So speculate how long until MOP? June, August, October, December or ?

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Rogue Feedback
He hasn't answere anything about the Prep/Step issue.
Again, I feel like we have made plenty of responses to the topic. I think it's one of those deals where because some players don't like the answer, they say the topic has not been addressed.

For the record, as many players will tell you, Sub is nearly impossible to balance with both Preparation and Shadowstep. On the other hand, having two talents that are both so good that you want them both and have to think long and hard about which one to take and perhaps even swap back and forth from time to time is pretty much exactly what we are trying to deliver with the new talent system. Are rogues doomed in PvP without both? I doubt that. Is it hard t o choose? Of course, and that's the point. If we conclude that it's just too cruel to ask rogues to choose between them, we'd likely just cut Prep from the game and perhaps lower a few cooldowns slightly. I really hope though that we aren't in a space where every cool talent has to become mandatory or deleted.

Leeching and paralytic locking each other out
Again, asked and answered. We said that we understand that very optimized rogues won't want both talents because you can only use one at a time. That depends a very great deal on how often you'd use the competing talents. If you find yourself using leeching poison then swapping to paralytic often, you may be better off just keeping both talents than constantly swapping. A Disc priest (on live) doesn't necessarily drop the Atonement talent evey time they think they might not Smite, though very min/max players probably do.

We're going to be underfunded for the first patch of MoP
Do you have any evidence of this? Even anecdotes are better than nothing (though not much better). The classes on beta are getting pretty well balanced at this point at both level 85 and 90 (modulo the occasional bug that creeps in), so if you think you're seeing something we're not, please let us know.

As an aside, I'm not a huge fan of simulations as evidence, because it requires us to debug them first. I used to spend more effort doing that, but it's a chore, and my time is probably better spent elsewhere. Sims are fantastic for suggesting to you that you might want to try a different rotation or stat allocation. They aren't great for "Hey Bliz, my dps is low. Please buff."

Dirty Tricks just sounds like a bug. I don't have our bug database in front of me, but it's hard to make assumptions about neglect based on when a bug gets fixed, so long as it does before launch. It could be that the developer is waiting on a code change to fix the bug. It could be that he or she is pondering how to fix it or if a redesign in the functionality (not the base design) is warranted.

I've been doing this a long time, and one of the truths I have uncovered is that apparently easy bugs are often the hardest to fix and things you predict would take weeks of programming time can be done in a few lines. It's hard to diagnose from the outside.

If you see bugs, report them in the bug forum. Once you have done so, stop worrying about it until we get close to launch.

[chaos5061]

Heroic Siege of Niuzao Temple Video Guide

Siege of Niuzao Temple is a four boss heroic instance in Townlong Steppes. You can see the loot, maps, and quests associated with the dungeon

on WoWDB!

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Siege of Niuzao Temple

Niuzao Temple extends across two fortified islands far beyond a towering wall called the Serpent's Spine. For years, tenacious pandaren defenders have protected the narrow bridges connecting the isles, staving off any would-be invaders. Yet recently, the mantid created their own bridge--a massive tree root--and seized one of the islands by surprise. Now, these brutal insectoids are poised to assault Niuzao's remaining guardians.

Achievements

• Heroic: Siege of Niuzao Temple - Defeat Wing Leader Ner'onok in Siege of Niuzao Temple on Heroic Difficulty.
• Run with the Wind - Defeat Ner'onok in Siege of Niuzao Temple on Heroic Difficulty while under the effect of Tenwu's Resolve.
• Return to Sender - Defeat General Pa'valak while he has 20 stacks of Detonate in the Siege of Niuzao Temple on Heroic Difficulty.
• Where's My Air Support? - Defeat Commander Vo'jak after having killed the Sik'thik Amberwing in Siege of Niuzao Temple on Heroic Difficulty.

Vizier Jin'bak

• Sap Puddle - The Sap Puddle grows over time, inflicting 8,000 Nature damage over 1 sec to enemies who touch it. Touching the Sap Puddle also causes it to shrink in size.
  • Sap Residue - When a player touches the Sap Puddle, it causes the Residue to attach to them. Sap Residue inflicts 8,000 Nature damage over 1 sec. The effect stacks.
• Summon Sap Globule - Vizier Jin'bak summons three Sap Globules from the tree.
  • Sap Globule - Sap Globules try to congeal with the Sap Puddle, increasing its size.
• Detonate - The Resin Harvester attempts to detonate the Sap Puddle, inflicting damage based on the size of the Sap Puddle.
• Heroic Difficulty - Siege of Niuzao Temple is only available on Heroic Difficulty.

