MoP: War: is it really? Or is it fake?

[chaos5061]

Classes
I don't frequent the class forums personally. Too much echo chamber effect and any class who disagrees gets shouted down.

And if so, are there any future changes to make those less-popular talents more competitive?
Yes, we monitor them and yes we'll look at the less popular ones. Consider some are fine but narrow situations etc.

any chance youre going to buff hunter in terms of PVE(especially MM),since we as pure DPS class cant compete even with hybrid?
Can you provide specific examples where a hybrid is beating you for us to look at? (Hint: top 100 tends to measure luck.)
Do you want us to provide anecdotal evidence? That seems more unreliable than the top 100 parses.
Just saying that top 100 can measure skill or just who managed to get a lot of crits. Looking at all parses can be better.
aren't those top parses filled with players ignoring mechanics, being fed tricks etc, old tier set abuses.
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of detective work to tell. Best source are logs from reliable raiders, but I know not all are public.

Do you feel that MM has unique utility? Maybe make the old Glyph of Conc Shot a MM passive? I feel that the spec lacks util.
Not a huge fan of unique utility for DPS specs in the same class. Feel like the raid makes the choice of spec, not you.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Why can't I Disengage uphill?
The game does a lot of LOS checks on terrain changes, partially to prevent exploits. Not ideal but probably unavoidable.

No. We are just tired of you being really smug, and taking pvp way too lightly, You ruined beast wrath in PTR. It's stupid.
A lot of players were complaining about BM hunters. I don't think it's fair to call us smug because we nerfed them.

Skill cap has been a huge challenge for us in PvP. Take hunters; historically weak at the low end and strong as the high end.

Speaking of bugs, any word on fixing Powershot bug? Such a fun ability but doesn't work half the time
Keep hearing that but it doesn't repro easily. Does it ever happen on target dummies who don't move?
On Dummies it looks like it hits 100% of the time, but actual players that's another story.
It is a "skill shot" (like Divine Star) so it can miss targets that move. That may be what players are seeing.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Gag Order pvp was available to all specs in Cata with pummel on a lower CD, yet warriors were crap. Control is not the issue.
Felt that we took away too much mobility from warriors at the end of 4 and we really want that to be one of their strengths.

any chance we will see stat scaling on 1h's for us smf warrs? To make up for the stat loss of skipping TG?
We balance SMF around the lower stats on the 1H weapons. That's why the bonuses are so high.

Still no Fury PvP Buff?
Which means we'd have to give Fury some utility or control that Arms lacks, which as I said recently, we're reluctant to do. As far as your original question, it's hard to buff SMF for PvP because the attacks are so small compared to Arms.

[chaos5061]

The Daily Blink - The Official MMORPG Feedback Form

[chaos5061]

Developer Interviews
Tonight we will take a look at two interviews, Cory Stockton (Lead Content Designer) at WarcraftPets and Dave Kosak (Lead Quest Designer) at the Darkmoon Herald. A summary of the main points is below, but listening to the full interview is worth it if you want to hear the full answers!

Pets

• The large number of pets added in Patch 5.1 was a reaction to the gaps in pet levels and families, such as the Mechanical, Dragonkin, and Undead pets. It is unlikely that we will see that many added in any of the future Mists of Pandaria patches.
• The Pet Battle system worked out really well and feels like it is part of WoW, rather than a tacked on minigame. Players have given overwhelmingly positive feedback.
• Account Wide Quests and Achievements had some issues that made the experience less smooth than they would have liked, but that is the side effect of all the new tech that went in to the system.
• More than half of the population in WoW has at least tried Pet Battles.
• Pets don't get as much balancing as classes do for PvP.
• Pet battles were designed to be fun, but simple. The tooltips and other information were added to make it easier for players to take part without needing to spend a lot of time learning about pet battles first.
• Anyone on the team can come up with a pet and create it, then work with the pet battle group to make it into a battle pet.
• The internal editor tool is made more for creating content and not looking up information, so fansites are helpful for looking up things, even for the devs!
• One of the early ideas for a new pet system was a dog collecting system. It would allow you to collect different types of dogs and teach them tricks.

