Trinket Itemization, Cataclysm Talents, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

Trinket Itemization and Philosophy

Our raid item philosophy has evolved a lot since vanilla. The tier sets were once considered a badge of honor. Someone stalking around (or mailbox afking) with their full set bonus might as well have been sporting a legendary item. These days, we virtually guarantee that any player with an interest in raiding is going to be able to complete at least the lowest level version of their set with just a minimal level of persistence. This ultimately serves as a powerful reward mechanism and is in line with our philosophy of letting more players actually see the content.

This design though also has its risks. One of the big ones is that item progression becomes very predictable and deterministic. Imagine (just as an example) a model where all bosses drop emblems and every item you want is for sale. That may sound cool for a few weeks, until you hit the point that without any kind of random element to progression that you can calculate to the day/week at which you will finish gearing up your character. The excitement of what the boss drops would be gone and we feel this would end up making the purpose of clearing new content very underwhelming.

Trinkets are really the one item (weapons are to a lesser extent) that we use to try and capture that old slot machine feel from the classic Molten Core days. Yes, completely random loot with huge loot tables can be frustrating but we are pretty far from being completely random these days. Trinkets however are still somewhat random, they can be hard to acquire, and there is often a lot of competition for them.

Trinkets are also tricky to design because we don’t want them to be just a pile of stats like other items. We generally want them to be unique by having a random proc or an on-use ability or something similar. These types of things are always trickier to balance, but this is also what makes them interesting. We also don’t necessarily want every trinket to be a guaranteed upgrade just because the item level is higher. Knowing what works or doesn’t work for your particular character and play style is one of the ways players have to demonstrate their mastery of the game.

There are some aspects of trinkets for which we think we can do better. For example, it’s annoying when a superior item is on a lower tier of content to where you feel like you have to argue with your guild to go back and farm easy bosses or run a 10 player version when everyone else wants to do 25. Many of the trinkets probably represent too big a dps (or equivalent) jump given how difficult it can be to acquire them. It’s also easy for us to fall into a rut of offering basically the same one every time (often because we know players like it) rather than experimenting with different things. We like to try new things to keep gear interesting for players as we know some have been evaluating trinkets for over five years now.

We also probably just need to drop more of them. That doesn’t mean they should be trivial to acquire, but when say a caster only has 2 good options in Ulduar and 1 requires a hard mode, then there is going to be ton of competition when they do drop. We know it’s rough when the trinket you have been wanting finally drops and you have to roll against 10 other people for it. Having more trinkets would mean more variety, which means players may want different ones and ultimately will be a little more different from their friends/guildmates.

Talent Trees in Cataclysm

I was going to bump this to the General forum, but I think the talent tree comment is worth addressing in the role forums, since it applies to class design.

1) We are changing talent trees, in some cases substantially. The major focus is pruning out boring but valuable talents that passively increase say damage or healing.

2) A secondary focus is to fix the clunky areas (e.g. warlocks having two conflicting range increasing talents). We're not going to remove old favorites or radically change the focus of the trees. You will definitely have to rethink your builds however.

3) Because you earn passive bonuses just for spending points in the tree, those fun, niche or utility talents won't seem as expensive as they do today. We want to create a lot more choices where you are choosing utility vs. utility. We want to see far more "cookie cutter" build guides that say "Spend the last 5-10 points where you want."

4) In some cases, trees will flat out get new abilities. These are in addition to the new level 81+ abilities.

5) You will get 5 additional talent points for the new levels.

6) We are not deepening the trees. This actually unlocks some interesting opportunities. For the first time, you can reach a 51 point talent and a 21 point talent in another tree.

I'll also add that for Lich King we just brought Naxxramas back and adjusted the bosses for 10 and 25 raid sizes. The Cataclysm raids are new content with new maps and new bosses. We're just trying to hit the nostalgia button with mentioning old foes like Ragnaros. Ragnaros may be back, but he's not in Molten Core.

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Blue posts

Invincible as a 25-man heroic mode reward only
Blizzard loves 10-person content guilds just as much as we love 25-person content guilds. The reason for having this mount in the 25-person Lich King encounter has to do with maintaining the proper distribution of such awesomeness. If it were available in the 10-person encounter as well, it may become too prolific and lose some of its initial unique qualities. (Source)

10-Man / 25-Man tuning
The 10-person heroic raid dungeons are tuned in such a way that players do not need to rely on gear from the 25-person normal mode equivalents. We made many adjustments along the way to make that possible. While it can be helpful to obtain additional gear from the 25-person normal modes, it's certainly not necessary and we were pleased to see so many players able to attempt and complete the 10-person heroic encounters in ToC who progressed exclusively from 10-person normal ToC. Often times players feel that they need to obtain items from higher content in order to complete Heroic encounters, when improved strategies would equally suffice.

