Ghostcrawler

„So Long, and Thanks for All the Spectral Fish” wysłany: 11 lat temu

First.

„So Long, and Thanks for All the Spectral Fish” wysłany: 11 lat temu

You know that part at the end of raid night when the final boss is dead and you’re done handing out loot and everyone kind of goes their separate ways? Yeah, this is one of those times.

We just came off of a great BlizzCon. We had so many different games to talk about, and we were thrilled at the reception of Warlords of Draenor. It was great to meet or reconnect with so many of you. I love BlizzCon dearly, which makes it so hard to tell you that this will be my last one, or at least my last one up on stage. An opportunity has come my way, and I have made the very tough decision to move on from Blizzard.

I wanted to thank all of you for being a part of this grand quest. I have said a hundred times that having passionate gamers, including the angry ones, is a far better place to be than having a community that doesn’t care. You all care. Like us, you want the game to be the best that it can be. So I ask you to keep on providing your feedback. I promise (and I rarely promise!) that the developers care very much about what you have to say.

I’ll be out there, and I can’t imagine it will be that hard to find me.

Hugs,
Ghostcrawler

P.S. No, you can’t have a pony. Or a moose. Or a mantis shrimp. Or a tardigrade. Or a crab. Keep trying though.

P.P.S. I play a Holy Priest.

„Coffee with the devs: Dissecting Patch 5.4 Class Changes” wysłany: 11 lat temu

Yeah, I know, long time no coffee table. I’ve been busy.

I wanted to take a moment to provide context for some of the Patch 5.4 class changes that we’ve been making. If you haven’t already, you’ll want to get acquainted with the 5.4 PTR Patch Notes, as this watercooler is going into detail on the changes listed. I’ll discuss the changes to each class, but here are a few things to keep in mind before we get started:

The team made a lot of changes to glyphs that weren’t working out well or were just to provide some new choices. There were a lot of changes so to keep this blog manageable, I’m not going to go into them in detail.
I’m not going to get into specific damage or healing tuning unless it requires extra explanation for some reason. In general, you can assume that your damage was too low or too high if you see generic buffs or nerfs to abilities.
As I write this, Patch 5.4 has not shipped yet, so if there are changes yet to come, I’m obviously not going to be able to cover them!

One final caveat: please don’t consider the number of changes or the size of the paragraphs as an indication of the degree to which we love or hate your class. When players start weighing the number of words we use on each class, the end result is just to make us less likely to want to engage in discussions like this. Paladins and Hunters have a lot of words below because their changes are fairly complex and I felt they required more explanations than other classes.

With all that in mind, here we go!

Death Knight
Most of our core changes were to Blood DKs. We added the Riposte passive to DKs (and Warriors) to allow them to increase their damage using the avoidance stats that naturally occur on their tanking gear. We also removed the Runic Power cost of Dancing Rune Weapon to allow it to be used more as a cooldown when needed. Finally, we changed Scent of Blood to also be proc’d by avoidance, to make sure avoidance stats can help provide more active mitigation.

In terms of DK talents, as with all the classes, our primary goal was to open up some more talent choices and address some underpowered talents. While Anti-Magic Zone was capable of mitigating a lot of damage when used at precisely the right time, it was also easy to not gain the full benefit of the cooldown. We changed it to just be damage reduction similar to Power Word: Barrier. We also buffed Death Siphon and Plague Leech, which were underutilized.

Druid
We buffed Guardian spec Stamina outright because we felt the spec needed it. Druids have less reliable damage reduction, which isn’t a problem itself, so long as they have the health pool to compensate for it. For Feral Druids, we reverted an earlier nerf to Cyclone’s cooldown but removed Cyclone from Predatory Swiftness. We felt like this ability had become a PvP problem that was too unpredictable to counter. We also lowered the PvP duration of Faerie Fire to make it less of a hard counter to stealthed players. We changed Innervate to scale with Spirit so it would scale with gear better. We also made a few changes to the Restoration healing toolkit. Our change to Efflorescence is an attempt to get Swiftmend back to its original design of being a potent single-target heal. We’re making that change slowly by having the 5.4 Efflorescence glyph move the ground heal from Swiftmend to Wild Mushrooms. We further tweaked Wild Mushrooms for Restoration by limiting it to a single mushroom.

We had several specs whose passive damage reduction we felt was starting to cause balance problems, and Balance’s Moonkin Form was among these. Originally we converted the physical damage reduction to spell damage reduction at a time when the spec needed a PvP buff, but we felt like the fact that Balance required less healing in PvE was causing raids to favor them over other casters.

Most of the changes to Druid talents were because of the situation where certain specs leaned heavily on certain talents in a row and tended to ignore the others—Dream of Cenarius, Force of Nature, Nature’s Vigil, and Soul of the Forest fall into this category. We changed Nature’s Swiftness to be a core Restoration ability because we felt the healers were dependent upon it. We replaced it with a new passive talent, Ysera’s Gift.

Hunter
We had three main issues we wanted to resolve for Hunters this patch: Silencing Shot, Readiness, and Stampede.

The problem with Silencing Shot is it’s just too powerful as a talent. No self-respecting Hunter is going to choose any talent but Silencing Shot, especially in PvP, but in PvE as well. At the same time, we think Hunters, especially Beast Mastery, have proven really powerful in PvP this expansion—and frankly the game has too many blanket silences already, so we didn’t want to just give Silencing Shot to all Hunters. Our decision was to give Silencing Shot to Marksman, who needed a PvP buff anyway. We did give all Hunters a base interrupt with the new Counter Shot, which can interrupt a spell being cast, but can’t pre-silence a caster.

increasingly making them difficult to tune in PvP. When you take a spec with high burst and good control and then give them Mastery that links the two together, you’re bound to have trouble. The new Mastery, called Icicles, spreads the burst out over a few seconds but in a novel way that doesn’t feel too similar to, say, Ignite. As a consequence, we removed the mechanic where Frostbolt buffs other spells and just let those spells do higher damage to begin with. As of this writing, we haven’t made any mechanical changes to Fire, though if you saw any earlier patch notes, we experimented with a few. Long term, we still have concerns about the interplay between Alter Time and Combustion, and we still have concerns about Fire scaling with Critical Strike, but we’re not convinced either of these problems is so egregious that it needs to be fixed in Patch 5.4.

In terms of talents, we increased the damage of the bomb tier, and buffed Ice Flows and Temporal Shield, which were underutilized. Long term, we still think the level-90 tier needs some work, but we were concerned that attempting to replace two or three of these talents for Patch 5.4 would lead to a lot more iteration before they felt good again. But we did ease the restrictions on Rune of Power. Since it didn’t feel like a crisis, we think more dramatic change is better saved for an expansion, when we have more time to consider new visuals, test, and get feedback.

Monk
Earlier in the PTR cycle, we attempted to solve Mistweaver mana problems, by which I mean Mistweavers didn’t have to stack Spirit to the extent other healers did. We became concerned that it would take quite a number of changes to solve this problem, resulting in a lot of relearning for players, so we agreed to accept the current status quo and balance Mistweavers around the fact that they have less Spirit (and therefore more of other secondary stats) compared to other healers. For Windwalkers, we redesigned their Mastery (yet again) and buffed the Storm, Earth, and Fire ability so that the cleave aspect of the cooldown would feel really potent.

Brewmasters were in pretty good shape, but we did feel like Keg Smash made their damage too high compared to other tanks.