Future Pet Changes

• More dog pets are coming in the future when they feel appropriate, most likely as achievement rewards.
• There are no current plans for releasing Pet Battles as a mobile game, but it is something that has been talked about. Currently the system is being polished and observed in the main game to figure out where to go next with it. Creating a mobile version would be a very large amount of work and a commitment that requires some serious consideration.
• Pets will be upgradeable to Epic quality in the future when it feels like an appropriate time.
• Pets have a breed and gender id in case Blizzard wants to use them in the future, but there are no current plans to use them.
• Similar pets may get new models in the future. For example, all of the frog pets currently share the same model with different skins, but in the future more frog models could be added.
• Trading Wild Pets is definitely a possibility for the future, but the game didn't feel ready for it in Patch 5.1. There are a lot of people still collecting pets and working on building up their teams. Allowing players to trade wild pets will reduce that excitement.
• It is possible that a few wild pets will be tradeable in Patch 5.2 and then further changes will be decided upon after that.
• Something being worked on for Patch 5.2 or later is wild pets that are like a boss. When encountering them, they would be bigger than normal pets, and you would only fight them, but they would be much stronger than a normal pet. There may be an achievement for defeating all of the "boss" pets in the world, similar to Glorious! that rewards a unique pet.

Questing

• When creating the quests for a zone the main storyline of a zone is the first thing decided upon. Then the individual quest designers have some more freedom to further the story through the quests they create for that part of the zone.
• Li Li's Day Off will let Li Li follow you all over Valley of the Four Winds and Krasarang Wilds providing some commentary.
• The quests or things added by the Make a Wish children are really important to Blizzard. One recent example is Owen's Wishing Well. You can read his story here.
• Phasing was utilized less this time around, only for the major events. This helped to keep players together, which was a problem in Cataclysm.
• Blizzard tries not to change quests unless they are really broken. Instead they are used as a learning experience.
• Players who don't read quest text are taken into account when designing quests. You should be able to have a general idea of what is going on when questing through the gameplay, even without reading the quests.
• The Golden Lotus quests starting at the same hub every day didn't feel fun, but the Tiller's questline did turn out well.
• Daily quests are mainly designed for people that enjoy solo progression and don't want to raid, giving them a way to advance their character. Unfortunately the daily quests felt mandatory for some players, causing them to try and do all of the quests every day. This continued until the players realized that they wouldn't earn enough Valor Points to buy everything they were earning access to.
• A class quest for every class would have reduced the number of zones in Pandaria by at least one due to all of the time it would have taken to create that content.
• The feedback for opening more of the Patch 5.1 quest line based on your reputation level has been generally positive after players understood how it worked.

Future Questing

• Questing in Patch 5.2 will use more space so that players are not bumping in to each other and constantly fighting each other for mobs. (Avoiding Fatty Goatsteak)
• In the future, the rewards from daily quests will be adjusted to make them feel less required to the hardcore raiders who aren't interested in them.
• The increased reputation leveling speed after Revered was a good step towards making the reputations more alt friendly, but it still could use some work.
• Patch 5.1 has brought back some World PvP in the new questing area.

[chaos5061]

Trinket Burst Damage Adjustments

After reviewing the data and player feedback, we remain concerned that on-demand burst damage remains too high in PvP. After investigation, we determined that the on-use PvP trinkets are a major contributor to extremely high burst output. As a consequence, in the near future we will be applying hotfixes to smooth out the damage provided by these PvP trinkets. In the case of the Gladiator's Badges this means cutting the amount of primary stat or PvP Power provided, but also cutting their cooldown in half. For the Kor'kron and SI:7 manuals, the cooldown of those trinkets will remain unchanged, but the amount of stats provided will be reduced and the duration of the buff will be increased. The overall damage provided by these trinkets should not be affected; only the burst they are capable of providing.

For example: The Dreadful Gladiator's Badge of Victory will shortly provide 2553 Strength once every minute, instead of 5105 Strength every 2 minutes. Please note that due to limitations in hotfix technology, the item tooltips and buffs will still incorrectly display the original stat value of 5105.

