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

[chaos5061]

Mogu'shan Vaults
The mogu, proud of their supremacy, kept lengthy records of their accomplishments within a great complex of vaults. Guarded by ferocious magical beings, these sacred chambers have remained silent since the mogu's departure.

The Stone Guard

Amethyst Guardian - The Amethyst Guardian gains energy when within 12 yards of another Guardian. The Guardian uses this energy to cast Amethyst Overload. If no other Guardian is within range, it instead gains the Solid Stone effect. In 10 player Normal Difficulty, a rotating set of three of the four guardians are present each week.
Amethyst Pool - The Amethyst Guardian creates a pool that inflicts (65,000 + 4.2% of SP) Shadow damage every 1 sec. to enemies who enter the area. Lasts 20 sec.
Amethyst Overload - Upon reaching full energy the guardian overloads, inflicting 500,000 Shadow damage to all enemies and interrupting Amethyst Petrification. The Overload does not free fully petrified enemies.
Amethyst Petrification - The Guardian attempts to turn its enemies to amethyst, reducing the Shadow damage they take by 80% but progressively slowing their movement speed. Enemies who reach 100 stacks of Petrification turn to stone and cannot move or act.
Cobalt Guardian - The Cobalt Guardian gains energy when within 12 yards of another Guardian. The Guardian uses this energy to cast Cobalt Overload. If no other Guardian is within range, it instead gains the Solid Stone effect. In 10 player Normal Difficulty, a rotating set of three of the four guardians are present each week.
Cobalt Grasp - Cobalt bursts from the ground at a random player's feet, inflicting 52,000 Arcane damage and preventing all movement for 6 sec.
Cobalt Overload - Upon reaching full energy the guardian overloads, inflicting 500,000 Arcane damage to all enemies and interrupting Cobalt Petrification. The Overload does not free fully petrified enemies.
Cobalt Petrification - The Guardian attempts to turn its enemies to cobalt, reducing the Arcane damage they take by 80% but progressively slowing their movement speed. Enemies who reach 100 stacks of Petrification turn to stone and cannot move or act.
Jade Guardian - The Jade Guardian gains energy when within 12 yards of another Guardian. The Guardian uses this energy to cast Jade Overload. If no other Guardian is within range, it instead gains the Solid Stone effect. In 10 player Normal Difficulty, a rotating set of three of the four guardians are present each week.
Jade Shards - The Jade Guardian fires shards of jade in all directions, inflicting 70,000 Nature damage to all players.
Jade Overload - Upon reaching full energy the guardian overloads, inflicting 500,000 Nature damage to all enemies and interrupting Jade Petrification. The Overload does not free fully petrified enemies.
Jade Petrification - The Guardian attempts to turn its enemies to jade, reducing the Nature damage they take by 80% but progressively slowing their movement speed. Enemies who reach 100 stacks of petrification turn to stone and cannot move or act.
Jasper Guardian - The Jasper Guardian gains energy when within 12 yards of another Guardian. The Guardian uses this energy to cast Jasper Overload. If no other Guardian is within range, it instead gains the Solid Stone effect. In 10 player Normal Difficulty, a rotating set of three of the four guardians are present each week.
Jasper Cleave - The Jasper Guardian inflicts 109,850 Fire damage to its current target and their nearest allies, affecting up to 5 targets.
Jasper Overload - Upon reaching full energy the guardian overloads, inflicting 500,000 Fire damage to all enemies and interrupting Jasper Petrification. The Overload does not free fully petrified enemies.
Jasper Petrification - The Guardian attempts to turn its enemies to jasper, reducing the Fire damage they take by 80% but progressively slowing their movement speed. Enemies who reach 100 stacks of petrification turn to stone and cannot move or act.
Shared Abilities - All four guardians have access to these abilities.
Solid Stone - When no other stone guards are nearby the Guardian reverts to stone form. While in this form it takes 90% reduced damage but cannot gain energy.
Rend Flesh - The Guardian rends the flesh of the target, causing 42,648 Physical damage every 1 sec. Lasts 15 sec.
Power Down - When the guardians reach 85%, 65%, and 40% remaining health, one of them will power down all Energized Tiles in the room to prevent players from using the energy.
Encounter Area -
White Floor Tiles - These tiles absorb the energy from Living Amethyst, Living Cobalt, Living Jade, and Living Jasper when a player stands on them. Each tile absorbs one charge of energy. For each tile currently energized in the room, every player gains a stack of Energized Tiles.
Energized Tiles - The energy of the living stone flows through the room tiles, empowering players and increasing damage dealt by 1%. This effect stacks.
Living Amethyst Crystal - The energy that powers the Amethyst Guardian forms into a crystal. Players who interact with this crystal gain the Living Amethyst effect.
Living Amethyst - 5 charges of the energy that animates the Amethyst Guardian tear though your body. Each charge inflicts (13,000 + 10.0% of SP) Shadow damage every 1 sec. Players drain the energy charges into white floor tiles to energize them.
Living Cobalt Crystal - The energy that powers the Cobalt Guardian forms into a crystal. Players who interact with this crystal gain the Living Cobalt effect.
Living Cobalt - 5 charges of the energy that animates the Cobalt Guardian tear though your body. Each charge inflicts (13,000 + 10.0% of SP) Arcane damage every 1 sec. Players drain the energy charges into white floor tiles to energize them.
Living Jade Crystal - The energy that powers the Jade Guardian forms into a crystal. Players who interact with this crystal gain the Living Jade effect.
Living Jade - 5 charges of the energy that animates the Jade Guardian tear though your body. Each charge inflicts (13,000 + 10.0% of SP) Nature damage every 1 sec. Players drain the energy charges into white floor tiles to energize them.
Living Jasper Crystal - The energy that powers the Jasper Guardian forms into a crystal. Players who interact with this crystal gain the Living Jasper effect.
Living Jasper - 5 charges of the energy that animates the Jasper Guardian tear though your body. Each charge inflicts (13,000 + 10.0% of SP) Fire damage every 1 sec. Players drain the energy charges into white floor tiles to energize them.

