Why is the Dragon Soul Entrance in the Caverns of Time?
Why is Dragon Soul in the Caverns of Time when the raid takes place at Wyrmrest Temple?
It's not quite as much for story reasons as it is for logistical ones. The raid starts in present day Dragonblight, heads over the Great Seas, and ends at the Maelstrom. The issue is that, unlike most raid instances, these are locations players can go visit in the world at any time. So we had to create instanced versions of them as settings for the raid. Because of this, we needed to put an instance portal somewhere. And due to the fact that the Caverns of Time locale fits with the rest of the story of the patch 4.3 dungeons, it seemed appropriate to put all the portals in the same place. (
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Regular Dungeons at Level 90
There are no level 90 regular dungeons.
The Mists of Pandaria heroic dungeons are easier than the Cataclysm heroic dungeons.* Once we made that decision, we thought that having two versions of the level 90 dungeons (normal and heroic) didn't make sense because they would be very similar in difficulty and offer similar loot. We thought about calling them something besides "heroic," since heroic tends to mean hard to a lot of players, but we also needed to call them something, because some dungeons like Temple of the Jade Serpent have a lower-level and a level 90 version. We thought about calling them "level 90 versions" but figured "heroic" required less explanation. (We also could have dispensed with lower level dungeons, or made lower level versions of the level 90 dungeons, but we felt like both solutions were just to make the nomenclature of "heroic" more clear, which seemed like bad reasons.)
TLDR: Some Mists of Pandaria dungeons have lower level and level 90 versions. Others just have level 90 versions. In both cases, the level 90 versions are called "heroic."
* - If you like very difficult dungeons, Challenge Modes are targeted at you.
But what about queuing for the lower level version at 90? I should be able to join a group of friends of lower levels and have the queue work, like it did in Wrath.
If the leader of the group meets the requirements (meaning is below level 90 in this case), I believe they can still queue you, especially if your group is completely premade. I'd have to check this though. We went back and forth on it. In any case, you can always just show up at the entrance to the dungeon the old-fashioned way and zone in.
In general, we don't want players using Dungeon Finder to queue for lower level content that is much too easy for them because then players who want to run the content at the appropriate level are faced with overpowered players who trivialize the experience, or pull aggro off a lower level tank, etc. We have no problem with you running lower level dungeons, provided other players aren't adversely affected.
Are Challenge mode dungeons going to offer more than just speed runs and a flat ilvl? I love the idea but I hopes it's more than just racing against a clock in an easy dungeon in the gear it's meant to be ran in.
At the Bronze level, you'll do good to just complete the dungeon in a reasonable amount of time, but you'll probably need to take it slow and stop and plan. It isn't just a test of who has the fastest movement speed. At the Gold level, you'll need to up your game even more and play smart as well as quick, taking risks where appropriate. The Bronze level is more like Heroic Arcatraz, Shadow Labyrinth or Shattered Halls when they were new. Gold level is more like a Zul Aman bear run when you didn't overgear the content.
That's the intent anyway. Nobody outside these walls has seen them yet so you'll have to let us know how they feel.
Are they actually tuned harder or is it the ilevel lock on them that is suppose to make them hard?
They are tuned harder. There are even some additional pulls and mechanics when necessary. (
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Rogue (
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Rogue Class Design
Rogues are in a pretty good place in Cataclysm in both PvE and PvP. We don't see a lot of huge glaring problems that need to be fixed. I realize there are several players out there asking for change just because they're getting bored of the same class or at the very least wanting to spice it up, and that is a totally valid way to feel. But you also have to consider the risk we'd take for all of the rogues out there who are totally happy with the way their class is playing now, thank you very much.
As an example, we changed paladins in Cataclysm because we thought they needed a resource mechanic to make their gameplay more interesting. Overall we're happy with the way that has played out, and it's even better in Mists, but it's also very easy to find "please remove Holy Power" posts regularly. While we disagree with those players, the fact remains that we made the class worse for them.
To use a second example, we are changing warlocks pretty extensively for Mists because we thought they had several fundamental problems. Is every warlock going to like those changes? Of course not. Are there going to lots of players who beg us to revert the changes? Absolutely.
(And this is all ignoring the risk that even changing a mechanic from an acknowledged bad design to a good design still risks frustrating or annoying many players just because they have to relearn something.)