These are the trinkets that are currently slated for adjustment:

Dreadful Gladiator's Badge of Conquest
Dreadful Gladiator's Badge of Dominance
Dreadful Gladiator's Badge of Victory
Malevolent Gladiator's Badge of Conquest
Malevolent Gladiator's Badge of Dominance
Malevolent Gladiator's Badge of Victory
SI:7 Operative's Manual
Kor'kron Book of Hurting

We are aware of the possibility that certain PvE trinkets could become more attractive for PvP in the wake of these hotfixes. While that is somewhat unlikely given that adopting those items would represent a significant loss of PvP Power and Resilience, we will nonetheless keep a close eye on the situation and make adjustments to the appropriate items if necessary. It is also possible that it could become too difficult to land reasonably consistent kills in PvP. If that proves to be the case, then we currently plan to increase the effects of the Battle Fatigue healing debuff to compensate, which is an adjustment that we’ve been considering for some time. On the other hand, if burst damage remains too high after these changes, we are prepared to take additional steps as needed.

[chaos5061]

World PvP Feedback

This is going to sound weird, and while I do empathize with the frustration that's being expressed in this thread, this conversation still warms the cockles of my black little heart.

Why? Because for too long there was very little distinction between playing on a PvE realm and playing on a PvP realm. We had inadvertently created a situation where there was little risk when leveling in the world on a PvP realm. The experiences were, for all practical purposes, virtually identical, but that wasn't what we had in mind.

Life on a PvP realm can be nasty, brutish and short. Justice is in very short supply. Every action you take in the world carries with it an added level of risk, from questing, to hunting down profession materials, to simply traveling from place to place. You can be attacked at any time, sometimes by an overwhelming force. Of course, the shoe can also be on the other foot, and you'll be able to turn the tables on your attacker, or find clever ways to delay them or escape from them. Some will become roaming slayers, seeking out enemies to destroy.

In short, the experience on a PvP server is different. We want it to be different, and that includes everything from honorable conflict on the field of battle to horribly despicable ganking. It's all part of the fabric that makes a PvP server what it is.

Let the blood be spilled.

Hey blue what server do u play on? Ill come farm u for a while and lets see if u still think its great.
You don't need to. It's already been done. Repeatedly.

I'm leveling a Monk as I play my other characters, and Pandaren are very popular targets (almost as popular as Blood Elves and Gnomes). I knew exactly what I was getting into, and I take my lumps with the rest of them.

what compensation do you give to those players that now find themselves on PvP
Despite the fact that the experience became less brutal for a time by accident, the expectation of what one should find on a PvP realm has always remained the same.

So how does that fit into your noble idea of a PVP open world of battle?
I didn't imply that it was always noble, nor did I say that revenge was always a likelihood or possibility. I do distinctly recall saying 'Justice is in short supply', though.

You are both right, after a fashion. The general guideline is: if there is a PvP solution available, our staff will not intervene on a PvP realm.

There are, however, situations that are extreme (or that involve exploitation), which merit intervention by our staff, but they are extremely rare.

Remove this barrier and many people will be a lot happier. Stop pretending this is not an issue.
Not that your own situation should be dismissed, because I think it's unfortunate that all your friends prefer playing on a realm type that you don't like, but I would be very surprised if this were a widespread issue. At least you have the support of dependable real life friends if you find yourself in a tough spot.

Cross realm raiding of the current tier has the potential to generate a lot of negative repercussions. It's not the sort of thing we'd commit to lightly.

Spending more time running back to my corpse than actually playing the game. Landing at a quest hub and dying before the NPCs and PCs even appear. Having my corpse camped because a level 90 only has to glance at me and I explode.
None of those things are griefing on a PvP realm, I'm afraid, though I freely acknowledge that they can be frustrating. Nonetheless, our stance on these issues hasn't changed since long, long before Cross Realm Zones were ever even imagined, much less implemented.

[chaos5061]

Developer Interviews and 5.2
When is 5.2 slated to drop, 4 months from release or 4 months from 5.1?
I have a feeling that Ghostcrawler's comment in that interview is going to be seen quite often on the forums in the coming days.

My best advice is to try not to take those time frames as though they're graven in stone (which is why I'm not directly answering your question). It's better to think of them as rough guidelines for approximately how frequently we'd like to patch in updates.

