send you mail that asks you to meet him at the Seat of Knowledge. Once there he will narrate a small story that gives you some more information about Pandaria lore.

In the video below, the Between a Saurok and a Hard Place story is told to you.

World Boss Preview
Blizzard published a preview of the Salyis's Warband encounter today, but if you want to see a video and the full list of skills, check out our new boss pages! Loot tables are not available yet.

Check out the Mists of Pandaria preview website and get a first glimpse at one of the two new roaming world bosses: Salyis’s Warband! These extremely powerful monsters will do everything in their power to make your life more... “interesting” as you explore the mysterious continent of Pandaria.

World bosses spawn in the open world and can be attacked by any player (un)fortunate enough to cross their paths. Salyis's Warband will be quite rare, while the expansion's other boss will appear with fairly regular frequency. But before you charge headfirst into battle, keep in mind that it will take the combined efforts of a full raid to bring one of these guys to their knees.

Taking down a world boss is no small feat, but the rewards make it all worthwhile: achievements, fabulous items, and massive bragging rights will all be yours if you and your comrades in arms succeed in felling one of these roving terrors. Check back soon for more info on the game's other world boss, the Sha of Anger! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Beta Class Balance Analysis

Hunter (Forums / Skills)
I've been trying to get accurate pet focus regen numbers but it's difficult to test accurately in game given the limits of the display and the fact that none of it ends up in the log. Currently it looks like the base pet focus regen is around 5 fps, but is it possible a blue poster could confirm if that's the correct number? It would also be extremely helpful if pet focus regen (and crit chance for that matter) were added to the pet display.

Also if I'm testing correctly, it looks like spiked collar does not increase pet focus regen (even though it is called haste and not attack speed). Which haste and attack speed bonuses increase regen for pets has never been incredibly clear or consistent. The terminology doesn't seem to be a reliable clue and measuring pet focus regen precisely is difficult. Is there a chance of this getting clarified at some point?
Base pet Focus regen is 5 per second (which is different from base hunter Focus regen, which is 4). Spiked Collar is indeed just attack speed, not actual haste; we’ve fixed the tooltip for the next build. Thanks for pointing that out. Same with Berserking; we’ve updated that to say Haste instead of Attack Speed.

Druid (Forums / Skills)
Question about the Guardian 4pc bonus. Does the 10% to Savage Defense mean:

0.45 * 1.1 = 0.495
or
0.45 + .1 = 0.55
It was multiplicative, but since that can be read ambiguously, we’ve adjusted it to say that it adds an additional 5% dodge chance (yes, that’s a very slight buff).

I dont know if its intended but the last spell cast in ether Eclipse is not buffed when fully cast. For example, when casting wrath with 15 or less solar energy the spell says its buffed however when the cast completes it uses the unbuffed damage. The same for starsurge and starfire in lunar. Its very misleading.
Unintended; we’ll get that fixed.

Monk (Forums / Skills)
Any there any plans to change the way Shuffle refresh is managed for Brewmasters?

What I mean in regard to this is how Shuffle is unable to refresh to the full 12 sec duration unless it is 6.0 seconds or below. At the beginning of a Shuffle application you can get it to 12 seconds. However at any point above 6.1 seconds Shuffle will never refresh to 12 seconds. This makes it very frustrating because you have to watch the time on Shuffle to be below the 6.0 mark to reapply it. I understand a Brewmaster wouldn't want to waste Chi by reapplying Shuffle too early or often but even at 6.1 seconds it will just waste 2 Chi without increasing duration to 12 seconds.

I wouldn't even mind if you say had Shuffle at 7 seconds and did a BoK that it went only to 12 seconds (the cap right now of time) than simply eating our 2 Chi and that's that. However, I think it'd be best if any reapplication of Shuffle above 6 seconds should automatically refresh it to 12 seconds.
In the build after next, you’ll find that Shield Block, Savage Defense, Shuffle, and Shield of the Righteous will always add their duration to the existing buff if there is one, instead of just adding an imaginary tick. If you hit Blackout Kick with 7 seconds left on Shuffle, it’ll go up to 13 seconds remaining.

Shaman (Forums / Skills)
There are several changes coming for shaman in the next build, some of which won’t be easily datamined, so we’d like to let you know about them. We shifted around where damage comes from for both Elemental and Enhancement. The overall damage should be down a bit, but both specializations should still feel strong. Remember, if you’re giving feedback and making comparisons to other classes and specs, please list who you’re comparing to, as it’s quite possible that you’re feeling underpowered compared to someone who is overpowered.

