PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part II

Round Two. Fight!

We aren't trying to cut off any discussion, but at nearly 2000 posts in the original thread, we thought it was unlikely many players were going to be able to follow the entire discussion, so let's try a second one.

At this point in 5.2 development, we are greatly slowing down on class mechanic changes. There will still be some, particularly in response to feedback and PTR testing, but ideas for new talents, core spells and the like are even less likely to get our attention now.

We still have not completed our tuning pass. You’ll know we're in the midst of it when you start to see a lot of PTR notes with number tweaks. Having said that, if you have specific concerns about PTR (not live) numbers, and you have some kind of mathematical evidence to back those concerns up, please let us know.

As always, this is not a good thread for whining. No thread is really ideal for whining, but we'll be particularly vigilant here. Sorry to end on a negative note, but it will likely be another long thread and we want to maximize the prospects for communication.

Paladin
To stave off the controversial Protection haste issue, we are making a chance to Grand Crusader to proc from dodge and parry at 30% instead of CS and HotR at 20%. This will improve dodge and parry slightly for active mitigation purposes without negating the +haste slant that many paladins have taken.

Mage
This is very much a PTR experiment, but we are going to try moving Blazing Speed to the top talent tier to replace Scorch. Scorch will become a baseline Fire spell. Blazing Speed’s old position on the talent tree will be replaced with a new talent.

The new talent is currently called Flameglow, and it is a “permanently on” ability that reduces all damage taken by a flat amount, based on spellpower, up to a maximum of 30% of the hit. The intent is to give mages a passive defensive option, and also one that varies with the frequency of incoming damage. Remember, mages must give up Temporal Shield or Ice Barrier to take the new talent.

We agree with the feedback that Blazing Speed makes more sense grouped with the movement talents than with the defensive talents. In addition, we have buffed Ice Floes already from live, and we have added an additional perk that spells cast within the first half a second of Ice Flows don’t consume a charge. Currently if you’re making use of spell queuing, it’s easy to waste the first charge, so this fix is intended to help with that.

That brings us to Scorch. Sorch feels really valuable to many players (above and beyond Arcane using it rotationally to avoid dropping stacks), but we’re concerned that it feels more valuable than it actually is. Yes, Elemental and Hunters can do a lot of damage while on the move, but not every spec in the game needs to do so, and mages have a lot of other advantages. Mages do have several tools to deal with movement, such as several instants and abilities such as Blink and the tier 2 talents to minimize movement time. We’d rather seem mages plan, move quickly, and plant rather than just stay moving all the time. Scorch preempts all of those tools and has the added psychological benefit of feeling like you’re always doing something, and because of that feeling of being productive, we’re concerned you have less motivation to minimize movement. Mathematically, if you’re making full use of your available tools without Scorch, Scorch isn’t much of a benefit of all, and we think the mage class would feel and play better overall without Scorch as a crutch. We debated removing Scorch completely, and we still might, but we’re sensitive to the fact that so many mages are using Scorch today and might not understand or appreciate its loss. As a compromise, we’re going to try Scorch as Fire only to preserve the gameplay for players who really like it and to help differentiate the Mage specs a bit more.

This is a big change, and the kind of thing we might revert if we and you don’t like how it plays. Try it out and let us know.

EDIT: The correct Grand Crusader number is 30% in case you're trying to theorycraft it.

Unless you can demonstrate that "scaling" is going to cause a 5-10% DPS difference between one spec and another within a single tier (say 13 ilevels or so), we're not inclined to mess with it. I'm not trying to dismiss the concerns, but it's become such a buzzword among players that I worry scaling discussions are drowning out other conversations.

Priest
- We are reverting the change to how Devouring Plague deals damage. It will have more up-front damage in 5.2 as it does in 5.1. We think the more recent nerfs to Shadow healing and Phantasm are more appropriate changes for PvP.

You mean that you're leaving haste AS IS for prot, but removing GrandCrusader from proc'ing off of CS/HotR and changing that to dodge/parry? Or do you mean that you're removing Sanctity of Battle for prot, and giving us the above change as the "fix"? Your wording was a little ambiguous, and it makes a HUGE difference about the angry prot pally mob forming or not.

No change to haste, dodge, parry or Sanctity of Battle. Grand Crusader changes to proc on dodge / parry to increase their value for active mitigation.

To address other concerns I've seen: yes, this is a small nerf to DPS when not the focused tank (and is similar to blocks for warriors). Yes, this improved Holy Power generation when AE tanking (but again is similar to Revenge for warriors, which hasn't been a gigantic balance problem). No, you shouldn't have to give up all your haste gear. This change should just let any dodge or parry you do accumulate be more attractive.