Somethings that gets me, hy is twitter the only place you guys discuss changes with players? Why would anyone at blizzard make a comment on blizzards goals on twitter, and then on the forums someone else has to back track those comments?
We discuss upcoming changes on the forums with regularity--sometimes they're stickied posts, and sometimes they're comments in threads. Nor am I countermanding anything Ghostcrawler said. Heck, the synopsis on mmo-champion is as follows:

A rough idea of how long patches will take: 2 months for a content patch and 4 months for a patch with a new raid and PvP season. This is just a rough target, as there are many factors involved in determining when players are ready and the content is ready.
I'm simply emphasizing that these are goals, not absolutes.

LFR Loot System Feedback
That's basically what all the whiners are saying. At the risk of sounding "old" but I remember years ago; if you were pugging current content raids, you were lucky if the group could even kill the boss. Never mind also getting loot.
Perhaps what's happening is that some players are having the illusion that because the roll is happening, something must drop eventually (eventually being, more often than not). But, if I may, I'd suggest you guys note down how many drops (for your character) do you encounter in your guild raids of a given week and how much competition you have going on for them.

When you factor those things in, does LFR really feel *that* different to the speed at which you gear up when you're competing against others in your guild? I'm just curious.

PvP Vanity Rewards
Pvpers need more vanity items.
We agree that players who prefer PvP should have cooler things to purchase, including more options like vanity items. We are currently discussing ways in which we can better deliver on this.

The current model for itemization somewhat follows the original formula that implied PvP'ers were mostly just interested in getting direct performance enhancers. We don’t agree with that implication anymore and, with the new currency system it makes much more sense to provide additional flavor items that players will be able to spend Conquest and Honor points on.

I think transmog stuff would work out really well. Also I always thought that rank one players should have a unique aura with a flavor text.
A unique aura, while cool, would just be on top of an already quite noticeable mount and title. I think it would be cooler to get gear sets that you can use for transmogrification or just nice little vanity items.

[chaos5061]

PvP
what about world pvp? are u gonna do the same SAD world pvp bg for the 3^ times or u have a good fresh new idea?
It's tough. Seem to be a lot of players on PvP servers who don't want to be interrupted with world PvP. We'll keep trying.

You implement tol barad and wintergrasp for level 90, Do we have any chance to see 5 man RBG in 5.1 ?
5 player RBGs won't be in 5.1. It's a bigger project.
Ok, thanks GC. But can I wait for this feature one day ?
Yeah, no promises, but we like the idea.

Way to learn the shaman class Ghostcrawler. Silencing enhance blocks our interrupt and some major cd's!
yeah I know. But silencing an Enhance is like disarming a Mage. I'm sure it happens, but I dont see it often.
That's not a fair comparison, as mages can still use their abilities while disarmed, whereas enh can't.
the point is you're often better off spending a silence on a healer or a caster who is dependent on spells for 100%.

Have you ever considered hiring multigladiator players to help out balancing pvp?
I'd tell you we have them, but you'd probably say we hired the wrong ones.
I thought you dont let expert players balance your game?
we let professional game designers balance our game. Many used to be expert players. Big difference.
Expert players is a very vague term, I believe you're overhyping in order to scaffold faith.
not sure what you're looking for. We have glads and world first raiders. Neither is as important as good design sense though.

I do think a partial reason for rogues having low rep is because of other classes (warrior)being overtuned
one of the challenges of 3s is teams can just choose who to take. It's why 3s always tend to feature just a few specs.

[chaos5061]

Developer Interviews
Today's interview is with Tom Chilton (Lead Game Designer) on ArenaJunkies. A summary of the main points is below, but listening to the full interview is worth it if you want to hear the full answers!

