Theorycrafting and game balance
Sometimes players aren't seeing the right numbers. Players put a lot of faith in simulations, target dummy tests, data base packages, theorycrafting and simple fights. None of those sources of information are totally invalid. None of them tell the whole story either. Often players are comparing apples and oranges because they are considering a fight which is very good for another class or comparing themselves to an overpowered class who has already gotten nerfs (that do not show up until the next patch). Players also tend to downplay any fight with adds ("trash doesn't matter") even though there are very few single-target boss fights. Players tend to downplay half of the fights as "gimmick fights" which leaves only Patchwerk and maybe Golemagg.
Often, player sense of perspective is wrong. The classes are closer than they have been at any time in the history of WoW. Could they be better? Absolutely. But when we read these threads that talk about a class problem (even low dps) as being the Worst Thing Ever That Has Always Been This Way, they sort of lose some of their credibility. There are some specs who we see as legitimately not making it into PvE groups very often (such as Frost mages and Demo locks) and some specs that just don't feel very viable in PvP (such as Prot warriors or Fire Mages). Many of the other "am being sat" anecdotes are overblown.
Often, we have made a fix and players just haven't seen it yet because the next build isn't out. It is very telling right now that there are a lot of "I logged into the game, tried hitting something for 5 seconds and didn't notice a dps increase" threads. What we deal with a lot are trends, and trends can take a lot of time to emerge.
Sometimes we even agree something is a problem, but A) aren't sure how we want to fix it yet, B) think that an upcoming change will fix the problem, or C) are just focused on other problems at the moment. You can ask why we won't at least acknowledge a problem even if we have no immediate plans to fix it. But ask yourself if you would be one of those people who would post "Why won't you fix it if you know it's a problem?"
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Harvest Festival and Violet Proto-Drake
Harvest Festival and Pilgrim's Bounty are two different holidays.
That said, the point of What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been is to experience all the holidays in its requirements, so we won't likely change it to be an 8 of 9 situation, and Pilgrim's Bounty is currently planned to remain off the meta achievement. (
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New "buff" drums/scrolls in 3.2.2
As a few players have pointed out, the reason we gave up back-up versions of Kings, Gift and Fort is because those affect the health of the tank. It is difficult to balance how hard bosses can hit when tank health varies with and without those buffs (again generally talking hard modes here for appropriate geared groups). There aren't many situations where Bloodlust / Heroism will absolutely make the difference between making or failing a dps check. It can be really advantageous in some situations though, such as blowing up a faction champions healer quickly.
Offering a drum (or whatever) version of BL / Heroism isn't totally off the table, but as we've said before, we don't want to have to go to Shadow Protection or Spirit consumables or whatever. (
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[color=#2459FF]Shaman
Chain Lightning
We don't want shamans to just push CL in all situations. We don't think that will be the case though. If you're a very sophisticated shaman and want to cycle in CL sometimes against single targets for a marginal but legitimate dps increase, there is nothing at all wrong with that.
I think some of our best class designs come out when a mediocre player can get X performance out of the class with a simple rotation, but an exceptional players can coax slightly > X damage by doing a more complex rotation. (
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