News Round Up: Initial Isle of Thunder Stage, Tier 14 Nerfs, Ghostcrawler on Class Balance

Live Geposted 08.02.2013 um 13:03 von perculia

Insel des DonnersIsle of the Thunder King: Stage 0Blizzard is testing different phases of the Isle of ThunderLightning ForgeTreasure Scenario

Offensive der Kirin Tor and Sonnenhäscheransturm have set up base on warships near the island. They have not yet landed and constructed the bases players will use in later phases.

Daily quests are picked up from the ships. They will send you to the Court of Bones, Ihgaluk Crag, or Za'Tual--Mogu, Saurok, and Zandalari areas, respectively. Each hub gives about 4 dailies.

Several quests require you to kill elites. These reward you with Arkaner Schatz or Belohnung der Sonnenhäscher, which can contain Ehrwürdiges Amulett des Glücks, Geist der Harmonie, Großes Pandarenfestmahl, Ritualstein der Shan'ze.

Quartermasters are available on the docks of the Sunreavers or down below for the Kirin Tor. Check out their reputation items in this recent post.

Several areas have interesting buffs. Hidden around the troll area are Zandalaritrank, which give one of three effects that last a minute: stealth and guaranteed crit on next hit, 25% more damage, 75% more speed to caster. This is needed for the achievement Das ist noch nicht alles. In addition, the Saurok area gives you In der Haut eines Saurok which transforms you into a Saurok, makes you friendly with nearby mobs, increases run speed, and makes you jump really far.

Click the cut to see the recent blue posts!10% Nerf to Tier 14 Raids

Bashiok

Thanks for your question Bashiok, I’m SO GLAD YOU ASKED.

Something that has continued to evolve over the life of the game has been end-game progression, and what’s required of your character to see what is at any one time considered the final raid. Originally it was a very linear path. You had to gear up through one raid before you could attempt the next, and the one after that, and so on. It meant that if you were even slightly behind the curve you could potentially never catch up. We began adding mechanics and options in Burning Crusade and beyond to ensure players could, with effort, have some ability to catch up. Fast forward to Cataclysm where we believe we went too far the other direction and a freshly minted 90 didn’t really have to do anything before jumping directly into Drachenseele.

In Mists of Pandaria we want to get back to where we were in helping people catch up, but only through some effort in completing prior content. We don’t want it to be a linear A->B->C model again, because that causes a lot of undue burden on guilds attempting to catch up alts and replacements, but we also don’t want the Cataclysm model of being able to more or less skip straight to the end, invalidating everyone’s efforts who came before.

New characters coming into Mists of Pandaria will be going through Mogu'shangewölbe, Das Herz der Angst, and Terrasse des Endlosen Frühlings, killing bosses, and gearing up before moving on. Due to that we’ll be adjusting the difficulty, as well as item drops, to make progression a bit quicker without shortcutting people directly to the Der Thron des Donners raid. With the release of 5.2 enemy health and damage in the three prior raids will be reduced by 10%. We expect this to be a one-time reduction, and not a slowly increasing reduction as we’ve done previously. In addition, item drops are being greatly increased, including those from Ehrwürdiges Amulett des Glücks bonus rolls. In addition, as stated in the patch notes, costs of 5.0 and 5.1 Valor items are being reduced by 50% and 25% respectively.

IN ADDITION! If you’re killing bosses in Normal and Heroic before 5.2 releases, and thus pre-nerf, you’ll actually get Feats of Strength honoring the accomplishments you made before the change – which is pretty cool. IMO.

With these changes we hope to see players able to catch when coming into the game mid-expansion, or leveling an alt, but still putting in the time and effort to get to the latest tier.

LFR Gear in 5.2

Watcher

A couple of points to make here.

First, the mere fact that item level 502 gear is available from Der Thron des Donners LFR doesn't mean that the day patch 5.2 goes live, everyone will suddenly be handed a set of that 502 gear. The sections of LFR are going to unlock over time, and as a quick glance around the Raid & Dungeon forums will tell you, players sometimes only receive gold when defeating bosses, instead of loot (shocking, I know). Sure, maybe 3 months down the line, someone who has been running Der Thron des Donners LFR regularly will have slightly better gear than someone who's been doing Normal mode raids today. But the Normal mode raider who has spent those same 3 months in Normal mode Der Thron des Donners will have far superior items (ilvl 522) by that point anyway.