Commander Vo'jak

• The Escaped Prisoners - The mantid captured these three Pandaren during the initial attack on Niuzao Temple, but the prisoners were able to break free of their bindings and fight back. Now they stand ready to do whatever it takes to end the siege.
  • Caustic Tar - Escaped prisoners, Li and Lo Chu, will position and prepare mantid tar kegs for use in the battle. Players can throw the kegs of Caustic Tar onto the battlefield. Caustic Tar inflicts on any unit standing within the tar 23,750 Nature damage, reduces movement speed by 50%, and increases damage taken by 10%. This effect stacks. The Caustic Tar also removes any effect from the target that increases movement or attack speed.
• Stage One: Bring It! - Commander Vo'jak orders his forces to attack the players.
  • Sik'thik Swarmer - Lightly armored and well trained, the Sik'thik Swarmers are a key part of the Vo'jak's forces.
  • Sik'thik Amberwing - The Sik'thik Amberwing flies to the top of the platform and bombards the players.
    • Bombard - The Sik'thik Amberwing fires a volley of explosives at random enemy locations every 1.5 sec. for 15 sec. Bombard inflicts 90,000 Fire damage to all creatures within 5 yards of the targeted location.
  • Sik'thik Demolisher - Quick and volatile, these mantid carry explosive charges.
    • Unstable Blast - The Sik'thik Demolisher carries unstable explosives and explodes when damaged or killed, inflicting 42,750 to all targets within 16 yards.
  • Sik'thik Warrior - Sik'thik Warriors slowly advance on the enemy position.
• Stage Two: Your Defenses Did Not Stop Me! - Commander Vo'jak's enters the battle as his forces near defeat at the hands of the players.
  • Rising Speed - Commander Vo'jak focuses his will and determination, increasing his attack speed by 15% every 2 sec. This effect stacks.
  • Dashing Strike - Commander Vo'jak charges a random enemy player, inflicting 71,250 Physical damage to all enemies passed through. The Strike also knocks back his current target, inflicting an additional 190,000 Physical damage.
  • Thousand Blades - Immediately after using Dashing Strike, Commander Vo'jak begins to spin around and send blades outward, inflicting Physical damage to all targets within 8 yards. Thousand Blades also removes the Caustic Tar effect.
• Heroic Difficulty - Siege of Niuzao Temple is only available on Heroic Difficulty.

General Pa'valak

• Blade Rush - General Pa'valak throws his sword at a random player's location, inflicting 150,000 Physical damage to all players within 4 yards on impact. Once the sword lands General Pa'valak then charges to it, inflicting 300,000 Physical damage to all players within 4 yards and knocking them back.
• Tempest - General Pa'valak unleashes a tempest, inflicting 90,000 Nature damage to all players within 60 yards and negating the next 45,000 points of healing on the target.
• Call Reinforcements - When General Pa'valak reaches 65% and 35% remaining health, he shields himself in a Bulwark and summons reinforcements.
  • Bulwark - General Pa'valak surrounds himself in a shield, absorbing 1,500,000 damage.
  • Aerial Bombardment - General Pa'valak summons Sik'thik Amber-Sappers to bomb players.
    • Siege Explosive - Sik'thik Amber-Sappers drop Siege Explosives that arm themselves after 3 seconds. Then after an additional 3 seconds pass they explode for 300,000 Fire damage in a 7 yard radius. The explosion causes players to take 5% additional damage for 15 sec. This effect stacks.
    • Throw Explosive - Players may attempt to throw Siege Explosives back at enemy Mantid before they arm. Thrown Explosives inflict 300,000 Fire damage to all Mantid within 7 yards of the targeted area and increase their damage taken by 5% for 1.5 min. This effect stacks.
  • Ground Assault - General Pa'valak summons waves of Sik'thik Soldiers to defend him in battle.
    • Sik'thik Soldier
      • Serrated Blade - Sik'thik Soldiers slice a player, inflicting 7,500 Physical damage every 3 seconds for 12 sec. This effect stacks.
• Heroic Difficulty - Siege of Niuzao Temple is only available on Heroic Difficulty.