[chaos5061]

Account Wide Mounts Update
We have been discussing this issue the last couple of days and we made the call to make the following mounts account-wide:

Reins of the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth
Reins of the Grand Expedition Yak
Mechano-Hog
Mekgineer's Chopper
Vial of the Sands
Reins of the Grand Ice Mammoth
Reins of the Ice Mammoth
Jeweled Onyx Panther (all color variants)
Cloud Serpents (all color variants)

At this point, the only mounts that are not account-wide are either class specific or rewarded from PVP. We feel like both these types of mounts should still be character specific.

Thanks for your feedback on this issue!

[chaos5061]

Challenge Mode Valor Rewards
Valor Point rewards were added to the Challenge Mode UI in a recent patch, but we have no word on if they are final yet. As a comparison, doing a random Heroic Dungeon rewards 60 Valor Points, and a random scenario rewards 30 Valor Points.

It is very unlikely the times that you see are final, as they are the same for every dungeon.

[chaos5061]

Heroic Scholomance Video Guide

Tonight we take a look at the revamped Heroic Scholomance!

[chaos5061]

Loot

463	Armor	Tank	Back	Phantasmal Drape
463	Armor		Trinket	Searing Words
463	Armor	Melee	Trinket	Lessons of the Darkmaster
463	Armor	Spell DPS	Trinket	Price of Progress
463	Armor	Tank	Neck	Necklace of the Dark Blaze
463	Armor	Spell DPS	Neck	Anarchist's Pendant
463	Cloth	Spell DPS	Head	Barovian Ritual Hood
463	Cloth	Spell DPS	Waist	Incineration Belt
463	Cloth	Spell DPS	Legs	Leggings of Unleashed Anguish
463	Cloth	Spell DPS	Wrists	Deadwalker Bracers
463	Leather	Spell Spirit	Hands	Rattling Gloves
463	Leather	Physical DPS	Head	Soulburner Crown
463	Leather	Physical DPS	Waist	Icewrath Belt
463	Leather	Physical DPS	Legs	Ghostwoven Legguards
463	Leather	Physical DPS	Hands	Tombstone Gauntlets
463	Mail	Spell Spirit	Chest	Shivbreaker Vest
463	Mail	Spell Spirit	Wrists	Shadow Puppet Bracers
463	Mail	Spell Spirit	Hands	Gloves of Explosive Pain

[chaos5061]

463	Mail	Physical DPS	Feet	Bone Golem Boots
463	Plate	Tank	Shoulders	Vigorsteel Spaulders
463	Plate	Tank	Chest	Breastplate of Wracking Souls
463	Plate	Tank	Feet	Wraithplate Treads
463	Plate	Melee	Hands	Dark Blaze Gauntlets
463	Plate	Spell Spirit	Shoulders	Shoulderguards of Painful Lessons
463	Shield	Spell Spirit	Off Hand	Metanoia Shield
463	Two-handed Axe	Melee	Two Hand	Goresoaked Headreaper
463	Two-handed Sword	Melee	Two Hand	Gravetouch Greatsword
463	Wand	Spell DPS	Ranged	Necromantic Wand

[chaos5061]

Scholomance

Individuals seeking to master the powers of undeath know well of Scholomance, the infamous school of necromancy located in the dark and foreboding crypts beneath Caer Darrow. In recent years, several of the instructors have changed, but the institution remains under the control of Darkmaster Gandling, a particularly sadistic and insidious practitioner of necromantic magic.

