WoWTal 12694, Reputation Enchantments, Blue Posts

[Boubouille]

Cataclysm Build 12694 - Talent Calculator
I didn't post the talent calculator on patch days because of a few issues caused by the new client (The annoying 0 values on most of the new spells). The problem is now resolved, feel free to use the Cataclysm Talent Calculator again.

Cataclysm Build 12694 - Reputation Enchantments
The latest beta build added the spells for reputation enchantments, nothing really super-interesting but I figured it would make a couple of theorycrafters happy.

Reputation Enchantments - Shoulders

• Inscription of Charged Lodestone - Permanently adds 30 Intellect and 20 haste rating to a shoulder slot item.
• Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone - Permanently adds 50 Intellect and 25 haste rating to a shoulder slot item.
• Inscription of Jagged Stone - Permanently adds 30 Strength and 20 critical strike rating to a shoulder slot item.
• Greater Inscription of Jagged Stone - Permanently adds 50 Strength and 25 critical strike rating to a shoulder slot item.
• Inscription of Shattered Crystal - Permanently adds 30 Agility and 20 mastery rating to a shoulder slot item.
• Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal - Permanently adds 50 Agility and 25 mastery rating to a shoulder slot item.
• Inscription of Shattered Crystal - Permanently adds 30 Agility and 20 mastery rating to a shoulder slot item.
• Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz - Permanently adds 45 Stamina and 20 dodge rating to a shoulder slot item.
• Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz - Permanently adds 75 Stamina and 25 dodge rating to a shoulder slot item.

Reputation Enchantments - Head

• Cataclysm Reputation Earthern Ring Revered Tank Enchant - Permanently adds 90 Stamina and 35 dodge rating to a head slot item.
• Cataclysm Reputation Guardian of Hyjal Revered Caster Enchant - Permanently adds 60 Intellect and 35 critical strike rating to a head slot item.
• Cataclysm Reputation Dragonmaw/Wildhammer Revered Strength Enchant - Permanently adds 60 Strength and 35 mastery strike rating to a head slot item.
• Cataclysm Reputation Ramkahen Revered Agility Enchant - Permanently adds 60 Agility and 35 haste rating to a head slot item.

Blue Posts

Concentration Aura
Someone else is getting Concentration Aura. Place your bets. (Source)

200% crits
Warlocks and mages get 200% crits.

We have talents or passives for the hybrid classes because we want the nukers to get the big crits but not the healers. But for mages and warlocks, it seemed silly to have identical passives that say "you get 200% crits" when we don't do that for all the melee classes who get 200% crits.

Incidentally, hunters also get 200% crits in Cataclysm. They already did for the most part on all of their physical attacks, but unless I'm mistaken, attacks like Arcane Shot could only get a 150% crits. That is fixed for Cataclysm. (Source)

Raid Buffs in Cataclysm
Nobody has more powerful versions. All raid buffs are identical in power in Cataclysm. Some have different durations or radii or other measurements of convenience. "I won't get brought because his buff is more powerful than mine," is a pretty reasonable argument. "I won't get brought because his buff is more convenient than mine," just doesn't carry the same punch.

Players are going to find themselves in situations all the time where they bring the same buff that someone else brings. Shaman and paladins are probably in the best situation of bring able to bring something no matter what else the group already has. But we still want for groups to be able to bring say two Fire mages, and in that case, their contributions are identical. (Source)

Failed specs
Yet, even though Enhance's dps was low, there were thousands of dps shaman raiding ICC. By far the majority of raids had at least one. The only specs we really failed on in LK raiding were Frost mage, Subtlety rogue, BM hunter and Arms warrior. (Source)

Hybrid Builds
We really haven't ever supported the true hybrid builds where someone goes halfway down two trees. It would be one thing if someone really wanted to play say an Affliction warlock who also emphasized demons or the Ret paladin who also wanted to be a better healer. But almost without exception the hybrid builds that have ever existed involved sneaking down into a second tree to get an overpowered talent or two. The developers never really wanted the last talent in a tree to be a decision. They want you to get that talent. When players would make builds that didn't go to the bottom of their tree they would feel like something was wrong with the tree. Nobody wants that 31-point talent to be a hard choice.

So, yeah, go get that 31-point talent. You'll have some decisions to make on the way down and then you'll have 10 points that can get you 3 or 4 additional talents from a pool of 15 or so that are left over. Not all of those builds will make sense, but many of them will. That feels like plenty of choice to me and both you and we will know that you have the basics that make your spec work. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Subtlety
We're going to make Dirty Tricks baseline.

We still think the mobility between Subtlety and the other trees is a little far apart. This is something we want to address.