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Wing Leader Ner'onok

• Hurl Brick

• - Ner'onok throws rubble from the damaged bridge at his target, inflicting Physical damage equal to 100% of his weapon damage.
• Caustic Pitch - Ner'onok throws a glob of Caustic Pitch at a random location. The glob inficts 40,000 Nature damage every 1 sec. and reduces the movement speed of players touching it by 50%.
• Quick-Dry Resin - Ner'onok sprays a target with heated resin. As the resin hardens it inflicts 7,500 Fire damage every 1 sec. If this process completes the target becomes encased in resin and cannot move or act for 6 sec. Jumping counteracts this effect and if the target breaks free they become Invigorated, increasing casting and movement speeds by 15% for 30 sec.
• Treacherous Winds - Twice during the fight Nero'nok lifts off and flies to the other end of the bridge. Upon landing he periodically channels Gusting Winds until interrupted.
  • Gusting Winds - Ner'onok beats his wings fiercely, creating a powerful gale that pushes enemies away from him at high speed.
• Heroic Difficulty - Siege of Niuzao Temple is only available on Heroic Difficulty.

[chaos5061]

Faction Description Updates

Several of the NPCs which have friendship levels got new descriptions in this patch.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

• Jogu the Drunk - Jogu's easy to find - gazing into the bottom of a bottle of the cheapest Stormstout Brewery has to offer.

• Ella - Ella aspires to be a great brewer, but she has a long road ahead of her!
• Old Hillpaw - Old Hillpaw is the canniest chicken raiser around.
• Chee Chee - If you've ever had a question about sheep, Chee Chee will know the answer.
• Sho - A stout, proud defender of the farmlands, Sho is always there when you need a strong fist.
• Haohan Mudclaw - The respected leader of the Tillers, Haohan Mudclaw is swamped with responsibilities.
• Tina Mudclaw - Tina Mudclaw is fond of the delicate things in life.
• Gina Mudclaw - Managing the Halfhill Market makes Gina Mudclaw one stressed lady!
• Fish Fellreed - Fish Fellreed's found out more about the history of this land than the rest of the town's forgotten.

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More Pet Battle Music
The latest beta patch added some more pet battle music!

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New Pet Battle Skills
The past few beta patches have added a few new pet abilities as well!

Blitz	Humanoid	8			50%
Build Turret	Mechanical	0		4 rounds	100%
Clone	Magic	0		100 rounds	100%
Damned	Undead	1		1 round	100%
Failsafe	Mechanical	25		1 round	100%
GM Revive	Humanoid	100		20 rounds	100%
GM Unkillable	Humanoid	0			100%

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Mudslide [NYI] Critter 0 3 rounds 100%
Railgun Elemental 20 90%
Recovery Humanoid 5 1 round 100%
Slippery Ice Elemental 0 0%
Turret Mechanical 190%

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Rogue Class Design
Ghostcrawler, I know you probably won't make your way this deep in the thread, but I just wanted to say thanks for all of this great information and feedback. I really appreciate the openness you've shared with us in these posts. Kudos.
We read everything. We just can't always respond to it all. But if you make good points, I promise we will consider them.

GC, I’d say thanks for the posts you’ve made, but they confuse me. Not the content of the posts, but that you take the trouble to post them yet the content of them is generally dismissive.
I understand your point of view and I sympathize, but it is something of a no win scenario for us. If we agreed with any particular feedback and there weren't compelling reasons to not make a change, then we would do it. Everyone is happy. That happens sometimes. More often, we disagree or we agree but there is some other reason we aren't going to make a change. The way this comes across to players more often than not is that ideas were suggested and ignored or dismissed. They are never ignored or dismissed.

It would be great if it was possible for us to debate those issues every time they come up, but I don't know a reasonable way to do that. Sometimes I find a bit of spare time to make a forum post or a blog to try and explain our design intent so that at least you have some frame of reference, and the other developers and the community team do likewise.

As I said in one these recent posts, it often feels like the only kind of post from us that is going to be acceptable to some players is "Yes! You are spot on! Buffs and / or changes incoming!" But imagine what the game would be like if we did that every time a suggestion came up. Yes, we should only make the good changes and not the bad ones, but we have yet to find a litmus test to easily detect good from bad. (Let us know if you know of one!) Instead we use our judgment, which is a mix of gut instinct, experience and feedback.

Realize that some of the time we choose to post nothing at all it's because we want to avoid the "But you just dismissed all of our concerns" responses. It's a bummer for players to read a post that says "We disagree" or even worse, "we agree but we have a good reason not to make the change." I get that.

[chaos5061]

Heart of Fear Raid Preview
The Heart of Fear raid has been updated again as we approach a more final version. There are a few comparison shots before the main gallery with before on the left and after on the right.

