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  1. #1

    3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Patch 3.3.3 - Jepetto's new toys!
    Jepettoy Joybuzz in Dalaran will sell 3 more items in 3.3.3! Your favorite toymaker added the following to his inventory:




    Blue posts
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Alterac Valley imbalance
    We have discussed this numerous times. Based on the data we've collected over the years after all of the changes that have been made to Alterac Valley, we simply do not agree that there are any glaring imbalances in the map favoring one side over the other enough to easily sway a match one way or the other. (Source)

    Masteries Cap
    It's possible you will only get the benefit of the tree in which you've spent the most points, or will only get the benefit from say 50 points maximum with the bonus chosen from the tree with the most points in it. We'll have to see when the talent trees are more finalized and we start to figure out build strategies.

    Overall, the goal is to spend points as you want, and not feel penalized for spending into another tree or feel like you have to game things by spending more points than you want in your tree. Remember these passive bonuses are designed to give you flexibility, not lock you into anything. (Source)

    [...] Imagine you spend 55 points in Retribution, so you get the maximum passive talent tree bonuses from that tree. Your remaining points you can spend where you want, in Retribution, Protection or Holy. It does discourage some kind of true hybrid build where you go partway down multiple trees, but we aren't really trying to support those, and they aren't very popular today.

    The flexibility comes (hopefully) in having more discretionary points that you can spend on talents you like, rather than sacrificing raw damage, healing or tanking to do so. (Source)

    Mastery/Talent system and new players
    It's designed partially with new players in mind. It will be much harder to have a truly terrible talent spec because you won't be able to help but be reasonably good at your chosen role.

    The mastery stat itself won't show up until high level, and even when it does, you should have more confidence that it's a stat you want instead of say trying to figure out the percent of your damage that is physical damage to calculate if armor pen is good for you or not.

    I admit that adding passive bonuses at all to talent trees complicates the talent feature slightly. We hope to make up for that by there being less paranoia about picking "the wrong" spec. The wrong spec might only be a slight loss instead of a tragic loss. As a point of comparison, dual-spec complicates talents a little, but overall we think it was good for the game. (Source)

    Mastery bonus distribution
    To answer your question -- and this applies to all classes. the first two mastery stats are gained by placing points into a given talent tree (and wearing the gear intended for your class, e.g. leather for druids). This will allow us to remove many of the talents that always felt mandatory, especially at the min-max level, and allow room for customization.

    When we begin revealing specific class information, (such as new spells and abilities, and the talent tree revamp) -- the posts we've made thus far, will make much more sense. I feel, players should look at the stat/system changes, as well as this mastery post as a "piece of a puzzle" -- and ask questions, provide feedback, but understand that until more information is released, it's not possible to see the whole of the picture. (Source)

    Masteries Q&A
    # 1. 28/28/20 spec. Does mastery on gear affect both highest trees or give no benefit at all?
    Mastery on gear gives you one bonus. That bonus is the third passive (the unique one) in the tree in which you’ve spent the most points. In the examples we gave, those are Absorption, Radiance and Runic Power generation.

    # 2. How are ferals and Dks as tanks working with mastery system in place? Are they to care about it for threat or do they have separate bonuses.
    Ferals will have passive bonuses that say Cat: melee damage done, Bear: damage reduction. For death knights we have a different plan in mind that we’re not quite ready to discuss. DKs are undergoing some slight changes so they aren’t so GCD constrained and are less limited by rune cooldowns.

    # 3. How are the non-pure classes going to be balanced against those with a full 76 point passive benefit? Balance, enhancement(not so much), shadow, feral, ele, resto, holy and Ret all have this issue.
    Assume you only get the passive bonuses for the tree in which you’ve spent the most points, and there is a ceiling per tree (which could be something like 51-55 talent points). If you spend more points than that in a tree you still get the benefits of the talent. If you spend points in another tree, you are benefiting from those talents instead. Unless you try to make say a 40 / 36 / 0 build, you shouldn’t be losing passive bonuses.

    If you turn level 10 and spend 1 point in Discipline, you are now a Disc priest. You receive the Disc talent tree passive bonuses and mastery rating on gear benefits your Disc passive bonus (Absorption). If you reach level 85 and have 70 points in Disc and 6 in Holy, you are still a Disc priest and the same rules apply. If you change your build to 51 Disc / 20 Holy / 5 Shadow, you are still a Disc priest.