Maps

Achievements

• Heroic: Scholomance

• - Defeat Darkmaster Gandling in Scholomance on Heroic Difficulty.
• Attention to Detail - Defeat Jandice Barov without ever eliminating a false image in Scholomance on Heroic Difficulty.
• Rattle No More - Defeat Rattlegore without allowing him to gain more than 5 stacks of Rusting in Scholomance on Heroic Difficulty.
• Sanguinarian - Defeat a Krastinovian Carver that has 99 stacks of Boiling Bloodthirst in Scholomance on Heroic Difficulty.
• School's Out Forever - Defeat 60 Expired Test Subjects within 20 seconds in Scholomance on Heroic Difficulty.

[chaos5061]

Instructor Chillheart
Stage One: First Lesson
Ice Wall - Instructor Chillheart summons a wall of ice that slowly sweeps across the room, instantly killing any player it touches.
Wrack Soul - Instructor Chillheart shatters the soul of a player, inflicting 15,000 Shadow damage every second for 10 sec. When Wrack Soul expires, it jumps to another player.
Ice Wrath - Instructor Chillheart wreaths a player in ice for 10 sec, causing them to inflict 45,000 Frost damage to all of their allies within 3 yards every second.
Touch of the Grave - Instructor Chillheart's icy touch causes her next 10 melee attacks to inflict an additional 45,000 Frost damage.
Frigid Grasp - Instructor Chillheart summons ice at a player's location that explodes from the ground, inflicting 200,000 Frost damage to all nearby players.
Stage Two: Second Lesson - When Instructor Chillheart's physical body dies, the foul magic that animated her escapes back to her phylactery. Fragments of Instructor Chillheart's soul escape the phylactery and animate the tomes of magic scattered throughout the classroom.
The Anarchist Arcanist
Arcane Bomb - The Anarchist Arcanist creates an orb of magic that explodes on impact, inflicting 60,000 Arcane damage to all players within 2 yards.
Antonidas' Self Help Guide to Standing in Fire
Burn - Antonidas' Self Help Guide to Standing in Fire inflicts 60,000 Fire damage to all players within 2 yards of it.
Wander's Colossal Book of Shadow Puppets
Shadow Bolt - Wander's Colossal Book of Shadow Puppets hurls bolts of dark magic at random players, inflicting 37,500 Shadow damage.

Jandice Barov
Wondrous Rapidity - Jandice rears her staff back with a flash of wondrous Arcane force, unleashing a barrage of attacks that inflict 175,000 Arcane damage in a cone in front of her.
Gravity Flux - Jandice creates a gravity distortion field that inflicts 175,000 Shadow damage to all enemies who enter it, knocking them back and causing them to briefly go blind.
Phantasmal Images - At 66% and 33% health Jandice dissipates into thin air, creating multiple illusions of herself. Destroying the one illusion Jandice hides behind forces her back into the fray. In Heroic difficulty, defeating the wrong image causes a Flash Bang, inflicting 60,000 Arcane damage to all enemies.
Whirl of Illusion - Whereas Jandice hides behind images of herself, the real Jandice dances in a Whirl of Illusion, inflicting 15,000 Arcane damage to all enemies every 1 seconds.

Rattlegore
Rusting - Rattlegore's dull blades rust with each successful melee attack, increasing damage by 10% but lowering attack speed by 5% and movement speed by 5% for 15 sec. This effect stacks.
Bone Spike - Rattlegore launches a powerful spike of bone at a random player, inflicting 225,000 Physical damage and knocking them back a great distance. Bone Armor absorbs the effect of Bone Spikes.
Soulflame - The souls of the dead Boneweavers continue to torment the living, periodically engulfing a section of the room in Soulflame. The flame inflicts 80,000 Fire damage every 0.5 sec. and grows in size over time.
Bone Pile - Bone Piles lie scattered throughout the summoning room. Interacting with a Bone Pile grants a player a charge of Bone Armor.
Bone Armor - Surrounds the caster with a series of whirling bones that absorbs one Bone spell.

