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The AT World of Warcraft Thread (Where do you play) and general BS
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AyashiKaibutsu
Diamond Member
You need to do something to stun/incapacitate him so you can get a tick or two off. All it takes is a few ticks + cost to cleanse to muck up a paladins mana pool.
Aikouka
Lifer
I did some of the Scourge invasion last night. All I have to say is UGH it's really annoying. At one point, I was lucky enough to get an entire point to myself as I don't think anyone knew where it was (score one for me looking up all the invasion points that's nicely pointed out on wowhead). I was able to kill all of the rare spawns, but they only dropped the stupid plate and mail pants >_<. I was on my Paladin+Warlock combo and really wanted the pants for my Warlock. With that, I think they should probably try something like dropping tokens for purchasing the pants rather than dropping specific pants. Random numbers do really funny things when there's such a small loot table (i.e. there are only four pairs of pants/drops, the chances of getting repeats is much higher).
I also found that people are pretty much dicks when it comes to the Shadows. I was on my Warrior + Priest combo doing the invasion after I got enough stones on the other combo (but I actually didn't... I need 8 more on each 🙁). That combo pretty much steamrolled mobs as I just collected a bunch and bladestorm'd 'em down. Then I summon a shade and start fighting it... and it seems someone decided they were going to summon their own shade and then someone summoned another one, well I made the initial mistake of not pulling my Shade back near the road and the whole thing turned into one huge clusterfuck. I left there and went to Azshara instead to find that the beach one was the only point left. It seems someone had a shade summoned there but was having issues because a bunch of mobs were around as well. At one point, I was able to get a shade and I was fighting it away from the pack of mobs... it was a tough fight because my priest wasn't even spec'd yet and I was literally just DPSing the mobs (they don't hit hard anyway). Well, it seems the Horde that were there didn't like me having a Shade (that I summoned by the way) and they made sure to aggro a bunch of mobs and then dump them onto me. I literally had that fucking shade at 1 fucking percent (1000 hp!) when the mobs took me out. I was incredibly pissed about that. They, of course, took my Shade and killed it. I ended up summoning another one and I killed that one (I spec'd my priest holy (13/48/0) before fighting it).
Luckily, the plate chestpiece dropped, so I ended up getting the entire plate dps set on my warrior (which none of it is good anyway 😛).
You that you didn't really need to respec. Well, I should say that I assume you don't need to. I've personally never tanked as Ret, but I have tanked as Arms (HH and some pulls in Kara) and I've had no problem. This was even with using my DPS set with an Axe (the one from Cipher of Damnation in SMV) and Shield (SSO Exalted Shield).
Well, DKs bring one thing that rogues don't to a fight... survivability. While a rogue does have a lot of tricks under its belt to control a fight, when it starts to get beat on, the #1 strategy is to run away (which a rogue is also very good at 😛). Death Knights bring a ton of survivability through Death Strike, Rune Tap (talent), Mark of Blood (talent) and Vampiric Blood (talent) (you won't see that one often). I do dare say that Death Knights may get a decent amount of QQ, because they simply have more tricks up their sleeve than even a rogue!
Lupi and I just read MMO Champion, which I think uses some sort of spider bot thingy to look for Blue posts? I donno, I saw them say one day about having huge news posts when people don't submit Blue posts to them, so it might be based on submissions and not a fancy bot. The biggest advantage of not being on them is how absolutely bad the live forums are, but you may be missing out by not being on the beta forums. I mostly peruse the Death Knight forum and that forum is actually pretty good.
So sounds like you're suggesting Viper Sting -> Intimidation? I was going to suggest using Arcane Shot to remove magic effects (pallies hate that 😛), but when going to look up which rank had it, I forgot that they removed it. Now you'll have to wait until level 60 as it's on Tranquilizing Shot.
I also found that people are pretty much dicks when it comes to the Shadows. I was on my Warrior + Priest combo doing the invasion after I got enough stones on the other combo (but I actually didn't... I need 8 more on each 🙁). That combo pretty much steamrolled mobs as I just collected a bunch and bladestorm'd 'em down. Then I summon a shade and start fighting it... and it seems someone decided they were going to summon their own shade and then someone summoned another one, well I made the initial mistake of not pulling my Shade back near the road and the whole thing turned into one huge clusterfuck. I left there and went to Azshara instead to find that the beach one was the only point left. It seems someone had a shade summoned there but was having issues because a bunch of mobs were around as well. At one point, I was able to get a shade and I was fighting it away from the pack of mobs... it was a tough fight because my priest wasn't even spec'd yet and I was literally just DPSing the mobs (they don't hit hard anyway). Well, it seems the Horde that were there didn't like me having a Shade (that I summoned by the way) and they made sure to aggro a bunch of mobs and then dump them onto me. I literally had that fucking shade at 1 fucking percent (1000 hp!) when the mobs took me out. I was incredibly pissed about that. They, of course, took my Shade and killed it. I ended up summoning another one and I killed that one (I spec'd my priest holy (13/48/0) before fighting it).
Luckily, the plate chestpiece dropped, so I ended up getting the entire plate dps set on my warrior (which none of it is good anyway 😛).
You that you didn't really need to respec. Well, I should say that I assume you don't need to. I've personally never tanked as Ret, but I have tanked as Arms (HH and some pulls in Kara) and I've had no problem. This was even with using my DPS set with an Axe (the one from Cipher of Damnation in SMV) and Shield (SSO Exalted Shield).
Well, DKs bring one thing that rogues don't to a fight... survivability. While a rogue does have a lot of tricks under its belt to control a fight, when it starts to get beat on, the #1 strategy is to run away (which a rogue is also very good at 😛). Death Knights bring a ton of survivability through Death Strike, Rune Tap (talent), Mark of Blood (talent) and Vampiric Blood (talent) (you won't see that one often). I do dare say that Death Knights may get a decent amount of QQ, because they simply have more tricks up their sleeve than even a rogue!
Lupi and I just read MMO Champion, which I think uses some sort of spider bot thingy to look for Blue posts? I donno, I saw them say one day about having huge news posts when people don't submit Blue posts to them, so it might be based on submissions and not a fancy bot. The biggest advantage of not being on them is how absolutely bad the live forums are, but you may be missing out by not being on the beta forums. I mostly peruse the Death Knight forum and that forum is actually pretty good.
So sounds like you're suggesting Viper Sting -> Intimidation? I was going to suggest using Arcane Shot to remove magic effects (pallies hate that 😛), but when going to look up which rank had it, I forgot that they removed it. Now you'll have to wait until level 60 as it's on Tranquilizing Shot.
Fingolfin269
Lifer
Quick prot pally question for you guys. I'm searching for a few cheap gear upgrades prior to xpac but have a dilemma. Back when I played this spec you wanted spell power. Has this all changed? Am I more like a warrior now? Str first (for DPS), Stam, defense, shield block, avoidance, etc last?
coloumb
Diamond Member
I think a majority of the playerbase will just out of curiosity or boredom. 🙂
A few guildies are deleting their warriors as the DK is exactly what they want in a class.
However, I suspect once everyone starts crying about how OP'd they are - they'll fall into the same bottomless pit that nerfadin's are currently stuck in. I think Blizzard should just delete the Paladin class as they can't seem to freakin make up their mind on what to do with it 🙁
lupi
Lifer
Quote from Blizzard staffHealer Boredom
One of the things we hear a lot from disaffected healers is they felt like they were playing the UI and not the game. Healers are notorious for standing in fires or whatever because they aren't even looking at the battlefield much of the time.
Here are some random thoughts on the issue:
If everyone threw larger heals more rarely (and damage input matched) you could look away from the UI more often.
We can't just increase healing range without also increasing the range at which the boss can hit you.
Nameplates (if refined) could have a lot of potential for combining UI with the game wold more effectively.
Integrating things into the base WoW UI such as out-of-range indicators, better debuff indicators, or heals from other about to land on a target might make healers be less dependent on mobs. (Source)
Tanking too easy in its current state
I do agree that everything is easier right now at 70. But keep in mind these 3 things coming up at 80:
-- Bosses have more armor. That is going to affect the threat generation, particularly of warriors and bears.
-- A lot of groups are AE tanking and burning down groups. It's fun, but at higher levels the risk you're going to take is that those groups kill you.
-- Threat is easy to manage now, and not too bad in Naxx. Naxx was designed to be more of an introduction to raiding. It won't stay that easy. I wouldn't expect a lot of Void Walker-style competitions to stay on top of threat meters compared to other tanks, but you might have to worry about the dps'rs catching up to you at some point. (Source)
DPS Balance in PvE
Pure classes should be able to out dps hybrid classes by a small margin. However, hybrid classes should be able to be a lot closer than they were in BC, and depending on the skill, gear and encounter involved, will sometimes beat the pure dps classes.
For purposes of this discussion, pure = mage, warlock, hunter, rogue. These are the classes that cannot spec into healing or tanking roles. I don't want to get too far down into what that margin should be, because then players return with a WWS parse saying "See, the mage beat me. You said we would be competitive."
I'm not saying the difference is only 1%, but even if it was, just look at how many players get freaked out about something that could increase or decrease their sustained dps by 1%. If your group doesn't notice a difference when it runs with all hybrids, then chances are you have e.g. awesome shamans and really cruddy mages. That's cool. If you can still kill the boss, you're golden. (Source)
Post expansion PvP balance
I'm not going to promise that we will automatically buff any class that can't obtain X arena rating in the first season. That takes all of the onus off of the community and makes the assumption that strategies and tactics never evolve, which they do. But we will make balance changes for PvP purposes after LK ships. Absolutely. (Source)
The logic behind the revamp of Hybrid classes
Our logic worked out like this:
1) Buffs are breaking the game. There are many examples you could insert here, but here are a few:
-- Ret paladins can't get into the melee group because of all the buffers in there.
-- Stacking shamans for Bloodlust rotations.
-- Stacking Shadow Priests so mana conservation would be irrelevant.
-- Mages getting shut out of raids, in part because it was better to bring yet another lock to benefit from Curse of Shadows.
2) We decided to consolidate buffs such that similar ones would not stack, but we extended the effects to raid wide.
3) Thus, in a 25-player raid, you need far fewer than 25 players to get the buffs you need, allowing you to fill those remaining slots with who you want.
4) Without the benefits of those buffs, those remaining slots would most likely just go to pure dps classes. Shamans, for example, might go from 5 per raid to 1 (or 1 death knight instead).
5) So we buffed hybrid dps a lot.
6) But we knew at the other extreme that pure dps classes risked getting shut out of raids if hybrids could do their damage.
7) So we made sure the pure classes could still do superior dps given similar skill and gear. We wanted you to risk having lower dps if you brought all hybrids.