    # 4. Hybrids who use spells not improved by their spec on occasion such as heals or the extra lava burst are feeling that their non-specced spells are going to be extremely weak as compared to now.
    They are weak now and the intent is to keep them that way. We aren’t trying to nerf them any more than they are today. If we want to make sure Resto shaman can do big Lava Bursts, we’ll give them a talent or something to make that happen. We don’t want Resto shaman to Lava Burst anywhere on the scale of an Elemental shaman. Again, how they perform today is pretty much the target for where we want to end up.

    Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
    Runic Power boost through Frost masteries
    I know it's hard to get a feel for the design when you can't see the complete picture, but talent trees are changing for Cataclysm. As Eyonix referenced above, we are changing the DK rune mechanic a little so that you aren't so GCD constrained. This in turn will give us a chance to rebalance how much runic power Frost gets. Remember that in many cases we are pulling talents out of the trees and giving them to you as passive bonuses. In general if you see a passive talent tree bonus and think to yourself "Hmm, that doesn't sound very good for me," then it's probably because we haven't revealed the changes that lead to that being attractive to you. (Source)

    Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
    Shockwave vs. Thunder Clap
    Shockwave is technically a ranged attack, like a hunter shot. This means it's treated like an attack (and not a spell) for purposes of what you want but can't be dodged or parried. (I believe ranged attacks can be blocked, but I can't honestly remember off the top of my head.) The Shockwave treatment might be the right way to go for Thunder Clap. Thunder Clap is currently a spell that hits for physical damage and can't be dispelled. The distinction among spell, melee and ranged attack (or persistent auras like Consecrate) is a largely technical one that doesn't always encompass unusual abilities well. (Source)

    Thunder Clap in 3.3.3
    I think we're likely to make Thunder Clap a ranged attack (like Shockwave) for 3.3.3. This will let it get 200% crits among other things.

    Standard no promises, in case there ends up being a problem with that implementation. (Source)
    Also, a few people asked for the visuals of the Masteries system released during Blizzcon. I'll post them again here but keep in mind that these pictures are already 6 months old and most of the information here is probably outdated.



  2. #2

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Wow pets? More? yay!

  3. #3
    Field Marshal
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    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Gah, getting more exited day by day...

  4. #4

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Race controller full size image is bugged

  5. #5

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    cool!

  6. #6

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    so the toys wasn't for this year's christmas afterall =D

  7. #7

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Alterac Valley imbalance
    We have discussed this numerous times. Based on the data we've collected over the years after all of the changes that have been made to Alterac Valley, we simply do not agree that there are any glaring imbalances in the map favoring one side over the other enough to easily sway a match one way or the other.
    The argument over faction balance in AV has for the most part been fixed I have felt. My gaping problem I always see with AV is the lack of PvP that actually goes on. It is a 40 vs 40 battleground and I find myself fighting NPC's more than actual players. How often does the horde and alliance just run past each other in the field of strife doing /wave.

    The 10 hour long AV's of yesteryear are not something that I want back but the pvp and effort it took to win was nice. When was the last time an AV lasted enough to see armor upgrades done or god forbid a Monster was summoned in the field of strife. AV is one of the most dynamic and event based battleground to date yet it has become a 3 minute rush to Vann/Drek.

  8. #8

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Alterac Valley is so easy now because we have tanks that can withstand the hits of General + Tower masters combo. Remember the fast runs in patches 3.0, 3.1? No? Cause there were none. No scaling of NPCs in AV with overall scaling of player PvP and PvE gear makes this battleground trivial.

  9. #9

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Honestly the whole mastery system is just looking like the lazy way out of nerfing and buffing classes in the future.

    "O we think you are OP we are going to reduce the benifit of your mastery bonus"

  10. #10

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Haha check the second picture, the one that shows the paladin tree and passive bonuses that light up.

    Under the protection trees bonuses "Damege Taken +3%" Spelt wrong and surely it's ment to be minus?