Several Monk talents were underpowered or difficult to use. We buffed Chi Brew, Zen Sphere, Power Strikes, and Healing Elixirs. We made Xuen easier to control by providing him with a true pet bar. We changed Chi Burst to require no target. Ring of Peace has a better visual that’s more representative of the affected area, and we tweaked its numbers. We didn’t think we could solve Rushing Jade Wind’s problems, namely that it was too similar to Chi Burst, so we redesigned it as a replacement for Spinning Crane Kick.

Paladin
Most of our core changes were to Holy Paladins. Specifically, we felt like the healing style of blanketing a group with Eternal Flame to proc absorbs from Illuminate Healing had become too widespread, and didn’t fit the healing style we wanted for Paladins. When some Paladins choose to use a heal-over-time spell, that’s the kind of diversity we want the talent tree to deliver. However, when every Paladin uses heal over time spells, then it’s just the way Paladins work.

In this case, we didn’t want to make Eternal Flame a core ability. Unlike Restoration Druids, Mistweaver Monks, and to a lesser extent Holy Priests, we don’t think every Paladin should be extensively using heal-over-time spells. The only change we made was to have Eternal Flame’s periodic heal not proc the Illuminated Healing absorb. It can still be used the way any HoT is used, to provide a buffer that can be layered with other heals, but it will no longer be an efficient way to blanket many targets with long-lasting absorbs. We made significant changes to Sacred Shield and Selfless Healer as well to help offset this nerf, which I’ll discuss below.

We also felt like Seal of Insight had a design problem. When Holy Paladins could melee targets, they had no mana problems at all, but when they had to heal at range (which we wanted to at least be an option, if not the default healing style), they suffered for mana. We thought it best to unshackle Holy Paladins from the pressure of having to stand in melee, so we removed the mana return from Seal of Insight and buffed Divine Plea. We had to provide more mana to Protection Paladins as well, since they typically tank using Seal of Insight. We also buffed Guardian of Ancient Kings for Holy, because we felt like it was too focused on single-target healing at a time when most healers are required to do a lot of area healing. Finally, we allowed the Sanctity of Battle passive to also affect Holy Shock, with the intent of making Haste slightly better for Holy.

Aside from the mana buff mentioned above, we changed Crusader Strike to also provide Weakened Blows as a quality of life improvement. We also changed Grand Crusader to proc from avoidance instead of attacks. We aren’t trying to make Dodge or Parry a Paladin’s best tanking stats, but those stats are going to appear on tanking gear, so we want to make sure they can tie into active mitigation. We’re happy with how active mitigation is working out overall and we want to put even more emphasis on it, for all tanks, in the future.

Retribution didn’t need much attention overall in our minds, but we did make Inquisition require less maintenance overall, and we reduced the cooldown and strength of Guardian of Ancient Kings, so that Retribution could use the cooldown more frequently. Retribution players had concerns that their damage was too tied to long cooldowns.

For Paladin talents, we tried to improve Selfless Healer for Holy by allowing Judgment to provide Holy Power, and we tried to improve Sacred Shield by removing the target cap and having a cooldown and charges instead. We’ve come to the conclusion that the same talent choices for healers and other specs just won’t always work, which is why you increasingly see talents work slightly different for healers in the case of Paladins, Priests, and Druids in particular. We replaced Burden of Guilt as a talent (and made it a slightly weaker glyph) with the ability to use Turn Evil on players. We hope that this will open up some PvP comp choices for Paladins, since fears are not always easy to get. We buffed Hand of Purity so that it will still have some benefit on boss abilities that can’t be prevented from immunities. We buffed Sanctified Wrath for Holy and Protection. We also simplified Unbreakable Spirit by just having it apply the cooldown all the time rather than having to be “driven down.”

Priest
We made a few changes to each Priest specialization. For Discipline, while we don’t think the shields, Atonement, or potent cooldowns are overpowered individually, we felt that having all three in one spec gave them too much versatility compared to the other healers. We know Atonement is fun, and while it’s useful, it doesn’t truly compete with a dedicated healer or DPS, so we think it’s in a good spot. We like Discipline to have a strong shield kit, and we’re happy to see more Power Word: Shield use in 5.2 than in 5.0. That left the cooldowns as targets, and we felt like Spirit Shell was the right one to nerf. We also felt like Rapture scaling so well with Spirit turned what was originally supposed to be a mechanic offering a discount on Power Word: Shield to reward smart use had instead become a bona fide mana regeneration mechanic. For Holy, we buffed Sanctuary and Serendipity to help keep Holy in mana a little longer. We also finally gave in and reversed Lightwell and Lightspring, so that the more passive (and popular) totem-like use of the spell became the default. We reduced the damage reduction of Shadowform as we did for Hunters and Balance Druids, because we felt like it offered too much of a passive benefit. We also completely rebuilt Shadowy Apparitions so that it keeps the kit of a delayed source of damage, but won’t get stuck on terrain or objects or struggle with bosses that move or fly.

For Priest talents, we are trying one more time to make Angelic Feather compete with the other movement talents, and let Mindbender and From Darkness, Comes Light compete better with Solace and Insanity. We also buffed Divine Insight for Discipline and Twist of Fate for all three specs.

Rogue
We buffed Evasion for Rogues outright to increase their survivability against melee. We also buffed Recuperate because we agree that it went from being a potent heal in Cataclysm to a more middling one in MoP. The other core changes were really focused on Combat. We increased the cost and damage of Sinister Strike in order to help address Rogues having too much energy with high Haste values, which led to a spammy, RSI-inducing style. (It’s fine for Combat to feel fast-paced, but it had gotten out of control.) To offset the loss of combo points from less frequent Sinister Strikes, we added (or returned, depending on your point of view) the Ruthlessness passive. The other Combat change was to redesign the targeting system of Killing Spree. Killing Spree now hits a single target if used without Blade Flurry. During Blade Flurry, it continues to work as it does on live.

For talents, we were worried in previous patches that we had overbuffed Burst of Speed, but clearly that is not yet the case, so we lowered its cost. We buffed the numbers on Cheat Death, Cloak and Dagger, Night Stalker, Paralytic Poison, and Shadowstep, since they were seeing less use than other talents.

Shaman
We’re happy with Enhancement and Elemental performance overall, but we are keeping an eye on their burst in PvP. We did feel that Restoration wasn’t really delivering on healing when grouped and stationary, which should be a Shaman’s strength. To remedy that, we changed Chain Heal to no longer decrease effectiveness per jump and buffed Healing Rain’s radius and healing. We also gave Healing Tide Totem to all Shaman, because we felt like Restoration was never going to choose another talent so long as they had the option to choose a group healing cooldown.

With Shaman talents, we still had the problem that some talents were only attractive to some specializations. We buffed Astral Shift, Stone Bulwark Totem, and Unleashed Fury for this reason. We had to replace Healing Tide Totem, so we introduced Rushing Streams, which allows Healing Stream Totem to heal two targets at once. We redesigned Conductivity to make it more useful for all Shaman by having it increase the duration of Healing Rain, saving GCDs (global cooldowns). We were convinced that Totemic Restoration was just a problematic talent. It saw little use in PvE, but was really annoying to deal with in PvP, since a Shaman could just drop totems for a split second and benefit from their effects. The replacement talent, Totemic Persistence, allows Shaman to summon a second Water, Earth, or Air totem without destroying the first one. (Including Fire Totems would have been a non-trivial DPS increase, making this the only talent attractive to Elemental or Enhancement.)