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We want to provide everyone with a quick update regarding the status of beta class design and balance, as well as start collecting more detailed analytics from you. Since you’ve probably seen us say many times in the past that we’re not yet in a place to start dissecting the numbers, it’s worth calling out that we now want you to bring it on!

For the purposes of keeping this thread as valuable to the developers as possible -- they will be actively reading and likely replying to posts here -- these are some things to know before posting:
First and foremost, as a ground rule let’s keep this one thread free of pleas about ability feedback, DPS being too low or other subjective declarations. This thread should be about information sharing. If you aren’t a theorycrafter, this thread may not be for you.
We feel the numbers are in a pretty good place right now. If you’re a theorycrafter who has been waiting for things to stabilize before submitting your class balance analysis, this is your cue to have at it.
Make no mistake, we’re confident in our ability to balance the game. On the other hand, we greatly value player feedback. And reconciling our numbers with yours is part of that.
Don’t consider this thread to be evidence that we feel class design for Mists of Pandaria is pretty much done. It also shouldn’t be a sign that X issue you may have been posting about for the last month is going to be ignored, or that we just don’t agree with you.
The primary goal is to maintain a relatively stable class system for a healthy period of time in the beta, so the number crunchers among you can really start to get into the nitty-gritty details without worrying that everything will change in the next beta build.
If there are any mechanics that are proving particularly hard to understand, feel free to ask in this thread. We understand there is a narrow line between squelching and fostering the theorycrafting community, and we’re not trying to solve everything for you. On the other hand, we don’t want you to burn too much of your time trying to figure out how potentially confusing mechanics work under the hood (e.g. monk weapon normalization). That said, we won’t just dump the coefficient for every spell -- you should be able to figure that out. However, if you just can’t figure out how a spell is designed, don’t hesitate to ask. We appreciate honest questions.

I am VERY interested in seeing the community's Thoughts on how to equalize 2h and DW Frost. Not from a "damage on beta" But equalize it for the future. It is obvious how one sided the damage is currently.
In a future build you will find that we removed the increase offhand damage bonus of ToT.

This isn't about wishlisting, it's about analyzing what is currently in the beta. Theory-crafting.
We agree, but at least it was a post that was getting at damage differences. The intent of this thread overall is to provide players a place to post and discuss numbers and answer any questions that are preventing you from doing so. There are plenty of other places to discuss other design issues and this thread will be moderated a bit more heavily than normal with that in mind. Nothing personal.

What level of uptime is Haunt being balanced around?
Haunt is balanced around Nightfall procs. While it may currently be a small DPS upgrade (3%?) to swap Drain Soul and Malefic Grasp, the intent is that you use Drain Soul to generate shards when you need to hit a burst window or of course below 20%.

What on earth is going on with Brewmaster mitigation? I don't even want to start theorycrafting because it feels/looks so broken
We're changing it a bit and haven't updated the beta in a little while.

The basic idea is that you should care about converting energy to chi, then converting that chi primarily into Shuffle and Purifying Brew. In most cases, we expect it to be optimal to mix those two abilities, not just always prioritize one over the other. Additionally, Guard should almost always be worth using. The next build you get should have a fairly stable version of Brewmaster mitigation, which includes the following changes to Brewmasters:

Added 5% Parry to Swift Reflexes.
Ox Stance now reduces damage taken by 25% (up from 20%), and health by 15% (down from 30%).
Shuffle now increases Parry by 20%, down from 30%.
Mastery now increases Stagger by 0.3% per point, down from 0.5%, and no longer increases Parry chance.
Brewing: Elusive Brew – New passive for Brewmasters which gives you charges of Elusive Brew when you get auto attack critical strikes: You get up to 2 charges per crit, based on weapon speed. For 2Hs, you get an average of Speed/1.8 charges. For 1Hs, you get an average of speed/2.6 charges. Max stack size of 15. (Using unusually slow weapons, you can actually get 3 sometimes, but we’re ignoring that for the tooltip.)
For example, with a 3.2 speed 2H, you get an average of 1.778 charges per crit (77.8% of the time you get 2, otherwise 1).
Elusive Brew (the ability) consumes those charges to give you 30% dodge for 1sec per charge.

It should be apparent by the information present in this thread that multi-shot is in desperate need of a retuning.
We need to make some adjustments, but aren't sure buffing Multi is the right solution. As you point out, BM AE is fine. Marks is a little low and Survival is a lot low. These can all be fixed, but if we just buff Multi then we need to nerf BM elsewhere.