We don't go into a lot of detail about how much higher or lower certain classes should be, because we noticed that players respond to this by posting WWS parses that shows their class in the #10 spot and get all bent out of shape about it (and totally ignoring the bit about equal gear or skill).
The net result is that hybrid dps is much higher, but not as high as pure classes. If you are an awesome hybrid player, then you will sometimes top the damage meters depending on your gear, skill and the specific encounter. But you probably won't do it as much as a rogue, mage, warlock or hunter (again depending on their skill).
I know the edge here sometimes seems fuzzy. It is. WoW's combat system is pretty complicated and hard and fast rules can only get you so far. But that is the basic model in very simple terms. (Source)
Armory Maintenance
We are currently performing a maintenance on the Armory and due to this the detailed character profiles will be unavailable for the next 2 days. Thank you for your patience as we continue to make the Armory a great feature for all of our players to use. (Source)
Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Druid mana issues
We're not trying to punish Feral with a lack of mana or anything. We're just evaluating how they perform and what they do, especially in PvP with regards to this issue. The bottom line is we're not sure yet if it's really a problem or if the Feral players are just having trouble adjusting to the change. (I understand many of them *say* it's a problem.)
We also aren't trying to make Balance and Resto the shifting specs. However, as mana-using classes they are going to be able to do more with that mana, such as healing. We want druids to be able to shift -- that is a major part of the class. The only thing in contention is how often is too often and how much can they do in night elf or tauren form. (Source)
Lifebloom
There are plenty of good threads on Lifebloom post-nerf. It is less powerful than it was before, but it is still a very good spell and we fully expect druids to still use it in PvE and PvP. (Source)
Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Hunter Ammo
We are looking at ammo too. We think there might be ways to turn it into an interesting decision about ammo type and not something that requires you to procure 500 stacks before a raid. (Source)
Mage (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Mage Armor
FWIW, Mage Armor is quite powerful, but it's a trade-off. It's going to make mages harder to kill by some classes but easier to others. That seems like a decent design, so then it just comes down to numbers. We'll keep an eye on it, but it's not something slated for an imminent nerf. (Source)
Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Holy paladin potential AE healing spell
Just say for sake of argument that anything remotely like Circle of Healing is off the table. Just pretend we said that it goes against the vision of the paladin class or whatever to ever AE heal (that's not true, but just roll with me here). Now then, what is the one healing spell you would want added to your repetoire? (Source)
Retribution Paladin
We LOVE Ret paladins. Seriously. We made a ton of changes to the spec that we wouldn't have done if we didn't care what happened to the class. When we did Naxx tests and people brought Ret paladins, it was great. Even before they became overpowered, there were several posts by Ret pallies saying how they liked the changes to their class (so I don't think it was just an issue that they were rolling over everyone that made them fun).
Sadly, you were overpowered by a considerable margin in both PvE and PvP. That was our fault (mine really) and not anything the community did. Most Ret pallies actually seem to agree they were OP and only argue with the magnitude of the nerfs. (Source)
Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Elemental AOE
If you have ever read the beta forums, you'll know that we have changed our minds on the design of Elemental and decided that the spec needs to be able to do real AE in order to fill the ranged dps role. We're still considering the best way to do that. Totems, Chain Lightning, or Thunderstrom are all candidates (possibly glyphed) but all have their problems too, which is why we haven't settled on an implementation yet.
We're not convinced Enhancement needs AE. Rogues and cats don't have a true AE (though they might really want one) and it doesn't seem to have hurt them much. (Source)
Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Warlock concerns (Source)
Soul Shard system not even touched
I have said many, many times that this is something we're looking at right now. I am going to be less sympathetic to QQ that we don't read your posts if you don't read ours. (Source)
Damage overall is too high, arenas feel "scrubfriendly" and even more luck-based
We think there is some truth to this. The recent resilience change was intended to help. We also expect health and mitigation to increase much faster than damage increases as players hit 80, but it is definitely a concern right now in PvP.
Completely reliant on having 11 points in Demo, maybe 17 (or even more).
This is not a major concern for us. As I have also posted, good talents are good. If you didn't want them, they would be bad talents. If you had so many good talents that you had a hard time deciding, I'm pretty certain the response would be that the trees are bloated.
Shadowflame is a pathetic addition, it's as if they've run out of ideas and don't want to bother thinking of any good ones. We're already strong enoguh at AoE, damnit. I mean really if you want to give us dragon's breath from mages, just give us the green version and call it green dragons breath with all the same goodies of dragons breath.
Shadowflame fulfills a very specific role. If you hadn't noticed, we are pushing Destro more towards fire and Affliction more towards shadow. Shadowflame is one of the few spells that crosses over because it does both types of damage (which should have obvious ramifications for a lock).
Teleport spell again pathetic (Can't used while stunned) I mean really Blizzard you give us a good Defensive spell after all this time and you do it half assed. I mean we actually have to set this spell up in order to use it. Tell you what make it so that Pallys have to cast a spell first before they can bubble, make it so Rogues have to do something before they can vanish/COS, make it so Mages have to cast a spell before doing ice block or blink.
We think Demonic Circle is going to end up being a big deal. It's not a trivial spell to use -- it's a thinking person's spell. It takes planning and some intuition. I suspect it is being underestimated because so few people have actually gotten to use it yet.
Affliction
Complex PvE rotation is impossible to accomplish in PvP; you have to do far more work than before to do the same relative DPS as in BC - the spec is more reliant on spells with cast times.
We think the complex rotation is very hard to pull off in PvE too and seems to almost mandate a mod, which is a problem. We have some long-term plans to change Affliction around a little bit.
Why did you add glaringly PvE-based talents and changes like Master Conjurer, Demonic Empathy, Demonic Pact, Imp. Demonic Tactics, and others when you expect this to be our PVP tree?
There are no PvP trees anymore. My comment was that Demo may not have the sustained dps of the other two trees in PvE, but at least it would still be taken for PvP. We need to see if the survivability offered by the tree offsets its lower dps or not. (And before anyone responds that you would raid with 10 health if it would improve your dps, I'll remind you that your dps when dead is 0.)
Chaos Bolt: Could have fixed our problems with quick, reliable burst damage, but was ultimately changed into a "add this into your rotation for a few more DPS!" spell.
Destro's rotation was among the least interesting in the entire game. It needed major help.
Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Arms / Fury concerns (Source)
#1-- Make sure they could tank a normal 5-player dungeon
Arms and Fury can tank 5-player dungeons fine. The Shield Slam change alone helped a lot here.
#2-- Give them both viable PvE and PvP roles
You offered almost no detail here. Both Arms and Fury are mobile in PvP and bring the MS debuff. Both of them can do great PvE damage. What's the issue?
#3-- Make the Arms tree about something other than Mortal Strike
Arms definitely cares about Deep Wounds and Execute now. Overpower perhaps a little less. I totally disagree they are useless in PvP.
#4-- Make Battle Stance a little sexier
It's definitely better than it used to be. Could we do more with it? We're not sure yet.
#5-- Make sure mobilty didn't just belong to one spec
Warbringer is great (despite a ton of QQ when we first implemented the talent). But Arms and Fury still have Charge, Intercept and Intervene. I am sad we couldn't make Heroic Leap work.
#6-- Try and get warriors to care more about plate
I think the jury is out here. The goal wasn't to prevent warriors from wearing leather. It was to make plate more attractive, which I feel like we've done.
#7-- Make warriors a little less reliant on "pocket healers"
If you don't want the healing, don't push the button. 🙂
One of the things we hear a lot from disaffected healers is they felt like they were playing the UI and not the game. Healers are notorious for standing in fires or whatever because they aren't even looking at the battlefield much of the time.
Here are some random thoughts on the issue:
If everyone threw larger heals more rarely (and damage input matched) you could look away from the UI more often.
We can't just increase healing range without also increasing the range at which the boss can hit you.
Nameplates (if refined) could have a lot of potential for combining UI with the game wold more effectively.
Integrating things into the base WoW UI such as out-of-range indicators, better debuff indicators, or heals from other about to land on a target might make healers be less dependent on mobs. (Source)
Tanking too easy in its current state
I do agree that everything is easier right now at 70. But keep in mind these 3 things coming up at 80:
-- Bosses have more armor. That is going to affect the threat generation, particularly of warriors and bears.
-- A lot of groups are AE tanking and burning down groups. It's fun, but at higher levels the risk you're going to take is that those groups kill you.
-- Threat is easy to manage now, and not too bad in Naxx. Naxx was designed to be more of an introduction to raiding. It won't stay that easy. I wouldn't expect a lot of Void Walker-style competitions to stay on top of threat meters compared to other tanks, but you might have to worry about the dps'rs catching up to you at some point. (Source)
DPS Balance in PvE
Pure classes should be able to out dps hybrid classes by a small margin. However, hybrid classes should be able to be a lot closer than they were in BC, and depending on the skill, gear and encounter involved, will sometimes beat the pure dps classes.
For purposes of this discussion, pure = mage, warlock, hunter, rogue. These are the classes that cannot spec into healing or tanking roles. I don't want to get too far down into what that margin should be, because then players return with a WWS parse saying "See, the mage beat me. You said we would be competitive."
I'm not saying the difference is only 1%, but even if it was, just look at how many players get freaked out about something that could increase or decrease their sustained dps by 1%. If your group doesn't notice a difference when it runs with all hybrids, then chances are you have e.g. awesome shamans and really cruddy mages. That's cool. If you can still kill the boss, you're golden. (Source)
Post expansion PvP balance
I'm not going to promise that we will automatically buff any class that can't obtain X arena rating in the first season. That takes all of the onus off of the community and makes the assumption that strategies and tactics never evolve, which they do. But we will make balance changes for PvP purposes after LK ships. Absolutely. (Source)
The logic behind the revamp of Hybrid classes
Our logic worked out like this:
1) Buffs are breaking the game. There are many examples you could insert here, but here are a few:
-- Ret paladins can't get into the melee group because of all the buffers in there.
-- Stacking shamans for Bloodlust rotations.
-- Stacking Shadow Priests so mana conservation would be irrelevant.
-- Mages getting shut out of raids, in part because it was better to bring yet another lock to benefit from Curse of Shadows.
2) We decided to consolidate buffs such that similar ones would not stack, but we extended the effects to raid wide.
3) Thus, in a 25-player raid, you need far fewer than 25 players to get the buffs you need, allowing you to fill those remaining slots with who you want.
4) Without the benefits of those buffs, those remaining slots would most likely just go to pure dps classes. Shamans, for example, might go from 5 per raid to 1 (or 1 death knight instead).
5) So we buffed hybrid dps a lot.
