RSS Upcoming Class Change Highlights (Part 1), Blue posts [Archive]

Azel

05/02/2009, 07:17

Update - Added today's blue posts, a stealth nerf for hunters and a hotfix for warriors. Also a few reports of bugs occuring in raids. Upcoming Class Change Highlights (Part 1) <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from: Eyonix (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/14910002204-upcoming-class-change-highlights-part-1.html" target="_blank" style="color: white;">Source</a>)</div><div class="blizzquote">We are planning a lot of exciting content for patch 3.1.0, and we are doing a three-part preview series on upcoming class changes. This is the first in the series: Priests, Rogues, and Shaman. Please keep in mind, that this list is not at all comprehensive, and subject to change. PRIEST <ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;"><li>Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.</li><li>Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).</li><li>Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.</li><li>Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.</li><li>Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.</li><li>Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.</li><li>We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.</li></ul> ROGUE <ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;"><li>Hunger for Blood – instead of a self-buff, this ability can only be used when there is a bleed effect on the target. However, it has no stacks and grants a 15% damage bonus.</li><li>Adrenaline Rush – the cooldown on this ability has been lowered.</li><li>Lightning Reflexes – reduced to 3 ranks. In addition to 2/4/6% dodge, this talent now also grants 4/7/10% passive melee haste.</li><li>Killing Spree – while this ability is active, the rogue does 20% additional damage.</li><li>Savage Combat – now causes 2/4% physical damage done.</li><li>Mace Specialization – this talent now grants haste in addition to armor penetration.</li></ul> SHAMAN <ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;"><li>Chain Lightning – now jumps to 4 targets but does less damage. We wanted to make the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning more clear.</li><li>Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.</li><li>Spirit Weapons – now reduces all threat, not just melee threat.</li><li>Unleashed Rage – reduced to 2 ranks, now also increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by 1/2%.</li><li>Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.</li><li>We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.</li></ul> COMING SOON <ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;"><li>Warlock</li><li>Druid</li><li>Hunter</li><li>Death Knight</li><li>Mage</li><li>Paladin</li><li>Warrior</li></ul></div></div></div> Blue posts Interesting blue posts are starting to appear... 3.1.0 release on PTRs is probably closer than ever! Please note that there is a slight issue with the blue tracker and I'll just link the official forums for today. The blue tracker should be fixed within the day. (And most likely before any other announcement comes up) <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from Blizzard staff</div><div class="blizzquote">Differences between classes DPS in raid There is no such thing as a typical raid or even a typical encounter, so it is tricky to make blanket statements like "X always tops the meters." Overall, we suspect that warriors are too high (largely on double-dipping effects of Deep Wounds), DKs may be too high, and rogues and possibly cats are too low. This should not be news to anyone who follows these forums. Again, that depends enormously on your actual group. Players are often very quick to ignore differences in gear or skill when claiming their dps is too low. We tend to balance around individual encounters though. There might be certain fights where we think say mages, hunters or shamans are too high depending on how that encounter plays out. I would not try and read too much into my statements above. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910421492&pageNo=5#97" target="_blank">Source</a>) [...] When we say "pure dps classes should generally top the meters" we mean "warlocks, hunters, mages and rogues." However, when we say "generally top the meters" we are refering to players of flawless skill and perfect gear. For almost all raids composed of mortals, a very good player of any dps spec should be able to do the highest damage on an encounter. This was not the case in BC where we kept say Enhancement shamans or Retribution paladins much lower than the pure classes. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910421492&sid=1&pageNo=8#158" target="_blank">Source</a>) Dual Talent Spec This is still in the works and we will have more information on it for everyone before too much longer. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910061835&pageNo=1#2" target="_blank">Source</a>) Raids & Dungeons Sapphiron - Aura bugged / not affected by Frost resist? We've made no explicit changes to the encounter on the design side to change how the frost aura works. When Sapphiron enters combat, he casts a spell on himself that every 2 seconds casts the debuff players receive, which you see as "Frost Aura". That debuff is a 5 second duration damage over time effect that deals frost damage every second. The only difference between the 10 and 25 player versions of these spells is the amount of damage. So if you were only getting damaged every 2 seconds previously in a 10 player raid, and still are only getting damaged every 2 seconds in a 25 player raid, there's some kind of odd bug going on that I'll have to track down. Especially since the data says you should be taking damage every second. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14697621780&pageNo=6#108" target="_blank">Source</a>) Once we find out what he bug is and correct the problem, we'll adjust the numbers if needed to closely match the damage that players have been experiencing when WotLK shipped. We're not trying to adjust the difficulty of this fight, but we need to determine what's happening so this bug doesn't cause problems with future encounters. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14697621780&pageNo=8#152" target="_blank">Source</a>) Sapphiron - not casting all the Ice Blocks he should We're also trying to track down why Sapphiron decides to occasionally not cast all the Ice Blocks he should. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14697621780&pageNo=7#124" target="_blank">Source</a>) Malygos - bugs in 3.0.8 We're checking into the various issues noted here, including why his cone breath hits targets behind his centerpoint, issues with malygos deciding to attack in phase 2, and trying to make the defense bubble's protection work even if you enter the bubble in between the time a missile is launched and when it lands. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14497011300&pageNo=3#54" target="_blank">Source</a>) Malygos - Feign Death not working is "intended" Feign death not working in actually intentional, but certainly not desired. It was causing a very nasty problem, and we've been trying to figure out a way to handle the particular boundary case without setting the creature flag that ignores feign death. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14497011300&sid=1&pageNo=4#60" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/24x24/deathknight.jpg" alt="" border="0" /> Death Knight (<a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=650" target="_blank">Skills List</a> / <a href="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight" target="_blank">Talent + Glyph Calc.</a>) Ebon Plague / Unholy Blight Can you make Unholy Blight a disease again and Ebon Plague a magical effect? Not all Unholy DKs pick up Unholy Blight though. One of the benefits of Ebon Plague is it just happens without having to spend that extra GCD. We'll get it fixed. We also agree that Plague Strike feels underwhelming. Part of the reason is that, unlike Icy Touch, it also has a pretty significant PvP effect in its ability to remove hots. We have some ideas to improve it though. We definitely don't want DKs to ever feel like the right way to play is to ignore one of their two main diseases. As some players have pointed out, there are a few reasons why that is the case. As a new class, I would expect to see a higher rate of change over time in the DK until they have caught up a little more with the 4+ year history of the other classes. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910130980&pageNo=5#90" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/24x24/hunter.jpg" alt="" border="0" /> Hunter (<a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=620" target="_blank">Skills List</a> / <a href="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunter" target="_blank">Talent + Glyph Calc.</a>) Explosive shot hotfixed and nerfed We made a hotfix recently to lower the coefficient of Explosive Shot. Sorry we didn't get a chance to announce the change ahead of ti...</div></div></div>

Fonte (http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=37896.0)