Warlock
Because Warlocks had so many changes coming into Mists of Pandaria, we had to iterate on a lot of these new mechanics throughout the expansion and tried to not change things too much for Patch 5.4. We did nerf Fel Armor for the same reasons we lowered the passive damage reduction of Balance Druids, Shadow Priests, and Hunters. We increased Fel Flame’s damage but removed its DoT extension, which had become a liability for Fel Flame in PvE rather than letting it provide damage on the move as it was intended. For Affliction, we shifted more damage to DoTs and away from Malefic Grasp. Malefic Grasp is a cool spell, and we like channeling it to increase DoT damage, but we felt like too much damage had been shifted away from DoTs, which hurt Affliction in PvP and made all Affliction locks have difficulty moving. We also simplified the Soul Swap mechanic slightly by removing the glyph and the initial damage component. For Destruction, we changed Rain of Fire to not be so essential to the single-target rotation by reducing its Ember generation. We made Howl of Terror baseline for all Warlocks because we thought they had lost too much of their fear-based control package.

Our biggest challenge with Warlock talents was the level-90 tier, where most Warlocks chose Kil’jaeden’s Cunning (often to the frustration of raid leaders forced to deal with slow-moving Warlocks). We removed the snare from KJC but reduced the number of spells it affected. The talent should help with movement but not guarantee characters never need to stop moving. We buffed Mannoroth’s Fury by allowing it to increase the damage as well as radius of area-effect spells, but on a cooldown so the Warlock has more control over the effect and so it’ll feel more potent when active. We decided we could not safely balance Archimonde’s Vengeance in its “damage reflection” kit, so we redesigned and renamed the talent to emphasize the Dark Soul cooldowns (with the intent that one talent needed to be attractive in fights with no movement or area damage).

In addition to these substantial changes to the level-90 row, we wanted to buff several unattractive talents. Harvest Life never had a strong niche, so we made it improve Drain Life rather than act as an area-effect Drain Life. We replaced Howl of Terror (now baseline) with a talent inspired by the Cataclysm version of Shadowflame that many players asked for. Demonic Breath is a cone-based snare. Soul Link was also returned to an older design which is easier to use and more powerful.

Warrior
Most of our Warrior changes were to increase Protection Warrior damage, try to improve the area-effect and cleave damage of Arms, or to address PvP quality-of-life issues. Buffing Blood and Thunder helped both Arms and Protection. Changing Enrage and Ultimatum for Protection Warriors provided both more damage and active mitigation by making Critical Strike a more valuable stat. We don’t expect Prot to heavily stack crit, but they’re going to have some anyway just from core stats and group buffs, and it does open up the possibility of using crit gear. We also gave Protection the same Riposte ability we gave to Death Knights, to make sure the avoidance stats that do show up on tank gear provide some active mitigation.

For Arms, we reduced the cost of Thunder Clap, buffed Sweeping Strikes, and gave Slam a cleave ability. We didn’t think Fury needed much attention overall, though we did change the animation system to allow them to dual-wield polearms. For the PvP changes, we reduced the cost of Shattering Throw, gave the Safeguard root break to Intervene baseline, took Hamstring off the global cooldown, and reduced the cooldown of swapping stances. We also made a change to allow Shield Wall and Spell Reflect to not require a shield to be equipped, but to still provide the visual cue that a Warrior was using these abilities by having a shield visually appear even if one was not technically equipped.

For Warrior talent changes, we buffed Bladestorm, Enraged Regeneration, Impending Victory, Storm Bolt, Vigilance, and Warbringer in addition to the Safeguard change mentioned above to open some more choices for Warriors, especially in PvP. We understand that Shockwave is hard to live without in PvP, but we didn’t think that was easily fixable without nerfing Shockwave—and probably speaks more for to the relative strength of stuns compared to other forms of crowd control, which is something we’d like to address long term. (Perhaps stuns need to be shorter, dispellable, or break on damage so they aren’t quite so game-changing.)

Final Thoughts
So there you have it. Hopefully you now have a little more insight into why we’re making the changes we’re making. I know it can feel like the developers are out to punish players sometimes, but really our primary goal is to keep everyone having fun. That includes redesigning awkward mechanics and buffing weak spells, but it also means nerfing overpowered mechanics so that other classes or specs don’t feel as if they can’t compete. We made a lot of talent and glyph changes because we want to deliver on the promise that players have a lot of choices in both of those systems. I won’t pretend that we’ll get everything perfect this time around either, but we should be closer. Please keep providing us with specific, constructive feedback. We still have time to respond to feedback, even after the patch launches.

As far as coffee with the devs go, I will personally try to get back to releasing them more frequently than I have over the past few months. No promises, but the one I am thinking of now is my own personal preemptive post-mortem of Mists of Pandaria. We’re very proud of the expansion overall, but we’re also our own harshest critics.

Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is one of the lead designers on World of Warcraft. He has been bitten by, but not limited to, the following animals: Atlantic brief squid, Roseate spoonbill, Texas ribbon snake, coatimundi. Follow him on Twitter at @Ghostcrawler.

„Dev Watercooler: Dissecting Patch 5.4 Class Changes” wysłany: 11 lat temu

Yeah, I know, long time no watercooler. I’ve been busy.

I wanted to take a moment to provide context for some of the Patch 5.4 class changes that we’ve been making. If you haven’t already, you’ll want to get acquainted with the 5.4 PTR Patch Notes, as this watercooler is going into detail on the changes listed. I’ll discuss the changes to each class, but here are a few things to keep in mind before we get started:

The team made a lot of changes to glyphs that weren’t working out well or were just to provide some new choices. There were a lot of changes so to keep this blog manageable, I’m not going to go into them in detail.
I’m not going to get into specific damage or healing tuning unless it requires extra explanation for some reason. In general, you can assume that your damage was too low or too high if you see generic buffs or nerfs to abilities.
As I write this, Patch 5.4 has not shipped yet, so if there are changes yet to come, I’m obviously not going to be able to cover them!

Readiness has been another problematic ability for us to solve. It started as a talent, but was too good compared to the other choices. We ended up giving Readiness to all Hunters, but we were never happy with this implementation. For PvP, it made Hunters really difficult to balance with the ability to reset so many offensive and defensive abilities. For PvE, we felt like Readiness wasn’t doing anything interesting besides making the opening attack sequence twice as complicated as it needed to be. If Readiness was an ability that a clever Hunter would bust out at a clutch moment, then you could argue it would be an interesting ability, but of course it was never actually used that way. Given that Hunters already have a lot of cooldowns, situational abilities, and just buttons in general, we didn’t think Readiness was worth saving. We did make small buffs to Deterrence and Disengage and we will make sure DPS is where it needs to be (which, if I had to guess, will be relatively higher than it was in Patch 5.3).

We felt like Stampede had been nerfed too much in PvE for PvP reasons. It’s the intent that Stampede is a potent cooldown for Hunters, so we increased its damage back to an exciting level and just had it do less damage in PvP. Finally, we made a change that some (though to be fair not all) Survival Hunters had asked for a long time, to remove Explosive Trap from Lock and Load (and therefore from the shared cooldown with Black Arrow) so that they could use Explosive Trap (typically with the knockback glyph) without interfering with Black Arrow/Lock and Load.

Hunter talents were in a pretty good spot overall after a bit of iteration throughout MoP. We did nerf Aspect of the Iron Hawk, because as with Shadow Priests and Balance Druids, we felt like the damage reduction was just too potent. We changed Narrow Escape to be dispellable as a PvP nerf. We buffed Spirit Bond, which has felt particularly weak, and we buffed A Murder of Crows.