Lilian Voss
Stage One: Fetch Me Their Bones! - Darkmaster Gandling turns Lilian Voss against her former allies, employing her powerful abilities to gather more corpses for his devious purposes. Though she tries to fight against his dark will, she cannot control her actions at this time.
Shadow Shiv - Lilian leaps onto a player and strikes them with both runeblades, inflicting 60,000 Shadow damage to players within 8 yards.
Death's Grasp - Lilian draws upon dark powers to pull all players to her location.
Dark Blaze - Periodically summons a patch of dark fire at the player's location, inflicting 25,000 Fire damage every 0.5 seconds.
Stage Two: Your Soul is Mine! - When Lilian's health reaches 50%, her will finally breaks. Darkmaster Gandling forcefully rips her anguished soul from her physical body, then commands Lilian's Soul to attack the players.
Blazing Soul - Lilian's soul blazes with barely-contained hatred, periodically inflicting 30,000 Fire damage to all players.
Unleashed Anguish - Lilian's anguish is further unleashed when striking players in melee. For every melee strike, Lilian will unleash another barrage of Blazing Soul. However, the movement speed of Lilian's Soul is significantly reduced.
Fixate Anger - Lilian's Soul fixates on a player. She will only attempt to attack that player and cannot be taunted.
Stage Three: A Perfectly Good Corpse - When Lilian's Soul reaches 1% health, Lilian's Soul fades into the spirit realm and cannot be attacked. Darkmaster Gandling reanimates what remains of Lilian's physical body to fight alongside Lilian's Soul. The reanimated corpse retains all abilities Lilian Voss used in Stage One.
Finale: Die, Necromancer! - When Lilian's physical body reaches 1% remaining health, she musters the strength to recombine with her soul for a final assault on Darkmaster Gandling.

Darkmaster Gandling
Incinerate - Gandling deals 70,000 Fire damage to his current target.
Immolate - Gandling burns an enemy for 50,000 Fire damage, then inflicts 30,000 additional Fire damage every 3 sec. for 21 sec.
Rise! - Gandling summons a legion of Failed Students to fight for him. The students swarm the area, fighting anything they can. While channelling this spell, the Darkmaster takes 50% less damage.
Failed Student - The Darkmaster raises the bodies of failed students to attack players.
Harsh Lesson - Darkmaster Gandling teleports a random player to one of his study rooms for a harsh lesson!
Study Rooms
Expired Test Subject - The Darkmaster keeps these former test subjects in the nearby rooms. They attack anyone who enters their rooms.
Fresh Test Subject - The Darkmaster keeps these subjects alive in the nearby rooms for testing. Each test subject suffers from Explosive Pain.
Explosive Pain - Gandling's experiment inflicts excruciating pain on the Fresh Test Subject. Dispelling the effect from the Fresh Test Subject unleashes an explosion of magical energy. This explosion inflicts 75,000 Shadow damage to Expired Test Subjects within 8 yards.

[chaos5061]

Beta Class Balance Analysis

How committed is the development team to having all tanks perform within an "acceptable variance" on all encounters? In Cataclysm we saw several "niches" become severe problems for tank balance on certain heroic encounters. For example:

Deathknights on Yor'Sahj, "Bearcatting" on Madness, Spine, Ultra, and Blackhorn, Deathknight and Druid compared to Paladin and Warrior for Impales on Madness, Warriors for Blood tanking on Spine, Paladins for most of heroic T12 due to Divine Guardian, and Warrior/Druid/Deathknight vs Paladin on Al'Akir.
We don't think any of those cross the line. If it were the same class showing up for all of those bullet points, that would be a problem. Our tanks all have strengths and weaknesses and unusual encounter mechanics may synergize or clash with them, but that's more interesting than extreme homogeneity, which would be the alternative. We like the puzzle aspect of "solving" boss encounters according to the comp and strengths of individual groups. We think it has helped contribute to the fun of killing bosses having such extraordinary legs (meaning that we're on tier 14 now and have made hundreds of dungeon bosses).

If memory serves the first Spine kill was Blood DK / Prot paladin and the second was a pair of druids. Now granted, world firsts sometimes have to resort to unusual strategies since they undergear the fights because they haven't had weeks to farm up better gear. Your mileage may vary.

As a counter-example, paladins on Heroic Major Domo initially were able to solo-soak the scorpion cleave, letting guilds with paladin tanks keep him in scorpion form longer than those without. We thought that crossed the line and we changed the boss mechanics to disincentivize that particular strategy. I fully admit that these calls are subjective.

It was explained that "Expertise will negate dodge and spell miss, then parry". No. I've tested this. Expertise reduces Dodge then Parry. Paperdoll is wrong and hasn't been updated yet.
Expertise does indeed reduce dodge and then parry. The character sheet itself does not appear to update correctly.

You're missing the point. Expertise doesn't help spell miss, which is a huge problem for any melee class that still has abilities on the spell hit table.
As far as we know, it does (and if it does not, it's a bug). You can't trust the tooltip in this case, because as I said, it is not yet updating -- you would have to actually test it in game.

Some follow ups on things that I said we’d investigate. More still to come. This thread has been great. Please try to keep it focused on theorycrafting discussion ("How does Combat Potency’s proc chance work?") and not general Q&A ("Explain your design intent with X"). Thanks!