6) But we knew at the other extreme that pure dps classes risked getting shut out of raids if hybrids could do their damage.
7) So we made sure the pure classes could still do superior dps given similar skill and gear. We wanted you to risk having lower dps if you brought all hybrids.
We don't go into a lot of detail about how much higher or lower certain classes should be, because we noticed that players respond to this by posting WWS parses that shows their class in the #10 spot and get all bent out of shape about it (and totally ignoring the bit about equal gear or skill).
The net result is that hybrid dps is much higher, but not as high as pure classes. If you are an awesome hybrid player, then you will sometimes top the damage meters depending on your gear, skill and the specific encounter. But you probably won't do it as much as a rogue, mage, warlock or hunter (again depending on their skill).
I know the edge here sometimes seems fuzzy. It is. WoW's combat system is pretty complicated and hard and fast rules can only get you so far. But that is the basic model in very simple terms. (Source)
Armory Maintenance
We are currently performing a maintenance on the Armory and due to this the detailed character profiles will be unavailable for the next 2 days. Thank you for your patience as we continue to make the Armory a great feature for all of our players to use. (Source)
Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Druid mana issues
We're not trying to punish Feral with a lack of mana or anything. We're just evaluating how they perform and what they do, especially in PvP with regards to this issue. The bottom line is we're not sure yet if it's really a problem or if the Feral players are just having trouble adjusting to the change. (I understand many of them *say* it's a problem.)
We also aren't trying to make Balance and Resto the shifting specs. However, as mana-using classes they are going to be able to do more with that mana, such as healing. We want druids to be able to shift -- that is a major part of the class. The only thing in contention is how often is too often and how much can they do in night elf or tauren form. (Source)
Lifebloom
There are plenty of good threads on Lifebloom post-nerf. It is less powerful than it was before, but it is still a very good spell and we fully expect druids to still use it in PvE and PvP. (Source)
Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Hunter Ammo
We are looking at ammo too. We think there might be ways to turn it into an interesting decision about ammo type and not something that requires you to procure 500 stacks before a raid. (Source)
Mage (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Mage Armor
FWIW, Mage Armor is quite powerful, but it's a trade-off. It's going to make mages harder to kill by some classes but easier to others. That seems like a decent design, so then it just comes down to numbers. We'll keep an eye on it, but it's not something slated for an imminent nerf. (Source)
Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Holy paladin potential AE healing spell
Just say for sake of argument that anything remotely like Circle of Healing is off the table. Just pretend we said that it goes against the vision of the paladin class or whatever to ever AE heal (that's not true, but just roll with me here). Now then, what is the one healing spell you would want added to your repetoire? (Source)
Retribution Paladin
We LOVE Ret paladins. Seriously. We made a ton of changes to the spec that we wouldn't have done if we didn't care what happened to the class. When we did Naxx tests and people brought Ret paladins, it was great. Even before they became overpowered, there were several posts by Ret pallies saying how they liked the changes to their class (so I don't think it was just an issue that they were rolling over everyone that made them fun).
Sadly, you were overpowered by a considerable margin in both PvE and PvP. That was our fault (mine really) and not anything the community did. Most Ret pallies actually seem to agree they were OP and only argue with the magnitude of the nerfs. (Source)
Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Elemental AOE
If you have ever read the beta forums, you'll know that we have changed our minds on the design of Elemental and decided that the spec needs to be able to do real AE in order to fill the ranged dps role. We're still considering the best way to do that. Totems, Chain Lightning, or Thunderstrom are all candidates (possibly glyphed) but all have their problems too, which is why we haven't settled on an implementation yet.
We're not convinced Enhancement needs AE. Rogues and cats don't have a true AE (though they might really want one) and it doesn't seem to have hurt them much. (Source)
Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Warlock concerns (Source)
Soul Shard system not even touched
I have said many, many times that this is something we're looking at right now. I am going to be less sympathetic to QQ that we don't read your posts if you don't read ours. (Source)
Damage overall is too high, arenas feel "scrubfriendly" and even more luck-based
We think there is some truth to this. The recent resilience change was intended to help. We also expect health and mitigation to increase much faster than damage increases as players hit 80, but it is definitely a concern right now in PvP.
Completely reliant on having 11 points in Demo, maybe 17 (or even more).
This is not a major concern for us. As I have also posted, good talents are good. If you didn't want them, they would be bad talents. If you had so many good talents that you had a hard time deciding, I'm pretty certain the response would be that the trees are bloated.
Shadowflame is a pathetic addition, it's as if they've run out of ideas and don't want to bother thinking of any good ones. We're already strong enoguh at AoE, damnit. I mean really if you want to give us dragon's breath from mages, just give us the green version and call it green dragons breath with all the same goodies of dragons breath.
Shadowflame fulfills a very specific role. If you hadn't noticed, we are pushing Destro more towards fire and Affliction more towards shadow. Shadowflame is one of the few spells that crosses over because it does both types of damage (which should have obvious ramifications for a lock).
Teleport spell again pathetic (Can't used while stunned) I mean really Blizzard you give us a good Defensive spell after all this time and you do it half assed. I mean we actually have to set this spell up in order to use it. Tell you what make it so that Pallys have to cast a spell first before they can bubble, make it so Rogues have to do something before they can vanish/COS, make it so Mages have to cast a spell before doing ice block or blink.
We think Demonic Circle is going to end up being a big deal. It's not a trivial spell to use -- it's a thinking person's spell. It takes planning and some intuition. I suspect it is being underestimated because so few people have actually gotten to use it yet.
Affliction
Complex PvE rotation is impossible to accomplish in PvP; you have to do far more work than before to do the same relative DPS as in BC - the spec is more reliant on spells with cast times.
We think the complex rotation is very hard to pull off in PvE too and seems to almost mandate a mod, which is a problem. We have some long-term plans to change Affliction around a little bit.
Why did you add glaringly PvE-based talents and changes like Master Conjurer, Demonic Empathy, Demonic Pact, Imp. Demonic Tactics, and others when you expect this to be our PVP tree?
There are no PvP trees anymore. My comment was that Demo may not have the sustained dps of the other two trees in PvE, but at least it would still be taken for PvP. We need to see if the survivability offered by the tree offsets its lower dps or not. (And before anyone responds that you would raid with 10 health if it would improve your dps, I'll remind you that your dps when dead is 0.)
Chaos Bolt: Could have fixed our problems with quick, reliable burst damage, but was ultimately changed into a "add this into your rotation for a few more DPS!" spell.
Destro's rotation was among the least interesting in the entire game. It needed major help.
Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Arms / Fury concerns (Source)
#1-- Make sure they could tank a normal 5-player dungeon
Arms and Fury can tank 5-player dungeons fine. The Shield Slam change alone helped a lot here.
#2-- Give them both viable PvE and PvP roles
You offered almost no detail here. Both Arms and Fury are mobile in PvP and bring the MS debuff. Both of them can do great PvE damage. What's the issue?
#3-- Make the Arms tree about something other than Mortal Strike
Arms definitely cares about Deep Wounds and Execute now. Overpower perhaps a little less. I totally disagree they are useless in PvP.
#4-- Make Battle Stance a little sexier
It's definitely better than it used to be. Could we do more with it? We're not sure yet.
#5-- Make sure mobilty didn't just belong to one spec
Warbringer is great (despite a ton of QQ when we first implemented the talent). But Arms and Fury still have Charge, Intercept and Intervene. I am sad we couldn't make Heroic Leap work.
#6-- Try and get warriors to care more about plate
I think the jury is out here. The goal wasn't to prevent warriors from wearing leather. It was to make plate more attractive, which I feel like we've done.
#7-- Make warriors a little less reliant on "pocket healers"
If you don't want the healing, don't push the button. 🙂
lupi
Lifer
So it looks like it will cost about 230g more to just buy my pally epic mount rather than do the quest. That's not a whole lot of incentive to try and get someone to do the strat run for me.
eh. change that. Didn't realize the twodiamonds i'd need are a few of the gems i don't have banked already. So just counting riding skill the difference is only about 80g more to pay and skip the instance - yeah, think I'll do that.
eh. change that. Didn't realize the twodiamonds i'd need are a few of the gems i don't have banked already. So just counting riding skill the difference is only about 80g more to pay and skip the instance - yeah, think I'll do that.
lupi
Lifer
Good thing they don't balance the game around pvp 😉
Upcoming Ret paladin PvP nerf
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)I'm attempting to post this early since the Ret community felt totally surprised last time.
We are looking at some way of making Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield mutually exclusive. This may be through Forbearance, if we can reduce the Forbearance duration through a hotfix. The bubble is intended as a defensive measure. Yet bubble+wings currently is used a lot in BGs and Arenas and helps contribute to the feeling of being destroyed by a Retribution paladin while you are unable to respond.
My apologies to the Ret paladins who already feel picked on. We are really trying hard to not overdo anything but even the last round of pretty severe nerfs didn't seem to do enough to Ret's dominance of PvP.
We are also sympathetic to the notion that if Ret can't do insane burst damage, that the spec might need other tools to be viable in PvP. We're exploring this now, possibly though the missing 11-point Prot talent, possibly through other avenues. We'll let you know when we've made a decision here.
I don't know exactly when this change will go live, but I didn't want you to return from trick-or-treating and be shocked that we didn't announce it, since that seemed to cause a lot of damage with the last nerf.
I'll leave this post unlocked for now, assuming the responses stay intelligent and we don't get too much flaming or trolling.
NOTE: The hotfix will be on Live and the beta.
[...] We lowered Seal and Judgement damage, changed Divine Storm (earlier) and changed Hammer of Wrath. Those all should have lowered PvP burst damage, and they did.
The JotW nerf was done because a paladin could use all their buttons quickly then go on to another opponent with no down time. On bosses in PvE, they could hit every button that was up and still have mana left to be very high on healing meters. So we do think the mana regen was too generous in both PvP and PvE cases.
Upcoming Ret paladin PvP nerf
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)I'm attempting to post this early since the Ret community felt totally surprised last time.
We are looking at some way of making Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield mutually exclusive. This may be through Forbearance, if we can reduce the Forbearance duration through a hotfix. The bubble is intended as a defensive measure. Yet bubble+wings currently is used a lot in BGs and Arenas and helps contribute to the feeling of being destroyed by a Retribution paladin while you are unable to respond.
My apologies to the Ret paladins who already feel picked on. We are really trying hard to not overdo anything but even the last round of pretty severe nerfs didn't seem to do enough to Ret's dominance of PvP.
We are also sympathetic to the notion that if Ret can't do insane burst damage, that the spec might need other tools to be viable in PvP. We're exploring this now, possibly though the missing 11-point Prot talent, possibly through other avenues. We'll let you know when we've made a decision here.
