Today's blue clues. Mostly DK and druid stuff today from my initial glance.
AchievementsRetro Dungeon & Raid Boss Kill UpdateWe did a pass and checked quests associated with dungeon boss kills. In an upcoming Beta build, you'll see that you'll get some dungeon/raid achievements granted retroactively. Not all dungeons and raids have quests associated with them so some players will still have to re-do the content. For example, there are no quests that validate the boss kills in Slave Pens or Blood Furnace.
Also, keep in mind that in cases such as Onyxia or Zul'jin, not every raid member got quest credit for the quest item drop. We figured it was better to try to reward credit wherever possible. (Source)
Could we get achievements for killing rare mobs ?Cool idea. We'll see if we can get to it. (Source)
Unobtainable Achievements - (See the whole thread for more details)
[*]Eggbert is non-refundable since you can reacquire him through in-game methods (i.e. do the quest again next year and get another Eggbert). [*]You can get the Searing Gorge key back from the Locksmith once he's in the beta build.
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------------Death Knight (WotLK - Skills List / Talent Calc.)Unholy Talents & Skills balancingWith the changes we made, the two diseases last the same amount of time, which is one of the things that makes the DK feel smoother in general. We're still working on Unholy. It has some really interesting talents but it needs to gel a little better. Since AE isn't universally useful and the Ghoul is something of an acquired taste, we'd like you to be able to build a solid Unholy tree even without those talents. Some of the talents also didn't fare well with the conversion. Blood-Caked Blade was a great talent before that didn't survive the transition well. We're still working on it. (Source)
Death Coil spamming nerfWe found that a lot of DKs were able to spam Death Coils at a pretty steady pace. Part of this was bugs, but part of it was also the Runic Power Mastery talent along with the talents that gave your runic power -- Butchery and talents like Dirge.
We made a big pass on all of these numbers to get Death Coil down closer to the frequency we intended -- something more like once a cycle (if you imagine a cycle being something like Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Death Strike). We feel like all of the talents are more interesting choices now without some of them being no-brainers and others being lackluster. For example, Sudden Doom feels meh when you are already tossing Death Coils as fast as you can.
Death Knight Role in raidsA DK of any spec should be able to tank a 5-player non-heroic instance. The same is true for a warrior, and perhaps even a paladin or druid, though those are a little tricky since the gear overlaps different roles even less.
A warrior pretty much cannot tank a raid (unless he massively overgears it) without a heavy investment in the Protection tree. The difference is the DK can go into the Blood, Frost or Unholy tree and still tank. But she probably needs as many tanking talents as she can get (which does not have to mean the same number of talents that other classes spend), and definitely needs the tanking gear and player skill that go along with raiding. (Source)
Frigid Dreadplate / Bone ArmorFrigid Dreadplate will probably not affect most bosses. It will however stack with things like Thunder Clap. It's not an expensive talent, so it may still be worth it for trash and PvP. If not, we might change it to something else, but we don't want to over stack Frost with too many tanking abilities.
It's a little tricky to compare Bone Armor directly to the other two abilities since it is dependent on hits. If you take 4 quick strikes (though there is an internal cooldown) it may not be up as long as Unbreakable Armor. This is entirely dependent on the duration and internal cooldown, which fortunately are easy numbers for us to adjust to try and achieve some approximation of parity. (Source)
Plague Strike and DegenerationWe removed the hot dispel effect from Scourge Strike and put it on the base Plague Strike. Scourge Strike will be given something to replace the loss. Even if all it does is Plague Strike but as Shadow damage, that may be sufficient.
A Brief History of DegenerationI believe the initial version of Degeneration described at the World Wide Invitational was that it removed all hots on the target and did extra damage per hot, and the dot effect of Degen also prevented any additional hots. Wow. While this might sound fun (for the death knight) it was probably ridiculously overpowered, and very punitive towards one type of healer in particular. If you think druids are OP in Arenas, this was probably not the best way to fix that.
The version of Degeneration that existed through most (possibly all) of the alpha and beta was a spell that removed one hot and did bonus damage on its dot effect (it was originally 7x damage then lowered to 3x damage). A potentially confusing tooltip on Degeneration probably didn't help at all.
When we made the recent pass at death knight talents, we gave the Degeneration effect (dispels one hot) to Scourge Strike. Some players were concerned that meant they had to go deep Unholy in order to be effective at PvP. This was not our intent and it's probably debatable whether or not that single ability made Unholy the PvP tree.
Nevertheless, after hearing many concerns, we are giving the ability back to core Plague Strike. It currently does not scale damage if it finds a hot -- it just removes the hot. If we think the damage bonus is necessary we'll add it back, possibly with a talent.
The current Plague Strike's tooltip says something like:- A vicious strike that deals X weapon damage and infects the target with Blood Plague, a disease dealing Shadow damage over time. Will dispel one heal over time effect from the target.
Druid (WotLK - Skills List / Talent Calc.)Lifebloom ChangesYes, we have done some toning down of Lifebloom. Lifebloom was unintentionally buffed too much during Burning Crusade when we made the coefficient scaling work on the stack applications. This has caused a lot of problems with balance in the game. Druids are intended -- as healers -- to be able to dish out good throughput heals with very low efficiency, likewise Lifebloom is intended to be rather cheap and efficient, but not to the degree that it is today.
Compare how you healed in dungeons and raids pre-Burning Crusade to today. Before you used nearly every healing spell you had, today you just use Lifebloom and maybe your other HoTs just because they stack with Lifebloom. Not only is this boring to the player, but it pigeon holes the Druid to spamming Lifebloom on the tanks.
We hope to tone down Lifebloom and bring the Druids other healing spells up to speed in this expansion. Part of this is through changes to the Druid class, changes to other healing classes and through encounter design.