On behalf of the Paladin community on Elitist Jerks, I would like to re-post something here about Crusader's Zeal (credit to post goes to Exemplar):
We'll look at Crusader's Zeal again. Maybe the mechanic isn't even needed. We wanted it to be a source of crit, but we didn't want it to be a maintenance-y buff like Inquisition.

Most trinket procs have a generous proc chance with an ICD. Gurthalak was an exception, but had some wacky consequences as a result of our making it an exception.

We don't think the paladin 90 talents need to benefit from mastery. The healing component can be balanced around Holy healing and since all 3 talents are in the same boat, there shouldn't be talent choice consequences.

The Expertise to spell hit conversion is in and working (as far as we know). The UI may not be updated to reflect it yet.

Protection warrior rage is still flakey in the beta, assuming you want us to be in defensive stance. So I guess the first question, is are we intended to be using battle stance this much, with the potential of constant stance dancing there? Assuming thats not the case, with a fair chunk of rage generation coming from enrage ( ie critical blocks ) and revenge, the current clunky feel when off tanking or fighting magic only bosses on live has become exacerbated, as we're now also getting hit with a large rage income reduction in these situations.
You are going to make life hard for everyone if you try to tank in Battle Stance, so we'll make sure that isn't too attractive. If super optimized tanks want to slip into Battle Stance (or Berserker Stance) in some optimized occasions, we're fine with that, but it should be a rare and hardcore tactic. On the other hand, if you are off-tanking in the sense that you aren't the target for several seconds, you can safely go into Battle Stance then. We understand warriors will always want more rage, but Protection isn't balanced around 100% uptime of Shield Block and Barrier, and nearly everything else is free.

[chaos5061]

Holy priest mana regeneration seems really low. Compared to other classes, Holy doesn't seem to have the longevity to last in a heroic or raid, and feels much like early cata, where Priests were never considered until there mana regen was nearly doubled.
We find regen is pretty similar among the healers over the course of a fight. It will feel lower in leveling greens than it did at 85 in epics however. Do you have any more information?

Mastery is by comparison utterly horrible for Shadow at present. It doesn't help that the extra ticks don't function like real extra ticks (more chances to proc things) with the exception of the mana regen from a procced VT tick.
Do you have a specific example of something that is not proc'd? The extra ticks should function like real ticks.

I did make a bug report out of this though I am reposting this here just for future reference. there is currently a bug with Faerie Swarms' damage.
This is fixed in a future build.

Also what is the status of crit suppression? Is it totally gone? Just gone for spells? Or still there? It's something that is extremely painful to test in-game.
Crit chances of players against mobs that are higher level than you are reduced by 1% per level difference, in Mists.

With regards to Priest mechanics, the only two "difficult" things to measure accurately are the damage modifications due to range on Cascade on Halo.
Cascade does a % of its max damage/healing based on linear distance between the source and target of the bounce. It does 40% of its maximum damage at 0yd, and 100% at 30+yd, scaling linearly between those two points (anywhere between 30yd and 40yd will give 100%). It prefers farther away targets when it bounces.

Halo’s damage scaling is… a bit more complex. Sometimes the formulae that are under the hood are extremely complex looking, because we build in several knobs that we turn to get the tuning where we want it. Halo is one of those cases. The easy to understand way to think of it is that the multiplier on the max damage/healing is 10% at 0yd, up to 40% at 17yd, spikes up to 90% at 22yd, 100% at 27yd, then down to 60% at 35yd. The intent is that it is weak on targets near you, but there’s a sweet spot in a ring from 20yd to 30yd from you, and that the edges of that ‘sweet spot’ are smooth. The actual formula (warning, may seem scary!) is… 0.5 * (1.01)^(-1 * (((Distance-25)/2)^4)) + 0.1 + 0.015*Distance. I’m sure someone can post a graph of that pretty quickly. One thing to note is that the max range is 30yd, but that it includes creature’s hit boxes, so the distance between the caster and a valid target may be slightly larger than 30yd, which is why the formula makes sense out to 35yd. Again, you absolutely do not need to understand any of that to benefit from the heal!

We of course don't need direct coefficients for most spells as we data-mine them anyway (and then test). There are some coefficients that we don't have data for and are a bit harder to test. Mostly pet related abilities. Shadowfiend etc. I've come up with decent enough numbers for them though.
I’ll try to put together a post explaining details of how pet scaling works soon. The general idea is that pets now inherit a % of most of your stats, but that % varies by the pet and the stat.