Second, part of the reason that the items are ilvl 502 is the existence of the array of Valor gear to which LFR-only players have had access to throughout patches 5.0 and 5.1. Many LFR-only players have a number of 489 and 496 Valor items that they've purchased and perhaps even upgraded. If we'd made Throne LFR drop ilvl 496 items, as suggested, a large number of LFR-only players would find that many of the 5.2 LFR drops were barely upgrades, or even downgrades in some cases.

And just to anticipate a familiar criticism ("But if the point of LFR is just to see the content, then what do they even need gear upgrades for?") let me just say that meaningful rewards are important for every playstyle, and character progression is an integral part of WoW.

Measuring "Best" DPS

Daxxarri

I have nothing to add here.

No, I kid. But that was an excellent point.

Something that Ghostcrawler has brought up in the past is that top players will tend to hone in on a specific spec, and wring the most out of it. Parses are posted showing the results, and others follow suit. Soon the parses get dominated by players doing very well with a particular class and spec. Now, we know from internal testing that other options might be competitive, or even better, but because of the... uh, I guess I'll call it the 'echo effect', those specs never really get a chance to shine because everyone has already found something that works, and works well.

Of course, that's not always the case. Sometimes those other specs might not be getting spotlight time because they're much harder to get optimal performance out of, or other factors. Still, it's a real phenomenon.

The other thing to keep in mind is that we (as a community) have developed a strange relationship with damage numbers. Once upon a time, there were pretty broad differences in dps between the highest and lowest dps classes. Bringing the wrong class could have a real impact on your ability to win a fight. Over the years I think we've gone a very long way toward fixing that, and the gap between the different classes and specs has narrowed considerably. Instead of 50 and even 100% differences in output, now we're usually talking about 5 and 10% differences. At these ranges, skill, timing, and knowledge play a more central role than ever before in determining how much practical damage a class is capable of, and even the classes that aren't topping the charts are contributing essential and meaningful amounts of damage.

Don't get me wrong, I have fun vying for the top spot too. I'm just saying that even if your class isn't the #1 top damage for a particular fight, you're still in a position to help make an important contribution to the fight and ensure that your raid group is killing bosses.
Not trying to quote out of context, but a 10% difference will never sit well with the bulk of the community. I'd even go so far as to say a 5% difference is probably too much. Yeah it's come a long way, but it simply doesn't work in the community's perspective on damage output.

This notion that a thin layer of elite players is leading the masses down the wrong path is cute. It's way more likely that your lab results, for whatever reason, don't translate perfectly in a live environment.

PTR Class and Set Bonus Discussion

Ghostcrawler

Round Two. Fight!

We aren't trying to cut off any discussion, but at nearly 2000 posts in the original thread, we thought it was unlikely many players were going to be able to follow the entire discussion, so let's try a second one.

At this point in 5.2 development, we are greatly slowing down on class mechanic changes. There will still be some, particularly in response to feedback and PTR testing, but ideas for new talents, core spells and the like are even less likely to get our attention now.

We still have not completed our tuning pass. You’ll know we're in the midst of it when you start to see a lot of PTR notes with number tweaks. Having said that, if you have specific concerns about PTR (not live) numbers, and you have some kind of mathematical evidence to back those concerns up, please let us know.

As always, this is not a good thread for whining. No thread is really ideal for whining, but we'll be particularly vigilant here. Sorry to end on a negative note, but it will likely be another long thread and we want to maximize the prospects for communication.
Unless you can demonstrate that "scaling" is going to cause a 5-10% DPS difference between one spec and another within a single tier (say 13 ilevels or so), we're not inclined to mess with it. I'm not trying to dismiss the concerns, but it's become such a buzzword among players that I worry scaling discussions are drowning out other conversations.
Will the 'always hit' apply to moving targets as well or is it just for stationary targets?

Ghostcrawler

Level 90 Hunter Talent -
Yes you have stated that you are trying to rebuild it, and I am positive that it will be great if you can get it to work properly, but there is no indication that it will be fixed by 5.2

Until a time comes when I say "Sorry, we were not able to get it to work," then you can safely assume our plans have not changed.

Ghostcrawler

This is very much a PTR experiment, but we are going to try moving Heiße Sohlen to the top talent tier to replace Versengen. Versengen will become a baseline Fire spell. Heiße Sohlen’s old position on the talent tree will be replaced with a new talent.

