RSS Blizzcon Tomorrow, Blue posts

Blizzcon Tomorrow! The Blizzcon starts tomorrow, the Cataclysm expansion will be announced during the opening ceremony and I already have a nice preview up : <ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;"><li><a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=92919.0" target="_blank">World of Warcraft - Cataclysm</a></li></ul> Again, this isn't confirmed by Blizzard yet but I really do not doubt most of my information at this point. (Let's say that ... at least 90% of it should be accurate) Blue posts <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from Blizzard staff</div><div class="blizzquote">Disparities between tanks Are you struggling on hard mode raid encounters because your guild picked the wrong tank? I understand that some of you are, but according to our data, it’s a pretty small minority of players trying those encounters. If you’re just offended that the health pools are not identical, then your argument isn’t going to carry as much weight as a guild that hit a brick wall because they didn’t have the best tank for an encounter. When druids couldn’t apply the Thunderclap debuff, that was considered a big problem. The fact that a druid can’t interrupt as well as a warrior is still considered a big problem by some. We used to let abilities such as Berserker Rage, Spell Reflect or Intervene play big roles on some encounters, but that inevitably leads to one tank being massively better on one encounter than another. None of the deltas are massive in the current game in our opinion, and we think that the number of cases of players who state with certainty that they can detect a difference is overstated. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/19110419643-flavor-vs-balance.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) [...] I’ll attempt to explain this at a vision level. In my experience, the community tries to approach game design too often with “laws.” They know “Any tank class can be MT” is something we want to accomplish, but then they take that to trump all other concerns and expect identical tanking classes to be the only possible outcome. That’s not how game design works. Player flexibility (bringing who you want) is a big concern. But so is class distinction. So is making the game approachable. So is making sure all the classes are fun. It may seem like an inherent contradiction when you have two design goals heading in opposite direction (simplicity vs. depth may be the most obvious one). But that doesn’t mean all other concerns can get swept aside. You have to take everything into consideration when you make changes. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/19110419643-flavor-vs-balance.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/ideathknights.gif" alt="" border="0" /> Death Knight Primary strikes inferor to disease builders That was a direct response to the diseaseless rotations that just spammed strikes. Because DKs use a pseudo combo point system (in that they can use their "finishers" whenever they want), things have strayed into ignoring the finishers or over-utilizing them from time to time. I suspect it has more to do with the difficulty of keeping diseases up in a PvP environment coupled with the benefits of ranged attacks. The IT glyph is probably a little generous. Scourge Strike falling behind Obliterate seems to be largely a function of armor pen (a problematic stat these days in many respects). It's not at all ideal, but we don't have a great plan yet to fix it that didn't involve just buffing Scourge Strike (and possibly leading to diseaselessness again). (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/19378359805-shadowfrost-againseriously.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Obliterate vs. Scourge Strike I don't think that's the whole issue. If Obliterate just beat Scourge Strike, then Unholy DKs might be using Oblit in PvP. Instead they're going to Icy Touch and Death Coil. Death Coil is supposed to be a bonus, not the centerpiece of the class. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/19378359805-shadowfrost-againseriously.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/images.gif" alt="" border="0" /> Mage Mages concerns My point was that we don’t want Fire / Frostfire to have to worry about mana to the extent that Arcane does. Arcane is more about pacing. Fire is more about responding to what is going on in the fight. That is not to say that Arcane should run OOM constantly or that Fire has an unalienable right to infinite mana. Try not to take my comments to illogical extremes. <img src="http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif" alt="Smiley" border="0" /> When I say we want Fire to be about cooldowns, I meant that lining up your spells at the right time is the hallmark of a great Fire mage. I know a lot of players will say either LOL mages just spam one button, or else LOL mage dps is entirely RNG. I don’t believe either to be true, and the evidence supporting this conclusion is that there are mages who can do much higher damage than other mages, consistently and with similar gear. This suggests there is a much higher skill component to mage dps than even some mages want to acknowledge. A lot of that skill component for Fire / Frostfire comes in doing things at the right time (which we hope to contrast with Arcane and ultimately Frost). What those things are you are supposed to manage come in several tiers: first are Scorch, Living Bomb and Hot Streak. Yes Hot Streak has an RNG component, but not entirely so. Players still have some control over it. Second are things like Icy Veins, Combustion, Molten Fury, trinkets and even things like Flame Caps. Yes, I know that both Fire and Frostfire mages don’t always take all of those talents. A note on Combustion in a minute. Third are more external cooldowns like say Bloodlust and Power Infusion. Yes, other classes benefit from these too. But mages can inflate their damage dramatically when they line these up with their other cooldowns. In the BC days, a mage who really focused on that last 20% of a fight could see their dps nearly double. (I acknowledge this was a bigger factor when Combustion was a bigger contributor.) Fourth are factors that have less of an effect overall. I’m talking about things like PoM and Firestarter (not included in most raiding builds), and Focus Magic and Torment the Weak (not trivial, but generally up nearly all the time too). Combustion isn’t good enough right now. We get that. Fire used to be more about cooldown stacking when Combustion meant more. The problem is that we’re happy with Fire damage. We don’t generally like to nerf a spec in order to buff a talent unless things are really, really off. We’ll eventually (3.3?) fix Combustion, because it’s a fun talent. But we aren’t going to do it in such a way that just grants some “free dps” unless of course mages need it at that time. If you disagree that Fire is performing well, then I can understand how you’d disagree with our course of action here. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/19110160602-the-new-real-top-mage-questions.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/ipriests.gif" alt="" border="0" /> Priest Mandatory talents No. We're no longer in the business of giving specs a talent or ability that is so awesome that you just have to get brought to a raid. A raid should be able to function without a Shadow priest. They should want you because you're a good player, not because your presence passively makes everyone else better regardless of your individual skill. Now we don't want you to be a liability, which is why we want Shadow damage to be proportionately higher than it was in BC and why we want Shadow to have great utility, including Replenishment and Vampiric Embrace. No, VE is not mandatory. Yes, other specs can bring Replenishment. That's so not every raid needs an X before they can enter the instance. Do we see Shadow priests in raids, even in very uber guilds attempting hard modes? Yes. All the time. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/19378359822-shadow-priests--blue-response-.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/iwarriors.gif" alt="" border="0" /> Warrior Rage generation scaling with gear When you get better gear, you do more damage. That’s progression. Assuming things scale reasonably well (though we tweak things so often now, I think scaling is less of a concern than it used to be), you should be at the same relative position to other classes as you progress. It’s a bad model that warriors start out weak but get stronger relative to other classes with gear. [...] Rage isn't an unalienable right. It's a resource. It has advantages and disadvantages. While you won't ever flame out the way a mage might run OOM in a long fight, you won't always have enough rage to do what you want at any given second (while the mage will probably have mana). Learning to manage that is the difference between okay warriors and great warriors. But suffer, suffer, suffer then explode with great gear isn't a great design. Why haven't we changed it yet? Because as with many changes of this level if we were to do it tomorrow it would feel really harsh to a lot of warriors. We do care about how our changes feel to the community, even if we sometimes decide to make unpopular calls when we think they're necessary. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/19377449515-if-rage-mechanic-isnt-fixed-by-next-expansion.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Giving Warriors more way to generate rage While that might be too dramatic a change, I agree that giving warriors more control over getting rage when they needed it might be a good idea. Imagine (I am totally waving my arms here and not announcing changes) an off-the-GCD...</div></div></div>

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