Pet Scaling: Still working on a more comprehensive description of our new pet scaling system. Please continue to report things that seem like bugs or inconsistencies.
Shadowy Apparitions: Looks like this got fixed sometime recently; its damage matches the tooltip now. Not sure which way was correct, but an example data point is that it does 19908 damage with 16334 spell power and Shadowform and no other buffs.
Gargoyle and Haste: It was incorrectly getting only melee haste from the DK, not spell haste. It now gets spell haste from your highest haste.
Barrage vs Powershot: We’re currently planning to reduce Barrage’s damage a bit, so that it ends up being on par with the others on the row in terms of overall DPS.
Frost DK Weapon Twisting: We’re looking for a more elegant way to solve this, but may end up just disabling Threat of Thassarian and Might of the Frozen Wastes for ~10 sec whenever you swap weapons. Obviously, the weapon twisting behavior is not what we want to encourage; we want Frost DKs to choose either DW or 2H, and stick with that choice (and have them be competitive choices).
Spinning Crane Kick: Will only generate Chi if it hits at least 3 targets.
Malefic Grasp: There’s another bugfix coming still for this so it won’t match what you see quite yet, but here’s how it should work:

1) DoT hastening of Malefic Grasp and Drain Soul back to +100%, from +50%.

2) Damage of MG and DS reduced, so that the total DPS gain remains constant (-40% to MG, -13.333% to DS).

3) Since MG once again simply doubles tick rate, it effectively means there should be an additional tick between each existing tick. So, if MG is active during a midpoint between normal ticks, an extra tick goes off.
Brain Freeze with Multi-DoTing: Brain Freeze will only be triggered by your most recently applied bomb.

[chaos5061]

Druid
Nature's Vigil is currently affecting Frenzied Regeneration. That doesn't seem intentional.
I believe the intention is that the healing amount is increased, but that it does not deal damage based on that healing.

Here are some more incoming changes relevant to Balance Druid theorycrafters.

We are experimenting with some changes to the rotation. No promises that these changes will stay, but we definitely look forward to your feedback (both in terms of theorycrafting and how fun it is). Shooting Stars should occur much more frequently, and Starsurge should be a more important (read: high damage) button. Additionally, we’re adding a new passive that has some interesting implications. Should you choose to ignore it, your DPS will likely be only a few percentage behind someone who uses it optimally, but it should hopefully provide some more varied gameplay. To use some game designer jargon, we’re happy with Moonkins’ macro level rotational gameplay, but think they needs some more mirco-level decisions.

Shooting Stars chance increased from 20% to 50%.
Starsurge damage increased by 30%.
Fae Empowerment: New passive for Balance Druids. When you cast Faerie Fire, you gain Lunar Empowerment and Solar Empowerment.
Lunar Empowerment: Increases the damage of your next 3 Starfires within 15 sec by 15%.
Solar Empowerment: Increases the damage of your next 3 Wraths within 15 sec by 20%.

Please note that these changes are straight DPS buffs, and we don’t think Moonkin need a buff right now, so we need to reduce overall damage (probably across the board) so that overall DPS stays the same. These nerfs may take a few builds, because we need to evaluate if these rotation changes are worth doing. However, don't be surprised when you see them, and help spread the word when you see the inevitable "I can't believe we were nerfed!" posts.

Hunter
I'm curious about the Hunter technique of macro'ing Fox and Hawk into cast time/instant shots, respectively, to maximize uptime with the Hawk AP buff while moving.
We don't consider that fun gameplay. You're basically opting out of Aspects as a mechanic and just always benefiting from the right Aspect because you're "clever" enough to know there is a macro. Usually in this situation we put the "stance" on the normal GCD or make the shared GCD longer.

Barrage: This ability seems to do 400% weapon damage in total but it does not seem to be normalized, unlike powershot which is normalized (as well as just about every other hunter ability). Is this an oversight or is it not normalized for a reason?
Bug (and a slightly sneaky one). The issues you raise with Murder of Crows and Dire Beast are one of the challenges with summoned creatures. It's possible they won't always get the same number of attacks off, but we can balance around the average.

As an aside, we have a lot of abilities that summon extra creatures for hunters, including Stampede. This can create client performance problems on lower end machines, so we may ultimately have to redesign some of them. (We don't want to hear raid or BG leaders asking hunters not to use certain abilities.) Stampede would be the last one we touch.

Nowhere was a promise made that Piercing Shots, Mastery, et al. would be exempt from break CC. "Not a fair requirement" and "probably do need to pause" are not the words of a promise.
If you CC someone (say Scatter Shot, Freezing Traps and Wyvern Sting) and your autoshot gets turned off but Piercing Shots or Wild Quiver merrily break the CC, then that's a bug. If you CC someone and then keep shooting at them, then you're a bad hunter, and it's fine to break the CC. (In other words, you're supposed to choose between CC or damage.) Serpent Sting is a bit of a gray area, because you do have control over whether you put it up. You could be in a situation where you have a dot up and then decide to CC that target, but that situation happens for a variety of classes. We provide the glyphs for that situation. (Like everything else we discuss in this thread, none of that is set in stone.)