The new talent is currently called , and it is a “permanently on” ability that reduces all damage taken by a flat amount, based on spellpower, up to a maximum of 30% of the hit. The intent is to give mages a passive defensive option, and also one that varies with the frequency of incoming damage. Remember, mages must give up

Ghostcrawler

The 2pc Windwalker PvE bonus no longer drops spheres in a circle. They drop right next to you, much like the Brewmaster's Gabe des Ochsen, so that you can shift side to side and pick them all up.
I feel like there's a huge disconnect here between the way we play and the way you guys play. The issue with this set bonus isn't the way the orbs are dropped, it's that extra energy is very rarely something we ever need.

Our suspicion is you are viewing this through the lens of 5.1, where you are often GCD capped. The 5.2 mastery changes open up a lot more GCDs (that you can then fill with extra energy). Have you tried the set bonus on the PTR?

Ghostcrawler

To stave off the controversial Protection haste issue, we are making a chance to Oberster Kreuzfahrer to proc from dodge and parry at 25% instead of Oberster Kreuzfahrer and HotR at 20%. This will improve dodge and parry slightly for active mitigation purposes without negating the +haste slant that many paladins have taken.
You mean that you're leaving haste AS IS for prot, but removing Oberster Kreuzfahrer from proc'ing off of Kreuzfahrerstoß/HotR and changing that to dodge/parry? Or do you mean that you're removing for prot, and giving us the above change as the "fix"? Your wording was a little ambiguous, and it makes a HUGE difference about the angry prot pally mob forming or not.

No change to haste, dodge, parry or . Oberster Kreuzfahrer changes to proc on dodge / parry to increase their value for active mitigation.

To address other concerns I've seen: yes, this is a small nerf to DPS when not the focused tank (and is similar to blocks for warriors). Yes, this improved Holy Power generation when AE tanking (but again is similar to Revenge for warriors, which hasn't been a gigantic balance problem). No, you shouldn't have to give up all your haste gear. This change should just let any dodge or parry you do accumulate be more attractive.
- We are going to try Oberster Kreuzfahrer proc'd by Kreuzfahrerstoß, HotR and dodge and parry (at lower chances for each).
- We are going to buff and damage. Neither of these Seals is seeing enough use. Justice was always intended to be a strong PvP Seal, and it just isn't right now. We haven't solidified numbers yet - I'm just sharing our intent.
We finished looking at and . Righteousness we ended up buffing by 50% so it should be a good choice against 4 targets instead of 6.

Justice is much more complicated. It was intended as a PvP seal, but the damage loss is so significant and the snare just not that valuable (which is ironic when you consider Ret's history of not being able to catch things), and is there if you really do want to snare. Furthermore, just buffing Justice's damage risks Seal twisting in PvE becoming a thing, where you stack up and then swap to Justice. It could be cool if designed right, but would probably just be annoying. We just don't have much room to buff Justice, and players might still forsake it in PvP.

So, we're going to redesign it and attempt to solve another problem, which is Ret's damage outside of cooldowns (which are quite potent). Justice will now proc (and Judgment will count for the proc) a stacking debuff on the target that increases the damage of your next Urteil des Templers. With 5 stacks, this will be a big hit (but not an insta-gib) and opens up some interesting decisions about how to use Holy Power, such as Inquisition or WoG, if you're trying to hold Urteil des Templers. While Truth + will still do more sustained damage overall, there is a chance Justice will see some situational use in PvE, and we're okay with that. Justice is a Ret-only thing, so it should be a Seal they actually use. It won't snare at all, which I expect some will call a devastating nerf, but again, there's if you really need a snare.
Combined with removing the snare, it's a really stupid change that solves none of the issues it was meant to and creates others. It's worse than no change, it's active destruction.
We went through several pages (on this and other forums) of Ret paladins saying they'd never use Justice because Truth is a lot more damage, they have if they really need a snare (and our numbers suggest plenty of high-end PvP players take it), and there are enough snares from allies that having an easy-to-apply snare isn't even that important.

Likewise, we had a lot of feedback, principally from Ret paladins, that changing Seals (occasionally - not rotationally) was something they wanted to do. Given that Ret has some problems with burst damage outside of cooldowns, we thought this was a good solution. Truth still does more sustained damage, if sustained is important to you, and has some perks such as being able to do damage to two targets at once or apply an anti-stealth dot.

Now given the size and diversity of our player base, it doesn't surprise me that other players will feel differently and expect that Justice is very important in PvP. We have to make these kinds of decisions all the time where we get competing, often contradictory, feedback.

Check it out when it's available on PTR or when we're able to provide actual numbers and let us know how it feels.

(Having a passive snare for Ret that's available all the time with no damage trade-off is just not something we're going to do. Why not just apply a snare when you enter PvP at that point?)