The tooltip for PW:S on the PTR was recently updated to show it shielding for 40% more than on live. However, the actual numbers for PW:S on the PTR do not reflect the 40% buff. Can you confirm if this is just a tooltip error or if there is an intended buff to PW:S in the pipeline?

We did not make a change to PW:S points nor is there anything in the patch notes or in one of my posts as far as I can recollect.

I will add that so far on our PTR raid testing, Disc priests are using PW:S along with PoH and not having abnormal HPS or mana problems. Heroic testing will tell more.

Level 90 Hunter Talent - Powershot
Yes you have stated that you are trying to rebuild it, and I am positive that it will be great if you can get it to work properly, but there is no indication that it will be fixed by 5.2

Until a time comes when I say "Sorry, we were not able to get it to work," then you can safely assume our plans have not changed.

Not 30% DR. I made the same mistake by reading it too fast. Read it again, and pay attention this time. It's a flat damage reduction (aka a number such as 3000, 2746, etc.) based on spell power, capped on a maximum 30% reduction. So if a hit would deal X damage, it deals X minus that number, but it cannot reduce the overall damage by more than 30%.

This is correct. Apologies if my initial description was insufficient. The rate of incoming damage is important here.

Thank you for additional feedback from everyone on various topics, though I am of course unable to comment on it all. Also recall my initial post in this thread: we're only interested in 5.2 (not 5.1) DPS comparisons for purposes of this thread, and also, no whining. ;)

Level 90 Hunter Talent - Powershot
Yes you have stated that you are trying to rebuild it, and I am positive that it will be great if you can get it to work properly, but there is no indication that it will be fixed by 5.2

Until a time comes when I say "Sorry, we were not able to get it to work," then you can safely assume our plans have not changed.

In fact, I posted this too soon. We have now completed rebuilding Power Shot and Glaive Toss. Both abilities always hit their primary target and are much more responsive to secondary targets in our initial testing. Once these abilities have been subjected to a QA pass, you can try them in a future PTR build and let us know how they work.

Will the 'always hit' apply to moving targets as well or is it just for stationary targets?

Always hit your primary target, even if moving.

Priest
- We are reverting the nerf to Body and Soul. It will stay at 4 sec duration.
- Holy Fire will be instant baseline. We agree it is an unnecessary nerf to remove that 5.1 functionality, but we also like the range increase from the 5.2 version of the glpyh, so just removing Holy Fire's cast time seems like the right move. Solace will still be positioned as an upgraded Holy Fire that generates mana.
- We understand that reverting the Devouring Plague change (restoring it to its 5.1 functionality) is a nerf to Shadow mastery, but overall we are still sympathetic to the arguments that losing burst from Devouring Plague is a negative in PvE and doesn't really solve the PvP burst problem (which is more about holding procs). We haven't adjusted Shadow's PvE damage yet in any case.

Paladin
- We are going to try Grand Crusader proc'd by CS, HotR and dodge and parry (at lower chances for each).
- We are going to buff Seal of Justice and Seal of Righteousness damage. Neither of these Seals is seeing enough use. Justice was always intended to be a strong PvP Seal, and it just isn't right now. We haven't solidified numbers yet - I'm just sharing our intent.

PvP
We're making a change to the way damage-to-healing conversions work so that the healing is not affected by resilience. The healing will be based on how much damage would have been done as if the target had no resilience. If you hit an opponent for 10K and have a mechanic that converts damage into 50% healing, your hit may land for 6K because of resilience, but the heal will still be 5K (50% of the unmitigated damage). This only applies to resilience, not to armor, Shield Wall or other forms of damage reduction.

This change currently includes Atonement, Glyph of Battle Healer, Ancestral Guidance, Vampiric Embrace, Nature's Vigil, Glyph of Siphon Life, Eminence, Glyph of Flame Shock, Leeching Poison, Death Siphon and Soul Leech.

Related, we have read feedback that certain mechanics, such as Retribution's mastery, Hand of Light, are double-dipping from resilience. If this happened, then your attack would be mitigated by resilience and then the mastery proc (which is supposed to be a percentage of the main attack) would also be mitigated by resilience. However, we can find no evidence that this is actually happening. In our testing, Hand of Light is never mitigated by resilience a second time. If anyone has additional information, please share.

Monk
The 2pc Windwalker PvE bonus no longer drops spheres in a circle. They drop right next to you, much like the Brewmaster's Gift of the Ox, so that you can shift side to side and pick them all up.

