Beta Invitations, Wintergrasp, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

Update - All the VOD of the MLG Orlando 3v3 WoW Tournament are now available on Gotfrag !

Another wave of Opt-in beta invitations is out
A few hours ago, another wave of beta invitations has been sent. If you registered to the Beta Opt-in a while ago you might want to check your mail ! Please keep in mind that there are also a lot of scam mails sent to players, to make sure that your beta invitation mail is 100% legit please check the [Guide/FAQ] How to verify a WLK beta invite on the official forums !


Lake Wintergrasp ... on Live Beta Servers ?
Yes ! There are actually a few things in Lake Wintergrasp on live beta servers ! Even if obviously nothing is really implemented here and this is only a developer playground for the moment, we've got a short previews of the vehicles available from the goblin workshops here along with a screenshot of the ... Strand of the Ancients Battlemaster.

Blue posts
For additional posts, make sure you check the Blue tracker ! I apologize to Death Knights but I had to push your walls of text at the bottom of class posts.

Update 14:30 CEST - Fixed an error, the post about the hit % of the master being transferred to the pet was for warlocks, not hunters.

Druid
Feral Concerns in WotLK
The changes made to things like armor were done mostly to solve itemization problems. We didn't make them to nerf Ferals (or anyone). We did them because we started to consider bosses who needed to drop 30 different pieces of armor (or tokens to trade for them or whatever) because classes and even specs were heading off into distinct niches. You'll get something to make up for it. No, you aren't there yet.

We're not entirely happy with the way the Feral ended up in BC. The idea was that you could be a decent tank and a decent melee dps class, so Ferals were something you wanted to bring if you weren't the kind of guild that swapped different people out for every boss. But I don't think "convenience factor" is ultimately a great value to bring to a raid. The problem was we were kind of stuck because if we made Ferals end-game tanks and amazing melee, then the rogues were screwed, because they couldn't go respec to tank or heal.

But now we have a chance to add some new talents, and we'd like for some of them to be the kind that let a druid declare that she is more of a cat or more of a bear. It doesn't have to be shoehorning two whole talent trees into one, but even offering a few choices would go a long way.

I didn't mean to sound condescending. The pot example was to offer that we haven't forgotten about bears. My point was NOT: hey, you lost armor but gee you got health stones, so why all the QQing? It was cool to see those big armor numbers on bears, and we have some plans for how to replace them (and not just with pots).

The DK gets a lot of attention because it has a lot of catching up to do. There were no DKs in UBRS or MC or TK or even Arathi Basin. Nobody knows how their abilities and power system are going to work so we feel like we have to cover a lot of the ground that was explored literally years ago for some of these other classes.

We will be really disappointed if there aren't bears main tanking Naxx and later raids, and cats that if not consistently as high as rouges, are at least a lot closer than they are now. (Source)

Allow Feral Swiftness Indoor
Seems reasonable to me. Done. (Source)


Hunter

• The mana cost of new ranks is not just an issue for Hunters. We're looking at lowering the mana cost of all new ranks among all classes. We also intend to do some improvements to Aspect of the Viper. Not to mention mana return mechanics in each of the tree's (Invigoration, Rapid Recuperation, Hunting Party etc.) (Source)
• We'll be doing some improvements to Chimera Shot. We'll experiement with it refreshing the duration of the sting instead of consuming, and adding some base damage to the shot as well. It should act as an Arcane Shot replacement, doing significantly more damage (especially if serpent sting is on the target). (Source)
• Regarding Serpent Sting, we'll bump the damage bonus you get from this effect up. We also want to make Serpent Sting more usable for Hunters. (Source)
• Tranq Shot will soon be able to dispel enrage mechanics (i.e. Warrior Enrage, Rogue's Hunger For Blood, etc.). It should also be able to dispel Druids' "Owlkin Frenzy" effect. Also going to lower the cooldown. (Source)
• In addition, Tranq Shot will also be able to dispel magic effects, and we're removing that from Arcane Shot. (Source)
• Explosive Shot is intended to be three shots in one cast. Imagine Arcane Missiles, but not having to channel it. The spell isn't quite there yet, we're still not sure if it needs the AOE or not. It's not intended to really be AOE utility. (Source)
• We haven't given up hope of fixing up your existing low-level pets. (Source)
  

Shaman

• In a future build your Stoneclaw Totem will "protect" your other totems, virtually increasing their HP by a value. We haven't decided how much it will give your totems, but it should be enough to protect them from being one shotted. Totems are intended to be as fragile as they are, it's what balances out their power. If we gave Totems base increased survivability, we would have to give them increased cooldowns, mana costs etc. (Source)
  

