Updated Tier 12 Set Bonuses, Dance in Combat Hotfix, Blue Posts, Comics

[Boubouille]

A Word on Tier 12 Set Bonuses

We've seen a lot of discussion and debate over the new set bonuses. Just so everyone is aware, we're still assessing the set bonuses for tier 12 as we go through more testing and gathering more feedback.

To give you a heads up on what we're looking at so far though, here are the most recent bonuses we have in mind for some of the sets (some of what's listed below are amendments to the existing bonuses on the PTR).

Some of these bonuses might already be live as of the build pushed earlier this week, while some are yet to be implemented. If your class/specialization isn't listed here, it means the bonuses either haven't changed, or the changes haven't been solidified. Just the same, all of this is subject to ch-ch-changes over the course of the PTR process. Your feedback is appreciated!

• Blood Death Knight 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Dancing Rune Weapon now begins when Dancing Rune Weapon wears off, instead of lasting while Dancing Rune Weapon is active.
  
  
• Frost/Unholy Death Knight 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Your Obliterate and Scourge Strike abilities deal 6% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 seconds.
  
  
• Feral Druid 4-Piece: The bonus to dodge from Barkskin now begins when Barkskin wears off, instead of lasting while Barkskin is active.
  
  
• Restoration Druid 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Your Swiftmend also heals an injured target within 8 yards for the same amount.
  
  
• Holy Paladin 2-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Healing with Holy Shock has a 40% chance to grant you 6% of your base mana.
  
  
• Holy Paladin 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Your Divine Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Light spells also heal an injured target within 8 yards for 10% of the amount healed.
  
  
• Protection Paladin 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Divine Protection now begins when Divine Protection wears off, instead of lasting while Divine Protection is active.
  
  
• Holy/Discipline Priest 2-Piece: Now also triggers from casting Prayer of Mending.
  
  
• Holy/Discipline Priest 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- You have a chance when you cast a helpful spell to summon a Cauterizing Flame at the target’s location. Each second the Cauterizing Flame will heal an injured party member within 20 yards for 9250 to 10750 health. Lasts 5 seconds.
  
  
• Shadow Priest 2-Piece: Now requires the priest to be in Shadowform to be active.
  
  
• Warlock 4-Piece: Now also triggers from casting Drain Soul.
  
  
• Arms/Fury Warrior 2-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced -- Your Battle Shout and Commanding Shout abilities grant you an additional 35 rage. Cannot occur more often than once every 60 seconds.
  
  
• Protection Warrior 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Shield Wall now begins when Shield Wall wears off, instead of lasting while Shield Wall is active.

Current Tier 12 Set Bonuses
For reference, the current T12 Bonuses (PTR Build 14040) are as follow. If a set bonus is different from the one in the post above, the official (blue one) is obviously the most recent

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Death Knight T12 Blood 2P Bonus - Your melee attacks cause Burning Blood on your target, which deals 800 Fire damage every 2 for 6 sec and causes your abilities to behave as if you had 2 diseases present on the target.
• Item - Death Knight T12 Blood 4P Bonus - Your Dancing Rune Weapon grants 15% additional parry chance.
• Item - Death Knight T12 DPS 2P Bonus - Your Horn of Winter ability also grants you 3 runic power every 5 sec for 2 min.
• Item - Death Knight T12 DPS 4P Bonus - Your critical strikes with melee abilities deal 15% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 sec.

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Druid T12 Balance 2P Bonus - You have a chance to summon a Burning Treant to assist you in battle for 15 sec when you cast Wrath or Starfire.
• Item - Druid T12 Balance 4P Bonus - While not in an Eclipse state, your Wrath generates 3 additional Lunar Energy and your Starfire generates 5 additional Solar Energy.
• Item - Druid T12 Feral 2P Bonus - Your attacks with Mangle, Maul, and Shred deal 10% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 sec.
• Item - Druid T12 Feral 4P Bonus - Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to extend the duration of Berserk by 2 sec and your Barkskin ability grants an additional 10% chance to dodge for 12 sec.
• Item - Druid T12 Restoration 2P Bonus - Your periodic healing from Lifebloom has a 40% chance to restore 1% of your base mana each time it heals a target.
• Item - Druid T12 Restoration 4P Bonus - Your Swiftmend also heals an injured target within 8 yards for the same amount.

Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Hunter T12 2P Bonus - Your Steady Shot and Cobra Shot have a 10% chance to trigger a Flaming Arrow, dealing 0% instant weapon damage as Fire.
• Item - Hunter T12 4P Bonus - You have a 10% chance from your autoshots to make your next shot cost no focus.

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Mage T12 2P Bonus - You have a chance to summon a Mirror Image to assist you in battle for 15 sec when you cast Frostbolt, Fireball, or Arcane Blast.
• Item - Mage T12 4P Bonus - Your spells have an increased chance to trigger Brain Freeze, Hot Streak, or Arcane Missiles. In addition, Arcane Missiles is now castable while moving.

