Blue Posts
A Lack of Cloth Healing Gear in Dungeons
Our item designers spend a lot of effort making sure there is gear for everyone, so if you haven't seen a specific piece you might have just gotten unlucky.
Note however that healer cloth is any cloth without hit on it. If you are expecting Spirit on every single piece, you might be disappointed. If you did manage to get Spirit on every single piece, you might find that your regeneration is higher than you really need for level up content. We know we can't make the level up dungeons super challenging, or players will just skip them and quest instead (given that even the most awesome level up dungeon gear won't last very long, so it's not possible to offer high reward for high risk).
As you are nearing level 90, and start gearing for end game content, stats for healers and survival stats for tanks start to become more important and you should find more of them.
Also, don't neglect the vendors. Their gear isn't best in slot by any stretch, but can be useful to fill any holes if you missed a piece or have just been unlucky.
Hunter Feedback
A few points on hunters, gathered from several threads:
We don't want for dots just to ignore crowd control. It's a test of skill for players to decide when to dot and when to CC. However, that's not a fair requirement for attacks that you can't prevent, such as Piercing Shots and MM mastery. Those probably do need to pause or do no damage to CC'd targets.
We're still tweaking focus regen. It does feel a little slow right now.
Stampede needs to appear at the target or you lose too much of the brief duration with the pets moving to the target. It also needs to have a long cooldown and short duration, because it's an awful lot of DPS to have so many pets out. The alternative would be that the extra pets do a lot less damage each, but we didn't feel like that really delivered on the fantasy of "opening the stable."
We want traps to be good CC. Traps are one of the signature hunter mechanics, and we'd rather make them good than just let players ignore them and do all their CC with shots. Improving CC in this way will also give hunters better synergy with other classes in PvP, rather than the hunter's viability being determined by how awesome their burst damage is.
We're still looking at expertise, dodge and running a lot of PvP tests right now. We do think it's a bit disingenuous to argue that melee are always behind their targets in PvP. Just ask any Backstabbing rogue or Shredding druid. Overall, we're still comfortable with the idea of ranged attacks able to be dodged. It's a little weird to argue any of this stuff based on "reality" but heroes so awesome that they could dodge arrows or bullets certainly exist in literature and cinema. If you can leap through the air towards your foe (or backwards in the case of a hunter), shield block a giant, or cast a fireball, then being able to dodge a shot shouldn't be the thing that breaks the suspension of disbelief.
(As an aside, when I was working on historical RTS games, I read that there was some evidence that Native Americans had some skill in dodging arrows, which may have been one of the things that led to their adopting firearms, given that firearms at the time were pretty inferior to arrows or javelins in most other ways. That still doesn't settle whether dodging arrows in a fantasy game with paladins and mages is reasonable or not.)
If it's an undue burden for PvP, then that's another thing (though we think the jury is still out on that), but arguing it's not realistic is a bit... er... dodgy.
Rapture Must Retire
We don't think Rapture is "fundamentally flawed." We also added it back because so many Disc priests asked for it. It's challenging for us to present a design when some players want something and some don't want it.
Discipline would struggle if the spec was designed around flawless Rapture use, but it's not. Meditation is still there and in fact a Disc priest with flawless Rapture use would have more mana return than other healers. A priest who totally ignored PW:Shield would have lower mana return, but why are you playing Disc if you ignore PW:Shield? For many Disc priests who say benefit from Rapture every 20+ sec instead of the minimum 12, their sustainability should be comparable to other healers. Keep in mind what I said in the other thread about considering the entire package; the only real measurement of sustainability is how long the various healers can cast in average (low HPS) and scary (high HPS) situations without going OOM.
Discipline Feedback
In the (hopefully) next build you receive, Discipline again has Greater Heal, Strength of Soul, and Power Word: Shield with no cooldown. We are also trying something really different with Spirit Shell. Let us know how it feels.
A Lack of Cloth Healing Gear in Dungeons
Our item designers spend a lot of effort making sure there is gear for everyone, so if you haven't seen a specific piece you might have just gotten unlucky.
Note however that healer cloth is any cloth without hit on it. If you are expecting Spirit on every single piece, you might be disappointed. If you did manage to get Spirit on every single piece, you might find that your regeneration is higher than you really need for level up content. We know we can't make the level up dungeons super challenging, or players will just skip them and quest instead (given that even the most awesome level up dungeon gear won't last very long, so it's not possible to offer high reward for high risk).
As you are nearing level 90, and start gearing for end game content, stats for healers and survival stats for tanks start to become more important and you should find more of them.
Also, don't neglect the vendors. Their gear isn't best in slot by any stretch, but can be useful to fill any holes if you missed a piece or have just been unlucky.
Hunter Feedback
A few points on hunters, gathered from several threads:
We don't want for dots just to ignore crowd control. It's a test of skill for players to decide when to dot and when to CC. However, that's not a fair requirement for attacks that you can't prevent, such as Piercing Shots and MM mastery. Those probably do need to pause or do no damage to CC'd targets.
We're still tweaking focus regen. It does feel a little slow right now.
Stampede needs to appear at the target or you lose too much of the brief duration with the pets moving to the target. It also needs to have a long cooldown and short duration, because it's an awful lot of DPS to have so many pets out. The alternative would be that the extra pets do a lot less damage each, but we didn't feel like that really delivered on the fantasy of "opening the stable."
We want traps to be good CC. Traps are one of the signature hunter mechanics, and we'd rather make them good than just let players ignore them and do all their CC with shots. Improving CC in this way will also give hunters better synergy with other classes in PvP, rather than the hunter's viability being determined by how awesome their burst damage is.
We're still looking at expertise, dodge and running a lot of PvP tests right now. We do think it's a bit disingenuous to argue that melee are always behind their targets in PvP. Just ask any Backstabbing rogue or Shredding druid. Overall, we're still comfortable with the idea of ranged attacks able to be dodged. It's a little weird to argue any of this stuff based on "reality" but heroes so awesome that they could dodge arrows or bullets certainly exist in literature and cinema. If you can leap through the air towards your foe (or backwards in the case of a hunter), shield block a giant, or cast a fireball, then being able to dodge a shot shouldn't be the thing that breaks the suspension of disbelief.
(As an aside, when I was working on historical RTS games, I read that there was some evidence that Native Americans had some skill in dodging arrows, which may have been one of the things that led to their adopting firearms, given that firearms at the time were pretty inferior to arrows or javelins in most other ways. That still doesn't settle whether dodging arrows in a fantasy game with paladins and mages is reasonable or not.)
If it's an undue burden for PvP, then that's another thing (though we think the jury is still out on that), but arguing it's not realistic is a bit... er... dodgy.
Rapture Must Retire
We don't think Rapture is "fundamentally flawed." We also added it back because so many Disc priests asked for it. It's challenging for us to present a design when some players want something and some don't want it.
Discipline would struggle if the spec was designed around flawless Rapture use, but it's not. Meditation is still there and in fact a Disc priest with flawless Rapture use would have more mana return than other healers. A priest who totally ignored PW:Shield would have lower mana return, but why are you playing Disc if you ignore PW:Shield? For many Disc priests who say benefit from Rapture every 20+ sec instead of the minimum 12, their sustainability should be comparable to other healers. Keep in mind what I said in the other thread about considering the entire package; the only real measurement of sustainability is how long the various healers can cast in average (low HPS) and scary (high HPS) situations without going OOM.
Discipline Feedback
In the (hopefully) next build you receive, Discipline again has Greater Heal, Strength of Soul, and Power Word: Shield with no cooldown. We are also trying something really different with Spirit Shell. Let us know how it feels.
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