• Steps are being taken to balance healers, especially Shaman, in PvP. This is being done incrementally to avoid a knee jerk reaction and going too far in one direction. Moving totems back into the schools of magic was one of the changes to bring them more in line.
• Discipline Priests and Monks will be buffed somewhat to bring them up to par. We should expect to see those changes on the Patch 5.2 PTR soon.
• War Games will be possible Cross realm at some point in the future when time allows for the change.
• It may be possible to ban one arena map in the future, similar to the map banning in random battlegrounds.
• Part of the reason Tol'vir was added was to increase the chance of getting the Nagrand style map. It also is nice to have a change of scenery rather than just getting Nagrand more often.
• Burst damage is still too high, making healing too high as well. Once burst comes down, the healing can be decreased as well.
• One of the goals for WoW as an esport is to make it easier to watch. Part of this will be accomplished by making it easier for addon authors to create nice tournament UIs.
• The DotA style battleground is still on hold, waiting for new tech to be worked on.
• MMR works pretty well for matching people up, but preventing the exploits that have popped up is difficult when keeping the system balanced for all levels of players. Blizzard will keep watching for exploits and taking appropriate action.
• WoW was never built from the ground up to be an easy to watch and perfectly balanced eSport, so the improvements that can be made are limited. That being said, Blizzard wants to keep improving things as much as possible.
• When asked about arena balance: Burst is too high, non burst damage is too low, there are some disparities between the different healers with Shaman / Paladin being good, Druids being okay, and Discipline Priests and Monks lagging a little bit, and the amount of offensive instant cast crowd control being used.
• Blizzard likes the player run tournaments and is evaluating what they can or should do to support them.
• PvP Power worked out really well, with players able to use their PvP gear in PvE. Using PvE gear to start PvPing isn't working quite as well, as it was intended to be able to take raid gear and start PvPing without feeling like you were very fragile and dying very quickly.
• Blizzard likes when the PvP and PvE part of the game operate the same, but is willing to make them work differently to make the game work better.

[chaos5061]

WoWkemon Addon
Today we are taking a quick look at the WoWkemon addon. It replaces the normal pet battle interface with one that will be familiar to anyone that has played Pokémon before. You can see what it looks like in the video or screenshots below. Another nice addon to use with it is Pet Battle Pokemon Mod, which will add some of the classic Pokémon music to pet battles.

[chaos5061]

Trinket Burst Damage Adjustments
Instead of addressing the strong classes
I just want to point out that this is only one step in a process. We will continue to assess classes and individual abilities and make adjustments as necessary.

Trinket Burst Damage Adjustments
Seems a buff for frost dk's, and if human they can align proc with on use and PoF...
You could say the same for several classes where this will help them to align their trinkets with their damaging abilities more often. However smaller burst every 60 seconds is a lot easier to survive than a much larger burst every two minutes.

The same goes for players that play human, they could take two of these trinkets and cycle them every 30 seconds with their burst abilities. Do not forget though, if a human wants to take advantage of these changed on-use trinkets will need to take two of them and give up the not-nerfed proc trinket.

The idea is good, but what gona happen with the proc trinkets?
I just answered that above for you. At this time we have no plans to be nerfing the proc trinkets, but this may change in the future.

But, an idea would be to increase resilience on the "tweaked" trinkets by; I don't know, maybe 20-25% to make them more attractive compared to PvE trinkets etc.!
We're fairly certain that it's unlikely for players to start using PvE trinkets because they would suffer a significant loss in PvP power and resilience. Do understand that we will be keeping a very close eye on the situation when this hotfix goes live and, if necessary, make the appropriate adjustments where we see they're required. This doesn't mean that the change we make would be to increase the resilience on trinkets like you suggested above, however if we do plan to make further adjustments we will let you know about them.

Updating Old Content
I often wondered why blizzard doesn't take advantage of the content people loved. Sure, new content and raids are fun but how much time would it really take to upgrade Kara to current gear levels.

I mean why in gods name wouldn't you do things like this, the Ony upgrade was great but even now its outdated by two expansions. The scarlet monastery was good but you didn't even have to redesign the dungeon, just leave them as they were.

Can you imagine if Apple decided to completely change the Iphone every release? Sure a few things are changed on each version but the core design, style, and functionality are all there and people still flock to get the latest version. Why is that, its because they have a good thing going.
I'm going to sound a bit like a broken record, so forgive me, but when we are working on updates to the game, we're looking at what works well for the ongoing development of it. Sometimes that means taking a look at previous content and updating, and sometimes it means leaving it as it is. Overall though, it's about where we want to take things next, what fits into the larger scheme of development, what can we devote resources to comfortably and still deliver the best possible experience we can in a reasonably solid time frame.