Mage
We didn’t think Mages needed many changes overall. One goal of ours was to fix Frost Mastery, which we felt was increasingly making them difficult to tune in PvP. When you take a spec with high burst and good control and then give them Mastery that links the two together, you’re bound to have trouble. The new Mastery, called Icicles, spreads the burst out over a few seconds but in a novel way that doesn’t feel too similar to, say, Ignite. As a consequence, we removed the mechanic where Frostbolt buffs other spells and just let those spells do higher damage to begin with. As of this writing, we haven’t made any mechanical changes to Fire, though if you saw any earlier patch notes, we experimented with a few. Long term, we still have concerns about the interplay between Alter Time and Combustion, and we still have concerns about Fire scaling with Critical Strike, but we’re not convinced either of these problems is so egregious that it needs to be fixed in Patch 5.4.

In terms of talents, we increased the damage of the bomb tier, and buffed Ice Flows and Temporal Shield, which were underutilized. Long term, we still think the level-90 tier needs some work, but we were concerned that attempting to replace two or three of these talents for Patch 5.4 would lead to a lot more iteration before they felt good again. But we did ease the restrictions on Rune of Power. Since it didn’t feel like a crisis, we think more dramatic change is better saved for an expansion, when we have more time to consider new visuals, test, and get feedback.

Monk
Earlier in the PTR cycle, we attempted to solve Mistweaver mana problems, by which I mean Mistweavers didn’t have to stack Spirit to the extent other healers did. We became concerned that it would take quite a number of changes to solve this problem, resulting in a lot of relearning for players, so we agreed to accept the current status quo and balance Mistweavers around the fact that they have less Spirit (and therefore more of other secondary stats) compared to other healers. For Windwalkers, we redesigned their Mastery (yet again) and buffed the Storm, Earth, and Fire ability so that the cleave aspect of the cooldown would feel really potent.

Brewmasters were in pretty good shape, but we did feel like Keg Smash made their damage too high compared to other tanks.

Several Monk talents were underpowered or difficult to use. We buffed Chi Brew, Zen Sphere, Power Strikes, and Healing Elixirs. We made Xuen easier to control by providing him with a true pet bar. We changed Chi Burst to require no target. Ring of Peace has a better visual that’s more representative of the affected area, and we tweaked its numbers. We didn’t think we could solve Rushing Jade Wind’s problems, namely that it was too similar to Chi Burst, so we redesigned it as a replacement for Spinning Crane Kick.

Paladin
Most of our core changes were to Holy Paladins. Specifically, we felt like the healing style of blanketing a group with Eternal Flame to proc absorbs from Illuminate Healing had become too widespread, and didn’t fit the healing style we wanted for Paladins. When some Paladins choose to use a heal-over-time spell, that’s the kind of diversity we want the talent tree to deliver. However, when every Paladin uses heal over time spells, then it’s just the way Paladins work.

In this case, we didn’t want to make Eternal Flame a core ability. Unlike Restoration Druids, Mistweaver Monks, and to a lesser extent Holy Priests, we don’t think every Paladin should be extensively using heal-over-time spells. The only change we made was to have Eternal Flame’s periodic heal not proc the Illuminated Healing absorb. It can still be used the way any HoT is used, to provide a buffer that can be layered with other heals, but it will no longer be an efficient way to blanket many targets with long-lasting absorbs. We made significant changes to Sacred Shield and Selfless Healer as well to help offset this nerf, which I’ll discuss below.

We also felt like Seal of Insight had a design problem. When Holy Paladins could melee targets, they had no mana problems at all, but when they had to heal at range (which we wanted to at least be an option, if not the default healing style), they suffered for mana. We thought it best to unshackle Holy Paladins from the pressure of having to stand in melee, so we removed the mana return from Seal of Insight and buffed Divine Plea. We had to provide more mana to Protection Paladins as well, since they typically tank using Seal of Insight. We also buffed Guardian of Ancient Kings for Holy, because we felt like it was too focused on single-target healing at a time when most healers are required to do a lot of area healing. Finally, we allowed the Sanctity of Battle passive to also affect Holy Shock, with the intent of making Haste slightly better for Holy.

Aside from the mana buff mentioned above, we changed Crusader Strike to also provide Weakened Blows as a quality of life improvement. We also changed Grand Crusader to proc from avoidance instead of attacks. We aren’t trying to make Dodge or Parry a Paladin’s best tanking stats, but those stats are going to appear on tanking gear, so we want to make sure they can tie into active mitigation. We’re happy with how active mitigation is working out overall and we want to put even more emphasis on it, for all tanks, in the future.

Retribution didn’t need much attention overall in our minds, but we did make Inquisition require less maintenance overall, and we reduced the cooldown and strength of Guardian of Ancient Kings, so that Retribution could use the cooldown more frequently. Retribution players had concerns that their damage was too tied to long cooldowns.

For Paladin talents, we tried to improve Selfless Healer for Holy by allowing Judgment to provide Holy Power, and we tried to improve Sacred Shield by removing the target cap and having a cooldown and charges instead. We’ve come to the conclusion that the same talent choices for healers and other specs just won’t always work, which is why you increasingly see talents work slightly different for healers in the case of Paladins, Priests, and Druids in particular. We replaced Burden of Guilt as a talent (and made it a slightly weaker glyph) with the ability to use Turn Evil on players. We hope that this will open up some PvP comp choices for Paladins, since fears are not always easy to get. We buffed Hand of Purity so that it will still have some benefit on boss abilities that can’t be prevented from immunities. We buffed Sanctified Wrath for Holy and Protection. We also simplified Unbreakable Spirit by just having it apply the cooldown all the time rather than having to be “driven down.”

Priest
We made a few changes to each Priest specialization. For Discipline, while we don’t think the shields, Atonement, or potent cooldowns are overpowered individually, we felt that having all three in one spec gave them too much versatility compared to the other healers. We know Atonement is fun, and while it’s useful, it doesn’t truly compete with a dedicated healer or DPS, so we think it’s in a good spot. We like Discipline to have a strong shield kit, and we’re happy to see more Power Word: Shield use in 5.2 than in 5.0. That left the cooldowns as targets, and we felt like Spirit Shell was the right one to nerf. We also felt like Rapture scaling so well with Spirit turned what was originally supposed to be a mechanic offering a discount on Power Word: Shield to reward smart use had instead become a bona fide mana regeneration mechanic. For Holy, we buffed Sanctuary and Serendipity to help keep Holy in mana a little longer. We also finally gave in and reversed Lightwell and Lightspring, so that the more passive (and popular) totem-like use of the spell became the default. We reduced the damage reduction of Shadowform as we did for Hunters and Balance Druids, because we felt like it offered too much of a passive benefit. We also completely rebuilt Shadowy Apparitions so that it keeps the kit of a delayed source of damage, but won’t get stuck on terrain or objects or struggle with bosses that move or fly.

For Priest talents, we are trying one more time to make Angelic Feather compete with the other movement talents, and let Mindbender and From Darkness, Comes Light compete better with Solace and Insanity. We also buffed Divine Insight for Discipline and Twist of Fate for all three specs.

Rogue
We buffed Evasion for Rogues outright to increase their survivability against melee. We also buffed Recuperate because we agree that it went from being a potent heal in Cataclysm to a more middling one in MoP. The other core changes were really focused on Combat. We increased the cost and damage of Sinister Strike in order to help address Rogues having too much energy with high Haste values, which led to a spammy, RSI-inducing style. (It’s fine for Combat to feel fast-paced, but it had gotten out of control.) To offset the loss of combo points from less frequent Sinister Strikes, we added (or returned, depending on your point of view) the Ruthlessness passive. The other Combat change was to redesign the targeting system of Killing Spree. Killing Spree now hits a single target if used without Blade Flurry. During Blade Flurry, it continues to work as it does on live.