Warlock

• We plan to give all pets the master's +hit%. (Source)
• We have yet to do number testing, we'll balance the tree's so that their damage is closer together. That said, Destruction has less group utility than Affliction or Demonology has, which can warrant a slight DPS advantage. Even though you'll be casting DoTs as affliction, you'll still be casting Shadow Bolt's in your rotation. Thus haste/crit/death's embrace all benefit you. (Source)
• Molten Core was more designed for Demonology, as that spec you have the freedom to switch between Shadow and Fire, or for more hybrid builds. (Source)
• We haven't yet tested Shadow Bite extensively to see if it's working as we intend, we'll be doing that soon. Not yet finished on Doomguard, but he's intended as niche pet for group situations. (Source)
  

Warrior
Blood Frenzy
This issue (who gets into the raids?) is something we are spending a lot of time on right now. Blood Frenzy is the kind of talent that could definitely present a problem if it means Arms warriors are really valuable for their debuff potential and Fury warriors have to compete for raid slots mostly on the merit of their dps. At least Fury still has PvP... oh, wait.... (Source)


Death Knight
Tanking Talent Changes
After further discussion, and lots of feedback from various forums including this one, we're going to make the following changes:

Vampiric Blood
One Rank
1 Blood, Instant (no GCD), 2 min cooldown
Increases the amount of health generated through spells and effects (i.e. your own or heals from other players) by 50% for 20 sec.

Unbreakable Armor
One Rank
1 Frost, Instant (no GCD), 2 min cooldown
Increases your armor by 25% and your total Strength by 5% for 20 sec.

With these changes, the mechanic ends up being pretty similar, where you have to sacrifice dps or other abilities for a mostly defensive one. However you don't feel like you're wasting Blade Barrier and overall it's easier to understand how you'd use these abilities. The cooldown still needs to be reasonably long in order to save these for the right moment rather than spamming them constantly (we want them to work like new Shield Block, not old Shield Block). You might still sometimes end up having to sit on a Rune for a bit, but probably no longer than a few seconds, and at least you won't have to worry about the ability going off when you don't want it to.

Anti-Magic Shell at the very least can no longer be dispelled, and we're looking at it preventing dots and possibly all magical debuffs while it's up.

We'll continue to massage the numbers to try and achieve rough parity among Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor and Bone Shield (Bone Armor) so that nobody feels compelled to go down one tree just because its talent is so much better than the others. Though obviously the 3 talents will still fulfill slightly different niches.

We'll continue to adjust mitigation and threat numbers in general to achieve rough parity among DKs, warriors, paladins and druids, while still trying to give each a certain type of battle they excel at. (Source)

Deathstrike Effect Clarifications
A deadly attack that deals 60% weapon damage plus X (where X varies per rank) and heals the death knight for 100% of the damage done for each of her diseases on the target. (Source)

Bone Armor and Unholy Talents
Bone Armor has always had an internal cooldown of 2 sec. We just changed it to 3.5 sec, same as a shaman. There is enough theorycrafting on Bone Armor right now and at least some people conclude it's a really potent ability. If it turns out to offer less protection than we thought, we'll buff it.

As per another thread, we did prune down some of the talents in deep Unholy and we're hoping to be able to fit another tanking or tanking / dps talent down there to compete with Will of the Necropolis and Acclimation for the other trees. (Source)

Bone Armor / Blood-Caked Blade and Crypt Fever Changes
We took Blood-Caked Blade and Crypt Fever down to 3 ranks each. We need to see if deep Unholy has enough talents now. Bone Armor (we call it Bone Shield now) is only 1 Unholy. I'm not sure where the Frost cost came from. I may have erroneously stated as such when typing fast, or the talent trees show it wrong. It's 1 Unholy though. (Source)

-----------------

Increased breath duration underwater
We are experimenting with increased breath duration underwater. Currently, in the beta, most players can stay under for three times as long. Forsaken can stay under 10 times as long as an old, normal character (used to be 4). (Source)

Addition of a Quest Giver Tracker to the Radar (Including low level quests)
Yes. This is in the next build (albeit not very polished yet). (Source)

Account Achievements
Account achievements are in the works. They won't be in for the launch of Lich King but they are on the horizon. (Source)

Guild Bank Tax
This is an interesting idea. We won't be able to get to this for the WotLK launch, but we are compliling a list of future guild improvements that we'd like to make in WoW. (Source)

Class changes deployment frequency during Beta Test
Seriously though, it's easier for to focus on only a couple of classes at a time. We find that way we are more in sync on the direction of the class and its problems. We don't work in an environment where each person goes to their desk, throws in the talents for one class, and then we pour them all into the game. A lot of the time it's 10% actual talent implementation and 90% brainstorming and discussion.