We will continue watching upcoming content in the future to make certain that we are able to adjust these encounters and keep them aligned with our goals. (Source)

Purified Lunar Dust item budget - Purified Lunar Dust
It is about 22 spell power under budget, and will be fixed. (Source)

Best DPS spec
I think one of the most interesting aspects is to look at those classes where one spec is generally perceived to be "the best."

For rogues, locks and hunters there are some players who choose the "second" spec even at a presumed dps loss. For mages, nearly all go Arcane even though Fire's damage really isn't that bad. (What I mean is that I don't think you can argue Combat, Survival and Destruction all trump Fire to explain why there are more of those specs on this fight). In all four cases, the third spec is pretty dead. (We'll assume the Demo locks are mostly there for DP, which as I've said before is not ideal). (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Death Knights and ranged abilities
It really just comes down to our not wanting death knights to be a ranged class. It is a melee class. Now they have some great ranged tools and some ranged spells, not unlike say an Enhancement shaman who throws out the occasional Lightning Bolt. There's nothing wrong with that. It's only when the DK strategy shifts to favoring ranged attacks too much that we make adjustments. The DK that runs around and does nothing but Icy Touch or Howling Blast or Death Coil feels like a rogue who forgoes combo points and openers and everything just to spam Fan of Knives and nothing else. It would probably even be okay if Death Coil was the largest component of damage, so long as you had to use your melee attacks to set that up first. (Source)

Death Knights tanking
Your understanding in this case does not appear to mesh with reality. There are still plenty of DK tanks in Icecrown.

The death knight was a new class with a lot of cool abilities, lore and a great starting experience. It doesn't surprise me at all that a lot of players flocked to them. When it turned out they were overpowered in dps, PvP and tanking early on in Lich King, that probably encouraged more players to pick them up or stick with them. So it's natural that after several patches the numbers have evened out a bit more, but there are still plenty of DKs and they seem to be doing just fine tanking Icecrown. We'll see if things look different when the hard modes unlock. If DKs (of appropriate gear and skill) struggle on those fights, we'll buff them. (Source)

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Arcane vs Fire
Is Arcane generally above Fire? Yes. The difference may only be 10% though, and Fire is still above many damage specs. Is Arcane so much higher than Fire than Marks is to Survival? Not really. Yet we see more Survival hunters (in this particular data set on one boss) than we do Fire mages. Clearly more is going on that players just gravitating towards whichever spec does the most damage. (The key word is "just." Players definitely like specs that deliver the most damage, but that does not appear to be the sole governing concern in this case.)

There are a lot of things contributing to Arcane beating other mages. Incanter's Absorption is probably way too good in conjunction with kind Disc priests. Arcane benefits a lot on movement fights like PP. Arcane benefits a lot from using those Innervates that the Fire mage can't really use and the healers (for the moment at least) don't really need. As Lhivera points out, Frost can do decent (not stellar) given the chance, but fights like Marrowgar really exploit (in a bad way) Frost's relative lack of pushback resistance.

We'd like to get the mages closer together, and that's something we're still going to work on. ("Wait until Cataclysm" is something snarky players like to say more than we do.) What we don't want to do is suddenly catapult Frost up ahead of Arcane such that every mage feels like they have to change... again. Close, without going over, is kind of the mantra at this stage. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Tier 10 4-pieces Bonus
There is a bug where the pet is not always receiving the damage bonus from the 4PT10 warlock set. We are going to fix it.

The issue of having to recast Corruption in order to benefit from the proc is a much harder problem to solve. We might be able to do something, but we can't promise a good solution there. It is just the nature of the way rolling dots work. You gain the benefit of whatever crit you on when you cast the spell, but aren't going to gain the benefit from procs that occur later on. (Source)

Soul Shards in Cataclysm
Ideally we design it so that you don't need a way to get them back in combat. We think that makes the shards feel more like cooldowns than something you do every time they are on cooldown. (Example: you generally save Heroism / Bloodlust for the best time to use it, not the first available time to use it.) It is definitely possible though that a lock could feel janked if they used their last shard just as a bunch of adds joined the fight or whatever. In that case we might have to add some kind of Evocation-like ability to get the shards back in emergencies.