Just as a note -- we did intend to change Lifebloom in the Burning Crusade (lower the coefficent), but we ended up delaying that so that we wouldn't hurt the Druids viability in raiding. With Wrath, we're introducing a new heal, a revamped Tree Form, and other mechanics to correctly balance things out. (Source)
Moonkins in WotLK
[*]Bloat: Bloat is another word for "I can't have everything I want!". We want every class to feel their tree is "bloated" to a degree. We want classes to have to make choices and sacrifices over good talents, because that is ultimately what makes talents interesting. If it weren't that way, we would just make it a linear progression without any choices. That said, if you feel the flow of the talents makes you spend points in something that doesn't necessarily benefit you what that build is for (i.e. spending too many "PvE" talents for a PvP build), then that can be addressed.[*]Dreamstate: If we deem Moonkins to have mana issues we can change this talent to work with Spirit/improve it, but from what I've seen it's the total opposite right now. If anything we might of gone too far in Moonkin efficiency.[*]Earth and Moon: I realize that the talent doesn't really justify more than a few points of investment. We'll do some changes here.[*]Eclipse: Eclipse is intended to be a good DPS upgrade when you utilize it, if it isn't resulting in that then we will change the damage bonus effects it gives you. Your specific results with Eclipse testing would help. It is intended to be a long cooldown, though. Otherwise you'd get fatigue from swapping between Wrath and Starfire too much.
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Feral Concerns in WotLK
[*]Druids are not all done and ready for live. We need to "really look" at druids before ship. As I have posted in other forums though, we don't generally look at all classes all at once. We work very collaboratively, which unfortunately means classes get appraised one at a time. (Source)[*]We don't think druids NEED to choose bear or cat. But it would be nice if you had the option of choosing bear > cat or cat > bear. Going that route lets us justify your being an awesome tank (because you're giving up some dps) or vice versa. I don't think anyone is arguing (I hope) that all Ferals with any spec need to be as good at tanking as prot warriors and as good at dps as rouges just by shapeshifting and swapping gear. I think we all know the outcome of such a design. But there is a difference between "as good as rogues" and "worth bringing on a raid." (Source)[*]We have no problem if paladins are better at some bosses than others, so long as a guild that runs with a druid MT isn't months behind the paladin MT guild because the encounter is so hard without the paladin. (Source)[*]The best solution is that Ferals bring something great to the raid. Imagine Mark of the Wild was as good as Blessing of Kings, but they didn't stack. Now a druid or a paladin is a great addition. Or imagine the health return from Imp LotP was at the level of Blood death knight or Shadow priest. Now bringing a Feral makes it noticably easier on the healers. These are just examples, not changes I'm announcing. (Source)
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Hunter (WotLK - Skills List / Talent Calc.)New abilities and pet bar sizeWe don't currently have a way to fit every active pet ability on the bar. It's something we're working on, but we didn't want to hold all of the pet changes in the event it wasn't done. Think of the pet bar as shortcuts to their abilities. Just because an ability isn't on the bar doesn't mean it can't be cast or autocast. (Source)
Hunter issues (Source)Making your abilities harder to dispel does not improve the class. The Hunter class should be a strong class similar to how other classes are strong, because of damage combos, CC, etc. Not because you stayed alive longer because of Viper String. Besides, you already have a talent that reduces the chance the target can dispel your stings.
The issues I feel the Hunters have (in PvP, which I assume is what you're at issue with) are the following:
[*]Mobility: Master's Call is a stun/snare break. Instead of having the ability just work on you, we've allowed you to also cast it on other players, making it more interesting and adding group utility. Changed Surefooted to %duration instead of %resist, making it more consistent. If the numbers don't pan out right (as in it should match Fleet footed), then we'll make that change.[*]Survivability: We've significantly improved Deterrence, it now works on spells and has a lower cooldown.[*]Line of Sight: We do plan to introduce two new Hunter abilities that will help combat LoS issues (those we'll announce soon), which we believe plagues Hunters the most out of other classes. We understand this has been an issue throughout Burning Crusade, but we couldn't really address it correctly without introducing new abilities, talents, etc. (which we can do in the expansion) We're also (as funny as it sounds) improving Hunter melee DPS through an improvement to Aspect of the Beast (10% Melee AP buff while this aspect is active), and removed the conditional from Mongoose Bite (so you can use it even if you haven't dodged the opponent). Though you won't be doing as much damage if you were at range, you'll find a pretty significant damage potential while in melee range with these changes.[*]"Finishing" move: Hunter's do have a powerful front-load combo (Aimed -> Multi -> Arcane etc.) , but the problem they have is finishing the player off. If the player is still alive after your front load damage, you're left standing there praying for autoshot crits. This should be addressed with the introduction of "Kill Shot." Also with the revamped "Kill Command" coming in a future patch.[*]Pets: We always believed that the Pet should be more of a focus for the Hunter in PvP (and PvE). We've revamped Pets in this expansion, giving them all unique abilities, a lot of which will help Hunters in the various arena brackets, battlegrounds, world PvP etc.
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Priest (WotLK - Skills List / Talent Calc.)Priest Buffs and InscriptionNote that the highest scroll in the expansion so far is for 25 Spirit, Divine Spirit is currently 50. The scrolls are intended as a compromise if you don't have the buff from the Priest, not a replacement/complete alternative. I talked to the designer who does Inscription and was told that if we do a "spirit scroll" it won't exceed ~75% of what Divine Spirit would be. Regarding scrolls similar to other abilities (mark of the wild, arcane intellect, etc.) those are still in design. (Source)
Warlock (WotLK - Skills List / Talent Calc.)Soul Well BuffSoul Well will have 25 charges in the next patch. (Source)
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