The Fire Elementals were stronger than we wanted, so we reduced the amount of spell power that the standard version gets to 40%, down from 55% (Primal: 60%, down from 82.5%). The Primal Elementalist talent was also too strong, so we reduced the damage of the Primal Fire Elemental’s Immolate DoT by 65%. Also on the topic of talents, Elemental Blast was too weak, so we increased its damage and stat effects by roughly 17%, but reduced its proc chance with Echo of the Elements to 6% for Enhancement (previously it had a 30% chance to trigger an Echo for Enhancement, which made that talent pair too strong).

Further, on the topic of shocks, we recently reduced the shared cooldown of shocks to 5 seconds for Elemental shaman. More recently, we lowered Earth Shock’s damage a bit and significantly increased Flame Shock’s damage.

Specific to Enhancement, we wanted to bring DPS down a bit and also make them feel like more of their damage was coming from their active buttons, rather than passively. The one significant change that you probably won’t be able to datamine is an increase to Feral Spirits’ damage. They now get 50% of your attack power each, up from 30%. And their Spirit Bite ability’s damage has more than doubled. The net result should be that Feral Spirits are significantly stronger than before, probably somewhere between 70% and 100% stronger, depending on gear.

Priest (Forums / Skills)
Renew seems to be benefiting from 15% bonus when in Chakra: Serenity-- akin to it being considered a Single Target Heal. Additionally, it also seems to be auto-refreshing (and thus, gaining an additional tick). Is this intended performance? If so, it dramatically affects the value of Renew and its corresponding Chakra: States as well as the Glyph of Renew when running Sims and Spreadsheeting haste values.
The 15% benefit to Renew from Serenity is intended. We decided it made more sense to associate Renew with Serenity and not Sanctuary. Renew refreshing itself to get that extra tick is not intended and we will fix.

Blue Posts

Beta Raiding Class Balance
When I'm being outhealed by a factor of two by any Joe Schmoe paladin or monk who happens to wander into a raid...I'm sorry, but skill is simply not going to overcome that. I don't even want to think about what a good paladin could do. At least not until I have one.

But be realistic. Do you think Blizzard will let such a disparity last into Live and if so, for any real determinate amount of time? Even during "Your class brings utility, shut it" era of TBC the numbers never went for that big of a spread.
It's probably not possible to overcome that much of a difference. Fortunately, you don't have to, because paladins and monks both had some egregious bugs that inflated their healing. We actually hotfixed those bugs but then a new build broke them again. Until you get a new build or we hotfix the issues again, you are probably better off comparing druid, priest and shaman healing. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Overall, I would recommend not deciding who you're going to bench based on beta testing until we are very close to ship. It's not a great strategy to try to get your character buffed either.

there being no Spirit whatsoever on the Legendary Sha weapons
Well, the weapons themselves aren't legendary, but the Intellect mace is supposed to have Spirit on it. That's a bug.

Also one thing to consider is that benching and stacking of classes in the top guilds has less to do with SimCraft numbers and more of certain mechanics being very powerful on certain fights. Case in point: Paragon's 11 Druids on their first Heroic Nefarian kill.
Agreed. Remember guilds in those world first situations are doing content very undergeared compared to what we expect because they are skipping the weeks of farming. In those situations players have to resort to some unusual strategies to make up the difference. In general (though not always depending on what they feel like they have to do) those type of machinations are fun for the guilds in questions and very few players are affected overall.

When we see widespread stacking, that crosses the line. In retrospect, the dependence on quick burst for a fight like Spine might cross the line. Overall, we didn't see a ton of stacking or sitting for the Cataclysm raids and we'll try to do even better for the new content.

For the record, I believe there is evidence the PW: Solace thread that druids are outpacing priests and shaman as well, but not nearly as much, the major issue seems to be the longevity.
That is possible. As I have said repeatedly, if every priest is taking Solace, we'll continue to nerf it until the perception is that it is on par with the other talents. We don't want Solace to be a required talent.

I believe we have the paladin and monk fixed and we have some more raid testing ongoing so we'll be able to get some better data.

We're in a situation again where we have made several changes to a variety of class mechanics but haven't been able to get a build up with fresh data. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums / Skills)
Feeback on Priest Changes
This is a combination of responses to some points in this thread and a couple of others, such as the "bench" thread.

When we stop seeing posts that rank Solace priests ahead of Mindbender priests, then we'll feel like the talents are in a better spot. Not every priest wants to have to cast nukes as part of their healing rotation, and we are just not going to make Solace mandatory. If you enjoy the style, awesome. That talent is for you. You shouldn't have to take it though. (When I heal, I tend to play the mana game a lot, because healing just enough without overheating is fun for me. Rather than overheal, I'll gladly sit idle a lot rather than waste a heal. Solace would work well for me. Other healers, even some I play with, want to stay more active and keep spells queued up and cancel them or just keep everyone topped off. That's cool too. The game supports lots of different healing styles, except for the one where you just spam your highest HPS spell and nothing else, which hasn't been supported since Icecrown.)