If both just do damage, whichever does more wins, which apparently will be Truth.

Sustained damage doesn't count for as much in PvP as being able to land a kill within a narrow window. If you want to have good damage meters at the end of a BG, then Truth may be fine for you (it has other benefits because of the dot as well). If you need to kill someone while their healer is CC'd, then you may not have time to let finish ticking for its full amount.

(The same is true in PvE by the way. Sometimes something needs to die right now.)

I'm fine with switching a seal to snare if I have to, but being forced to spend a talent point for the same mechanic handed to EVERY SINGLE MELEE with zero tradeoff besides maybe a GCD is really irritating.

A GCD is a DPS tradeoff.... Other abilities, like Hamstring, have costs. In any case, we balance classes around their entire package of abilities not single ones. Specs with very good snares often have weaknesses elsewhere.

I made that comment for a very specific reason, which was to try to get players to not lobby for a -level ability that also snared everyone. And yet, I guess that was a mistake because my making that comment still brought out a lot of lobbying for the very thing I said we weren't going to do. :)

Ghostcrawler

- We are reverting the change to how deals damage. It will have more up-front damage in 5.2 as it does in 5.1. We think the more recent nerfs to Shadow healing and Phantom are more appropriate changes for PvP.
The tooltip for Machtwort: Schild on the PTR was recently updated to show it shielding for 40% more than on live. However, the actual numbers for Machtwort: Schild on the PTR do not reflect the 40% buff. Can you confirm if this is just a tooltip error or if there is an intended buff to Machtwort: Schild in the pipeline?

We did not make a change toMachtwort: Schild points nor is there anything in the patch notes or in one of my posts as far as I can recollect.

I will add that so far on our PTR raid testing, Disc priests are using Machtwort: Schild along with PoH and not having abnormal HPS or mana problems. Heroic testing will tell more.

- We are reverting the nerf to Körper und Geist. It will stay at 4 sec duration.
- Heiliges Feuer will be instant baseline. We agree it is an unnecessary nerf to remove that 5.1 functionality, but we also like the range increase from the 5.2 version of the glpyh, so just removing Heiliges Feuer's cast time seems like the right move. Solace will still be positioned as an upgraded Heiliges Feuer that generates mana.
- We understand that reverting the change (restoring it to its 5.1 functionality) is a nerf to Shadow mastery, but overall we are still sympathetic to the arguments that losing burst from is a negative in PvE and doesn't really solve the PvP burst problem (which is more about holding procs). We haven't adjusted Shadow's PvE damage yet in any case.

GC currently (on live) Vampirberührung don't return mana when hit shielded targets, is this intent?

Also, dispelling Vampirberührung causes it to diminish return itself and Psychisches Entsetzen intended as well? I think it devaluate the dispel protection.

The first part (vs. shields) is a bug and now fixed. The second part (the dispel DR) is intended.

Euphorie now reduces the cost of Machtwort: Schild by 25% and provides mana equal to 150% (was 200%) of the Priest's Spirit, but no longer benefits from Spirit provided by short-duration bonuses.

Really..... a Mana Nerf?????

It wont't feel like a nerf when you consider that Machtwort: Schild is cheaper and is now the same as other healers in cases except timing Euphorie for use with things like Mana Tide (which is what we call cheesy). We also changed the Disc set bonus in PvP to make Blitzheilung cheaper.

Overall, Disc in PvE on live just does not worry about mana the way other healers have to and all are supposed to. PvP is a different story, but the changes above are intended to help fix.

Ghostcrawler

the Rogue Assassination ability Vergiftende Wunden does not currently proc off of absorptions effects;

Also a bug. Most things that proc on an attempt to deal damage should proc if the damage was absorbed.

Any thought on removing all together and lowering the remaining rogue cooldowns. The recent Mantel der Schatten change makes gameplay feel smoother and I'm really digging it.

I don't think we'd remove . Would the design be stronger without and lowered cooldowns? Possibly. But we're convinced what would happen is that all the rogues that love for whatever reason would come out of the woodwork. It's been a core ability forever and all that. Years from now when we did threads asking players what to fix about their class, I'm convinced we'd see "Bring back " I really don't mean to sound cynical; I'm trying to sound practical.

I know many of you are smart players and you expect all players to be just as logical and objective and see that there is no massive difference between a cooldown that finishes the cooldown or other spells and those spells all having shorter cooldowns. I don't think the reaction would be universal praise though.