[chaos5061]

Mage
Hi Doctor Street. A question has arisen concerning the mage tier 6 talents and if we'll be balanced around 100 up time on their use for our dps to be competitive with other classes.
Are Mages going to be balanced under the assumption that they have perfect 100% uptime of their level 90 talents? No. Are they going to be balanced under the assumption that they take one of them and use it reasonably well? Yes.

Monk
Is that a range Mistweaver or a melee one?
Yes.

Paladin
Currently because of the mana cost of spells and how slowly we generate Holy Power, I'm basically relying on Holy Shock and Holy light, with some WoG's / Eternal Flame on the tank. But I'm almost forced to not use Flash of Light of Divine Light because of the mana cost to heal ratio. More than a few casts of either of those will put me in the danger zone of going oom, with not a lot of healing to show for it. Also Holy Radiance doesnt do nearly as much AoE healing as it was in Cataclysm, where i could rely on it to keep the group up during rough raid damage periods.
Holy Radiance is quite overpowered on many Dragon Soul fights, so I wouldn't use that as a yardstick for how spells should perform. Many of the nerfs we have made to Holy paladin healing over the course of beta have come about when our internal raid tests were dominated by Holy paladins (both throughput and efficiency) and Mistweaver monks. We'll compare these results to healers on beta now that raid tests are open.

Priest
What was the decision process behind moving Vampiric Embrace from a passive ability to an active one?
In order to balance it, the number either needs to be very small, or the duration needs to be less than 100%. We generally think active abilities are more engaging than passive ones, so we went with the latter.

As far as your other Shadow questions go, I suggest just waiting until the next build so that you can see all of the numbers. It might take a lot of time to explain via text that would just lead to more questions. If the intent still isn't clear at that point, we can clear things up.

Shaman
Currently Stormlash totem is scaling to ridiculous levels for certain classes(I've noticed Warlocks, Balance Druids, and Warriors so far) getting almost 400% more usage out of the totem than the myself as Elemental(With 2 back to back totems during heroism it did 300k damage for myself, but 1.2m for the warrior, 1.6m for the demo lock, 1.6m for the Balance druid.) Are you going to balance this down to those classes and then look at Stormlash and balance it around 25m but make sure it'll still be worth it for 10m.
That sounds off. It is possible something is proc'ing it than we don't intend. We don't want the shaman dropping the totem just to make someone else super awesome. It's a matter of degree -- if melee benefit a little more, no big deal. If some specs get 400%, then that may lead to a stacking issue. If it becomes a mandatory raid cooldown, then that's a problem. The benefit should be more like Shattering Throw -- nice to have, but not mandatory. (Mandatory tends to be in the eye of the beholder however.)

GC - you wanted more info on the Earth Elemental dodge thing:
Thanks, we’ll investigate this.

[chaos5061]

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder - Raid Encounter Preview

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder is the third boss of the Mogu'shan Vaults encounter. During testing only one group was able to defeat the boss.

[chaos5061]

Mogu'shan Vaults
The mogu, proud of their supremacy, kept lengthy records of their accomplishments within a great complex of vaults. Guarded by ferocious magical beings, these sacred chambers have remained silent since the mogu's departure.

Achievements
Heroic: Gara'jal the Spiritbinder - Defeat Gara'jal the Spiritbinder in Mogu'shan Vaults on Heroic difficulty.
Sorry, Were You Looking for This? - Successfully activate the Ancient Mogu Artifact during the Gara'jal the Spiritbinder encounter in Mogu'shan Vaults on Normal or Heroic difficulty.