I don't know exactly when this change will go live, but I didn't want you to return from trick-or-treating and be shocked that we didn't announce it, since that seemed to cause a lot of damage with the last nerf.
I'll leave this post unlocked for now, assuming the responses stay intelligent and we don't get too much flaming or trolling.
NOTE: The hotfix will be on Live and the beta.
[...] We lowered Seal and Judgement damage, changed Divine Storm (earlier) and changed Hammer of Wrath. Those all should have lowered PvP burst damage, and they did.
The JotW nerf was done because a paladin could use all their buttons quickly then go on to another opponent with no down time. On bosses in PvE, they could hit every button that was up and still have mana left to be very high on healing meters. So we do think the mana regen was too generous in both PvP and PvE cases.
ModerateRepZero
Golden Member
meh, went into kara today on my resto druid, killed the Tenris boss but forgot to go inside chambers and look...ok no problem. Created a raid with another member who had the same raid ID and i find the blood-soaked door locked...../facepalm
oh yeah, and i tried to get into a hyjal pug but was told to have at least 1k heals (I had 870).....meh
my wotlk question: since BoJ are for 70 items, is their usefulness when wotlk comes out limited to loading up on 70 epics to minimize gear upgrades, and buying uncut epic gems for socketing? I might as well just load up on gems then.
oh yeah, and i tried to get into a hyjal pug but was told to have at least 1k heals (I had 870).....meh
my wotlk question: since BoJ are for 70 items, is their usefulness when wotlk comes out limited to loading up on 70 epics to minimize gear upgrades, and buying uncut epic gems for socketing? I might as well just load up on gems then.
Slight tangent for you guys: I'm looking to return to the game for WOTLK, after being gone for a year, and I have no idea where to start finding a new guild. My last one evaporated a while back.
I'd like the ability to raid 25-man zones, but not on a hardcore schedule. (It used to eat my life 5 nights a week, and I don't want that any more.) My main is a Tauren resto druid; I cleared all Vanilla WoW content through 10 bosses in Naxx, and all TBC content through the end of Tier 5. I quit right when T6 was released.
Thoughts?
I'd like the ability to raid 25-man zones, but not on a hardcore schedule. (It used to eat my life 5 nights a week, and I don't want that any more.) My main is a Tauren resto druid; I cleared all Vanilla WoW content through 10 bosses in Naxx, and all TBC content through the end of Tier 5. I quit right when T6 was released.
Thoughts?
lupi
Lifer
Blue posts
Ghostcrawler posted a LOT during the weekend, again with a lot of explanations about retribution nerfs. I know some of the other classes aren't very happy about it, but a lot of communication from Blizzard is always nice when it comes to nerfs.
Quote from Blizzard staffPvP - Crowd Control spell reduced to 10 seconds
We made a pass to get all of the CC or movement impairing effects down to the standard 10 sec duration in PvP. There are still a few exceptions. Sorry I didn't pre-announce that one. I don't always know when something is going out the door. (Source)
Mortal Strike debuff
The Mortal Strike debuff is a tricky one. We do realize how potent it is in Arenas and we have used it on occasion to give classes or specs a good role in Arenas. But then recently we stopped and asked ourself where we were going with MS. If Ret and Enhancement and Feral and whoever ends up with MS, what's the point really? Shouldn't we just start you in Arenas with healing at 50% and be done with it? This is a topic we're thinking a lot about. (Source)
200% damage spell crits talents
We don't think 200% spell crits need to be baseline for most classes. They make some really good talents and if we pulled those away, you might be left with less interesting talents to choose.
We do think it's a problem that some specs don't have access to those talents though. (Source)
Achievement Known Issue: A Simple Re-Quest
There is currently an issue with "A Simple Re-Quest". The achievement has a bug that will sometimes cause it to reset if you enter a Cross-Realm Battleground. We have a fix in place for this that will go live with patch 3.0.3 (soon). In the meantime, if you absolutely want this achievement, the best thing to do is to not enter a BG while working on it. Many apologies. (Source)
Achievement - Fish Caught
Currently, 1000 fish is the extend of the achievement. But we can definitely add more in a patch. (Source)
51-Points talents
I think there is some truth there. In most cases they were trying to fill a niche, and depending on the spec, that niche might be very small. Some of the mechanics are unusual just because we wanted something players hadn't already seen a thousand times in the game.
If there is anything we could do differently, I think that some of the talents are too weighted towards PvP or in some cases PvE. It's hard to make an ability that can do both well without being OP, but if it can only do one, then players only focused on one aspect of the game end up not liking it. (Source)
New class forums
I think there is a lot of QQ at the moment, but I also think players are getting used to the idea of a new forum and figuring out how it's going to work.
Usually what happens is the players who say uninformed or dare I say dumb things get ignored or shouted down. Eventually, it's still our hope that we can foster some intelligent discussion about the things that are working and not working in the current class balance.
That is going to take some e.g. mages posting on warrior concerns, and the warriors getting comfortable with that happening.
There is a lot of bad behavior to unlearn, but I remain optimistic. The tanking and healing forums are already off to a good start, in part because those specs are typically not trying to kill each other in PvP settings, in part because they aren't competing quite as much for raid spots, and in part because there are just more specs that do dps. (Source)
Dungeon Itemization
There are still pieces which are more appropriate for one class or spec than another. Some of the changes we made, such as spell power, will blur the lines slightly more. Our goal with that was more to help say an undergeared paladin get healing gear or an undergeared warlock be able to benefit from the "healing" cloth rather than just sharding it.
I've played a priest enough (I've played every class) to know that it can be frustrating when a paladin wants to roll on a piece of cloth, but most of the time the raid leaders I have run with tend to let the cloth-wearers get first dibs. I agree that there is a big social aspect to loot distribution. To some extent, that is by design. (Source)
Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Disengage
There is a limitation to Disengage in which a hunter who is already snared leaps as if snared. That issue will require new tech to fix it, but when we get it, we can solve that problem. We are also getting new tech to make Disengage work better on uneven ground.
The last time I used Disengage, I didn't have to aim at all. You just leap backwards, much like the way a mage Blinks. If you want to control where you land, you can rotate in place. But we thought actually requiring you to click where you wanted to go would make the ability too hard to use when you're supposed to use it -- to retreat. (Source)
Mage (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Arcane Stability and pushback reduction talents
I think some of these talents probably need to be tweaked with the new pushback system in place (assuming that we like the way it plays out). (Source)
Arcane tree balancing
We think we know how to adjust Arcane to make their rotations work better in PvE (which will also help the PvP burst at the same time). It involves changing a couple of spells though so it will take some time and isn't the kind of thing easily hotfixed (as it will make tooltips incorrect).
We don't think Arcane is so broken that it's useless to take raiding. We just want to make the rotations a little smoother and perhaps bring up PvE damage a little bit. (Source)
Arcane tree balancing #2
We are very concerned about the burst damage of Arcane in PvP. If we end up nerfing Arcane Barrage in particular, nobody should be surprised.
We understand that it is fun to have an instant spell that does so much damage, even on a cooldown. But we also think Arcane is a bit of a one-trick pony at the moment -- run around and Fireball or whatever, then Barrage when it's on cooldown. A more interesting and balanced rotation would be something like getting an Arcane Blast out first, which then buffs Barrage up to its current big numbers.
In PvE, Arcane doesn't seem to be OP and might even be low compared to Frost and Fire. Buffing Arcane Blast might help in this situation too. (Source)
Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Holy & Protection DPS
We are concerned that Holy and Protection may have lost too much dps as "collateral damage" from the Ret nerfs. It is something we're working on now, though I do believe Holy dps is still a lot better than it was in BC. Healers will always level more slowly than dps specs since using your abilities may keep you alive but doesn't always kill stuff faster. (Source)
Retribution - Developer Q&A
1) Do you really think we'll use AW now other than select PvE encounters? (Source)
We understand that AW will be used much, much less than it is now in Arenas. That wasn't the intention, but we felt we needed to counter the standard winged bubble opening move that so many paladins were doing. If this change actually seems to make a difference (because to be honest despite the number of nerfs we've done to Ret, they were still overpowered) than we'll consider other ways of getting the same effect that don't involve Forbearance.
2) Why is it that you're so hot to balance out a class that has been a joke for 2+ years for two weeks of playtime when PvE progression and arena rankings are now all but meaningless?
We can't let one spec run around killing everyone just because they were underpowered before. I expect you'd be just as frustrated as other classes if it was Elemental shammies or Feral druids dominating everyone in PvP. Where Ret's history did come into play is we originally tried relatively small nerfs originally (though the paladin community didn't perceive them as such at the time). In retrospect, being gentle there didn't do you guys any favors because then we just had to come back two more times with big nerfs.
3) Where were our desperately needed hot fix buffs for the past two years? Is this new insta-balance stance going to swing both ways?
We made a lot of big changes to classes for LK and we need to able to adjust them as needed. I honestly wasn't doing this job for the past two years, so I'm not in a position to comment on why certain decisions were made the way they were. I have faith they were made for good reasons, but I just can't share them with you because I don't know. I will say that the perception around Blizzard was that the Ret paladin situation was very severe. I don't want to understate it. It was considered one of the most egregious balance problems we've had in some time.
4) Where were the desperately needed nerfs to certain classes in arena for the past two season?
See above.
5) Will problems such as lack of MS debuffs, interrupts, distance closing, and susceptibility to mana burns/silences be addressed?
Mana burns - yes.
Distance closing and interrupts - we are considering giving Ret or paladins in general some new utility to make up for all the nerfs we have made to their damage. It will almost certanly not be MS though. You can find a thread where I recently attempted to explain why we don't want to give out more MS debuffs.
I haven't heard a lot of silence complaints from paladins recently (more than normal I mean). Is this a new problem? Care to elaborate?
Ghostcrawler - I'm not understanding why the winged bubble move was such a big deal? Bubble in and of itself is overpowered, but that's OK because it's on a 5 minute cooldown. It sort of seems like it's possible that you're letting people's anecdotes guide this decision.
The problem was that the cooldown was irrelevant. The paladin could wing + bubble, then go in with a stun, DS, CS, JoC and maybe Consecrate, all within a few GCDs. If the poor sap on the receiving end was below 35% (now 20%), which was likely, he would get hammered as well. If somehow the target was still alive after all that, or had an ally, the paladin usually had enough mana to heal himself to full. Then, even if the battle was over, the paladin had enough mana to just go on to the next target (minus bubble). In Arenas this didn't matter of course, because with a death that early, the match is usually decided. This strategy was the entire PvP problem with Ret in a nutshell. It didn't take a lot of skill and was impossible to counter. Most other classes can't open with that many abilities at once (ignoring the bubble defense and healing potential). Players complain about rogues stun-locking them, but at least that takes some skill from the rogue to do things in the right order and usually requires an element of surprise.