We also think Subtlety's damage against heavy armored targets is probably a little low and we're looking at that as well.

However, as we said in the Twitter dev chat, if you had a tree with Assassination's burst or Combat's timers *and* Shadowstep and Prep, why would you play anything else in PvP? In PvE, we want to get all 3 rogue specs to be as close together as possible. But part of that involves Rupture and Honor Among Thieves, which are just more potent in PvE than PvP. In PvP, we think it's fair that Subtlety does less toe-to-toe damage given that the tree has so many advantages when not toe-to-toe. (Source)

Sprint cooldown
I will admit that the 3 min cooldown on Sprint feels a bit antiquated. It's something we're discussing but it's too soon to promise anything. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Totems not as useful as before?
This is a pretty common sentiment among shaman, but it's just not one we agree with. Elemental shaman having to give up their dps totem for a dps buff was a situation we weren't happy with. But Enhance giving up a dps buff for utility totems -- and very powerful utility totems -- isn't the same thing in our minds.

We don't want to have to balance the game around the assumption that Earthbind or Tremor Totem are up 100% of the time in a raid, which they would be if they also gave you the Strength of Earth buff. (For starters, we'd have to give equivalents to other classes since otherwise having a shaman would be a huge advantage.) Once you remove Tremor and Earthbind, (and disregarding Stoneclaw and Earth Elemental as super situational) then you're left with Strength of Earth vs. Stoneskin, and the powers of those two really aren't comparable. If you have one shaman, drop Strength of Earth. If you have two, or someone else who can bring that buff, then you can add Stoneskin. If you really need Earthbind or Tremor for an encounter, then you can live without Strength of Earth. Most of the time in PvE when you need those other two, it's not for the entirety of the fight anyway. (Source)

[...] If the model was that shaman were brought for their buffs then that would be a problem. But the model is that shaman are brought because they contribute to the group as a whole, which includes bringing some buffs (and to be fair, more than most classes) but also doing competitive dps. If your dps is too low, then *that* is the problem, not that you don't bring a powerful buff so awesome that you're virtually guaranteed a raid spot even if you go AFK half the time. (Source)

[...] And if you have a paladin, you probably have Devotion Aura, so then there is no reason to drop Stoneskin either. And if the group also has a warrior, then that warrior might Battle Shout, rendering Horn of Winter useless. You just aren't going to be guaranteed a raid slot because you bring the only reasonable version of a group buff. The good news is that nobody is. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Rage Normalization - Crits no longer generate extra rage
We actually are concerned that even with normalization that rage scales too well with gear. Currently on beta, rage generation feels about right at level 80, but the income drops down more and more with higher levels. Now we have no doubt once warriors get epic gear with tons of haste and crit that they will have plenty of rage again, but that's the problem that rage normalization was really intended to fix.

The solution we're looking at, and I predict a lot you aren't going to like it, is not to have crits provide extra rage. That will let us bump rage income across the board without it getting infinite again at the epic level. This actually provides a certain amount of consistency with other classes because then crit would be about bigger numbers and haste would be about being able to do more because you have more resources to work with.

We think to feel right that warriors (and bears) generally need enough rage income to hit their main rotational buttons, but not Heroic Strike or Cleave. You might occasionally have to wait a second for that Bloodthirst or Mortal Strike, but we don't want that to be a regular occurrence (unless you just squandered your rage by playing badly.) Getting a lot of rage, because say you were stunned or took a lot of damage from something or the shaman popped Bloodlust, then just lets you Heroic Strike or Cleave more, get bigger Executes, save GCDs from going to Bloodrage, etc.

But also to feel right, this needs to occur in both quest greens and fully-gemmed and enchanted endgame gear. We don't think that is happening enough yet on beta.

Rest assured, you'll still scale just fine with gear.

Hit rating and rage generation
We know Cataclysm warriors will value hit pretty highly, and to be honest that's not a bad place to be coming off of LK where warriors viewed hit as junk. Then again, part of that was because of the Heroic Strike bug, so maybe hit would have been more valuable even in LK.

We're also taking a hard look at combat ratings across the board right now in Cataclysm. We removed so many passive combat ratings from the talent trees (as well as things like Misery and the Draenei racial) that we're concerned that our current ratings are too brutal. If we relax those, then everyone will see their hit go up.