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder
Spirit Totem - Gara'jal the Spiritbinder periodically summons a Spirit Totem at a random location.
Cross Over - Spirit Totems cause the nearest 3 players within 7 yards to cross over to the spirit world when they are destroyed. The process of Crossing Over leaves the victim with 30% of their current health.
Cross Over - Players use Spirit Totems to cross over into the spirit world. Players exist in the spirit world for 30 sec before returning to the real world.
The Spirit World - Players crossing over to the Spirit World must return to the real world within 30 sec or die.
Frail Soul - Returning to the real world from the Spirit World inflicts players with a Frail Soul for 60 sec. Attempting to cross into the Spirit World with a Frail Soul kills the player.
Spiritual Innervation - Healing a player in the Spirit World energizes their soul with Spiritual Innervation. The effect of Spiritual Innervation varies depending on the class and specialization of the healed player, and the effect grows with larger heals.
Shadowy Minion - Shadowy Minions only exist in the Spirit World, but damage players in the real world with Spiritual Grasp.
Spiritual Grasp - A Shadowy Minion reaches into the real world with a Spritual Grasp, inflicting 20,000 Shadow damage on a random player in the real world.
Shadow Bolt - A Shadowy Minion fires a bolt at a random player in the Spirit World, inflicting 26,000 Shadow damage.
Voodoo Dolls - Gara'jal the Spiritbinder fixates on his current target and then that player and 2 other players to turn into Voodoo Dolls. A Voodoo Doll copies 100% of their damage received to all other Voodoo Dolls in the raid. The Voodoo Doll effect persists until either the victim perishes or Gara'jal the Spiritbinder banishes his fixated target to the Spirit World. Players turned into Voodoo Dolls cannot enter the spirit world. In 25 player raids, Gara'jal chooses 3 other players from the raid to turn into Voodoo Dolls.
Banishment - Gara'jal the Spiritbinder banishes his current target to the Spirit World. While in the Spirit World, a Severer of Souls assaults the victim. In Heroic Difficulty, three Severers of Souls attack.
Severer of Souls - Severers of Souls attempt to tear apart the soul of Banished victims.
Soul Sever - If players do not defeat every Severer of Souls within 30 sec., the Banished victim dies.
Soul Explosion - The Severer of Souls immense spirtual energy explodes outward at a random player in the real world. The Soul Explosion inflicts 45,000 Shadow Damage to the target and all players within 5 yards of them.
Frenzy - Gara'jal the Spiritbinder Frenzies when he reaches 20% remaining health, gaining 100% melee haste and inflicting 50% additional damage. Gara'jal the Spiritbinder also stops summoning Spirit Totems.
Right Cross - Gara'jal the Spiritbinder attacks with a crushing right handed punch, inflcting 100% weapon damage as Shadow damage to his target.
Left Hook - Gara'jal the Spiritbinder attacks with a mighty swing of his left fist, inflcting 100% weapon damage as Shadow damage to his target.
Hammer Fist - Gara'jal the Spiritbinder slams his opponent with both fists, inflcting 100% weapon damage as Shadow damage to his target.
Sweeping Kick - Gara'jal the Spiritbinder attacks with a sweeping kick, inflcting 100% weapon damage as Shadow damage to his target.

[chaos5061]

Beta Class Balance Analysis

Why do Unholy Aura/Windfury Totem (and other attack speed buffs) not increase rune regeneration speed? Same question with goblin racial. Heroism and Unholy Frenzy however do. In contrast a caster's Cast time, DOTs and HOTs are affected by group buffs as well as things like Heroism and Power Infusion. Is this a bug? If not, could you please outline exactly what it is that will affect a Death Knight's rune speed regeneration?
Sure. “Haste” is somewhat of an overloaded word, in WoW’s vocabulary. There are, mechanically, several different kinds of haste:

Melee: Affects melee attack speed
Ranged: Affects ranged attack speed
Spell: Affects spell casting speed
Regen: Affects rune/energy/focus regen speed

Various sources of haste provide some or all of those. Haste rating, for example, provides all of them. There’s a raid buff that just applies 5% spell haste. And another that just applies 10% melee and ranged Haste. Typically, we refer to the combination melee+ranged as "attack speed," to indicate that it’s only affecting your attack speed, not your regen.

However, we’re not entirely consistent about this. On the character screen, the line that says “Haste” is really showing attack speed. We try to be specific about which one we’re giving you in specific spells or abilities. For example, the goblin racial and Unholy Aura specifically state that they increase attack speed, so they don’t give regen haste. Occasionally we mess up and refer to something as the wrong type of haste, but I don’t know of any more of those offhand.

Hunter
What? It's already not worth using either single target or in an AoE situation. Also, hunter shots are currently partially blockable as are pet attacks. Pet attacks are also suffering from glancing blows. Is this intended?
All of the hunter level 90 talents are getting an across the board damage buff (they’re intended to be worth using single-target, and currently they’re not). I just meant that Barrage’s damage will be lowered a bit relative than Powershot. Hunter ranged attacks should not be blockable, and they currently are (known issue, will be fixed). Pet attacks should be blockable and able to glance.

Mage

In regards to the mage level 90 talent Incanter's Ward, I have a bad feeling the fact that Priest shield spells are absorbed on higher priority than IW is going to foster a hateful relationship between a mage with the talent and the disc priest who is spell-blocking him. It would be a nice improvement to have Incanter's Ward at least have a higher absorb priority than other raiders' absorb spells if not also higher than Ice Barrier.
That’s a bug (or rather, we’re waiting on some code changes to support it that haven’t been implemented yet). Incanter’s Ward should always be used first to absorb damage.

Is Mage mana regen intended to increase only with Haste Rating, or with total haste? At present, it appears that neither the Frost Armor 5% haste buff nor the 5% haste aura increase regen.
Bug. Mage mana regen is currently scaling with melee haste instead of spell haste like it should be. That will be fixed in a future build.

We're also really wondering about the various "ignite-like" mechanics in the game....