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Paladin T12 Holy 2P Bonus - Healing with Holy Shock has a 40% chance to grant you 6% of your base mana.
• Item - Paladin T12 Holy 4P Bonus - Your Divine Light also heals an injured target within 8 yards for 20% of the amount healed.
• Item - Paladin T12 Protection 2P Bonus - Your Shield of the Righteous deals 20% additional damage as Fire damage.
• Item - Paladin T12 Protection 4P Bonus - Your parry chance is increased by 12% while Divine Protection is active.
• Item - Paladin T12 Retribution 2P Bonus - Your Crusader Strike deals 15% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 sec.
• Item - Paladin T12 Retribution 4P Bonus - Increases the duration of your Zealotry ability by 15 sec.

Priest (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Priest T12 Healer 2P Bonus - Casting your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Mending spells cause you to regenerate 2% of your base mana every 5 sec for 15 sec.
• Item - Priest T12 Healer 4P Bonus - You have a chance when you cast a helpful spell to summon a Cauterizing Flame. Friendly raid and party members can use the Cauterizing Flame to be instantly healed for 4625 to 5375. Lasts for 45 sec sec or 10 charges. After using the Cauterizing Flame, players cannot benefit from it again for 10 sec.
• Item - Priest T12 Shadow 2P Bonus - While you are in Shadowform, your Shadowfiend deals 20% additional damage as Fire damage and its cooldown is reduced by 75 sec.
• Item - Priest T12 Shadow 4P Bonus - While you have Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch active on the same target you gain Dark Flames, which reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 3 sec.

Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Rogue T12 2P Bonus - Your melee critical strikes deal 6% additional damage as Fire over 4 sec.
• Item - Rogue T12 4P Bonus - Your Tricks of the Trade ability also causes you to gain a 25% increase to one of your combat ratings at random for 30 sec.

Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Shaman T12 Elemental 2P Bonus - Your offensive spells have a chance to reset the remaining cooldown on your Fire Elemental Totem.
• Item - Shaman T12 Elemental 4P Bonus - Your Lava Surge talent also makes Lava Burst instant when it triggers.
• Item - Shaman T12 Enhancement 2P Bonus - Your Lava Lash gains an additional 5% damage increase per application of Searing Flames on the target.
• Item - Shaman T12 Enhancement 4P Bonus - Your Stormstrike ability also increases Fire damage you deal to that target by 6%.
• Item - Shaman T12 Restoration 2P Bonus - Your periodic healing from Riptide has a 40% chance to restore 1% of your base mana each time it heals a target.
• Item - Shaman T12 Restoration 4P Bonus - Your Chain Heal spell will jump to one additional target.

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Warlock T12 2P Bonus - Your periodic damage has a chance to summon a Fiery Imp to assist you in battle for 15 sec.
• Item - Warlock T12 4P Bonus - Casting your Shadow Bolt, Incinerate, and Drain Soul spells has a 5% chance to increase all Shadow and Fire damage you deal by 20% for 8 sec.

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Item - Warrior T12 DPS 2P Bonus - Your Battle Shout and Commanding Shout abilities grant you an additional 35 rage. Cannot occur more often than once every 60 sec.
• Item - Warrior T12 DPS 4P Bonus - Your Mortal Strike and Raging Blow abilities have a 30% chance to trigger a Fiery Attack, dealing 100% instant weapon damage as Fire.
• Item - Warrior T12 Protection 2P Bonus - Your Shield Slam deals 20% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 sec.
• Item - Warrior T12 Protection 4P Bonus - Your parry chance is increased by 6% while Shield Block is active.

Don't Worry Folks. We Got This.

We've been repeatedly saying in various threads recently that we are listening, even if we're not acting on every piece of feedback we read. Well readers, listen up!

With the help of Ghostcrawler, the following will be added to the patch notes for the next PTR update:

• Players are once again free to dance in combat (without causing graphic errors). Other animations, such as attacks, will take precedence over dancing. The dance animation will be suppressed until the higher priority animation is complete. Fun has been unnerfed.

The concerns of the people vanished. And there was much dancing.

Blue Posts

Patch 4.2 Conquest Points Changes
So, as many of you are interpreting this change, it is to encourage more participation in Rated Battlegrounds. We see the fact that participating in Arenas is by far the superior way of obtaining top-notch PvP gear, in terms of time investment, as a problem. If you want to maximize your Conquest Point gains in patch 4.2, you'll need to participate at least a little bit in Rated Battlegrounds.

We know this may not sound very appealing to those of you who have grown accustomed to spending as little as an hour a week getting the top PvP currency in the game via Arenas over the last couple of expansions. To put things in perspective though, the total number of items that can be purchased with Conquest Points today is much larger than what you used to be able to buy with Arena Points pre-Deathwing world explosion. And there is no longer a requirement to “grind” unrated BGs for Honor each season, so the real time investment isn't changing as much as some players are perceiving it to be.