We are trying to fix some of the annoying things rogues have had to deal with and we are trying to offer some options in talents and glyphs that can help spice up the gameplay for someone who has been loyally Sinister Striking for these eight years. But we also don't want to fix what isn't broken. We try really hard not to change classes for the sake of change. It's hard. But we try.
I'd go as far to say that most of the class team would probably agree (and I didn't poll them, so I may be sticking my neck out) that the rogue is the best designed class. And much of that design was in place before virtually any of us started working on classes, so we can't even really take credit for it. The rogue has the best resource system (energy), a strong kit, a good toolbox, and a clear role in PvP and PvE, yet it still has disadvantages to go along with the advantages and can't just do everything flawlessly all the time. It's a good design, again in our humble opinions, which is why you see so few changes to the class overall. But please don't over-read that as my stating that we won't fix bugs, add polish, balance numbers, undo bone-headed design flaws when the need arises, or yes, add a little bit of newness once in awhile just to keep things shiny. (
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Highlighting Some Major Issues
Homogenization - to a large extent, this is fallout from the decision to make spec choice one about rotation and move utility into talents or the class as a whole. We felt like we had been moving in the direction of having 30 classes (which would be 34 in Mists) and wanted to get back to our roots a bit and have a rogue feel like a rogue. I realize that isn't going to sit well with a player who wants Combat to play wildly different from Subtlety. If you feel like the combat rotations of the 3 rogue specs play too similarly, then that is useful feedback for us, but realize that it's going to be fairly subjective.
Play speed - the real issue here is the game design that requires us to reset player power to a large extent every expansion. I'll go ahead and call it a design flaw, because I think it is, but it's also a really difficult one to address and have WoW still feel like WoW. Our reward system is structured around continually offering more powerful gear, yet our combat mechanics begin to break down when say your crit chance approaches 100% and your haste becomes so high that you can fill every GCD. It's fine if say crit chance is 70% at the final tier of content, but that means we have to start every expansion with small crit chances (or have lame upgrades). It absolutely sucks though to see your combat ratings plummet when you gain a level (which is supposed to be a fun, exciting thing that you want to do). We'd love to come up with a solution where you feel more powerful at 86 than you did at 85, but math works against us. The only silver lining is that when you get to level 90 and accrue some good gear, you'll start to feel like your old self again. We'll keep trying to come up with something better.
Passive damage - there are advantages and disadvantages of passive damage. One of the big ones, for us, is it ensures that the best players can never move too far ahead of the worst players. It's fine if good players can do much higher damage than bad players. It makes our lives very difficult if the best players do say ten times the damage of bad players, given similar gear and everything else. We also like the differentiation we get from having classes with a larger or smaller percentage of passive damage. As long as you can still improve your performance as your skill and gear increase, and you can with rouges, we think the system will work.
PvP talents - I feel like we have addressed this concern extensively. If you are never called upon to snare adds, move quickly, hit something at range, pop a survival cooldow, crowd control a dangerous creature, or interrupt a dangerous cast, then you're doing relatively easy content. Talents aren't going to be as interesting in that situation, but then again neither are gear, skill, group comp, and all of those other things that can make the difference between success and failure when the latter is a possibility. Most classes still have a few talents that are more damage or healing though. We did take a few abilities for various classes and move them into the talent trees, but we felt we had to in order to make the talents powerful. We can make a CC potent when you have to choose one. It would have to be weak if you were able to layer it along with other forms of CC. The way we figured, if there was an ability you really wanted, you still had access to it, but you could also choose to give it up for another ability that is (hopefully) just as good but a little different.
Breaking the rules - I regret a little making that comment, because I feel like it's the kind of thing that gets lawyered. "GC said the theme was breaking the rules. If we can prove that the rules aren't being broken, then they will be forced to redesign the talents." Yes, your class, like every class, has some inherent disadvantages. Yes, it would be easier to play your class if we removed those limitations. (Rogue target switching would be much easier if cps were on the rogue.) But part of mastering your class is being able to overcome those challenges. An analogy I use a lot is that racing games would be easier without curves. Those tracks would also be pretty boring. It's also the argument you used above about passive damage - if there are no limitations to overcome, then it's harder to distinguish yourself.
I realize I didn't say "yep we agree and here is how we're going to buff you," but you have to realize that isn't going to happen very often. If we thought a class mechanic needed changing, we would go ahead and change it. We wouldn't wait for a request to change it. I try to avoid responses like this because it can bum players out if they don't see a bunch of incoming buffs, but the alternative is not many posts from us, which can also bum players out. (
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