Recent patch 5.2 notes Discussion at blizz HQ

Hehe, I will say that I got a bit of a chuckle from that comic. :p

06/02/2013 00:35Posted by Pudger

I think its cute that its implied blizzard have a board meeting about pvp balance and get a bunch of feedback from all the devs.

Of course they do, they have regular meetings to discuss both game balance and the feedback they receive from the community. Just because you do not agree with some changes does not mean that they ignore your feedback or don't care, they simply cannot implement every change that the community mentions, especially if they feel it's not entirely beneficial to the health of the game.

06/02/2013 00:40Posted by Xavieric

What else is there? Surely its not discussed over a game of Countryside Golf, now is it? xD

I love golf, I wish I had someone to discuss World of Warcraft with over golf! :O

05/02/2013 22:53Posted by Xavieric

http://imageshack.us/f/580/officememeblizz.png/

On the topic of the Flameglow talent that is mentioned in this comic, I think there are some misunderstandings on how this new talent functions which I would like to address. First of all, this new talent for mages functions as follows:

Protects you with fiery energy, absorbing [ 20% of Fire Spell Power ] damage from each attack against you (up to a maximum of 30% of the attack).

Too many people are focusing on this talents potential to protect the mage from a maximum of 30% of an attack, where you must realise that under the more dire of circumstances where damage is high, it's protection is quite minimal. With most mages only just breaking 20,500 spell power unbuffed they will only protect themselves for a maximum of 7,000 damage with full procs and buffs, and 5,000 under normal buffed circumstances.

Let's take Ice Barrier which is also in the same tier as Flameglow, for a mage who has 20,000 spell power it will absorb approximately 70,000 damage. For Flameglow to absorb this damage at the same amount of spell power, you would need to take more than 17 hits where each hit does a minimum of 14,000 damage. Another situation you need to consider is that when big burst damage comes in to play.

If you are about to be hit hard, let's say you get hit by a big skill for 70,000 damage. At 20,000 spell power again, your Ice Barrier will absorb all of this, your Flameglow however will only absorb a measly 4000 damage and you will get hit for 66,000.

As you can see, Flameglow is certainly a good talent but it is not an outright winner against either Ice Barrier or even Temporal Shield. They all simply offer different situational uses and styles of gameplay. I would think that Flameglow works best against DoT's or lots of low damage, whereas Ice Barrier would be better against holding up against larger, more bursty damage.

Edit - whoops, paragraphing! :O