There are a lot of things that people keep bringing up that they'd like to see again, or revisit in a new and fresh way. We're not unaware of this. But, at the same time, we have to keep asking ourselves, "Does it make sense and if it does make sense, does it make sense right now?" In contrast, there are those detractors who are often upset when we do go back and refresh content. In some cases it's because they're new enough that they haven't seen it yet, in others it's because they feel we should leave well enough alone, and to others yet who feel that it's a development "cop out" and a mere recycling effort. That's not to say that these things aren't possibilities "someday", but what seems simple to you may not be quite so simple as all that.

An example of updating things on a very large scale, is Cataclysm. There was so much work done from the starting quests to the environments to the very flight paths, but to those who didn't go through the refreshed content, it was a "waste" of time. We also then had what many felt was far too little at the upper end of content for them. So, despite best efforts to refresh a significant amount of content, not everyone was pleased with it once the immediate blush was off the rose. What we must fight against is time, nostalgia, "What do I get to do/take part in?", or even "where's my challenge?" So, no, it's not as easy as that. In a perfect world, maybe it would be.

[chaos5061]

Class Forums and Blue Posts
Do blue posters avoid class forums? If so - why?
The main reason that we don't make responses in the class forum is because if we post in the forum of class A, then classes B through K will start complaining about favoritism or something similar. While we may not post in threads on the class forums, we do pay attention to the opinions and feedback presented there.

And where are we supposed to turn in order to get the "official" Blizzard PoV on, for example, major nerfs to a certain spec?
These forums are designed and built in order for players to give their feedback and opinions about the current state of our games or even upcoming changes so that it can be relayed to the developers. They are not for the purpose of having a direct line of communication and discussion with blue posters. If we have some information that we can provide, we will post it, but you should not be actively searching for this as the forums are for you as the players to bring up and discuss topics.

Do we really have to post immature, whiny post in order to get attention?
Definitely not. As said above, if we have information on a given topic of discussion we will provide it. We are also more inclined to do this with more well written and presented threads rather than ranty or "whiny" posts.

you're on EU forums enough said. Blizzard doesn't care about you, they don't want your opinion, the blue post always say the same thing. It is always sad for us to see these types of comments because it is something that is simply so far from the truth, it is unreal. The European community team work tirelessly to forward on and present your feelings, feedback and opinions on to the developers.

[chaos5061]

Questing
Your ridiculously gated rep AND VP system for gear cost me one of my raid leaders and you a sub. Just an FYI.
players quit for a variety of reasons. We're sad when they do, but can't be held hostage to "change X or I quit."
No Greg, but if a lot of peple quit for a reason and a lot of us dont quit but dont enjoy it, then somthg is wrong
of course. That's why hearing feedback is so important to us. In fact, it's more useful than threats.
If your reaction and filtering of feedback wasn't so slow compared to other games, you wouldn't get threats.
A poor justification I'm afraid. Good arguments win arguments, not threats of consequences.

I dont understand why rep grind has to be one way. Let questers do dailies, raiders do dungeons and pvpers pvp...
We want players out in the world. We don't think WoW will have enough legs as an instance only game. Convenient != best design.

Mate, don't let the "rep tabard" brigade get you down. We're better off shedding instance only players from the playerbase.
Well, we don't want to shed anyone. Concern is that instance-only is convenient short term but causes loss of interest in the long.

Making dailies a requirement for rep seems like a VERY poor way to get people out of cities and make the world feel populated.
What do you want to do out in the world?

For the love of god don't buckle to the "we are forced to do dailies" minority. Don't change a thing!!!
it's just a question of volume. 12 quests a day isn't bad with some optionals. Doing GL and Klaxxi every day felt like a lot.

Well I'll just try asking again tomorrow, I realize you're busy. If you see this tweet, check my profile for the initial ?
we've heard a lot of feedback on dailies, and we'll likely try some tweaks to keep players out in the world but address concerns.

For 5.1 can we have a short term (20min?) LFR buff that simulates the rep tabards for the last rep we did dailies with today?
Talking about some ideas. So long as someone can't finish rep in one weekend by chain running, we're open to it.