Specific questions: Do these mechanics have the same basic implementation internally? In other words, can we trust that there is a single set of assumptions we can make about how the damage calculation and propagation works that will allow us to simulate all these mechanics correctly? And are there any details you can give us that would reduce the number of assumptions we need to make?
Ahhh, Ignite mechanics. What a storied history they have.

While there have been several versions of Ignite and similar effects, historically, the general goal for quite a while now has been for this sort of effect to be simply a way to move part of the damage from an attack into a DoT, to reduce burst, and add flavor. And since these attacks were likely to happen again before the DoT finished, each one needed to "roll" the damage left over from the previous DoT into the new one. However, that damage rolling processing has always been somewhat delayed. That leads to the “munching” problem (two hits could land at nearly the same time, and the first one wouldn’t have been processed yet when the second one lands, leading to the first one’s DoT getting overwritten by the second one’s).

However, we got some code changes done in 5.0 that handles rolling periodics better. If Blackout Kick does 20% of its damage as a DoT, then at the end of the fight, Blackout Kick’s DoT should have done exactly 20% of the damage of Blackout Kick (barring any rounding errors or overkill of course). The actual logic involved is rather simple: When reapplying this DoT, take the damage left in the previous DoT and distribute it evenly across the new DoT’s ticks. Do remember that refreshing a DoT refreshes it to the full duration, plus the next tick (so that you can clip DoTs by 1 tick and have no loss).

For example, suppose Blackout Kick does 20% additional damage as a DoT that ticks every 2 sec, for 4sec.

0sec: Blackout Kick lands for 100 damage. DoT applied, with 4sec remaining, doing 10 damage per tick.
2sec: Blackout Kick DoT ticks for 10 damage. 2sec remaining, still 10 damage per tick.
3sec: Another Blackout Kick lands, and this time it crits, for 200 damage. The DoT is refreshed and extended to 4sec past the next tick; 5sec remaining, or 3 ticks. It needs to do a total of 10 damage still from the previous DoT, and 40 more for this one, for a total of 50 damage over 3 ticks, so ticks for ~17 damage, 3 more times.
4sec: Blackout Kick DoT ticks for 17 damage. 4sec remaining, still 17 damage per tick.
6sec: Blackout Kick DoT ticks for 17 damage. 2sec remaining, still 17 damage per tick.
8sec: Blackout Kick DoT ticks for 17 damage, and expires.

Hope that helps.

Spells that use this mechanic include: Ignite, Blackout Kick, Echo of Light, Devouring Plague, Touch of Karma, Hand of Gul’dan, Bloodbath, Temporal Shield, Piercing Shots, Explosive Shot, and several set bonuses.

One additional addendum on the Ignite things: Explosive Shot does not do this in your current build, but will in the next. The others should all work that way in your current build.

Priest
How does Psyfiend pick which target and in what order to fear if there are more then one enemy attacking the priest? Is it based on location, order of who attacked when, or is it totally random?
Without trying it out, I believe it prefers the last target that attempted an attack on the priest.

What counts as the three direct attacks for Spectral Guise? Any attack that isn't a DoT, or is there more specific list of attacks?
Any damage event, including DoT ticks.
What exactly is considered a range attack for Phantasm? Is it any attack that can be cast beyond melee range, or are there spells that are exception to this?
The mechanics for this are identical to Smoke Bomb or Camouflage, so try those out to compare.

[chaos5061]

Shaman
Our shaman guy is working on implementing Stormlash, but he's lacking details on how the damage scales, in particular whether or not it scales with the cast time of the proccing spell, and if so what the formula is. I haven't looked into it myself so I don't have any more specific questions, but any other details you could share on Stormlash would be helpful as well.
We’re currently in the process of tuning Stormlash, so you can expect its numbers to change somewhat. It does vary the damage by the cast time of the spell or attack that proc’d it, but that formula is likely to change (and/or likely to include other variables). I’ll try to get that formula for you after we tune it.

Warlock
I'm assuming you're referring to the dot it triggers, Shadowflame, but that functions as a dot with a stacking mechanic: For one, it can crit, which seems counter to the whole premise of rolling forward a fixed amount of damage. It also just doesn't roll damage in that way at all - I can cast two HoGs back-to-back or I can wait and do the second one just before Shadowflame wears off, and after the second HoG I get a 2-stack dot ticking 7 times for the same amount in both cases.
By Hand of Gul’dan, I did indeed mean Shadowflame. However, as you point out, this rolling periodic mechanic interacts rather oddly with debuffs that stack. So, we’re just going to take it off of Shadowflame. Shadowflame will be a simple DoT that can stack, not using this rolling periodic mechanic.

Warrior
Pre-MoP Deep Wounds used this mechanic - does the MoP version continue to use it, or something else?
Mists’ Deep Wounds is no longer that kind of DoT; it’s now much more similar to Rend.