For talents, we were worried in previous patches that we had overbuffed Burst of Speed, but clearly that is not yet the case, so we lowered its cost. We buffed the numbers on Cheat Death, Cloak and Dagger, Night Stalker, Paralytic Poison, and Shadowstep, since they were seeing less use than other talents.

Shaman
We’re happy with Enhancement and Elemental performance overall, but we are keeping an eye on their burst in PvP. We did feel that Restoration wasn’t really delivering on healing when grouped and stationary, which should be a Shaman’s strength. To remedy that, we changed Chain Heal to no longer decrease effectiveness per jump and buffed Healing Rain’s radius and healing. We also gave Healing Tide Totem to all Shaman, because we felt like Restoration was never going to choose another talent so long as they had the option to choose a group healing cooldown.

With Shaman talents, we still had the problem that some talents were only attractive to some specializations. We buffed Astral Shift, Stone Bulwark Totem, and Unleashed Fury for this reason. We had to replace Healing Tide Totem, so we introduced Rushing Streams, which allows Healing Stream Totem to heal two targets at once. We redesigned Conductivity to make it more useful for all Shaman by having it increase the duration of Healing Rain, saving GCDs (global cooldowns). We were convinced that Totemic Restoration was just a problematic talent. It saw little use in PvE, but was really annoying to deal with in PvP, since a Shaman could just drop totems for a split second and benefit from their effects. The replacement talent, Totemic Persistence, allows Shaman to summon a second Water, Earth, or Air totem without destroying the first one. (Including Fire Totems would have been a non-trivial DPS increase, making this the only talent attractive to Elemental or Enhancement.)

Warlock
Because Warlocks had so many changes coming into Mists of Pandaria, we had to iterate on a lot of these new mechanics throughout the expansion and tried to not change things too much for Patch 5.4. We did nerf Fel Armor for the same reasons we lowered the passive damage reduction of Balance Druids, Shadow Priests, and Hunters. We increased Fel Flame’s damage but removed its DoT extension, which had become a liability for Fel Flame in PvE rather than letting it provide damage on the move as it was intended. For Affliction, we shifted more damage to DoTs and away from Malefic Grasp. Malefic Grasp is a cool spell, and we like channeling it to increase DoT damage, but we felt like too much damage had been shifted away from DoTs, which hurt Affliction in PvP and made all Affliction locks have difficulty moving. We also simplified the Soul Swap mechanic slightly by removing the glyph and the initial damage component. For Destruction, we changed Rain of Fire to not be so essential to the single-target rotation by reducing its Ember generation. We made Howl of Terror baseline for all Warlocks because we thought they had lost too much of their fear-based control package.

Our biggest challenge with Warlock talents was the level-90 tier, where most Warlocks chose Kil’jaeden’s Cunning (often to the frustration of raid leaders forced to deal with slow-moving Warlocks). We removed the snare from KJC but reduced the number of spells it affected. The talent should help with movement but not guarantee characters never need to stop moving. We buffed Mannoroth’s Fury by allowing it to increase the damage as well as radius of area-effect spells, but on a cooldown so the Warlock has more control over the effect and so it’ll feel more potent when active. We decided we could not safely balance Archimonde’s Vengeance in its “damage reflection” kit, so we redesigned and renamed the talent to emphasize the Dark Soul cooldowns (with the intent that one talent needed to be attractive in fights with no movement or area damage).

In addition to these substantial changes to the level-90 row, we wanted to buff several unattractive talents. Harvest Life never had a strong niche, so we made it improve Drain Life rather than act as an area-effect Drain Life. We replaced Howl of Terror (now baseline) with a talent inspired by the Cataclysm version of Shadowflame that many players asked for. Demonic Breath is a cone-based snare. Soul Link was also returned to an older design which is easier to use and more powerful.

Warrior
Most of our Warrior changes were to increase Protection Warrior damage, try to improve the area-effect and cleave damage of Arms, or to address PvP quality-of-life issues. Buffing Blood and Thunder helped both Arms and Protection. Changing Enrage and Ultimatum for Protection Warriors provided both more damage and active mitigation by making Critical Strike a more valuable stat. We don’t expect Prot to heavily stack crit, but they’re going to have some anyway just from core stats and group buffs, and it does open up the possibility of using crit gear. We also gave Protection the same Riposte ability we gave to Death Knights, to make sure the avoidance stats that do show up on tank gear provide some active mitigation.

For Arms, we reduced the cost of Thunder Clap, buffed Sweeping Strikes, and gave Slam a cleave ability. We didn’t think Fury needed much attention overall, though we did change the animation system to allow them to dual-wield polearms. For the PvP changes, we reduced the cost of Shattering Throw, gave the Safeguard root break to Intervene baseline, took Hamstring off the global cooldown, and reduced the cooldown of swapping stances. We also made a change to allow Shield Wall and Spell Reflect to not require a shield to be equipped, but to still provide the visual cue that a Warrior was using these abilities by having a shield visually appear even if one was not technically equipped.

For Warrior talent changes, we buffed Bladestorm, Enraged Regeneration, Impending Victory, Storm Bolt, Vigilance, and Warbringer in addition to the Safeguard change mentioned above to open some more choices for Warriors, especially in PvP. We understand that Shockwave is hard to live without in PvP, but we didn’t think that was easily fixable without nerfing Shockwave—and probably speaks more for to the relative strength of stuns compared to other forms of crowd control, which is something we’d like to address long term. (Perhaps stuns need to be shorter, dispellable, or break on damage so they aren’t quite so game-changing.)

Final Thoughts
So there you have it. Hopefully you now have a little more insight into why we’re making the changes we’re making. I know it can feel like the developers are out to punish players sometimes, but really our primary goal is to keep everyone having fun. That includes redesigning awkward mechanics and buffing weak spells, but it also means nerfing overpowered mechanics so that other classes or specs don’t feel as if they can’t compete. We made a lot of talent and glyph changes because we want to deliver on the promise that players have a lot of choices in both of those systems. I won’t pretend that we’ll get everything perfect this time around either, but we should be closer. Please keep providing us with specific, constructive feedback. We still have time to respond to feedback, even after the patch launches.

As far as watercoolers go, I will personally try to get back to releasing them more frequently than I have over the past few months. No promises, but the one I am thinking of now is my own personal preemptive post-mortem of Mists of Pandaria. We’re very proud of the expansion overall, but we’re also our own harshest critics.

„Battleground Feedback - Deepwind Gorge” wysłany: 12 lat temu

We have a new Battleground in patch 5.3 and we'd like to hear your feedback! Please use this thread to specifically focus on Deepwind Gorge mechanics and not general PvP issues.

What did you like?

What did you not like?

How long are the battles lasting?

Were the objectives clear?

Were there any areas of the map that were difficult to fight in?

Anything else you want to add?

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Then why is it okay to force every Unholy DK to go Frost?

That's not the intention. Now it's not realistically possible to have Unholy and Frost do idential DPS on every single boss given how different mechanics are, and that's not really our goal anyway. For players who care about 1% theoretical DPS changes, they will probably just swap specs constantly, and there isn't much we can do to change that behavior. What we do try to do is get things close enough so that someone who loves Frost and can play Frost on every encounter and someone who loves Unholy can play Unholy on every encounter. In 5.1, Unholy's DPS was probably a little too low (though take the huge sampling bias in mind when comparing DPS on sites such as Raidbots). Through all the changes going into 5.2, we found that Unholy had such an advantage that we were scared we had tipped the scales too far in the opposite direction and would see every DPS DK abandon Frost, so we buffed Frost a little again. Do we always balance these things perfectly? Of course not, and sometimes despite our best intentions Arcane ends up ahead of Fire or BM ends up ahead of Marks, or there are just more encounters that favor one over the other or whatever. Realistically our only solutions are to keep trying (which is our plan) or just give up and accept that some DPS specs aren't really for raiding (which we think would be really lame).

