RSS Blue posts, Gnomish Yellow Pages, Comics

Blue posts <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from Blizzard staff</div><div class="blizzquote">Talents and group buffs We are looking at all of the talents that provide group buffs, particularly those that require many talent points and represent a trade-off of utility for dps. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14697605245-hunting-party-incongruent-with-replenishment.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Recount, Damage Meters ... "Hot" is not the weather. That might be all that a particular day brings, but it also might be windy or cloudy. That is weather. The thermometer only tells you temperature. If you watch the thermometer enough and correlate its behavior with other things you experience then you might notice, for example, that the temperature tends to drop before a storm. But its predictive value is still limited. It won’t tell you what the weather will do in 6 hours or a week. Satellite imagery is a very powerful tool for predicting the weather. A thermometer is not (though it is far from useless). I chose that particular analogy carefully. I did not say recount was useless as a tool – far from it. My suggestion was that it measures one particular thing and it measures it very well. But that one particular thing is not the sum total of “was this guy a good player or not?” Healing in particular has a lot less to do with total amout healed and a lot more to do with who you healed and when. (I love all the healers whose most healed target is... them!). You can heal a lot but ignore decursing. Or heal a lot, but only because you were propped up by mana pots and every Innervate in the raid. Players can top the damage meters but wipe the raid or require excess healing or require too many explanations on a boss fight or cause loot drama or go AFK a lot or offend other good players who might choose to bail on you as a result. Recount (et al.) is a tool. It is not the whole toolbox. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/14697301234-sorry-blizz-doesnt-balance-based-on-qq.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Why did you remove downranking on healing spells? This requires a long answer, and you can probably find our response from previous posts. The short summary is that it was taking more and more of our development time to balance spells where the new ranks still looked appealing. Early LK beta testers just ignored the new ranks of spells because their mana costs were huge and their spellpower was high enough that the lower base healing on a lower rank was irrelevant to them. The math problem was getting difficult and after many meetings we decided we could better spend our design time on more pressing issues. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/14697301234-sorry-blizz-doesnt-balance-based-on-qq.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) [US] Free Character Moves to Scilla As we our nearing our goal for PvP transfers to Scilla, free character moves to this realm will be shut down Monday, February 2, 12:00 pm PST. Players on eligible source realms are encouraged to move to Scilla as soon as possible if it is your desired destination. We thank you for your understanding as we shut these moves down ahead of schedule. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/14697600325-free-character-moves--127.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Posting on official forums ... A friendly reminder if you're just joining us.... <ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;"><li>I read all of these threads. Many other Blizzard employees do too.</li><li>If you make good points, then trust that we have gotten the message. You do not need a blue response to indicate that we have gotten the message.</li><li>Please do not complain about which posts we respond to or why.</li><li>As a rule of thumb, the better posts tend to discuss classes and mechanics and not Blizzard itself. </li></ul> <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/24x24/druid.jpg" alt="" border="0" /> Druid (<a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=700" target="_blank">Skills List</a> / <a href="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid" target="_blank">Talent + Glyph Calc.</a>) Lower Bear threat in 3.0.8 We still have not identified anything that could account for lower threat, other than those factors already mentioned in this thread (e.g. lowered Mangle, possibly more armor leading to less rage). We will keep looking into in it and following discussions such as this. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/14498473051-can-we-get-a-blue-on-bear-threat.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/24x24/priest.jpg" alt="" border="0" /> Priest (<a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=640" target="_blank">Skills List</a> / <a href="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest" target="_blank">Talent + Glyph Calc.</a>) Raid-Wide Holy Nova The reason we haven't switched every spell over to be raid-wide is some of them don't scale easily. With something like Holy Nova, you have two options: 1) Heals well in a 5-player group, so it heals phenomenally well in a 25-player group. 2) Heals well in a 25-player group, so trivializes anything in a 5-player group. In other words, if you make it raid-wide and heal 25 for as much as it heals 5 for then it is just 5x as good in a larger group. So you start considering a 5 player cap, but then positioning is really tough because you can't pick out the 5 most wounded people to target. So then you consider making it smart, and suddenly priests have 2 or 3 spells that work exactly like CoH. The right answer might be something like it heals less per person the larger your group, but even that is a little strange and changes the role of the spell depending on group size. But we have some ideas. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/14697495446-gc-any-thoughts-on-raid-wide-holy-nova.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Hotfix for Guardian Spirit? (Doesn't properly proc the 50% Heal) It is not an easy bug to fix because the problem described seems to happen inconsistently and smells strongly of being affected by server lag. If we can come up with a clean fix then we will hotfix. Currently we aren't sure how widespread or frequent the problem is. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/14697593701-so-hotfix-for-gs.html" target="_blank">Source</a>)</div></div></div> Featured Addons – Issue 4 - Gomish Yellow Pages (by <a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?action=profile;u=5774" target="_blank">Trell</a>) First of all, as requested by a few readers, who emailed specifically to ask, heres a list of the previous Featured Addons articles. <a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=13376.0" target="_blank">Featured Addons Issue 1 - TourGuide</a> <a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=34002.0" target="_blank">Featured Addons Issue 2 - ClassTimer</a> <a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=34901.0" target="_blank">Featured Addons Issue 3 - ClosetGnome</a> This time around, we're featuring an addon called GnomishYellowPages.  It's another WoWAce addon, and is, as the name suggests, a great way of keeping track of all those Trade messages.  Further down, we also have an interview with the author of GnomishYellowPages (referred to as GYP from here on).  As usual, click any link within the addon feature to see a full size image. Bascially, once installed, GYP will run non intrusively in the background, and every time you enter a capital city, it will start 'listening' in on the Trade channel.  Any time anyone links a profession, it will store their link, along with any other text they send to Trade with it. To bring up the main screen, simply type /gyp into a chatbox.  If you're more lazy, you can macro it to a button/hotkey (if you don't know how to do this, type /macro in a chat box, click the New button, then choose an icon, and type a name for the new button you're creating.  Then in the large textbox on the left, simply type: /gyp - once you've done that, you can drag your new button down to an action bar, if you so wish). <a href="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/january/f_gypmainscrem_2d69ac5.jpg" target="_blank">You'll get this screen come up</a> (don't worry if it isn't full, or doesn't have a scrollbar, bear in mind that GYP needs a little time to collect links of people advertising in Trade.  If you only log on at 5am in the morning, it's not likely that GYP will collect much data <img src="http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/tongue.gif" alt="Tongue" border="0" />). Now, in the screen that you see above, names in red are people who are currently offline, names in grey are 'strangers' (people not in your guild/friendlists), who are online, and names in green are guildies.  Friends are showing in yellow.  Finally, names in cyan are people that are in the same zone as you. GYP offers a wealth of ways to use this data too, <a href="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/january/f_gypclicktowm_0b07bc6.jpg" target="_blank">this screen shows that you can whisper someone directly</a> from the main screen simply by clicking their name.  You can also <a href="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/january/f_gyprefreshsm_d2dae28.jpg" target="_blank">refresh someones location on the list</a> by clicking their status.  You can <a href="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/january/f_gypfiltersom_528112e.jpg" target="_blank">sort any of the columns</a> in the table by left clicking the title of the column, and can also <a href="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/january/f_gypfiltersom_528112e.jpg" target="_blank">filter the professions shown</a> by right clicking the professions column. Clicking any of the links in the table will bring up that persons profession, for easy browsing.  Clicking the buttons at the top of the table will enable you to Fonte