Mages recently got a fair amount of attention and death knights always do, just because they have the most catching up to do to the years of analysis and design that's been done on the other classes.

But even then, you're more likely to see ability changes than number adjusting. We need to feel like the abilities have a chance of working out before we go into the mode of comparing everyone's dps and threat and survival in a variety of situations. The encounter design and item design need to be at that level too. We're still debating things like encounters and raid stacking will work. Think about all the changes: many stats are universal now (meaning melee hit and spell hit are the same as far as items are concerned), most buffs affect the entire raid, we're trying to offer fewer very specialized items as random drops, etc. etc. It ends up being a lot of changes all with ramifications for every class. (Source)

Raid Composition in WotLK
Class design isn't done. We are shooting for more parity. Nobody should get a raid spot because their one talent brings a huge dps (or mana or healing or health) benefit to the raid that no other spec can provide. (Source)

[sektor]

Images don't work for some reason.

Edit: oh they work now

[Shuji1987]

Images work fine.

But you might want to add that it's the US opt-ins and not the EU ones (since you linked to a EU guide people might assume it's EU).

Still no blue posts about the EU opt-ins so it's safe to assume the EU Opt-Ins haven't been sent yet.

[Gilthoniel]

HOLY FU*K I GOT MY INVITE OMG IM DONT KNOW CANT EXPRESS IT OMG

[Glomp]

Ehh, when the wotlk beta opt-in was announced I was kinda excited. I'm not that much anymore, I don't really mind if I don't make it into beta. Because I know that when I buy the expansion I won't be disappointed.

Of course if I do get a beta invite I'll have a look at the new talents and such.

[Gilthoniel]

And you would be EU or US?

eu

[bbr]

The lack of rogue updates and feedback from the blue front is quite disturbing.

It's also quite sad when a blue can't spell "rogues" correctly.
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/85377...-in-wotlk.html

We will be really disappointed if there aren't bears main tanking Naxx and later raids, and cats that if not consistently as high as rouges, are at least a lot closer than they are now.

DPS as high as rogues, hmm. So, why should I bring more than a single rogue on a raid then?
We can't heal, we can't battle rez, we have zero raid buffs, we can't tank.
Druid dps should obviously be inferior to rogues, but if blizzard intends to make that a closer match.... Should we just reroll druid? Sacrifice a tiny bit of extra dps for a huge lot of utility.
Surely some raid buffs would benefit rogues, armor decreasing poison, a crit aura, anything really. All we got is dps, our CC is rarely used in raids, that's what mages are mainly there for, reusable CC.

[Sonikk]

Images work fine.

But you might want to add that it's the US opt-ins and not the EU ones (since you linked to a EU guide people might assume it's EU).

Still no blue posts about the EU opt-ins so it's safe to assume the EU Opt-Ins haven't been sent yet.

This is wrong..
I myself loaded gmail faster than hell when i read this news, and WTFOMGBBQLOLHAX there it was!
Just tell me a part of the e-mail you want a screenshot of, and il prove it..

"Cngratulations! You have successfully upgraded your World of Warcraft account. You are now ready to experience all the exciting new content that World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King™ has to offer, including:" feels good

[Vilcoyote]

This is wrong..
I myself loaded gmail faster than hell when i read this news, and WTFOMGBBQLOLHAX there it was!
Just tell me a part of the e-mail you want a screenshot of, and il prove it..

damn...i'm eu and didn't get one...hope they'll be a lot more in the next days. Really hope to get in.

[Eldariel]

Hunter

• We plan to give all pets the master's +hit%. (Source)
• The mana cost of new ranks is not just an issue for Hunters. We're looking at lowering the mana cost of all new ranks among all classes. We also intend to do some improvements to Aspect of the Viper. Not to mention mana return mechanics in each of the tree's (Invigoration, Rapid Recuperation, Hunting Party etc.) (Source)
• We'll be doing some improvements to Chimera Shot. We'll experiement with it refreshing the duration of the sting instead of consuming, and adding some base damage to the shot as well. It should act as an Arcane Shot replacement, doing significantly more damage (especially if serpent sting is on the target). (Source)
• Regarding Serpent Sting, we'll bump the damage bonus you get from this effect up. We also want to make Serpent Sting more usable for Hunters. (Source)
• Tranq Shot will soon be able to dispel enrage mechanics (i.e. Warrior Enrage, Rogue's Hunger For Blood, etc.). It should also be able to dispel Druids' "Owlkin Frenzy" effect. Also going to lower the cooldown. (Source)
• In addition, Tranq Shot will also be able to dispel magic effects, and we're removing that from Arcane Shot. (Source)
• Explosive Shot is intended to be three shots in one cast. Imagine Arcane Missiles, but not having to channel it. The spell isn't quite there yet, we're still not sure if it needs the AOE or not. It's not intended to really be AOE utility. (Source)
• We haven't given up hope of fixing up your existing low-level pets. (Source)
  