Ghostcrawler

Currently to maximize DPS Enhance is casting before reaching 5 stacks of Maelstorm quite often. This is cause does the same amount of damage regardless of how many stacks of you have. As a melee spec I find having to 'stutter step' in order to get casts off is really akward. I was thinking that if increased the potency of your spells with each stack kind of like how the Ausgebrannte Glyphe operates for healing then it would be more favorable to cast an instant spell at 5 stacks as opposed to hard casting prior to the 5th stack.

This is intended behavior. We like that there is some decision about when to use , and the mechanic has worked this way for some time, possibly always. That said, you don't have to game it. It will be a DPS loss, but not a massive one, if you only use at 5 stacks. Do what works for you. Trying to use at various stacks to improve your DPS and failing to do so might be lower DPS than always using it at 5 stacks.

That said, HTT swings wildly in the other direction for Restoration due to both and Mastery scaling.

We think this is a legit concern and we're looking at it, but we also want to make really sure any change didn't feel like a massive nerf to Resto, who relies on Totem der Heilungsflut a lot for group healing. Opening up talent options is important to us, but so is enjoying your class, and big nerfs to talents to make the other choices seem better is a last resort. (Yes, we do it. You don't need to bring up examples of when we've done it. But we don't like to.) It could be that it's not worth the risk of changing, but we are considering how we'd do it.

Ghostcrawler

No more embers on SB killing blows (and it only refunds 1 ember period for the very last SB you used if killed in 5 sec).

We didn't make any intentional change here. It could be a bug.

- if you get blanket silenced and a melee attacks you (rogue's garrote comes to mind), they don't get feared, and you still lose the blood horror buff. So I spend health and a cd for no effect at all.

- if a warrior spell reflects, he can successfully reflect blood horror back at the warlock.

Silence shouldn't prevent the horror proc. We'll get that fixed. Warriors can Spell Reflect proc, so it seems consistent that they can reflect the proc.

Auge von Kilrogg glyph no longer allows you to place your Dämonischer Zirkel: Teleportieren if the location is out of line-of-sight. Then to make matters worse, it places it at your current player location instead of giving a LoS error, thereby making it even more difficult to replace a soon to expire Dämonischer Zirkel: Teleportieren that may appear to be in LoS, but actually isn't. Auge von Kilrogg can't even be used in RBGs, yet this was somehow necessary.

We had to implement the nerf to stop some exploits where it was possible to get Dämonischer Zirkel: Teleportieren in areas that you aren't supposed to path. We didn't want to nerf the mechanic overall and in fact we think we found a compromise where you have to either LoS OR be able to path to the location. That should cut out the exploits while still letting you use Auge von Kilrogg to get behind a pillar or something legit.

Believe me, nothing frustrates us more than having to nerf something because of 'sploiters.

Ghostcrawler

I don't care so much about Shattering throw (mostly a PVP thing), or Cleave (I don't mind if it's useless much much HS is for us), but Wirbelwind, , and Donnerknall all really need to be looked at.

Awhile ago, we made Wirbelwind only cost 20 rage for Arms to address Arms needing to spend more rage on Überwältigen. I may have forgotten to report it and I don't think it's in the patch notes. Spalten is supposed to be expensive (like ). Donnerknall is really cheap already.
We are currently trying Überwältigen on a 1 sec GCD (again). We like the way it feels and we like that it boosts Arms' damage without having to increase the damage of special attacks (which risks PvP burst), so we're going to let you guys try it next PTR build.

Ghostcrawler

We're making a change to the way damage-to-healing conversions work so that the healing is not affected by resilience. The healing will be based on how much damage would have been done as if the target had no resilience. If you hit an opponent for 10K and have a mechanic that converts damage into 50% healing, your hit may land for 6K because of resilience, but the heal will still be 5K (50% of the unmitigated damage). This only applies to resilience, not to armor, Schildwall or other forms of damage reduction.

This change currently includes Abbitte, Ausgebrannte Glyphe, Führung der Ahnen, Vampirumarmung, Wache der Natur, Ausgebrannte Glyphe, Uralte Lehren des Klosters, Ausgebrannte Glyphe, Egelgift, Todessog, Wildgeist and Seele entziehen.

Related, we have read feedback that certain mechanics, such as Retribution's mastery, , are double-dipping from resilience. If this happened, then your attack would be mitigated by resilience and then the mastery proc (which is supposed to be a percentage of the main attack) would also be mitigated by resilience. However, we can find no evidence that this is actually happening. In our testing, is never mitigated by resilience a second time. If anyone has additional information, please share.

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