If after all that dust settles warriors still are penalized too much for a miss then we might consider something to address that, but only if we were confident that warriors would still desire hit on gear more than they did in LK. (Source)

Rage "nerf"
It's just tricky because we know that warriors used to the Icecrown raiding environment are going to feel rage nerfed almost no matter what. Some of those warriors are going to complain about being rage starved anytime they aren't hitting Heroic Strike on cooldown. We just have to be very cautious when we get feedback. It is 100% supposed to be a nerf, but only to the degree of having to pay attention to that red bar up there under your health. It isn't supposed to be a dps nerf (minus the Heroic Strike bug and Shadowmourne and other things that make Fury dps too high on live). (Source)

Warrior Scaling
Totally. A little more rage is fine. Cats get more combo points as their geat gets better. Mages get more mana. We're just worried that the Cataclysm numbers currently in beta will make warriors still scale too well with gear, which means the leveling warriors don't have fun or the warriors facing the Bastion of Twilight out-dps the other classes. (Source)

[Duster505]

Hybrid Builds
We really haven't ever supported the true hybrid builds where someone goes halfway down two trees. It would be one thing if someone really wanted to play say an Affliction warlock who also emphasized demons or the Ret paladin who also wanted to be a better healer. But almost without exception the hybrid builds that have ever existed involved sneaking down into a second tree to get an overpowered talent or two. The developers never really wanted the last talent in a tree to be a decision. They want you to get that talent. When players would make builds that didn't go to the bottom of their tree they would feel like something was wrong with the tree. Nobody wants that 31-point talent to be a hard choice.

So, yeah, go get that 31-point talent. You'll have some decisions to make on the way down and then you'll have 10 points that can get you 3 or 4 additional talents from a pool of 15 or so that are left over. Not all of those builds will make sense, but many of them will. That feels like plenty of choice to me and both you and we will know that you have the basics that make your spec work.

This is exactly a topic when you realise that CURRENT Blizzard devs have lost the basics and the core of an entire game. What is a "hybrid" class in Cata? - oh ... wait .. there IS none. And the reasons acording to Blizzard is "the hybrid builds that have ever existed involved sneaking down into a second tree to get an overpowered talent or two". Hmm ... really? I have yet to hear of a Holy paladin that speced half way down to Tank tree to get better at healing PVE content...

Lets talk facts here. Poor DESIGN makes for ppl exploiding game mecanics. And in this case - we are talking BALANCE . And no.. we are NOT talking overall balance... We are talking PVP balance ONLY
Lets look abit deeper into this Blizzard statement. The last point in each tree would be the defining talent of each spec... then that exact talent would be the one that makes an ENTIRE class a PERFECT
1) tank in PVE and PVP (oh... there is no tanking in PVP)
2) Perfect HEALER in both PVP and PVE... hmm)
3) Perfect DPS in both PVP and PVE (actually possible if there was just ONE kind of PVP - Withc is NOT the case since PVP is open world - 2v2 -3v3 -5v5 (rated) and then
battlegrounds).

Overall - this statement from Blues goes as FAR as possible from a person that actually knows what the term Hybrid means. Hybrids are NOT about balance... they are about Choises ! And that EXACTLY what Blizzard has removed from the game...

And the sad part... they are not removing it because it improves the game for most players or make it more intresting... No - They are doing it because they are YET again trying to balance two SEPERATE parts of the game. Two parts that are TOTALY irrelevant to the other - if not for the fact of 3 talent trees...

And btw... since when has BLizzard managed to make ANY Hybrid tree that makes the 31 point talent a "defning" talent for that class - Hmmm... lets start with holy paladin Cata 31 talent that heals players INFRONT of the player while all the other healers can just hit a button and do the exactly same not worrying where they stand as long as they are in range... lol how poor of a group healer must a class be if that is a must compared to the other smartheals ingame?

oh... and I still wonder if that Holy paladin talent is actually a defing talent for PVP and PVE... ye... right.... 2v2... lets hit that frontal healing saviour !!!

Cut the crap Blizzard.

If you want balance then lets see 1 tree for each class in PVP . Defining ablies that make the ENTIRE class and lets build the PVP balance from there. For god sake stop destroying an entire game trying to balance something that is NOT possible. And stop ruining the entire game for BOTH PVP and PVE while at it...

And back to poor design. When will BLizzard realise that designing a "core" classes for PVP and PVE isn't possible when 1 of those 3 core classes isn't vialbe ? Im OFC talkning PVP and Tanking. So... Design your game properly or just explain the TRUTH instead of bringing out statements like the one above.

[Wakaboom]

200g on shamans!

[Marlamin]

Also, before people go mad over this;

Yes, the Dragonmaw orcs have joined the Horde, and the Wildhammer dwarves joined the Alliance. It will all be explained while questing in Twilight Highlands.

[Grubby]

The only specs we really failed on in LK raiding were Frost mage, Subtlety rogue, BM hunter and Arms warrior.