Classes
So many classes and specs are overpowered right now, why won't you apply hotfixes rather than waiting months for patch 5.1?
We can't hotfix everything and it's frustrating for players to constantly suspect ninja nerfs. We hotfix egregious stuff.

Do you think it's still possible to add new class in the game without too much redundancy ?
I hope so.

Alot of people were complaining about "Stampede". Not the Bestial Wrath ability. Critical mistake on your end
We nerfed Bestial Wrath and Avatar. We're regretting offensive abilities that prevent CC. Encourages tunneling and burst.

talent system is awesome btw. Way better than anything before.
We agree. A few talents aren't quite there but the system is much better IMO. I see players changing talents for the first time.

As a rouge i have problems getting a clean opner in arena and duel because of the amount of aoe effects in the game. toughts?
TBH, it kind of bugs me personally that AEs are so efficient at breaking stealth. Would be a huge change to revert though.

Ever thought of smaller patch changes? Like changing an ability dmg in 5% increments a week instead of 25% all at once?
One risk of small changes is players don't notice. Flashy changes can sometimes get players to try a class / talent / strat.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Any word on healing mushrooms? They are pretty useless but have so much potential.
Agree they aren't there yet, but we want them to be sutiational, and not used on cooldown.
Any chance for some 5.1 love? Thank you for responding to my first tweet ever!
Maybe not for 5.1. We want to make sure there's time for players to try out any changes. It's on our radar though.

Did static mana pools really gave you the freedom you needed to design better enocunters? Are we balanced?
The problem with +Int providing infinite mana didn't manifest until later tiers. Still like the change though.

And of course, would love to hear how you feel healers compare for PvE and how Mistweavers have played out.
Pretty happy with healer balance overall. MW were too good in 5.0. Raiders discovering Disc now and we have to keep an eye on it.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
In your eyes are Shockadins a legitimate form of Raid DPS, or is that unintentional or unwelcome? Not even sure if its viable.
Holy isn't a dps spec. We tried to provide some support for players who like it, but it will likely stay a niche.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
I really like to know what you guys think about Holy and Disc priests perfomance in PvP. Not many people want them.
Most teams just want Resto shaman. We think we'll see more priests in 5.1.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Nobody uses Tricks of the Trade anymore in Raids. You found a way to make that useless too! Get a dev 4 rogues. ur useless.
Quick poll of the raiders in my office, and they all use Tricks of the Trade. Small sample size is small.

playing devil's advocate a little, if the 5.1 changes don't 'fix' rogues, will further changes happen immediately or in 5.2?
Depends on the degree. If I say "immediately" though, then I'll just hear about how I broke promises, so I can't say.

serious question, does blizzard have numbers on how many people have taken versatility as a talent? I'm betting its VERY low.
We do, and it is low. We're looking at all unpopular and too popular talents and considering changes.

Saying Cold Blooded made us not care about crit as a stat is terrible logic since crit is now our worst stat by a long shot.
Last I looked, crit was behind haste and mastery for Combat, but not by much, and even better for the other two.

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
I'm just a wee bit :O at the totem nerfs. What's the thinking behind it? Will Tremor still break fear? Don't like this change!
We thought they were too hard to counter. Have a lot of utility (not just group buffs) in 5.0 and you just have to endure them

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
with "bring player, not class" policy, why did you implement Stormlash and Skull banner?
They are very minor DPS increases. You don't need them.

Ever had a thought about warrior's shockwave? Every 20 seconds for an AoE stun and damage seems a bit much versus rogue KS.
It's something we looked at, but we nerfed warriors a lot for PvP and we don't want to overdo it. Not all are taking SW yet.

Do you not think it's a little unfair that Fury has never been good in Arena? Other specs had their time to shine except Fury.
The bigger topic is whether it's fair to players (or reasonable to balance) to have 34 viable 3v3 Arena specs.

[chaos5061]

Patch 5.1 BMAH Additions
Patch 5.1 added three new items to the BMAH. The first is a weapon with a fairly unique model, the Sun-Lute of the Phoenix King! The on use effect turns you in to Sig Nicious.

It has a reported starting bid of 70k, the same as the Arcanite Ripper. You can find a full list of the items on the BMAH here.