Prior to these buffs, we'd estimated 2h Frost and Unholy were close on most single target scenarios while DW pulled ahead in cleave.

Hey GC, so the weakest Warlock spec (destro) gets the lowest RPPM on the meta gem?

So You Are Buffing Classes Yet Again That Do Not Need A Damage Increase, Brovo!

Don't understand why buff assassination and not combat?! Combat still behind assassination...

And combat? just 5% Vitality buff, why assassination got so many buffs? Just because of the T15 raid set bonus? and pvp as combat rogues?

Yeah, my above comments apply to every DPS class. “Why did you buff Spec X when they were already tied with Spec Y? Do you hate Spec Y and want us to only play Spec X?”

We’re making these changes based on actual data and test results. Unfortunately, the primary tool the community uses for comparing and reviewing test results (World of Logs) hasn’t worked for 5.2 PTR at all, as far as we know (largely I believe to some well-meaning changes we added to let players better track things like attack power and mana gains). That basically restricts performance measurements to occasional Recount screenshots or LFR streams. This has added a fog of war effect to class balance tweaking that didn't exist last patch.

As I said in an interview recently, it's our job to balance the game. A lot of players want to help, and we appreciate that, but it's not something every forum poster needs to concern themselves with. We don't mind you challenging any of our assumptions, but try to do so in a reasonable manner, ideally with some kind of data to back it up. Most importantly, don't freak out. That just drags the conversation down for everyone.

To be clear, we buffed Frost DKs yesterday, because they were significantly behind Unholy, and we want them to be equal. Same with Assassination (compared to Combat), and Shadow. Also, for clarification, we are explicitly not using legendary meta gems as a form of balance tuning knob. We’re balancing specs without the legendary meta gems, and we’re also balancing the performance gain of the legendary meta gems. Players will have a variety of gear levels, and we strive to balance them all.

We've been told many times over the course of this testing that ret was around the same spot as the other melee specs in terms of single target but that ret was lacking in the AOE/Cleave department and that was something you were going to look at.

Since the Seal of Righteousness change, Ret is actually one of the best specs at clumped AE. I’d encourage you to try it out. Now, AE is a pretty broad encompassing term and it depends a lot on number of targets, length of the fight and so forth. Players tend to focus less on the encounters that are considered easy and a lot more on those that are considered blocking, so the specific encounter mechanics of the hardest fights become the yardstick of which kind of AE is considered important at any point in time.

I assume that you mean ranged, melee or spell haste (whichever is higher) right? Otherwise hunters will lose the benefit of RPPM scaling on ranged specific haste abilities like rapid fire and focus fire. I also assume that when you refer to non-melee specs you mean non-physical specs. Sorry to be picky about language but based on past history it's necessary to verify these things.

Yeah, sorry, I meant ranged/melee/spell haste for determining RPPM proc rate. And yes, clarification on Rune of Re-Origination: The *0.1 proc multiplier is for non-Agility users, not non-melee.

For clarification, does the last statement about the proc rate multipliers apply to all the agility trinkets or just the Rune of Re-Origination?

Just Rune of Re-Origination.

Do you currently have any plans to change/alter the elemental shaman tier 15 4 piece set bonus?

We did. It's -1.5 sec per Lava Burst.

[Re: Unerring Vision having a 0% proc chance for “non-caster” specs] Does anyone know if healers fall into this group?

No, it will proc for healers.

As others have asked, was the RPPM change live?

It's not always easy for us to keep track of when certain PTR builds were triggered so it's possible it was excluded, but my guess is that it was on PTR for about a week.

I noticed none of the buffs mentioned earlier are in the updated patch notes. I dont know if it is a mistake or just not implemented yet?

If they aren't live yet, they should be soon. Sometimes there is a lag for late changes, but we haven't reverted them.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

So the Windwalker proc rate is the same regardless of whether they use 2hand or DW?

Yes.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Recent DPS Tweaks

- Might of the Frozen Wastes includes melee damage by 20%, up from 15%.
- Icy Talons increases attack speed by 30%, up from 25%.
- Threat of Thassarian now increases Frost Strike damage by 50%, up from 40%.
- Assassin's Resolve now increases damage by 30%, up from 20%.
- Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 25%.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Meta Gem Madness

Okay, these should be the correct meta gem proc rates. I also updated the melee ones, just because that's the kind of thing we are going to continually tweak until we're happy with them. The caster ones should be more sane.

Capacitive
1.136 Combat
1.789 Assassination
1.114 Subtlety
1.339 Arms
1.152 Fury SMF
1.257 Fury TG
1.721 Feral Cat
1.532 Frost DK 2H
1.134 Frost DK DW
0.838 Unholy
1.295 Retribution
0.809 Enhancement
1.087 Monkbot
0.950 Beast Mastery
1.107 Marksmanship
0.950 Survival

Sinister
0.761 Arcane
0.302 Fire Mage
1.387 Frost Mage
0.625 Affliction
0.598 Demonology
0.509 Destruction
1.891 Elemental
1.872 Moonkin
0.933 Shadow

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Destruction: 9.631

GC wat r u doin

GC stahp

Yeah, you're right. Those numbers make no sense. I transposed a column or something. Actual numbers coming when I get a chance. My apologies to anyone who tried to model the Sinister Primal.

I double checked all the other numbers and they appear correct, though we may continue minor tweaks.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Apparently I hadn't mentioned the RPPM haste changes before and this is the first you're hearing of it. My mistake. It's hard to keep straight sometimes what we've discussed internally and what we've shared publicly.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Updated Trinket and Meta Gem numbers

Warning: Arcana! This information is targeted at theorycrafting. You don't need to read any of the following to benefit from these items in patch 5.2.

RealPPM Functionality Changes
We changed RealPPM to use your true melee haste or spell haste (whichever is higher) to scale the proc rate instead of attack speed or casting speed. The difference is that things that buff your attack speed (such as the raid buff or Slice and Dice) do not increase the frequency of RPPM procs. True haste boosts, such as Bloodlust or haste rating on gear will improve proc rate. We felt this change was necessary to balance proc rates among different specs.

Trinkets

Agility DPS
- Vicious Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault – 15% chance on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 105 sec ICD.
- Renataki’s Soul Charm – 0.56 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 22 sec ICD.
- Talisman of Bloodlust – 3.00 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.
- Bad Juju – 0.50 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD. Voodoo Gnomes are mostly for flavor and deal ~200 damage before armor per hit.
- Rune of Re-Origination – 0.92 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 22 sec ICD
- Proc rate multiplied by 0.1 for non-melee specs. Proc rate multiplied by 0.25 against player controlled units. Proc rate multiplied by 1/(1.15^((528-ItemLevel)/15) for the various Item Level versions of the trinket.

Strength DPS
- Brutal Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault - 15% chance on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 75 sec ICD.
- Fabled Feather of Ji-Kun - 0.56 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 22 sec ICD.
- Primordius’ Talisman of Rage – 3.00 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.
- Spark of Zandalar - 5.00 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.
- Gaze of the Twins – 0.75*(1+MeleeCritChance) RealPPM on critical harmful abilities and spells, periodic spell, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.

