Death Knight
I don't understand why the 30s reduction in the outbreak CD was removed in contradiction to this portion in the article. Was it to make the first tier of talents more viable?
We feel like the short Outbreak for Blood wasn't a great design. It was probably the right choice at the time, but in Mists, every tank will have to focus more on what were traditionally DPS abilities (since they translate to resources and therefore threat). We didn't think it was compelling gameplay to let Blood opt out of disease transmission. That said, you can get a lot of the gameplay back through Unholy Blight if you choose.
Druid
If this is the preferred design why do Guardians have to spend rage for Maul? It has been stated a few times that Maul would never be used except to solo things (an only if the damage comes up).
Maul is still a DPS button. It may not be one you use often, but there will be times when you don't care about surviving (when the boss needs to die NOW, or even when you're solo or running a scenario perhaps). We may eventually end up adding a proc or something (hopefully not exactly like Ultimatum), but we're not sure it's needed. At the moment Guardian damage is too high, so encouraging more Mauls isn't super high priority.
Hunter
Based on my testing so far with the snake trap formula, it looks like snake trap is going to be doing enough damage (at least for SV) that we would want to include it in our rotation (assuming I calculated the scaling right).
You're probably right, and we don't want Snake Trap to be used rotationally. We do want Snake Trap damage to be in the non-joke range. We'll try to find some middle ground.
In the current beta build, survival's damage is being hindered by explosive shot ticking for almost less than a serpent sting tick.
In ilevel 460, I show Serpent Sting ticking for about 6K and Explosive Shot ticking for about twice that. Overall, Explosive Shot contributes 3x or 4x as much damage as Serpent Sting. What are you seeing?
It feels extremely weak while PvPing, have you played survival in a bg recently? You can barely make a difference without spamming cobra shot.
Survival gets a lot of damage from dots, which is just a different model than Marks. We can push damage numbers around a bit (perhaps nerf Cobra Shot so it's not quite so much of an upgrade over Steady Shot) but at some point that's just going to mean the difference between MM and SV is the name of their signature shot. Dots also can be really powerful in PvP. I would want to see some more testing before determining that Survival needs very high burst damage to be PvP viable.
Monk
This honestly bothers me a hell of a lot, because when you nerf energy regen for monks, you're making their best tanking stat haste.
It's a good stat for Brewmasters for sure, and it needs to be because monks will have haste on their gear. However, Brewmasters probably have the most valuable secondary stats of any spec in the game. They don't really have bad stats, and their good stats aren't a ton better than others. (If you think that isn't the case, please feel free to argue that point though.)
I don't understand why the 30s reduction in the outbreak CD was removed in contradiction to this portion in the article. Was it to make the first tier of talents more viable?
We feel like the short Outbreak for Blood wasn't a great design. It was probably the right choice at the time, but in Mists, every tank will have to focus more on what were traditionally DPS abilities (since they translate to resources and therefore threat). We didn't think it was compelling gameplay to let Blood opt out of disease transmission. That said, you can get a lot of the gameplay back through Unholy Blight if you choose.
Druid
If this is the preferred design why do Guardians have to spend rage for Maul? It has been stated a few times that Maul would never be used except to solo things (an only if the damage comes up).
Maul is still a DPS button. It may not be one you use often, but there will be times when you don't care about surviving (when the boss needs to die NOW, or even when you're solo or running a scenario perhaps). We may eventually end up adding a proc or something (hopefully not exactly like Ultimatum), but we're not sure it's needed. At the moment Guardian damage is too high, so encouraging more Mauls isn't super high priority.
Hunter
Based on my testing so far with the snake trap formula, it looks like snake trap is going to be doing enough damage (at least for SV) that we would want to include it in our rotation (assuming I calculated the scaling right).
You're probably right, and we don't want Snake Trap to be used rotationally. We do want Snake Trap damage to be in the non-joke range. We'll try to find some middle ground.
In the current beta build, survival's damage is being hindered by explosive shot ticking for almost less than a serpent sting tick.
In ilevel 460, I show Serpent Sting ticking for about 6K and Explosive Shot ticking for about twice that. Overall, Explosive Shot contributes 3x or 4x as much damage as Serpent Sting. What are you seeing?
It feels extremely weak while PvPing, have you played survival in a bg recently? You can barely make a difference without spamming cobra shot.
Survival gets a lot of damage from dots, which is just a different model than Marks. We can push damage numbers around a bit (perhaps nerf Cobra Shot so it's not quite so much of an upgrade over Steady Shot) but at some point that's just going to mean the difference between MM and SV is the name of their signature shot. Dots also can be really powerful in PvP. I would want to see some more testing before determining that Survival needs very high burst damage to be PvP viable.
Monk
This honestly bothers me a hell of a lot, because when you nerf energy regen for monks, you're making their best tanking stat haste.
It's a good stat for Brewmasters for sure, and it needs to be because monks will have haste on their gear. However, Brewmasters probably have the most valuable secondary stats of any spec in the game. They don't really have bad stats, and their good stats aren't a ton better than others. (If you think that isn't the case, please feel free to argue that point though.)
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