The other two items are old Proto-Drakes. The first is the Reins of the Plagued Proto-Drake, which was a reward of Glory of the Raider (10 player). The other is theReins of the Rusted Proto-Drake, a reward of Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10 player).

[chaos5061]

Madness of Deathwing 10 Solo Kill
Congratulations to Mionelol for another impressive solo kill.

[chaos5061]

Classes
On a related note: Do you still feel that number changes are preferable over mechanical changes for all specs during an XP?
Ya. More players quit because of constant class changes than quit because of balance concerns. Hard to believe maybe but true. (Source)

But GC in all fairness we have other classes standing up for us, its not us shamans vs the world
Also "my warrior alt agrees with my shaman main." See the problem? That's not the same as an actual discussion with back and forth from both sides. Players never agree 100% with anything. (Source)
Yo GC, try and show some respect to your playerbase /cast Busshock
I respect our players a great deal or I wouldn't make such an effort to do this. That does not mean game design is up for a vote. (Source)

Why the huge nerf to glyphs in MoP? They seem, well, underwhelming. #wow
They were a DPS increase before, but not an interesting one. Most players picked the highest DPS glyph and never changed them. (Source)

Do you think abilities such as Destro Rain of Fire or Halo should break Rogue's stealth? And if so why? It's too easy to break
I would love to see only Flare and a few others break stealth, but that's a potentially destabilizing change. (Source)

Have you ever considered changing a spec from a pure dps class to a tank/heal spec?
yes, but I don't think every one of those pure players would like that (& you can't just say they can ignore the new roles). (Source)
With druids now having 4 specs to choose from, wouldn't it be possible to add them&not remove any specific spec?
Druids have always been hybrids though. Maybe a rogue doesn't want to have to be considered a tank. (Source)
I dont think most people would have to consider it. I assume if your in a raid you have a designated tank.
Not that simple. If you have a tank as a class might be less room for DPS of same class. Also has gear, DPS, dual spec implications. (Source)

some classes/specs does not bring anything useful generally, hunters rogues come to mind these problems -continued
We don't like balancing around awesome raid utility - just shifts the problem to who has strongest utility. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
¨What do you think of DK survival in pvp? I quit mine because I realized in premop patch that we were going to be easy target
If you can get a DK to blow all def cooldowns, then they're easier to kill, but you still have Blood Presence. (Source)

Why is Blood getting nerfed PvP wise? We have no mobility what so ever.. we are easily kited.WTF. Compensate for the nerf?
We don't like invulnerable tanks in PvP even if they are slow. Blood had too much self-healing in PvP. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
I'm not sure why you just don't throw a 1 min CD on Healing Shrooms and scale them properly and be done with it at this point.
that might get druids to use them, but that makes them like a lot of other spells and the game needs more variety not less. (Source)
why not have mushroom healing to be increased based on a proc you receive by using another spell, like regrowth, etc
potentially. Want to be a little careful not to add too many RNG procs though. (Source)

How long are we going to have to wait to see shifting out of snares removed?
Not on our radar ATM. We don't want to nerf every counter in PvP, just the ones that feel super frustrating. (Source)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Is there a possible warlock-style redesign for hunters in future? New talents seem to cause button bloat and spread dps thin.
We don't think hunters need a massive revamp (beyond range and ammo changes they already have). They do have too many buttons. (Source)

Regarding hunters, why is BW, a skill untouched for years suddenly OP? Also 5.1 changes nothing regarding MM being weak in pvp
We don't think defenses used offensively makes good gameplay. They tend to get blown immediately not strategically. (Source)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Any chance Mages could get rune of power castable on the move?
Don't want it to be a buff you just hit on cooldown. Agree it needs a little work. (Source)
Any word on IW or Invocation?
Invocation works for Arcane, but feels too maintenancy for others. IW is a bigger topic. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Hey GC with the change in 5.1 making totems act as spells was it intended to nerf all specs or just resto ?
it was intended as a nerf to totems. Now that they do things (not just buffs) they were hard to counter. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
How's the banner experiment working out? Have you guys contemplated any other cool banner style abilities for warriors?
honestly, not sure yet. Still like the concept. Not sure if it's delivering on the fantasy. (Source)