Intellect DPS
- Volatile Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault – 15% chance on landing harmful spell. 45 sec ICD.
- Wushoolay’s Final Choice – 0.56 RealPPM on damage/absorb from harmful abilities and spells, and periodic spells. 22 sec ICD.
- Breath of the Hydra – 0.50 RealPPM on damage/absorb from periodic spell. No ICD.
- Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen – 0.50 RealPPM on damage/absorb from harmful spells and periodic spells. No ICD. Proc rate multiplied by 0.00 for non-caster specs. Proc rate multiplied by 0.5 for Balance Druids. Proc rate multiplied by 0.25 against player controlled units. Proc rate multiplied by 1/(1.15^((528-ItemLevel)/15) for the various Item Level versions of the trinket.
- Cha-Ye's Essence of Brilliance – 0.77*(1+SpellCritChance) RealPPM on critical harmful spells and periodic spells. No ICD.

Healer
- Soothing Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault – On Use, 180 sec CD.
- Horridon's Last Gasp – 1.00 RealPPM on heal from helpful spell and periodic spell while in combat. No ICD.
- Inscribed Bag of Hydra-Spawn – 1.13 RealPPM on heal from helpful spell and periodic spell while in combat. 17 sec ICD.
- Stolen Relic of Zuldazar – 3.00 RealPPM on attempting helpful spell while in combat. No ICD. Use effect has a 20sec CD.
- Lightning-Imbued Chalice – 3.00 RealPPM on heal from helpful spell and periodic spell while in combat. No ICD.

Tank
- Steadfast Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault – On Use, 120 sec CD.
- Fortitude of the Zandalari – On Use, 120 sec CD.
- Delicate Vial of the Sanguinaire – 4% chance on dodge melee ability or swing. No ICD.
- Ji-Kun's Rising Winds – 100% chance on taking damage from melee abilities or swings, that leaves you below 35% health. 30 sec ICD.
- Soul Barrier - On Use, 120 sec CD.

Legendary Metagems

Capacitive Primal Diamond – 21.00 base RealPPM on landing melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.
- At 5 stacks, fires a Lightning Strike, which deals [280 + 75% AP] Nature damage. This is considered a ranged attack for Hunters, and a melee attack for everyone else.
- Base proc rate is multiplied by an additional coefficient:
Assassination: 1.089
Combat: 1.232
Subtlety: 0.388
Feral: 2.397
Windwalker: 0.495
Beast Mastery: 0.960
Marksmanship: 0.984
Survival: 0.714
Enhancement: 0.266
Retribution: 1.199
Frost DK (2H): 2.098
Frost DK (DW): 1.479
Unholy: 0.639
Arms: 1.783
Fury (TG): 0.944
Fury (SMF): 0.596
Anyone Else: 1.000

Sinister Primal Diamond – 1.18 base RealPPM on damage/absorb of harmful or periodic spell. No ICD.
- That base proc rate is multiplied by an additional coefficient:
Arcane: 0.282
Fire: 1.155
Frost: 0.589
Demonology: 0.519
Affliction: 0.610
Destruction: 9.631
Elemental: 3.489
Moonkin: 6.192
Shadow: 0.495
Anyone Else: 1.000

Courageous Primal Diamond – 1.40 RealPPM on attempting helpful spell. No ICD.

Indomitable Primal Diamond – 1.40 RealPPM on damage/absorb taken from melee ability or swing. No ICD.

EDIT: Apparently I hadn't mentioned the RPPM haste changes before and this is the first you're hearing of it. My mistake. It's hard to keep straight sometimes what we've discussed internally and what we've shared publicly.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Here are some recent changes:

- Renewing Mist - mana cost reduced 10%.
- Healing Rain - mana cost reduced 15%.
- Beast Cleave - damage increased from 30% to 50% of original damage.
- Critical Mass - nerf reverted. It's back to 30%.
- Pyroblast - direct damage reduced 10%.

The mana changes were to help less well geared healers. The Beast Cleave change was because we felt Survival's multi-target damage was too far ahead. We don't mind good AE as a spec niche, but it shouldn't be so high that you feel like an absolute idiot for not swapping to that spec. (This is the same mentality we used when trying to tone down without destroying Combat rogues being good at cleaving.) The Fire changes were because we needed to nerf Fire to keep other mage specs competitive in PvE in 5.2, but we agree that nerfing Critical Mass unfairly targets less well geared players, and that the spec is just less fun if it crits too rarely. (Long term, we might investigate some of the non-linear percent scaling suggestions players have made.)

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

What I'm wondering, is how long it'll take you to notice/nerf/fix fistweaver monks using agility 2h weapons while fistweaving. Is that going to be intended game play?

Do you have some evidence or numbers of this? We've heard it a few times from the community, but we don't see how it would work.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Monk
- We'd rather you try out Soothing Mist in a combat situation rather than try to predict how it will feel, but the chi proc chance is 15% plus 15% for each tick that it doesn't proc. The chance to generate chi increases with each tick that doesn't proc and resets when it does.

Could we get some clarification on how the "time since last chance to proc" variable in the RPPM equation interacts with ICDs?

For RPPM procs with ICDs, none of the attacks during the ICD are considered chances to proc. So if I have a 22 sec ICD, the first attack after the ICD ends will have the full capped 10 sec ICD. In other words, option “A”, as you have it working already.

Jabx2 - BOK costs 6% more mana (100% increase), requiring BOK to be preceded by jab to proc muscle memory. The cleave change is a nice mechanic change and will make BOK circumstantially less unviable.

Against a single target, you should pretty much never be using 2 Jabs in a row (at least when efficiency is a concern). To Blackout Kick, you’ll use a Jab plus the chi from Renewing Mist. In a 3+ target situation, you’ll likely want to use Spinning Crane Kick instead of Jab, which is considerably more efficient, and does more damage.

Surging Mist now costs 8.8% of base mana, up from 8%.

It already did cost 8.8% mana by default. The glyphed version was mistakenly still at 8%.

Water Jet is back on the Frostbolt tooltip. As much as I would dearly like this to indicate a return for Water Jet in some form, am I right in assuming this is just a result of a rollback to the tooltip of the version that buffed Frostbolt's damage? (Or, of course, just a datamining error.)

Unfortunately, that is just a persistent tooltip bug. We still are interested in the concept, but are not introducing Water Jet for now.

I would really like to know why Monk healers were given a dps increase and healing decrease?

Assuming you’re talking about fistweaving, that’s always been the intention (and always been the case). Fistweaving is an alternative that provides less HPS in exchange for very significant DPS.

Think about it like this:

Holy priest / Mistweaving monk: 100% healing
Combat rogue / Windwalker monk: 100% DPS
Atonement priest / Fistweaving monk: 50% DPS AND 50% healing at the same time

DPS Tuning

- Standard, yes, this is a roller coaster. Our process is to try things out and iterate if we don't like them. If the churn offends you, just hang on for another week or two.
- Undid the buff to Vitality for Combat. It's back to 30% AP.
- Partially reverted the -25% nerf to Execute. It's now -15%. (As mentioned previously, we adjust the meta-gem.)
- Rising Sun Kick now increases your damage to the target by +10%, down from +15%.
- Sword of Light now increases damage by 15% up from 10%.
- Haunt now increases damage to the target by 30% up from 25%. This is partially in compensation because we also nerfed Sacrifice for Affliction because it was looking too mandatory.
- Partially reverted the buffs to Conflag and Immolate. They were +20%, and are now +15%.
- We are concerned that fully geared Subtlety, Enhancement and Windwalker DPS are still too high. None of these are particularly easy specs to play, so it might be okay that given that players won't realistically be able to hit their theoretical maxima. Just wanted to let you know they are on our radar.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Do the spirits from the DK 2-piece DPS set "snapshot" your stats like the Ghoul do upon summoning?