Tons of explanation about the nerfs
See the post
More Retribution Q&A ... (Source)
So my question to you would be, has it been discussed between the developers about our mana regeneration, and if it would be at all possible to have it scale?
It's not clear to me why your mana needs to scale. Your spells don't keep increasing their cost as your gear increases, and in fact your damage does increase as your gear improves. Caster mana increases with gear, but whatever item budget they are spending on Int, you get to spend on other stats, such as Strength.
As I've said though, we do think we will change mana drains to a percent so that they aren't strictly more effective against classes with smaller mana pools.
I know you've been busy reading, but has something like this been considered? I'm sure you realize how we feel about Divine Storm being more or less just like a warriors whirlwind and why we are petitioning for this to go back to holy damage.
If Divine Storm went back to Holy, its damage would have to drop by a lot to compensate (maybe 40% or so). There are some design advantages to having it stay physical. For example, an Arena team can send a plate wearer to fight the Ret pally since Divine Storm will do less damage to that person.
Ultimately, we would like to have the spell feel more different from Whirlwind, but understand that our first priority was just to get paladin damage under control.
My final question and then i'll let you get back to working on the class, has to do with Righteous Vengence.
You're going to have to explain a little more what you mean about it being resisted often and doubly affected by resilience. Maybe someone else explains it in this forum and I'll see it soon. When crits are prevented from resilience, they typically do not prevent secondary effects that would have been a result of that crit. It's physical damage IIRC, so it shouldn't be resisted or dispelled at all, but I'll look into that. Ultimately though we wanted this talent mostly for PvE utility, so you shouldn't expect us to buff it a lot for PvP purposes.
4) 51 Pointers are broadly situational. I don't think it's totally fair to expect something other out of Divine Storm.
This is true, and Divine Storm is less situational than a lot of the 51 point talents.
41pt better than 51pt...what?
We don't inflate the value of deeper talents. If the bottom talents were always the best there would never be any reason to take less than 51 points in a tree.
The core rotation should be sustainable without requiring the use of JoW. JoW should be for mana regen above and beyond that core rotation. It's bad enough in PvP that judgements don't return mana when they are absorbed. Now we essentially have to use JoW in PvP because of that limitation to JotW which means we're no longer choosing between extra mana or stopping a runner: we're choosing between necessary mana to function and stopping a runner.
I really don't see a lot of paladins judging Wisdom in PvP. Unless you are being mana drained a ton (which as I mentioned is something we do plan on fixing) I don't understand how you can be going out of mana while fighting someone. Now if you blow a lot of mana, you may have to pause in between fights. Most mana-using classes have to do that.
There is still a lot of debate on these forums about how long a paladin can go before running on fumes. So far a lot of players are finding results similar to ours, and I think some (though not all) who do claim to have trouble are being disingenous in hopes of getting it buffed. But we'll keep watching to see what happens. If we reach the point where Ret paladins are just getting slaughtered in PvP then we'll know we went way too far. I don't see that happening yet though.
GC will delete anything that makes him look bad, post something were he contradicted himself in and it will get deleted. he only leaves messeges that benefit him. Trick me once, shame on you, trick me twice GC then shame on me
This is just name calling as far as I can tell. The only posts that get deleted are those that violate the forum terms of use. Players catch me in contradictions all the time -- I tend to type fast so that I can respond to as many posts as possible. Life goes on. In any case, it doesn't really matter what was said in the past. Ret paladins were broken and we had to fix them. As I have said dozens of times, we don't like nerfing classes but we still have to do it when necessary.
Retribution in PvP
On utility, the designers did agree that if we were going to keep hurting Ret's burst dps, which is a big thing they brought to a team, that we needed to give them some kind of tool to make up for it. We're not sure whether that will be a snare or interrupt or whatever, but the feedback on forums like this one will certainly help determine it. I am surprised to hear you say you don't have a lot of control, becaue I think that is the preception of a lot of classes on the receiving ends of your stuns.
Mana, rage and energy are different mechanics. Yeah, duh, I know, but hear me out. To a class with mana seeing players with a resource that never runs out can seem amazing. But the flip side of that is you start a battle with a full bar. A rogue (or druid) does too, but their bar goes dry in 2-3 hits while yours can last for a long time and pack a lot of hits into a short period. Rage can come back for a warrior (or druid) but they start with none and use a lot of it on every swing. Each of them has their advantages and disadvantages and I think we've done a pretty good job overall of preventing any one of them from dominating either PvP or PvE. (Source)
Holy Paladins Q&A (Source)
Aura Mastery - This needs to be removed and made baseline, Holy paladins need a new 11 point talent.
A little bit of explanation wouldn't hurt when you make claims like this. Typically we don't like to turn good talents into baseline abilities. That either leaves you with mediocre talents or the next tier of good talents (that you ask to be turned into core abilities).
Illumination - Needs a buff, mana return back to 100%? At least 75%
There was a time not too long ago where Holy paladins just didn't run out of mana. This was not good for the game. (Source)
Holy paladins are still locked down to easy in pvp and bring nothing special to aid the group, whats being done to fix this?
This is a little vague for me to be able to address your concerns. I do think there may be something to the issue that Arena teams want a healer with some offensive capabilities as well, even if that means Mass Dispel.
We are close to no longer being the best single target healer. Other classes are catching up and paladins are being removed from raids.
I haven't seen any evidence that paladins are being removed from raids in LK. In BC, that started to happen because healers needed to move a lot and raids required a ton of AE heals which didn't play into paladin strengths. We chilled down those elements as well as giving paladins more tools for those situations (such as Infusion of Light and Beacon of Light).
Beacon of Light - Is horrible in its current state, at least lower the mana cost, make it work on overhealing, and make it last longer.
I have seen an awful lot of paladins who really like Beacon. Since you sound like someone who is active in the community, I would imagine you know this, so it surprises me you would state that Beacon is horrible as if it were an accepted fact. You're at least going to have to offer some more evidence.
Judgements of the Pure - Worst 5 point talent ever made. Its so deep in the holy tree and all it dose is give 15% haste? Not worth it at all.
Before we buffed Pure, I think it was underpowered. We hesitated because we saw some player calculations that it could have been decent even in its own form. Now in its new form, we feel like it is pretty potent. If it has a disadvantage, it's that it might invalidate some of the earlier Holy talents.
JUDGEING IN COMBAT ISNT FUN. Its very annoying, mobs are taken down way to fast to even bother, this would only work on bosses.
Part of the reason we did this was because a complaint we heard from Holy paladins was they wanted more buttons to push than just FoL and HL. Judging seemed like a natural fit since it was already part of the paladin repetoire. This perplexes me a little since you then ask for new healing spells down below. Perhaps you or someone else could elaborate? (Having 40 yard ranged Judgements is pretty nice too.)
Holy Guidance - Every other tree has a similar talent but theres is 3 points, gives more spell power AND has a secondary effeft!! Why do Holy paladins have such a horible version!
It's difficult to just directly compare talents between two different classes or specs. We can take a look at this one in particular though.
NO NEW HEALING SPELLS? ok in BC i could settle for no new spells but now in wrath its just plain stupid.
Sorry, we disagree. We don't want to just keep adding new rotational spells every expansion or classes are going to end up with just too many buttons -- some specs are dangerously close to that already. Instead we added some more situational heals. The paladin has been designed around Flash of Light, just like the shaman was designed around Chain Heal. We didn't want to completely change what these classes were all about, in part because a lot of players like them as they are. We figured players who gravitate towards wanting lots of different kinds of heals can play the druid or priest. Players who want to have relatively few spells and can then focus on cooldowns, trinkets or the like can play the paladin or shaman. We think it would be dangerous for paladins to pick up Lich King and find their class had completely changed.
But we did make some major changes to specs like the Prot warrior and Shadow priest. If there are enough Holy paladins who think the spec is fundamentally broken and not fun, then that's something on which we'd like to see more discussion from you guys. Just remember not everyone automatically agrees with you.
Missing 11-point Prot talent
We're not sure if we're going to do this or not. If we do it (make an 11-point Prot talent that is attractive to Ret) it would be for these reasons:
-- It would be cooler if the talent was something fun for Prot and not something they "need" to tank.
-- In our experience, Ret paladins who PvP often go down into Prot anyway to get Imp Hammer of Justice.
-- I suggested we might offer Ret more PvP utility since we are stripping some of the burst damage, so PvE Retadins might not want this ability anyway.
-- We wouldn't want this talent to be something Prot would never get and Ret would always get. If anything we need to err on the side of something Prot definitely wants. (Source)
Priest (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Mindflay bugs (See source)
We'll look into it. I don't have the bug list right in front of me at the moment. (Source)
Developer Q&A (Source)
1) Dispersion. Some call this the 'self cyclone.' In other ways it's very similar to a mage's Ice Block.
We've gone back and forth on Dispersion. At times in beta it was overpowered and we backed off of it. We do think casting out of it would be too powerful. It's supposed to be a defensive ability, not something you do to keep someone from being able to counter you when you're wailing on them. (Source)
2) Being Dispelled... Dispelling resistance.
We are working on a redesign of the whole dispel system. This is a big topic, but to be brief:
1) It adds a lot of randomness to who wins or loses a battle, just based on whether the dispel worked.
2) Some classes were designed with powerful self buffs. It's hard to balance those when they are often immediately gone.
3) The whole strategy of junk buffs feels lame to both sides, but it's effective so players feel like they must do it.
4) Defensive dispelling (getting a debuff off of you) feels more legitimate than removing someone else's Fort or whatever. We want to try and steer the system towards that.
5) We need to be more consistent with dispel resistance among classes. (Source)
4) Hymn of Hope is useless in Shadowform...
We have some plans for hymns. More when we have the details worked out a little more.
5) Dropping shadowform to heal. Again, there is a severe mana penalty when we are forced to heal. All our healing casts cost a lot more plus we take on added damage and do less damage. While I'm fine with this increase/decrease aspect, I think the mana cost of switching forms needs to be removed entirely.
I don't think we'd remove it entirely, but we can look at how much it really ends up costing. There should be a decision involved with going in and out of forms, but we're re-evaluating what that is right now. Druids have a similar problem.
6) No real burst damage... In PvP, Priests really don't base their overall damage around critting. Our current gear doesn't reflect spell critical strike... As for Penance, I really like this spell. However, we cannot self-cast and it's also currently target-faced bugged.