Warrior
We are currently trying Overpower on a 1 sec GCD (again). We like the way it feels and we like that it boosts Arms' damage without having to increase the damage of special attacks (which risks PvP burst), so we're going to let you guys try it next PTR build.

EDIT: Forgot Leeching Poison, Soul Leech and Death Siphon.

Leeching poison not getting that change or just forgot to list it?

It is and I did forget (and edited the note above).

Will they still be getting reduced by Battle Fatigue, or are those conversions set to ignore it as well?

Battle Fatigue will still reduce the healing.

I feel like there's a huge disconnect here between the way we play and the way you guys play. The issue with this set bonus isn't the way the orbs are dropped, it's that extra energy is very rarely something we ever need.

Our suspicion is you are viewing this through the lens of 5.1, where you are often GCD capped. The 5.2 mastery changes open up a lot more GCDs (that you can then fill with extra energy). Have you tried the set bonus on the PTR?

Battle Fatigue is gone on the PTR, that's why a ton of feedback about some hybrids heals in the ptr are false. Just saying that this is a cause of some incorrect feedback, and make PVP on the ptr quite frustrating to test.

This is accurate. Battle Fatigue isn't working at the moment on the PTR. We're aware of it and we keep that in mind when evaluating feedback. It's a good idea for you all to do so as well.

I don't care so much about Shattering throw (mostly a PVP thing), or Cleave (I don't mind if it's useless much much HS is for us), but Whirlwind, Sweeping Strikes, and Thunderclap all really need to be looked at.

Awhile ago, we made Whirlwind only cost 20 rage for Arms to address Arms needing to spend more rage on Overpower. I may have forgotten to report it and I don't think it's in the patch notes. Cleave is supposed to be expensive (like Heroic Strike). Thunder Clap is really cheap already. Sweeping Strikes is expensive but also quite powerful so we suspect it's okay, but we'll adjust if needed.

GC currently (on live) Vampiric Touch don't return mana when hit shielded targets, is this intent?

Also, dispelling VT causes it to diminish return itself and Psychic Horror intended as well? I think it devaluate the dispel protection.

The first part (vs. shields) is a bug and now fixed. The second part (the dispel DR) is intended.

the Rogue Assassination ability Venomous Wounds does not currently proc off of absorptions effects;

Also a bug. Most things that proc on an attempt to deal damage should proc if the damage was absorbed.

Paladin
We finished looking at Seal of Righteousness and Justice. Righteousness we ended up buffing by 50% so it should be a good choice against 4 targets instead of 6.

Justice is much more complicated. It was intended as a PvP seal, but the damage loss is so significant and the snare just not that valuable (which is ironic when you consider Ret's history of not being able to catch things), and Burden of Guilt is there if you really do want to snare. Furthermore, just buffing Justice's damage risks Seal twisting in PvE becoming a thing, where you stack up Censure and then swap to Justice. It could be cool if designed right, but would probably just be annoying. We just don't have much room to buff Justice, and players might still forsake it in PvP.

So, we're going to redesign it and attempt to solve another problem, which is Ret's damage outside of cooldowns (which are quite potent). Justice will now proc (and Judgment will count for the proc) a stacking debuff on the target that increases the damage of your next Templar's Verdict. With 5 stacks, this will be a big hit (but not an insta-gib) and opens up some interesting decisions about how to use Holy Power, such as Inquisition or WoG, if you're trying to hold TV. While Truth + Censure will still do more sustained damage overall, there is a chance Justice will see some situational use in PvE, and we're okay with that. Justice is a Ret-only thing, so it should be a Seal they actually use. It won't snare at all, which I expect some will call a devastating nerf, but again, there's Burden of Guilt if you really need a snare.

Combined with removing the snare, it's a really stupid change that solves none of the issues it was meant to and creates others. It's worse than no change, it's active destruction.

We went through several pages (on this and other forums) of Ret paladins saying they'd never use Justice because Truth is a lot more damage, they have Burden of Guilt if they really need a snare (and our numbers suggest plenty of high-end PvP players take it), and there are enough snares from allies that having an easy-to-apply snare isn't even that important.

Likewise, we had a lot of feedback, principally from Ret paladins, that changing Seals (occasionally - not rotationally) was something they wanted to do. Given that Ret has some problems with burst damage outside of cooldowns, we thought this was a good solution. Truth still does more sustained damage, if sustained is important to you, and has some perks such as being able to do damage to two targets at once or apply an anti-stealth dot.

Now given the size and diversity of our player base, it doesn't surprise me that other players will feel differently and expect that Justice is very important in PvP. We have to make these kinds of decisions all the time where we get competing, often contradictory, feedback.