I love you blizzard ;D Traps are getting reworked, and now this ;D
And no, I didden't get a beta invite :'(

[Nuronv]

There are some very nice changes in that list

Hunter
-We plan to give all pets the master's +hit%. Beast Masters will love this
-Chimera Shot refreshing serpent sting would be a godsend and its nice to see they are finally trying to make it part of the main group of hunter shots.
-Tranq Shot will soon be able to dispel enrage mechanics and will Take the dispell mechanics from arcane shot. I've never thought it was fair that we had dispell built into a general damage shot.

I'm very happy in general with the state of the Hunters in wotlk at the moment

Shaman
In a future build your Stoneclaw Totem will "protect" your other totems, i think as a happy medium shamans could be happy with this. It would also be nice if they added some sort of unstable affliction element to stoneclaw so that anyone who blasts the totems takes some damge

[Deleted]

When first beta key wave was sent some blue said you have to have an active account when the beta starts. Is this valid for all waves during the entire beta? As I didn't have an active account when the beta started.

[Soulstorm]

Nothing new about warriors..

[kittynipples]

The problem was we were kind of stuck because if we made Ferals end-game tanks and amazing melee, then the rogues were screwed, because they couldn't go respec to tank or heal.

Well, maybe Blizzard should have thought about why making a single class that can fill all four distinct party roles might not be great game design.

edit: And with no more crushing blows from raid bosses, why shouldn't bears have gotten a slight nerf to their armor?

[FailedCRC]

Hooray, pet hit. Maybe spell lock won't get resisted one billion percent of the time now!

Native spell penetration as well please.

[Dismas]

The hunter's post about all pets getting their master's hit % is actually addressing a warlock thread so that should be moved to the warlocks blues. Assume it would be true for all classes, including shamans with their wolves, and frost mages with their elemental. But blues are vague so unless someone of that class specifically asks in that forum, I'd play on the safe side and just bump it down to Warlocks.

[Deleted]

I got a Beta key too, EU. So the EU opt-ins are really being sent.

[garapueto]

The lack of rogue updates and feedback from the blue front is quite disturbing.

It's also quite sad when a blue can't spell "rogues" correctly.
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/85377...-in-wotlk.html

DPS as high as rogues, hmm. So, why should I bring more than a single rogue on a raid then?
We can't heal, we can't battle rez, we have zero raid buffs, we can't tank.
Druid dps should obviously be inferior to rogues, but if blizzard intends to make that a closer match.... Should we just reroll druid? Sacrifice a tiny bit of extra dps for a huge lot of utility.
Surely some raid buffs would benefit rogues, armor decreasing poison, a crit aura, anything really. All we got is dps, our CC is rarely used in raids, that's what mages are mainly there for, reusable CC.

I've wanted to post some many times before, but after reading this I simply could not hold back anymore. I absolutely agree. What good am I to raids if all I bring is DPS when I can easily be swapped out for someone that brings slightly less, but can cast when melee is useless, heal in a pinch, be an off-tank or tank in a bind to avoid a wipe, and toss the all important battle rez? And yet, the talk is always still rogues are OP. For quite some time it has felt like our level of importance has slowly gone by the way side until it eventually reaches the point that the Blue Tracker title of the day is simply "Blizzard: Rogue Class removed from game."

[Marvdatboi]

Just checked my gmail... and nothing yet.... but idk if I get an invite or not since you can basically see whats going on through mmo champ and other wotlk sites. Glad they're changing arc shot back..... really a dispel and damage in one yea thats quite fair (sarcasm).

[Marvdatboi]

I've wanted to post some many times before, but after reading this I simply could not hold back anymore. I absolutely agree. What good am I to raids if all I bring is DPS when I can easily be swapped out for someone that brings slightly less, but can cast when melee is useless, heal in a pinch, be an off-tank or tank in a bind to avoid a wipe, and toss the all important battle rez? And yet, the talk is always still rogues are OP. For quite some time it has felt like our level of importance has slowly gone by the way side until it eventually reaches the point that the Blue Tracker title of the day is simply "Blizzard: Rogue Class removed from game."

Lol are you serious.... so your saying you feel rogues are going to the wayside when you constantly top the charts and your crying about not having utility?