We're not noticing a big longevity problem between priests and druids. Shaman seemed a little low so we are examining the impact of the Water Shield and Resurgence chances. We may also lower the cost of Healing Rain. It is definitely a challenging thing to sim out how much mana the various healers use because it has a lot to do with spell choice. You should be able to use your more expensive heals somewhat, but you should also be casting a lot of Heals as well.

We don't feel like mana regen in 5-player dungeons is at all a problem. Mana felt tighter (too tight in retrospect) in Cataclysm launch. If you are running out while healing a dungeon boss, I would suspect it's because you are using Flash and it's equivalents too often or you're just used to the rapid mana regen of full Dragon Soul gear. It's possible mana is tighter in raids, especially 25 player, but we're running a lot of raid tests right now and it's just not a common theme we're hearing from those players, which again leads me to want to understand what is going on for players who feel they are struggling. Again, being as specific as possible would help. Which bosses? How far into the fight are you struggling for mana? How quickly are you having to Shadow Fiend? Are you wearing Mists quest greens, Mists PvP gear, or scaled up Dragon Soul raid gear?

Returning Holy Concentration to a higher value is extremely unlikely. We felt that created more class balance problems than it solved. We are more likely to lower priest and or shaman heal costs if we think it is needed. We just don't want to be in a situation where we improve priest and shaman healing now and are then forced to nerf them after launch. Nobody will be happy with that outcome.

I'll dig into the "Realistic 60 sec Holy priest average" posted. You shouldn't feel, with any mana talent choice, that are you are sitting around a lot too scared to heal. (The example I used for my healing style above is just one play style, not the only valid way to play. I could overheal a lot more and still be fine.) The risk should be that any time you replace a Heal with a Flash Heal that it's going to hurt a little, but sometimes that is still the right call. A priest casting nothing but Heal should last indefinitely. That isn't true of say a paladin who uses a lot of free spells. PW:Shield for Disc is a little more risky. It has a lot of benefits, but overall you should be rewarded for shielding folks who are taking damage and not just throwing it around indiscriminately on the raid. The former should benefit you through Rapture. The latter should slowly run you OOM. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Content Difficulty and Consumption Speed
If blizzard actually believe LFR keeps people interested beyond 2 weeks, I am SERIOUSLY worried for the game. They must see how shallow and short spanned it is.
There's a broad spectrum of players on this game. And the LFR is interesting to some of those players, just as Heroic, soul-crushing bosses are interesting to a different set of players, and then you get everything in between. The community is way more different that what some of you think it is. Even the motivation behind each of us is entirely different in some cases. Some might raid for the loot, some might raid for the lore, others for the achievements, others for the challenge, others for the social experience of tackling content with their friends... and so on. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Madness Heroic and Ragnaros Heroic Mounts
Will the mounts be an 1% drop ish in MoP? Or do they stay as current 100%?
The developers haven't decided yet how they'll handle it, but it's likely they'll make some adjustments. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Raid Testing Schedule - August 7

Raid testing will continue on Tuesday.

Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below for all Beta Test Realms, regardless of suggested geographical region.

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder (Mogu'shan Vaults) - 10 Player Heroic
10:30 PDT (13:30 EDT, 19:30 CEST)

Sha of Fear (Terrace of Endless Spring) - 25 Player Normal
16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session or cancel it entirely, due to bugs, builds, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

MMO Report
The MMO Report is here with news on the Secret World’s creepy new Unleashed update, SWTOR going free-to-play, and more!

[Deleted]

Oki! Mannen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Antherios]

When i read "Faction Capital Changes", i was so excited! New buildings in SW? Park district rebuilt?

Great disappointment =,(

[2hd]

Shamans, TO THE GROUND. But seriously sounds like a lot of nerfs inc to shammys.

[Schaapa]

Hahaha. Uncle Gus' dialog is so witty 60% speedbuff, huh. I don't remember it as that big.

[Melilithia]

I'm curious to know why we need a giant speed buff in the Horde city.

When i read "Faction Capital Changes", i was so excited! New buildings in SW? Park district rebuilt?

Great disappointment =,(

Same here. ):

[Tierbook]

Hahaha. Uncle Gus' dialog is so witty 60% speedbuff, huh. I don't remember it as that big.

probably cause you normally go around on 100% mounts 60% is what a lvl20-40 is used to

[hellboyy]

i dont mind walking to all the npcs, but a better map would be nice. even when the guards mark the location of an npc you can't find them because they are on another level. and the rooms are so small and have their own individual maps.