We made a recent change to allow Shadowform to do more with crits. I believe the target-facing bug on Penance was also fixed. Preventing self-casting is by design.
7) Current Vampiric Touch is useless. You reduced the mana regeneration so raids are less reliant on Shadow Priests in order to run instance.
Um, Vampiric Touch does a lot of damage. It's coefficient was doubled and is now almost overpowered. When we noticed Shadow's damage was a little low, we gave a lot of it back just through VT. As far as Replenishment goes, I explained why we tied it into Mindblast elsewhere. It has to do with the cooldown - duration of the spells involved as well as not wanting to lose ticks.
9) Fade/Improved Shadowform does not match up with the tooltip. 2/2 Improved Shadowform states that it will have 100% chance to 'remove all movement impairing effects.' It doesn't remove Cyclones...
There aren't many things that remove Cyclones, but we'll look into how the bonus to Fade is implemented.
10) Overall Survivability. It's really lackluster.
Do you mean priests in general or specifically Shadow priests are squishy? We do think everyone feels a little squishy at 70. Players understandably got the new talents that enchance damage without getting the corresponding survival oriented ones that they will probably pick up in the next 10 levels. In addition, health just grows faster than damage on the way to 80. Compare PvP gear and you can see that it gains defensive stats a lot faster than offensive ones.
One reason why pre-3.0.2 that warlocks were more successful is that you could live over time through their dots and fears but their armor/survivability was high so they weren't focused as much. Basically they were a persistent CC nuisance.
Warlocks were designed to have high dps while Shadow priests were designed to have much lower dps. They were a utility class that paid in dps in order to justify their amazing group benefits. With the buff overhaul, we improved Shadow's dps significantly. (We also dropped lock survivability in PvP too.)
Rogue (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Developers Q&A (Source)
1. With the reworking of ?tanking? stats the rogue ability to dodge as a primary form of melee damage reduction has been significantly reduced to levels which impair their survivability in PvP, it is feared. What is Blizzard?s position, and possible compensation for the reduction in the rogues ability to dodge?
You could be refering to one of two things -- the higher dodge ratings required, in which case you'll eventually catch up with good gear, or the diminishing returns at very high avoidance rating, but in those cases they are just diminishing returns. Your dodge does still increase.
We're not too worried about rogue survival in PvP at the current time. Rogues still have plenty of tricks. We do think PvP is a little bursty overall at level 70, but the recent change in resilience and the higher health pools at level 80 should help that.
2. With the removal of the snare negating effect on shadowstep, there are concerns about the mobility of rogues in a PvP environment where utility is just as important as damage. At the very least many players feel obligated to try and acquire the improved sprint talent lest waste cooldowns normally reserved for other aspects of combat, e.g. Cloak of shadows to break frost nova. With the emphasis and ability of many classes to snare, hamstring, slow, and chill with little to no cooldown increasing, how do the developers plan to compensate in the mobility of melee classes, especially when our mobility is specifically being reduced and the prevalence of snares is increasing?
Again, your question is all about compensation. We don't know that any is needed. Rogues were a very good PvP class in BC and Cloak was either overpowered or bordering on overpowered for a lot of that time.
3. We understand that play style of a class may change, and change is scary for us all. Hemorrhage has been a main attack for almost four year and we understand it is to be considered a debuff attack in the upcoming expansion. It has been the general consensus that the debuff is rather insignificant to be a dedicated supportive roll in the realm of PvP combat. What do the developers think about the debuff and damage provided by the hemorrhage ability with respect to PvP combat? Are there any plans to either increase the debuff to resemble those available to other classes or uphold and restore the ability?s role as a primary attack within the configuration of certain builds?
As a debuff, it can still account for a lot of damage. Usually when rogues complain about it, it's because it isn't boosting their personal damage enough (because other players are using all the charges). On that last part, players may use it as a primary attack, but that doesn't mean we designed it to be.
4. Finally, as will all new programs and games there are bugs to work out, and the rogue community is fairly adamant about issues with the proper function of stealth and vanish. Are the programmers and developers aware of any particular bugs or problems with the workings of stealth and vanish and is so are steps being taken, as I imagine they would be, to rectify the situation?
One could write several volumes on the epic adventures of Vanish. Here is how I think the story goes: Players were convinced for a long time that there were bugs with Vanish. We finally got a few good cases where we could repro the problem and those were fixed (say sometime post-Sunwell). There may still be some edge cases where it still happens. I believe those are more rare, but some players are so used to the concept of Vanish being bugged that they assume nothing has ever changed. It's one of those jokes that has become larger than life (almost like Ony deep breathing more).
There were some more recent legitimate stealth bugs, at least in PvP. We just fixed several of them. I can't recall if those were hotfixed or not.
Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Purge
We have no plans AT THIS TIME to change purge. That's not a promise to never ever change it. Any dispel changes we might implement are weeks or months away, and purge is not ever specifically mentioned as a problem in those discussions.
Dispelling can be a pretty cool mechanic in PvP. We just need to tone down the annoying, frustrating and overly random parts. (Source)
Elemental Tree AOE
I don't think it's a good idea to keep bumping posts. You're just going to start an arms race with every other player in the forum.
We have several ideas on AE for Elemental:
A modification of Thunderstorm.
A modification of AE Totems.
A modification of Chain Lightning.
A new spell.
Feedback is of course appreciated. (Source)
Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Metamorphosis and Demonology Tree
The taunt is there because we thought it might be fun in a 5-player instance for the warlock to be able to tank once in awhile, especially if the main tank goes down on a pull. It's not the signature ability of Metamorphosis. We don't have a problem with the spell. It is useful in PvP and provides a nice damage buff in PvE. Some of its abilities, like the Immolate, can be useful in the right situations.
[...] What I said, and I clarified later, was that Affliction and Destro seem to do competitive damage in PvE. Demo is lower than that, which is not ideal, but we are also concerned Demo's survivability might make it the only raiding spec if its dps was just as high. In the meantime, we think people will still spec Demo because it is useful in PvP.
Our new design is there are no PvP vs. PvE trees. But it will take some time to reach this point because we didn't want to rip out every talent of every class and start over. The death knight has 3 trees with different flavors, but no PvP, PvE and tanking tree. The warrior and hunter are a lot closer to that than they used to be. We're working on all the others, including Demo. (Source)
Warlock Pets
I doubt raid leaders are going to be bringing death knights just for Hysteria. The whole point is nobody brings something unique to raids so important that it gaurantees them a spot. Locks still have several very potent buffs -- it's just that there are other ways to get those now too.
The Felhunter was just too well-suited for PvP. There was no reason to bring any other pet.
We would like to get the Voidwalker a little more use besides just leveling though. (Source)
Ghostcrawler posted a LOT during the weekend, again with a lot of explanations about retribution nerfs. I know some of the other classes aren't very happy about it, but a lot of communication from Blizzard is always nice when it comes to nerfs.
Quote from Blizzard staffPvP - Crowd Control spell reduced to 10 seconds
We made a pass to get all of the CC or movement impairing effects down to the standard 10 sec duration in PvP. There are still a few exceptions. Sorry I didn't pre-announce that one. I don't always know when something is going out the door. (Source)
Mortal Strike debuff
The Mortal Strike debuff is a tricky one. We do realize how potent it is in Arenas and we have used it on occasion to give classes or specs a good role in Arenas. But then recently we stopped and asked ourself where we were going with MS. If Ret and Enhancement and Feral and whoever ends up with MS, what's the point really? Shouldn't we just start you in Arenas with healing at 50% and be done with it? This is a topic we're thinking a lot about. (Source)
200% damage spell crits talents
We don't think 200% spell crits need to be baseline for most classes. They make some really good talents and if we pulled those away, you might be left with less interesting talents to choose.
We do think it's a problem that some specs don't have access to those talents though. (Source)
Achievement Known Issue: A Simple Re-Quest
There is currently an issue with "A Simple Re-Quest". The achievement has a bug that will sometimes cause it to reset if you enter a Cross-Realm Battleground. We have a fix in place for this that will go live with patch 3.0.3 (soon). In the meantime, if you absolutely want this achievement, the best thing to do is to not enter a BG while working on it. Many apologies. (Source)
Achievement - Fish Caught
Currently, 1000 fish is the extend of the achievement. But we can definitely add more in a patch. (Source)
51-Points talents
I think there is some truth there. In most cases they were trying to fill a niche, and depending on the spec, that niche might be very small. Some of the mechanics are unusual just because we wanted something players hadn't already seen a thousand times in the game.
If there is anything we could do differently, I think that some of the talents are too weighted towards PvP or in some cases PvE. It's hard to make an ability that can do both well without being OP, but if it can only do one, then players only focused on one aspect of the game end up not liking it. (Source)
New class forums
I think there is a lot of QQ at the moment, but I also think players are getting used to the idea of a new forum and figuring out how it's going to work.
Usually what happens is the players who say uninformed or dare I say dumb things get ignored or shouted down. Eventually, it's still our hope that we can foster some intelligent discussion about the things that are working and not working in the current class balance.
That is going to take some e.g. mages posting on warrior concerns, and the warriors getting comfortable with that happening.
There is a lot of bad behavior to unlearn, but I remain optimistic. The tanking and healing forums are already off to a good start, in part because those specs are typically not trying to kill each other in PvP settings, in part because they aren't competing quite as much for raid spots, and in part because there are just more specs that do dps. (Source)
Dungeon Itemization
There are still pieces which are more appropriate for one class or spec than another. Some of the changes we made, such as spell power, will blur the lines slightly more. Our goal with that was more to help say an undergeared paladin get healing gear or an undergeared warlock be able to benefit from the "healing" cloth rather than just sharding it.
I've played a priest enough (I've played every class) to know that it can be frustrating when a paladin wants to roll on a piece of cloth, but most of the time the raid leaders I have run with tend to let the cloth-wearers get first dibs. I agree that there is a big social aspect to loot distribution. To some extent, that is by design. (Source)
Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Disengage
There is a limitation to Disengage in which a hunter who is already snared leaps as if snared. That issue will require new tech to fix it, but when we get it, we can solve that problem. We are also getting new tech to make Disengage work better on uneven ground.
The last time I used Disengage, I didn't have to aim at all. You just leap backwards, much like the way a mage Blinks. If you want to control where you land, you can rotate in place. But we thought actually requiring you to click where you wanted to go would make the ability too hard to use when you're supposed to use it -- to retreat. (Source)
Mage (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Arcane Stability and pushback reduction talents
I think some of these talents probably need to be tweaked with the new pushback system in place (assuming that we like the way it plays out). (Source)
Arcane tree balancing
We think we know how to adjust Arcane to make their rotations work better in PvE (which will also help the PvP burst at the same time). It involves changing a couple of spells though so it will take some time and isn't the kind of thing easily hotfixed (as it will make tooltips incorrect).