Neither the 2T15 Zandalari or your Ghoul “shapshot” stats (and hasn’t since 5.0).

GC, when dealing with the Rune [of Re-Origination] trinkets, will the only difference be between the three trinkets be the agility on the three or will there be a further adjustment of stat allocation.

The proc frequency changes based on the ilvl of the trinket:

541 ilevel = 112.88% proc multiplier
535 ilevel = 106.74% proc multiplier
528 ilevel = 100.00% proc multiplier
522 ilevel = 94.56% proc multiplier
502 ilevel = 78.49% proc multiplier
463 ilevel = 54.57% proc multiplier

This counts for both Unerring Vision and Rune of Re-Origination.

Are there any plans in 5.2 for changing or removing the ability to build up Tigereye Brew stacks before a pull and use them as a pre-pot? I grow tired of casting Spinning Fire Blossom.

Yes. The charges and buff are cleared upon beginning raid boss combat. Ultimately we'd like to remove the burden from players for any behavior like this, such as using Holy Shock to stack up 5 Holy Power prepull. We just have to be clever about it to distinguish between this annoying use and a legit use, such as pulling a boss quickly after trash, the way you might in Challenge Modes.

Druid
- The Symbiosis version of Dispersion is now 3 min.

Hunter
- Dismiss pet now has a 3 sec cast time (up from 2 sec). This is to discourage swapping pets in the middle of PvP to get a different form of CC.
- Powershot now cancels Camo when the cast begins rather than the shot landing. Powershot is much more effective in 5.2 since it is so reliable now.

Mage
- Incanter's Ward can now be dispelled. We agree with the concerns that the 30% damage buff is a significant contributor to mage PvP burst and often one not recognized by the recipient of said burst.

Monk
- Spear Hand Strike's silence has been reduced to 2 sec.

Meta-gems and Trinkets
- All of the PvE Legendary meta-gems, the Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen and Rune of Re-Origination now have a reduced chance to proc against players. We're not crazy about hidden penalties like this, but we don't want PvP players to feel obligated to pursue these raid items in order to stay competitive.

DPS Tuning
- We overshot the mark on DKs and hunters a little, and we think warriors need that Execute nerf after all. All of this may change tomorrow as we look at different situations, so don't overly freak out about anything.

Death Knight
- Might of the Frozen Wastes to 15% melee damage (down from 20%).
- Icy Talons increases attack speed by 25% (down from 30%).
- Blood Plague and Frost Fever damage +15% (down from +30%).
- Howling Blast damage to primary target +8% (down from +23%).
- Scourge Strike damage +3.8% (down from 7.7%).

Hunter
- Chimera Shot damage +25% (was +50%).
- Black Arrow and Explosive Shot damage +10% (was +15%).

Warrior
- Execute damage -25%.

EDIT: Added the actual chances above. As always, you don't need to understand ANY of that to benefit from the trinkets.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

im not saying revert the dk buffs, they are fine...but by that same logic, where are the ret sustained buffs to keep us competitive? we are already pretty far behind frost as it is.

Unless you can demonstrate to us that Ret is behind Frost in 5.2, we can't do much with comments like this.

We think Ret and Frost are where they should be in 5.1 with the exception that Frost pulls ahead too much in certain cleave and AE situations.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

I'm still confused. In 5.1 I never felt my DPS, or rather DK frost DPS in general was bad, or even close to bad. Where are all these buffs coming from, is there going to be some kind of counterweight in 5.2 yet to be announced?

It's a lot of things. Overall, we are balancing for 5.2. That's a different environment. Nearly everyone will quickly get better gear with more secondary stats. While everyone scales to some extent with those stats (and as much as I like to tweak the community about its seeming obsession with scaling) the fact still remains that those numbers do affect damage. Set bonuses will change. There are new trinkets and meta-gems. Not everyone will get all of those items, but we still have to take into consideration with our tuning that many will. We have to look at the new bosses. While we like there to be some variation from boss to boss depending on encounter mechanics, we also understand human nature well enough to expect that players will quickly start worrying only about their performance in the new raid and stop worrying about how well they did on the previous one. For DKs specifically, also recall that we also nerfed the current T14 2pc because it ended up so good that there was a risk DKs wouldn't feel like they could upgrade to the T15 gear.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

Warrior
- We are going to lower Recklessness to 3 min cooldown, 30% crit. We will have to adjust the Glyph of Recklessness and T14 4pc (and probably other mechanics I forgot) to keep them at the same relative power.

Warlock
- We are going to go ahead and grandfather in the bug of Shadowburn granting 2 embers on a kill. It is technically a bug, which is why we fixed it, but it's been that way since MoP launched and we don't think it's causing huge balance problems, so in cases like this, we think the right thing to do is just make it official.

Mage
- While we like mages hard casting spells more often in PvP, we agree with the consensus that we overdid the buff to Frostbolt. We are going to revert one of the earlier changes and have it once again increase its damage by its own debuff. Base damage has been reduced to compensate, but should not change for the fully stacked case.

Old patch note: Frostbolt deals 52% more damage, but its debuff no longer increases subsequent Frostbolt damage.

New patch note: Frostbolt now deals 32% more damage.

„PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III” wysłany: 12 lat temu

But mages are allowed to 100 to 0 anyone in a deepfreeze every 30 seconds with instant casts, awesome

This is either vague and/or hyperbole and without more information I can't tell which.

I feel like fury could use some nerfs (especially SMF).

We're not seeing this in 5.2. Any more information?

Either way, the point remains that Supremacy is highly inferior in most situations. This is because your mastery (extremely powerful for affliction and destruction) does your pet no benefit. Additionally, your haste does not scale the fel energy gain of the minion. This leaves your pets scaling tied directly to critical strike and spell power, unless using a pet with melee attacks (which then gets marginal haste benefit).

We think this is a legitimate criticism. We think it's only a problem at very high gear levels, but once players see the highest DPS players choosing Sacrifice, it's going to be conventional wisdom that you just have to take that talent... which we really don't want. If anything, this talent should be rare. As I've said before, the common warlock should be one with a demon. Short of having Supremacy and Service somehow give Affliction and Destruction Demo's mastery or just nerfing Sacrifice to the point where it's really only for players who hate pet bars (even at a DPS loss), we don't have a great solution yet.

If this is even remotely true then blizzard has done a horrible job.

This is the first time I've read or heard the sentence "middle of the pack" regarding mages and warlocks.

I think you might be misinterpreting my comment. Perhaps it was vague. What I meant was that if you are a player wondering if your DPS is low, compare it to someone in the middle. Players almost always compare themselves to the guy at very top of the stack rank, but that dude is often overpowered and it's rarely our goal to buff everyone else up to that line. More than likely, he'll be getting a nerf.

Is removal of the T11 Protection tier gimmic going to be addressed before 5.2 hits so don't have to keep it for a 45 sec guardian prepull as retribution?

We addressed it in 5.2. When you remove the set bonuses, the buff is also cancelled.

Mage frostbolts are doing crazy damage on the PTR on full resilience targets. Something along the lines of 200k damage crits with CDs.

We did shift some damage to Frostbolt, but overall it's a good thing for the game for mages to hard cast. They have to stand still and you can cause a Frost lock.

[Asked by everyone] Are you done changing my class?

It is impossible for us to answer that.

This

I've never been in a forum where this is welcome. It's particularly unwelcome in threads this long that move this quickly. If you really agree with someone and can't add anything to the conversation, use the up vote.

Blizzard really does need to start listening to the higher rated players on the PTR testing this !

We actually do and not all conversations happen on the forums.