  11. #11

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Quote Originally Posted by CaspianRoach
    Alterac Valley is so easy now because we have tanks that can withstand the hits of General + Tower masters combo. Remember the fast runs in patches 3.0, 3.1? No? Cause there were none. No scaling of NPCs in AV with overall scaling of player PvP and PvE gear makes this battleground trivial.
    You should've seen AV in vanilla.

    I didn't play in vanilla but I Heard a lot of QQ how faster AV is nowadays, heard people in guild how much fun it was with 5 hours each battly, saw some SS, etc...

    On-Topic:
    The Mastery System seems really interesting!! I just can't wait.
    Oh and new pets, Whoo!!

  12. #12

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    It kind of takes the fun out of being a pet collector when all the "cool" pets are bought with RL gold. Sorry Jepetto, but the bizzard store is putting you out of business.

    As far as AV goes, I do see the bridge offering more ally protection than the horde wooden wall. However, it should be noted that ever battlegroup I have played on horde wins every battleground consistantly, except AV. Ally have to have something to make their epeen grow. Using AB as an example, horde can get to both LM and BS faster than ally can. Even if ally has a DK who turns on Path of Frost to run over the lake, to reach BS, horde still reaches the flag before ally does. Guess strategic disadvantages makes the game more fun.

  13. #13

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    It's a '40 vs 40 Boss Race' rather than a bg, as for some old school ones lasting 5 hours, I've joined ones that had been going on for over a day before.

    Thats a real war.

    Where is the war in warcraft now? It seems they're too busy killing dragons and dead things to worry about fighting each other.

  14. #14

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Quote Originally Posted by Boubouille

    Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
    Shockwave vs. Thunder Clap
    Shockwave is technically a ranged attack, like a hunter shot. This means it's treated like an attack (and not a spell) for purposes of what you want but can't be dodged or parried. (I believe ranged attacks can be blocked, but I can't honestly remember off the top of my head.) The Shockwave treatment might be the right way to go for Thunder Clap. Thunder Clap is currently a spell that hits for physical damage and can't be dispelled. The distinction among spell, melee and ranged attack (or persistent auras like Consecrate) is a largely technical one that doesn't always encompass unusual abilities well. (Source)

    Thunder Clap in 3.3.3
    I think we're likely to make Thunder Clap a ranged attack (like Shockwave) for 3.3.3. This will let it get 200% crits among other things.

    Standard no promises, in case there ends up being a problem with that implementation. (Source)[/blizzquote]
    Really hope that sticks

  15. #15

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    I think Blizz has to overhaul AV bigtime. Over time it ended up being a race, and the winner is the one who killed the leader the fastest. Its More like Horde and Alliance ignore eachother and gogo rush to Drek!

  16. #16

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    ;D ooo I had forgotten that camouflage was attached to hemorrhage in cata.

  17. #17
    The Lightbringer Geckomayhem's Avatar
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    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    It seems a bit clearer now with the whole points in multiple trees thing. Every tree that you put points into will give you mastery; but the tree that has the most points in it (that 51st point being in an integral talent) will define the mastery bonus that you get.

    I really want to have more flexibility in building my character spec rather than looking at what is optimal within a handful of situational points. The way that the talents trees are moving seems only positive. But if they give us too many additional skills and spells, how will we find room for the buttons on our bars?
    For the Alliance!

  18. #18

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Quote Originally Posted by aruki

    Where is the war in warcraft now? It seems they're too busy killing dragons and dead things to worry about fighting each other.
    I heard a rumor about these 2 gunships...

  19. #19

    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    Even if they don't plan to change AV much they need to put a class check in place to make sure that each team has the correct classes. I don't know how many times I've joined AV and read "blitz, go drek" and when you finally get there the chat goes crazy cause there's no tank and we end up losing.

  20. #20
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    Re: 3.3.3 New Toys, Blue posts

    "Alterac Valley imbalance
    We have discussed this numerous times. Based on the data we've collected over the years after all of the changes that have been made to Alterac Valley, we simply do not agree that there are any glaring imbalances in the map favoring one side over the other enough to easily sway a match one way or the other. (Source)"

    Give me a f...... break, you'd have to be either completely braindead or playing Alliance to find Alterac Valley either remotely balanced. The reason Horde does ok is because we work for it, and adapt. Alliance can just sit back, and wait for the zerg, and they still get more honor that we do, its pathetic.
    The grass is always greener - The times were always better

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