[demonicslushie]

None of those faction capital changes are going to matter if there are no auctioneers in the cities, people will go where EVERYTHING is, not where everything minus the AH is...

[KCguy]

Surprise, surprise. Shamans have been getting nerfed since Vanilla WoW. It's ridiculous. I mean I'll always main one, more specifically elemental because I enjoy it, but good Lord throw us a bone sometime will you Blizzard?

[Shamoniko]

'Specific to Enhancement, we wanted to bring DPS down a bit'

^ ARE YOU FRIGGING KIDDING ME. Ok, well looks like I will be shelving my shaman for sure now. The dps, compared to their precious monks and warriors, was already sub-par.

Screw you Blizzard. I'm officially pissed at you.

[Hyve]

Surprise, surprise. Shamans have been getting nerfed since Vanilla WoW. It's ridiculous. I mean I'll always main one, more specifically elemental because I enjoy it, but good Lord throw us a bone sometime will you Blizzard?

Are you people incapable of remembering what was said only a few weeks ago? Do you choose to only take the information you see right now, and ignore all previous information?

Ghostcrawler said that several classes would be getting a DPS Nerf to bring them in-line with all other classes. Remember that they're several builds ahead of us, with class tweaks and changes that are not published or shown.

Stop being such a fucking drama queen.

[Kaleredar]

None of those faction capital changes are going to matter if there are no auctioneers in the cities, people will go where EVERYTHING is, not where everything minus the AH is...

And yet Shattrath and Dalaran still managed to be fairly populated cities without auctioneers, now didn't they? The only reason people converged on Stormwind and Orgrimmar was because the portals to the cata zones located there exclusively. While these weren't nearly as essential after the initial burst of questing was done, people just stayed there out of habit.

The new cities in Pandaria present a geographical convenience, just like Shattrath and Dalaran did back in their respective expansions.

I do, however, hope that they come around to at least allowing ground mounts in the cities.

When i read "Faction Capital Changes", i was so excited! New buildings in SW? Park district rebuilt?

Great disappointment =,(

I know... it'd be awesome if they could merge a pandaren district with a worgen district and put it where the park used to be... a fusion of the Gothic English Gilnean architecture with a few interspersed dark "colonial china" type Pandaren buildings would look great.

[Hyve]

a fusion of the Gothic English Gilnean architecture with a few interspersed dark "colonial china" type Pandaren buildings would look great.

How can something so wrong, sound so amazing!?

[Eleidess]

I dont like the shaman change were we rely on long cooldowns like Feral Wolfs ? Tho I really dont' know how much damage we do now, just speculations what it feels shamans outcome would be.

"Ok guys lets nuke the priest down now"
"Just wait 45 seconds until my spirit wolfs are ready"

[wombocombo32]

And yet Shattrath and Dalaran still managed to be fairly populated cities without auctioneers, now didn't they? The only reason people converged on Stormwind and Orgrimmar was because the portals to the cata zones located there exclusively. While these weren't nearly as essential after the initial burst of questing was done, people just stayed there out of habit.

The new cities in Pandaria present a geographical convenience, just like Shattrath and Dalaran did back in their respective expansions.

I do, however, hope that they come around to at least allowing ground mounts in the cities.



I know... it'd be awesome if they could merge a pandaren district with a worgen district and put it where the park used to be... a fusion of the Gothic English Gilnean architecture with a few interspersed dark "colonial china" type Pandaren buildings would look great.

I guess you haven't been to Shattrath or Dalaran because both of them have auctioneers in them.

[ZenX]

I guess you haven't been to Shattrath or Dalaran because both of them have auctioneers in them.

They didn't have them during the respective content of relevance, except for engineers who had access to it in the Dalaran which was located by the engineering trainer.

[Venziir]

Surprise, surprise. Shamans have been getting nerfed since Vanilla WoW. It's ridiculous. I mean I'll always main one, more specifically elemental because I enjoy it, but good Lord throw us a bone sometime will you Blizzard?

If you've always played Elemental shaman, you'd be very well aware that we haven't been nerfed since vanilla.

[KCguy]

If you've always played Elemental shaman, you'd be very well aware that we haven't been nerfed since vanilla.

I'm talking about the shaman class in general.

[Venziir]

I'm talking about the shaman class in general.

Still incorrect. In vanilla you had a flawed Enhancement system relying totally on RNG from WF, you had Elemental which was just.... And then you had resto which wasn't exactly fantastic either, but it was a healing spec.

It got a little better in TBC, especially for Enhancement.

Little better in Wotlk, when all three specs recieved new spells and abilities - though a lot of people moaned about Enh using agi instead of str.

Cataclysm - meh.

MoP - lots and lots of wierd changes and nerfs for no reason.