We don't think Arcane is so broken that it's useless to take raiding. We just want to make the rotations a little smoother and perhaps bring up PvE damage a little bit. (Source)
Arcane tree balancing #2
We are very concerned about the burst damage of Arcane in PvP. If we end up nerfing Arcane Barrage in particular, nobody should be surprised.
We understand that it is fun to have an instant spell that does so much damage, even on a cooldown. But we also think Arcane is a bit of a one-trick pony at the moment -- run around and Fireball or whatever, then Barrage when it's on cooldown. A more interesting and balanced rotation would be something like getting an Arcane Blast out first, which then buffs Barrage up to its current big numbers.
In PvE, Arcane doesn't seem to be OP and might even be low compared to Frost and Fire. Buffing Arcane Blast might help in this situation too. (Source)
Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Holy & Protection DPS
We are concerned that Holy and Protection may have lost too much dps as "collateral damage" from the Ret nerfs. It is something we're working on now, though I do believe Holy dps is still a lot better than it was in BC. Healers will always level more slowly than dps specs since using your abilities may keep you alive but doesn't always kill stuff faster. (Source)
Retribution - Developer Q&A
1) Do you really think we'll use AW now other than select PvE encounters? (Source)
We understand that AW will be used much, much less than it is now in Arenas. That wasn't the intention, but we felt we needed to counter the standard winged bubble opening move that so many paladins were doing. If this change actually seems to make a difference (because to be honest despite the number of nerfs we've done to Ret, they were still overpowered) than we'll consider other ways of getting the same effect that don't involve Forbearance.
2) Why is it that you're so hot to balance out a class that has been a joke for 2+ years for two weeks of playtime when PvE progression and arena rankings are now all but meaningless?
We can't let one spec run around killing everyone just because they were underpowered before. I expect you'd be just as frustrated as other classes if it was Elemental shammies or Feral druids dominating everyone in PvP. Where Ret's history did come into play is we originally tried relatively small nerfs originally (though the paladin community didn't perceive them as such at the time). In retrospect, being gentle there didn't do you guys any favors because then we just had to come back two more times with big nerfs.
3) Where were our desperately needed hot fix buffs for the past two years? Is this new insta-balance stance going to swing both ways?
We made a lot of big changes to classes for LK and we need to able to adjust them as needed. I honestly wasn't doing this job for the past two years, so I'm not in a position to comment on why certain decisions were made the way they were. I have faith they were made for good reasons, but I just can't share them with you because I don't know. I will say that the perception around Blizzard was that the Ret paladin situation was very severe. I don't want to understate it. It was considered one of the most egregious balance problems we've had in some time.
4) Where were the desperately needed nerfs to certain classes in arena for the past two season?
See above.
5) Will problems such as lack of MS debuffs, interrupts, distance closing, and susceptibility to mana burns/silences be addressed?
Mana burns - yes.
Distance closing and interrupts - we are considering giving Ret or paladins in general some new utility to make up for all the nerfs we have made to their damage. It will almost certanly not be MS though. You can find a thread where I recently attempted to explain why we don't want to give out more MS debuffs.
I haven't heard a lot of silence complaints from paladins recently (more than normal I mean). Is this a new problem? Care to elaborate?
Ghostcrawler - I'm not understanding why the winged bubble move was such a big deal? Bubble in and of itself is overpowered, but that's OK because it's on a 5 minute cooldown. It sort of seems like it's possible that you're letting people's anecdotes guide this decision.
The problem was that the cooldown was irrelevant. The paladin could wing + bubble, then go in with a stun, DS, CS, JoC and maybe Consecrate, all within a few GCDs. If the poor sap on the receiving end was below 35% (now 20%), which was likely, he would get hammered as well. If somehow the target was still alive after all that, or had an ally, the paladin usually had enough mana to heal himself to full. Then, even if the battle was over, the paladin had enough mana to just go on to the next target (minus bubble). In Arenas this didn't matter of course, because with a death that early, the match is usually decided. This strategy was the entire PvP problem with Ret in a nutshell. It didn't take a lot of skill and was impossible to counter. Most other classes can't open with that many abilities at once (ignoring the bubble defense and healing potential). Players complain about rogues stun-locking them, but at least that takes some skill from the rogue to do things in the right order and usually requires an element of surprise.
Tons of explanation about the nerfs
See the post
More Retribution Q&A ... (Source)
So my question to you would be, has it been discussed between the developers about our mana regeneration, and if it would be at all possible to have it scale?
It's not clear to me why your mana needs to scale. Your spells don't keep increasing their cost as your gear increases, and in fact your damage does increase as your gear improves. Caster mana increases with gear, but whatever item budget they are spending on Int, you get to spend on other stats, such as Strength.
As I've said though, we do think we will change mana drains to a percent so that they aren't strictly more effective against classes with smaller mana pools.
I know you've been busy reading, but has something like this been considered? I'm sure you realize how we feel about Divine Storm being more or less just like a warriors whirlwind and why we are petitioning for this to go back to holy damage.
If Divine Storm went back to Holy, its damage would have to drop by a lot to compensate (maybe 40% or so). There are some design advantages to having it stay physical. For example, an Arena team can send a plate wearer to fight the Ret pally since Divine Storm will do less damage to that person.
Ultimately, we would like to have the spell feel more different from Whirlwind, but understand that our first priority was just to get paladin damage under control.
My final question and then i'll let you get back to working on the class, has to do with Righteous Vengence.
You're going to have to explain a little more what you mean about it being resisted often and doubly affected by resilience. Maybe someone else explains it in this forum and I'll see it soon. When crits are prevented from resilience, they typically do not prevent secondary effects that would have been a result of that crit. It's physical damage IIRC, so it shouldn't be resisted or dispelled at all, but I'll look into that. Ultimately though we wanted this talent mostly for PvE utility, so you shouldn't expect us to buff it a lot for PvP purposes.
4) 51 Pointers are broadly situational. I don't think it's totally fair to expect something other out of Divine Storm.
This is true, and Divine Storm is less situational than a lot of the 51 point talents.
41pt better than 51pt...what?
We don't inflate the value of deeper talents. If the bottom talents were always the best there would never be any reason to take less than 51 points in a tree.
The core rotation should be sustainable without requiring the use of JoW. JoW should be for mana regen above and beyond that core rotation. It's bad enough in PvP that judgements don't return mana when they are absorbed. Now we essentially have to use JoW in PvP because of that limitation to JotW which means we're no longer choosing between extra mana or stopping a runner: we're choosing between necessary mana to function and stopping a runner.
I really don't see a lot of paladins judging Wisdom in PvP. Unless you are being mana drained a ton (which as I mentioned is something we do plan on fixing) I don't understand how you can be going out of mana while fighting someone. Now if you blow a lot of mana, you may have to pause in between fights. Most mana-using classes have to do that.
There is still a lot of debate on these forums about how long a paladin can go before running on fumes. So far a lot of players are finding results similar to ours, and I think some (though not all) who do claim to have trouble are being disingenous in hopes of getting it buffed. But we'll keep watching to see what happens. If we reach the point where Ret paladins are just getting slaughtered in PvP then we'll know we went way too far. I don't see that happening yet though.
GC will delete anything that makes him look bad, post something were he contradicted himself in and it will get deleted. he only leaves messeges that benefit him. Trick me once, shame on you, trick me twice GC then shame on me
This is just name calling as far as I can tell. The only posts that get deleted are those that violate the forum terms of use. Players catch me in contradictions all the time -- I tend to type fast so that I can respond to as many posts as possible. Life goes on. In any case, it doesn't really matter what was said in the past. Ret paladins were broken and we had to fix them. As I have said dozens of times, we don't like nerfing classes but we still have to do it when necessary.
Retribution in PvP
On utility, the designers did agree that if we were going to keep hurting Ret's burst dps, which is a big thing they brought to a team, that we needed to give them some kind of tool to make up for it. We're not sure whether that will be a snare or interrupt or whatever, but the feedback on forums like this one will certainly help determine it. I am surprised to hear you say you don't have a lot of control, becaue I think that is the preception of a lot of classes on the receiving ends of your stuns.
Mana, rage and energy are different mechanics. Yeah, duh, I know, but hear me out. To a class with mana seeing players with a resource that never runs out can seem amazing. But the flip side of that is you start a battle with a full bar. A rogue (or druid) does too, but their bar goes dry in 2-3 hits while yours can last for a long time and pack a lot of hits into a short period. Rage can come back for a warrior (or druid) but they start with none and use a lot of it on every swing. Each of them has their advantages and disadvantages and I think we've done a pretty good job overall of preventing any one of them from dominating either PvP or PvE. (Source)
Holy Paladins Q&A (Source)
Aura Mastery - This needs to be removed and made baseline, Holy paladins need a new 11 point talent.
A little bit of explanation wouldn't hurt when you make claims like this. Typically we don't like to turn good talents into baseline abilities. That either leaves you with mediocre talents or the next tier of good talents (that you ask to be turned into core abilities).
Illumination - Needs a buff, mana return back to 100%? At least 75%
There was a time not too long ago where Holy paladins just didn't run out of mana. This was not good for the game. (Source)
Holy paladins are still locked down to easy in pvp and bring nothing special to aid the group, whats being done to fix this?
This is a little vague for me to be able to address your concerns. I do think there may be something to the issue that Arena teams want a healer with some offensive capabilities as well, even if that means Mass Dispel.
We are close to no longer being the best single target healer. Other classes are catching up and paladins are being removed from raids.
I haven't seen any evidence that paladins are being removed from raids in LK. In BC, that started to happen because healers needed to move a lot and raids required a ton of AE heals which didn't play into paladin strengths. We chilled down those elements as well as giving paladins more tools for those situations (such as Infusion of Light and Beacon of Light).
Beacon of Light - Is horrible in its current state, at least lower the mana cost, make it work on overhealing, and make it last longer.
I have seen an awful lot of paladins who really like Beacon. Since you sound like someone who is active in the community, I would imagine you know this, so it surprises me you would state that Beacon is horrible as if it were an accepted fact. You're at least going to have to offer some more evidence.
Judgements of the Pure - Worst 5 point talent ever made. Its so deep in the holy tree and all it dose is give 15% haste? Not worth it at all.
Before we buffed Pure, I think it was underpowered. We hesitated because we saw some player calculations that it could have been decent even in its own form. Now in its new form, we feel like it is pretty potent. If it has a disadvantage, it's that it might invalidate some of the earlier Holy talents.
JUDGEING IN COMBAT ISNT FUN. Its very annoying, mobs are taken down way to fast to even bother, this would only work on bosses.