In a very pure, possibly unrealistic sense, though we'd love to see 3 shards per fight with some kind of cooldown in between the use of each. I mean non-trivial fights here. Maybe you use 1 shard on raid trash and no shards while killing a mob for a quest while leveling. (Source)

[Drizzay]

thank god invicible is only on 25 heroic, ortherwise there ouwl be too many going around

[maxvdakker]

i like the talent trees

[SalcN]

thank god invicible is only on 25 heroic, ortherwise there ouwl be too many going around

Indeed .. i want one tough :<

///Trinkets .. Im a pretty well geared Ret Pala and yet i find myself running around with an ArP-Proc-Trinket cause i simply can't get better (Gief moar Death's Verdict plx)

[Jaqen Hghar]

/drooling at the implications of the talent changes :3

[Deathcold]

Arent we getting new talents in cata?

[Durendal]

I miss setting things on fire

[Frozenbeef]

i thought raggy was dead? wasnt his main goal to try and get back to the elemental plane so he could battle with the other elementals? if killing him just sent him back why didnt he order his minions to attack him?

[H3ll]

4) In some cases, trees will flat out get new abilities. These are in addition to the new level 81+ abilities.

Maybe there is still hope left for ele shams... my 3 button rotation isnt rly that interesting :<

[ike0072]

Ragnaros may be back, but he's not in Molten Core.

LIES! O.O

[Ryme]

thank god invicible is only on 25 heroic, ortherwise there ouwl be too many going around

Yeah, cos 10 man is going to be such a push over...

[WilliamAG]

Talent Trees in Cataclysm

I was going to bump this to the General forum, but I think the talent tree comment is worth addressing in the role forums, since it applies to class design.

1) We are changing talent trees, in some cases substantially. The major focus is pruning out boring but valuable talents that passively increase say damage or healing.

2) A secondary focus is to fix the clunky areas (e.g. warlocks having two conflicting range increasing talents). We're not going to remove old favorites or radically change the focus of the trees. You will definitely have to rethink your builds however.

3) Because you earn passive bonuses just for spending points in the tree, those fun, niche or utility talents won't seem as expensive as they do today. We want to create a lot more choices where you are choosing utility vs. utility. We want to see far more "cookie cutter" build guides that say "Spend the last 5-10 points where you want."

4) In some cases, trees will flat out get new abilities. These are in addition to the new level 81+ abilities.

5) You will get 5 additional talent points for the new levels.

6) We are not deepening the trees. This actually unlocks some interesting opportunities. For the first time, you can reach a 51 point talent and a 21 point talent in another tree.

It sounds like Blizzard is going to widen the talent trees.

It is likely that Blizzard is taking a page from the Feat Trees from Age of Conan. For those who don't know, this is a very good thing. The Feat Trees in Age of Conan was very well thought out and I hope that Blizzard has taken a page from Funcom (creator of Age of Conan) on this.

[Name0]

Blizzard is just way to into wow but i think it will die when starcraft and diablo come out

[Grob]

Blizzard is just way to into wow but i think it will die when starcraft and diablo come out

Why typical mmo-gamer suddenly stop playing WoW for Diablo and Starcraft?

i thought raggy was dead? wasnt his main goal to try and get back to the elemental plane so he could battle with the other elementals? if killing him just sent him back why didnt he order his minions to attack him?

Kael'THas

[Hoodi]

thank god invicible is only on 25 heroic, ortherwise there ouwl be too many going around

Kind of depends how hard he is on heroic lets hope hes a bit of a bitch.

[galvin]

I read it as 5 new talent points, not 5 per level after 80.

[Zyffyr]

It sounds like Blizzard is going to widen the talent trees, and give 25 more talent points to play around with when players reach Level 85.

It is likely that Blizzard is taking a page from the Feat Trees from Age of Conan. For those who don't know, this is a very good thing. The Feat Trees in Age of Conan was very well thought out and I hope that Blizzard has taken a page from Funcom (creator of Age of Conan) on this.

One thing Blizzard is generally very good at is adapting other companies ideas for their own use.

[Spotnick]

Arent we getting new talents in cata?

We are getting Archeology only as far as I know.

[tyrant21]

trinkets randomness does make it more exciting, but also very frustrating depending on your luck, i have killed twin valks 21 times according to statistics and DV dropped one time, only killed saurfang a few times and DBW has dropped once, who knows when it's coming next?

[Kaneiac]

Yeah, cos 10 man is going to be such a push over...

It's more in the way of that if a 25 man HC guild gets invincible, they then send in, what, 2-3 10 man teams that will then clear it, and that's 3-4 Invincibles a week. It makes sense to just be 25.