Shadowy Apparitions have been a bit....strange. The coefficients in-game have never exactly matched what they actually do for their entire existence (I submitted bug reports about it during the *Cata* beta). At present their actual damage is *far* more than the tool-tip says. Any idea if the tool-tip on them might be fixed for MoP so we know which coefficient and base dmg are intended?
I’m not sure offhand which is correct (tooltip or damage); there may be a bug involved. We’ll double-check the tooltip on these, but the numbers I have in front of me at the moment say that they should do 97.8% of SP plus 554 at level 85, or plus 615 at 90 (and benefits from Shadowform’s multiplier). We’ll follow up on that and make sure that the tooltip and the damage match, whichever is right.

I know that modeling totem pets like the Fire Elemental has been annoying for the various Shaman theorycrafters. They seem to perform some actions randomly and they have an unexplained long "start-up" time. Any information you can give on how these things function under the hood would be welcome.
I believe there is a known issue that we’re currently working on, where many guardians that auto-assist you take a few sec to start assisting you after they spawn. We’re working to fix that, as we know that it impacts the performance of spells that summon these guardians.

In terms of number comparisons are you also "generally happy" with the AoE and multi-dotting/cleave numbers as well? We've only got a few classes implemented in SimulationCraft but there are some *wildly* different numbers when it comes to AoE.
Somewhat. There are still a few outliers that we’re working on resolving. Additionally, AoE is extremely dependent upon the exact situation. The classes that win at 10sec AoE bursts may lose at 60sec or 5min sustained AoE. Same with 2 targets vs 3 targets vs 10 targets, etc. We try to balance for a variety of scenarios, but keep some strengths and weaknesses to everyone, and make sure they feel different. That isn’t to say that if you are amazing at cleave, you must be useless on 50 target AoE, or anything like that, just that we expect some variance in performance on any given AoE situation (much more than we do on single target situations, anyway).

With Shadow Priest talent balancing, you've done a good job it seems getting Tier 3 talents to be a lot closer to one another now. Tier 6 talents still have a bit of a spread. Divine Insight seems the clear choice by the numbers on that tier unless you're able to "game" Twist of Fate to increase its uptime in which case the two become viable. If you're unable to game it then Twist of Fate is around the same level as Power Infusion which seems to be generally the worst option on that tier.
We’d be interested in seeing your analysis on this sort of thing (and other talent rows for other classes, etc). Balance of ‘power’ talent rows is something we’re trying to keep tight. I think in this specific case, we’ve been trying some new things with priest talents (the level 45 and 75 rows in particular) lately, and haven’t redone the balance on those rows since then.

While it's possible that our Retribution Paladin modeling *might* be off in terms of the exact usage of abilities, the damage range on the abilities used is something I've verified to be correct to +/- 1 damage in-game. That said, Retribution seems to be performing fairly poorly at level 85 compared to the other classes we've implemented. It has mana issues for one and I've got it Seal swapping to regen mana if it gets low, but even without mana issues its DPS still seems too low in comparison. How are they performing at 85 for you? (We've been waiting on the release of some level 90 PvE gear before worrying too much about level 90 balance for now).
We’re aiming for classes at 85 to stay roughly where they are. The mana constraint issue is something we’ll look into, as that sounds like particularly out of place. We have not noticed it in internal testing.

Will Detonate indeed not be affected by Solar Eclipse?
Correct. Mushrooms should not be affected by Solar.

Is Bloom intended to be used in AoE healing rotations? How will it affect Harmony?
It isn't intended to be used rotationally, and may be too good at the moment. It is fine for it to affect Harmony as long as it doesn't become a vehicle to keep Harmony up. If we can make it a small little bonus, that's fine.

The changes to talents have led to a pretty big change in hunter pet focus regen. Currently BM is the only hunter spec which has any talents which regen pet focus. Since pet base focus regen is fairly low, this means that the frequency of basic attacks for non-BM pets has dropped quite a bit. Even for BM the regen is pretty low (although that at least will improve with crit rate). I'm not sure if the intention is to make hunter pets do significantly lower damage or to tweak the pet melee attack to do a far larger portion of the pet damage, or if this is just a mechanic that hasn't really been worked on yet.
We essentially took some damage from the pet and gave it to the hunter. We think overall hunter damage is fairly balanced on beta, except for the AE issue noted above.