Only?

[fangless]

I love that the Blues never refer to Cataclysm as Cata. Always annoys me when people do -_-



That said, this raid buff swapping they're doing is just going to make buffs/debuffs arbitrary, and Blizzard will design encounters assuming you have more of them available.

Everyone will be assumed to have their kings/+crits/+ap/+sp/etc and the mobs will be expected to be fully debuffed.

/shrug

I have faith in them regardless.

[Strafer]

If Dragonmaw rejoins the Horde I want red skin for my Orc.

[Deleted]

Only?

They have the numbers so I would be inclined to listen to them.

[Hairballs]

Hybrid Builds
We really haven't ever supported the true hybrid builds where someone goes halfway down two trees. It would be one thing if someone really wanted to play say an Affliction warlock who also emphasized demons or the Ret paladin who also wanted to be a better healer. But almost without exception the hybrid builds that have ever existed involved sneaking down into a second tree to get an overpowered talent or two. The developers never really wanted the last talent in a tree to be a decision. They want you to get that talent. When players would make builds that didn't go to the bottom of their tree they would feel like something was wrong with the tree. Nobody wants that 31-point talent to be a hard choice.

So, yeah, go get that 31-point talent. You'll have some decisions to make on the way down and then you'll have 10 points that can get you 3 or 4 additional talents from a pool of 15 or so that are left over. Not all of those builds will make sense, but many of them will. That feels like plenty of choice to me and both you and we will know that you have the basics that make your spec work. (Source)

I think its total bullshit that we are losing the hybrid build!!! I love the fact that while farming or leveling my lock can have a fel guard out and still do alot of dmg. forcing me to go all demo just to get the fel guard is bullshit because a full demo build sucks and you cant raid with it and your dmg sucks overall. Guess Ill never play my lock again. Thanks blizzard for screwing something else up.

[holyevil44]

yay yet again warrior are 2 good NERF NERF NERF!!!! i bet that wen cata comes out warrior are gona suck so mutch that most of the dps warrior are gona get /sit on ea raid . we are probaly gona do 1 attack oom on rage other attack oom on rage again fuck u blizz u suck at making warrior beter

[Vestig3]

Im so pissed about this new changes as a prot warrior why so much damm hate towards heroic strike... they keep telling its not in our rotation but it is.. its the most used attack for me as a prot warrior.

[Typhron]

Someone else is getting Concentration Aura. Place your bets.

Druids.

They get everything.

[Deleted]

rage "nerf"
it's just tricky because we know that warriors used to the icecrown raiding environment are going to feel rage nerfed almost no matter what. Some of those warriors are going to complain about being rage starved anytime they aren't hitting heroic strike on cooldown. We just have to be very cautious when we get feedback. It is 100% supposed to be a nerf, but only to the degree of having to pay attention to that red bar up there under your health. It isn't supposed to be a dps nerf (minus the heroic strike bug and shadowmourne and other things that make fury dps too high on live).

lol!

[Sunseeker]

You know, it's times like this I wonder if Blizzard has forgotten what "balance" is. Of course rage generation is going to be all over the place when comparing 80 epic gear in Cata, 81-85 quest greens/blues and 85 cata raid gear. The idea that this infinite assortment of gear can be balanced is just outrageous. The paladin has been, continues to be, and from all Cata accounts will still be OP, and yet, the warrior is getting the nerf hammer. Blizz I think you've forgotten how your own game works.

[Will]

a full demo build sucks and you cant raid with it and your dmg sucks overall

Since Cataclysm isn't even out yet and we're still in beta, how could you possibly have any idea if demo will suck or be non-viable in raids for cata?

[bbr]

""Someone else is getting Concentration Aura. Place your bets. (Source)""

Priests? I guess.

Shamans already have so much..
Priests are the only class - out of the casters - really lacking a good aura.

[Deleted]

If Dragonmaw rejoins the Horde I want red skin for my Orc.

The Dragonmaw in Azeroth never became fel orcs like the ones in Outland who joined Illidan.

[holyevil44]

blizz dont fucking care about warrior if we are not the last on the dps meter u can bet all the money in the world that we are gona get nerf most guild on my server gona bench dps warrior like in vanilla/bc

[Dexiefy]

they are talking bullshit about rage being infinite yet they made ret and enh having infinite mana, what kind of logic is that?

Why would i want to play warrior and struggle to get rage, while i can just go for ret, have infinite mana and just worry about my abilities cd aswell as getting more tools in my arsenal....

[Deleted]

Just me or is fury pve build forced to take alot of pvp tools atm ?