On top of that, the frank reality is that the total time investment required in season 9 to get all your points has been much, much too low, as you could do that from a few 2v2 Arena games each week completed in less than an hour’s time. It shows that Rated Battlegrounds are currently sub-par in terms of the rate at which points can be accumulated.

We do feel this change is necessary to keep the time investment vs. high-quality item accumulation in check, even if it doesn't read well on paper. However, as always, your constructive feedback is welcomed. :) (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Holy Paladins Nerf in 4.2
We increased paladin mana costs because they were too efficient at healing. In raid encounters, for instance, paladins were sitting at 40% of their mana while the other healers were flat out of mana. Paladins were casting Divine Light as their main heal because they didn’t need the efficiency of Holy Light. You personally may not have been in that situation, but when looking at the overall picture, as well as running plenty of tests, this was our conclusion overall. It is entirely possible this will hurt Holy paladins in PvP, where mana can be harder to come by. It is our hope that the recent Speed of Light change as well as another change or two coming will help offset that.

We did not make these mana cost changes because of the change to critical heals or because of any upcoming set bonuses (which are still being designed, by the way). We made the changes only because paladins were too efficient compared to druids, priests and shaman.

As a postscript, we see a lot of paladins advocating a strategy of Beacon the tank, heal the off-tank with Divine Light, and never ever do anything else... and if you ever heal the Beacon target, you fail. That’s just not a realistic goal. Stuff is going to happen that is unpredictable, or else you’d probably win every fight. You should make the most of Beacon, absolutely. It’s a great tool. But you shouldn’t consider anything that doesn’t maximize Beacon to be a class design or personal performance failure. Sometimes you’re going to want to heal the Beacon target directly. It happens.(Source)

Comics
People threatened to burn me alive because I forgot to post comics this week. Fixed! Dark Legacy Comics #287 and Teh Gladiators #234 + #235 are out!

[Bareno]

Missed ya DLC <3

Don't really get the point of most of the tank set changes...

[Archimand]

the tank changes is simply cus when you use small tanking cooldown as the 20% damage reduction and you add more % to dodge or parry to it that make the tanking cd pointless as there is no reason you will want to take less damage if you gonna dodge/parry it anyway

with the new design you will take less damage for 10sec and after that you avoid more which will make those small cd alot more powerful

[Deleted]

I dont get the warr tank changes, in the datamined it said 6 % block on shield block (30 sec CD) but from blizzard they said they changed the bonus to be after shield wall (2 min cd). But if it occurs after the shield wall, it should be more than 6 % or it could just be after shield block, which would be nice.

[FireBorne]

can I threaten to burn you alive for posting Teh Gladiators?

[steamrice]

holy priest 4p went from crap lightwell 2.0 to 10k hps proc on injured players... damn nice but not sure how often it can proc

[Deleted]

Missed ya DLC <3

Don't really get the point of most of the tank set changes...

Well resto druid one was kinda stupid, it would basically force druids to completely change their specc and actually let lifeblooms wear off instead of keeping them up at all times.

[mathiasschnell]

<3 the new Holy Pally bonuses. Previous ones were already good (compared to this tier at least), but now they're godly.

[Bytecus]

Missed ya DLC <3

Don't really get the point of most of the tank set changes...

The reason is why pop a damage reduction cool down, if you chance not to be hit has just doubled. It's a semi-waste of a cool down.

This way you get more benefit overall.

I like all the redesigns thus far, and props to Disc/Holy 4-Set change, much better.


--------edit

Archimand

Do'h you beat me to it

[arthar77]

can I threaten to burn you alive for posting Teh Gladiators?

are you kidding me -.- poor bastard

[Sinuviel]

I guess they changed Priest tier quite fast after getting priest community feedback, too bad for the shadow 2-piece But at least the healer 4-pieces sounds more interesting now.

[Explosion_Rex]

I wish that as a feral cat Druid I could dps in instances and get dps bonuses on set pieces.... I don't want to tank.

[Durandro]

Healing Priests using 2x 2-set bonuses = SHUT DOW!

[Gaudaloht]

TYPO on blue about tank: is shield block (not shield wall)

[Ave07]

Oh wow conquest change will make a lot of people unhappy and I already checked that thread.

[Explosion_Rex]

are you kidding me -.- poor bastard

In his defense it is the worst damn comic strip ever.

[LordSothe]

Blood Death Knight 4-Piece: The bonus to parry from Dancing Rune Weapon now begins when Dancing Rune Weapon wears off, instead of lasting while Dancing Rune Weapon is active.

Uh... Hooray?

[Keosen]

Let's see now if the challenged will understand that PTR is constantly changing and think twise before whine and start spamming the new topic button

[Nitche]

Like the paladin nerf ;


lol at the 2/2 priest thing ... we got SHUT DOWN .. xD

[kindlin]

In his defense it is the worst damn comic strip ever.

so I'm NOT the only one that hates every "teh gladiators" posted? I stopped seriously reading them a while ago... Every once in a while i check one and it's never any better. I generally enjoy the dark legacy ones tho.