Check it out when it's available on PTR or when we're able to provide actual numbers and let us know how it feels.

(Having a passive snare for Ret that's available all the time with no damage trade-off is just not something we're going to do. Why not just apply a snare when you enter PvP at that point?)

No more embers on SB killing blows (and it only refunds 1 ember period for the very last SB you used if killed in 5 sec).

We didn't make any intentional change here. It could be a bug.

- if you get blanket silenced and a melee attacks you (rogue's garrote comes to mind), they don't get feared, and you still lose the blood horror buff. So I spend health and a cd for no effect at all.

- if a warrior spell reflects, he can successfully reflect blood horror back at the warlock.

Silence shouldn't prevent the horror proc. We'll get that fixed. Warriors can Spell Reflect Nature's Grasp proc, so it seems consistent that they can reflect the Blood Horror proc.

If there are no enhancement buffs after this then they are truly biased.

We asked you not to whine. This is whining. Please don't do it. I don't have a lot of time, so I want to actually get something out of reading this thread, and posts like this just waste my time and that of anyone else trying to read this thread.

My apologies if I sound like a jerk. I'm not going to mention this again.

Currently to maximize DPS Enhance is casting Lightning Bolt before reaching 5 stacks of Maelstorm quite often. This is cause Lightning Bolt does the same amount of damage regardless of how many stacks of Maelstrom you have. As a melee spec I find having to 'stutter step' in order to get casts off is really akward. I was thinking that if Maelstrom Weapon increased the potency of your spells with each stack kind of like how the Healing Storm glyph operates for healing then it would be more favorable to cast an instant spell at 5 stacks as opposed to hard casting prior to the 5th stack.

This is intended behavior. We like that there is some decision about when to use Maelstrom Weapon, and the mechanic has worked this way for some time, possibly always. That said, you don't have to game it. It will be a DPS loss, but not a massive one, if you only use MW at 5 stacks. Do what works for you. Trying to use MW at various stacks to improve your DPS and failing to do so might be lower DPS than always using it at 5 stacks.

That said, HTT swings wildly in the other direction for Restoration due to both Purification and Mastery scaling.

We think this is a legit concern and we're looking at it, but we also want to make really sure any change didn't feel like a massive nerf to Resto, who relies on Healing Tide a lot for group healing. Opening up talent options is important to us, but so is enjoying your class, and big nerfs to talents to make the other choices seem better is a last resort. (Yes, we do it. You don't need to bring up examples of when we've done it. But we don't like to.) It could be that it's not worth the risk of changing, but we are considering how we'd do it.

Any thought on removing preparation all together and lowering the remaining rogue cooldowns. The recent cloak change makes gameplay feel smoother and I'm really digging it.

I don't think we'd remove Prep. Would the design be stronger without Prep and lowered cooldowns? Possibly. But we're convinced what would happen is that all the rogues that love Prep for whatever reason would come out of the woodwork. It's been a core ability forever and all that. Years from now when we did threads asking players what to fix about their class, I'm convinced we'd see "Bring back Prep!" I really don't mean to sound cynical; I'm trying to sound practical.

I know many of you are smart players and you expect all players to be just as logical and objective and see that there is no massive difference between a cooldown that finishes the cooldown or other spells and those spells all having shorter cooldowns. I don't think the reaction would be universal praise though.

If both just do damage, whichever does more wins, which apparently will be Truth.

Sustained damage doesn't count for as much in PvP as being able to land a kill within a narrow window. If you want to have good damage meters at the end of a BG, then Truth may be fine for you (it has other benefits because of the dot as well). If you need to kill someone while their healer is CC'd, then you may not have time to let Censure finish ticking for its full amount.

(The same is true in PvE by the way. Sometimes something needs to die right now.)

I'm fine with switching a seal to snare if I have to, but being forced to spend a talent point for the same mechanic handed to EVERY SINGLE MELEE with zero tradeoff besides maybe a GCD is really irritating.

A GCD is a DPS tradeoff.... Other abilities, like Hamstring, have costs. In any case, we balance classes around their entire package of abilities not single ones. Specs with very good snares often have weaknesses elsewhere.

I made that comment for a very specific reason, which was to try to get players to not lobby for a Seal of Truth-level ability that also snared everyone. And yet, I guess that was a mistake because my making that comment still brought out a lot of lobbying for the very thing I said we weren't going to do. :)

Can you tell us when you'll start doing PvE adjustments?

Soon? We're actually working on it now. I will try to give you our quick summary of who is likely to go up or down so you can prepare for it before you see the notes or datamining.