Part of the reason we did this was because a complaint we heard from Holy paladins was they wanted more buttons to push than just FoL and HL. Judging seemed like a natural fit since it was already part of the paladin repetoire. This perplexes me a little since you then ask for new healing spells down below. Perhaps you or someone else could elaborate? (Having 40 yard ranged Judgements is pretty nice too.)
Holy Guidance - Every other tree has a similar talent but theres is 3 points, gives more spell power AND has a secondary effeft!! Why do Holy paladins have such a horible version!
It's difficult to just directly compare talents between two different classes or specs. We can take a look at this one in particular though.
NO NEW HEALING SPELLS? ok in BC i could settle for no new spells but now in wrath its just plain stupid.
Sorry, we disagree. We don't want to just keep adding new rotational spells every expansion or classes are going to end up with just too many buttons -- some specs are dangerously close to that already. Instead we added some more situational heals. The paladin has been designed around Flash of Light, just like the shaman was designed around Chain Heal. We didn't want to completely change what these classes were all about, in part because a lot of players like them as they are. We figured players who gravitate towards wanting lots of different kinds of heals can play the druid or priest. Players who want to have relatively few spells and can then focus on cooldowns, trinkets or the like can play the paladin or shaman. We think it would be dangerous for paladins to pick up Lich King and find their class had completely changed.
But we did make some major changes to specs like the Prot warrior and Shadow priest. If there are enough Holy paladins who think the spec is fundamentally broken and not fun, then that's something on which we'd like to see more discussion from you guys. Just remember not everyone automatically agrees with you.
Missing 11-point Prot talent
We're not sure if we're going to do this or not. If we do it (make an 11-point Prot talent that is attractive to Ret) it would be for these reasons:
-- It would be cooler if the talent was something fun for Prot and not something they "need" to tank.
-- In our experience, Ret paladins who PvP often go down into Prot anyway to get Imp Hammer of Justice.
-- I suggested we might offer Ret more PvP utility since we are stripping some of the burst damage, so PvE Retadins might not want this ability anyway.
-- We wouldn't want this talent to be something Prot would never get and Ret would always get. If anything we need to err on the side of something Prot definitely wants. (Source)
Priest (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Mindflay bugs (See source)
We'll look into it. I don't have the bug list right in front of me at the moment. (Source)
Developer Q&A (Source)
1) Dispersion. Some call this the 'self cyclone.' In other ways it's very similar to a mage's Ice Block.
We've gone back and forth on Dispersion. At times in beta it was overpowered and we backed off of it. We do think casting out of it would be too powerful. It's supposed to be a defensive ability, not something you do to keep someone from being able to counter you when you're wailing on them. (Source)
2) Being Dispelled... Dispelling resistance.
We are working on a redesign of the whole dispel system. This is a big topic, but to be brief:
1) It adds a lot of randomness to who wins or loses a battle, just based on whether the dispel worked.
2) Some classes were designed with powerful self buffs. It's hard to balance those when they are often immediately gone.
3) The whole strategy of junk buffs feels lame to both sides, but it's effective so players feel like they must do it.
4) Defensive dispelling (getting a debuff off of you) feels more legitimate than removing someone else's Fort or whatever. We want to try and steer the system towards that.
5) We need to be more consistent with dispel resistance among classes. (Source)
4) Hymn of Hope is useless in Shadowform...
We have some plans for hymns. More when we have the details worked out a little more.
5) Dropping shadowform to heal. Again, there is a severe mana penalty when we are forced to heal. All our healing casts cost a lot more plus we take on added damage and do less damage. While I'm fine with this increase/decrease aspect, I think the mana cost of switching forms needs to be removed entirely.
I don't think we'd remove it entirely, but we can look at how much it really ends up costing. There should be a decision involved with going in and out of forms, but we're re-evaluating what that is right now. Druids have a similar problem.
6) No real burst damage... In PvP, Priests really don't base their overall damage around critting. Our current gear doesn't reflect spell critical strike... As for Penance, I really like this spell. However, we cannot self-cast and it's also currently target-faced bugged.
We made a recent change to allow Shadowform to do more with crits. I believe the target-facing bug on Penance was also fixed. Preventing self-casting is by design.
7) Current Vampiric Touch is useless. You reduced the mana regeneration so raids are less reliant on Shadow Priests in order to run instance.
Um, Vampiric Touch does a lot of damage. It's coefficient was doubled and is now almost overpowered. When we noticed Shadow's damage was a little low, we gave a lot of it back just through VT. As far as Replenishment goes, I explained why we tied it into Mindblast elsewhere. It has to do with the cooldown - duration of the spells involved as well as not wanting to lose ticks.
9) Fade/Improved Shadowform does not match up with the tooltip. 2/2 Improved Shadowform states that it will have 100% chance to 'remove all movement impairing effects.' It doesn't remove Cyclones...
There aren't many things that remove Cyclones, but we'll look into how the bonus to Fade is implemented.
10) Overall Survivability. It's really lackluster.
Do you mean priests in general or specifically Shadow priests are squishy? We do think everyone feels a little squishy at 70. Players understandably got the new talents that enchance damage without getting the corresponding survival oriented ones that they will probably pick up in the next 10 levels. In addition, health just grows faster than damage on the way to 80. Compare PvP gear and you can see that it gains defensive stats a lot faster than offensive ones.
One reason why pre-3.0.2 that warlocks were more successful is that you could live over time through their dots and fears but their armor/survivability was high so they weren't focused as much. Basically they were a persistent CC nuisance.
Warlocks were designed to have high dps while Shadow priests were designed to have much lower dps. They were a utility class that paid in dps in order to justify their amazing group benefits. With the buff overhaul, we improved Shadow's dps significantly. (We also dropped lock survivability in PvP too.)
Rogue (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Developers Q&A (Source)
1. With the reworking of ?tanking? stats the rogue ability to dodge as a primary form of melee damage reduction has been significantly reduced to levels which impair their survivability in PvP, it is feared. What is Blizzard?s position, and possible compensation for the reduction in the rogues ability to dodge?
You could be refering to one of two things -- the higher dodge ratings required, in which case you'll eventually catch up with good gear, or the diminishing returns at very high avoidance rating, but in those cases they are just diminishing returns. Your dodge does still increase.
We're not too worried about rogue survival in PvP at the current time. Rogues still have plenty of tricks. We do think PvP is a little bursty overall at level 70, but the recent change in resilience and the higher health pools at level 80 should help that.
2. With the removal of the snare negating effect on shadowstep, there are concerns about the mobility of rogues in a PvP environment where utility is just as important as damage. At the very least many players feel obligated to try and acquire the improved sprint talent lest waste cooldowns normally reserved for other aspects of combat, e.g. Cloak of shadows to break frost nova. With the emphasis and ability of many classes to snare, hamstring, slow, and chill with little to no cooldown increasing, how do the developers plan to compensate in the mobility of melee classes, especially when our mobility is specifically being reduced and the prevalence of snares is increasing?
Again, your question is all about compensation. We don't know that any is needed. Rogues were a very good PvP class in BC and Cloak was either overpowered or bordering on overpowered for a lot of that time.
3. We understand that play style of a class may change, and change is scary for us all. Hemorrhage has been a main attack for almost four year and we understand it is to be considered a debuff attack in the upcoming expansion. It has been the general consensus that the debuff is rather insignificant to be a dedicated supportive roll in the realm of PvP combat. What do the developers think about the debuff and damage provided by the hemorrhage ability with respect to PvP combat? Are there any plans to either increase the debuff to resemble those available to other classes or uphold and restore the ability?s role as a primary attack within the configuration of certain builds?
As a debuff, it can still account for a lot of damage. Usually when rogues complain about it, it's because it isn't boosting their personal damage enough (because other players are using all the charges). On that last part, players may use it as a primary attack, but that doesn't mean we designed it to be.
4. Finally, as will all new programs and games there are bugs to work out, and the rogue community is fairly adamant about issues with the proper function of stealth and vanish. Are the programmers and developers aware of any particular bugs or problems with the workings of stealth and vanish and is so are steps being taken, as I imagine they would be, to rectify the situation?
One could write several volumes on the epic adventures of Vanish. Here is how I think the story goes: Players were convinced for a long time that there were bugs with Vanish. We finally got a few good cases where we could repro the problem and those were fixed (say sometime post-Sunwell). There may still be some edge cases where it still happens. I believe those are more rare, but some players are so used to the concept of Vanish being bugged that they assume nothing has ever changed. It's one of those jokes that has become larger than life (almost like Ony deep breathing more).
There were some more recent legitimate stealth bugs, at least in PvP. We just fixed several of them. I can't recall if those were hotfixed or not.
Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Purge
We have no plans AT THIS TIME to change purge. That's not a promise to never ever change it. Any dispel changes we might implement are weeks or months away, and purge is not ever specifically mentioned as a problem in those discussions.
Dispelling can be a pretty cool mechanic in PvP. We just need to tone down the annoying, frustrating and overly random parts. (Source)
Elemental Tree AOE
I don't think it's a good idea to keep bumping posts. You're just going to start an arms race with every other player in the forum.
We have several ideas on AE for Elemental:
A modification of Thunderstorm.
A modification of AE Totems.
A modification of Chain Lightning.
A new spell.
Feedback is of course appreciated. (Source)
Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Metamorphosis and Demonology Tree
The taunt is there because we thought it might be fun in a 5-player instance for the warlock to be able to tank once in awhile, especially if the main tank goes down on a pull. It's not the signature ability of Metamorphosis. We don't have a problem with the spell. It is useful in PvP and provides a nice damage buff in PvE. Some of its abilities, like the Immolate, can be useful in the right situations.
[...] What I said, and I clarified later, was that Affliction and Destro seem to do competitive damage in PvE. Demo is lower than that, which is not ideal, but we are also concerned Demo's survivability might make it the only raiding spec if its dps was just as high. In the meantime, we think people will still spec Demo because it is useful in PvP.
Our new design is there are no PvP vs. PvE trees. But it will take some time to reach this point because we didn't want to rip out every talent of every class and start over. The death knight has 3 trees with different flavors, but no PvP, PvE and tanking tree. The warrior and hunter are a lot closer to that than they used to be. We're working on all the others, including Demo. (Source)
Warlock Pets
I doubt raid leaders are going to be bringing death knights just for Hysteria. The whole point is nobody brings something unique to raids so important that it gaurantees them a spot. Locks still have several very potent buffs -- it's just that there are other ways to get those now too.
The Felhunter was just too well-suited for PvP. There was no reason to bring any other pet.
We would like to get the Voidwalker a little more use besides just leveling though. (Source)
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