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

[chaos5061]

Druid
How are the devs feeling about Fae Empowerment?
We’d definitely still like more feedback on Fae Empowerment. I don’t want to taint feedback too much with what we think about it, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s gotten a bit on the complex site, now that it provides the DPS boost we’re looking for. How it breaks up the rotation, and how it feels to use Faerie Fire rotationally, how that contributes to the feeling of repetitiveness, etc, are all things we’d love more feedback on.

Hunter
Is this intentional or has aimed shot just not been tweaked yet to use a more straightforward formula?
We can give it a more sane formula. The damage it does is about in the right place.

Paladin
Hey GC, sorry to ask/bother you again -- but is Divine Purpose supposed to have synergy with Hammer of Wrath, that the tooltips are not telling us? Also asking because it also affects how valuable the talent is with this extra synergy -- since it affects gameplay in an execute phase.
Just a bug left over from the Cataclysm version. Divine Purpose should proc from Word of Glory, Templar's Verdict, Inquisition, Eternal Flame, Shield of the Righteous, Light of Dawn and Divine Storm.

As it stands now there are no useful glyphs for Holy PvE since Ascetic was removed, Blessed Life nerfed and, while Battle Healer was buffed, it's still weak.
Every Holy paladin was taking those glyphs, which removed the choice about which glyph to use. Battle Healer is tricky to balance for Holy, because it wouldn't take much for every paladin to feel forced into melee, which isn't the intent. It should be an option.

Is Sacred Shield limited to one target still? The talent would be tremendously better if it had a small target cap. Also just to confirm EF does not longer have a target cap? It's still pretty limited without one but just wanting to confirm.
Sacred Shield is limit one. We could consider removing the target cap, but I suspect since it is free now you might see paladins trying to blanket a group and ignore their other spells, which would have gameplay and balance ramifications.

Eternal Flame does not have a target limit. It is in nearly every way a Word of Glory that also has a hot component. One exception is that Eternal Flame does not work with Harsh Words.

Is it intended for Eternal Flame not to consume Bastion of Glory because its not consuming it (while WoG still is)?
Unintended. Fixed for next build.

[chaos5061]

Shaman
I am also wondering if we will see any Compensation for this nerf to our mana and our throughput as from what I seen we are not the top of the pile in healing or mana for beta. And like you pointed out it cuts out about 8% of our total healing and a big chunk of mana
As I said before, Resurgence and Water Shield are where we would add back Resto shaman regen if needed. It felt a little low last week so we might do that. Determining whether healer mana is sufficient is a slow process for us because it takes lots of testing (theoretical and in game) under a variety of situations. It's impractical to "target dummy" healing.

1. Lightning Shield does not appear to be able to proc Echo of the Elements. Intended?
Intended.

2. With Unleashed Fury, it appears that synchronized weapon swings might be suffering from a hidden cooldown on Static Shock.
Another good catch. Fixed for next build.

Can you tell us a bit about the changes to Stormlash Totem? Pre-patch i was getting 1mil dmg single target from two Stormlashes on a 10min test, Post-patch I got 220k on the same test.
The build you just got includes our latest pass at tuning Stormlash Totem. It is not intended to be on the same scale as Bloodlust in value to a raid. Some specs will get more benefit from it than others, but everyone should get at least something out of it. In particular, Stormlash will favor class abilities and passives that increase all damage, or that increase nature damage. But, in the grand scheme of things, Stormlash shouldn’t be a major impact on class/spec balance, even if one spec gets double the damage from it another spec does, since its total damage contribution isn’t a significant percent of a player’s total damage.

Fundamentally, there’s a base Stormlash damage, which is currently (but may be too strong) 30% of SP or 20% of AP. Then, various attacks deal a percentage of that base damage. Auto attacks deal 40% of base for main-hands, and 20% for off-hands, and are normalized to a 2.6 weapon speed. Spells and abilities generally deal 100%, and are normalized to a 1.5 sec cast time. It generally only procs from direct non-periodic damage, but there are exceptions for Mind Flay, Malefic Grasp, and in the next build Drain Soul. Finally, we do customize these formulae for certain spells which we want to tune to be stronger or weaker, to make up for significant deficiencies or proficiencies.

Warlock
I thought it would have been fixed in this build, but Drain Soul is doing too much damage out of Execute.
There’s a bug in the current build you have, where Drain Soul is doing significantly more damage than it should (triple, I believe), all the time. That should be fixed for the next build.

[chaos5061]

Warrior
I did some extensive mathematics on warrior tanking, more precisely, Shield Block vs. Shield Barrier.
Short Version: There is currently nearly no reason for any warrior to use Shield Block. The amount of physical damage done by a boss melee swing to be high enough that the 30%/60% block outshines the absorb puts it out of reach of the vast majority of the playerbase. Obviously, this is even more true with non-blockable or magic damage, but even with the kind of attacks that can be blocked, Shield Barrier is just plain better for everything other than non-nerfed 25H bosses who use debuffs on the tank.
Thanks for the great analysis.

The scaling we chose for Shield Barrier was to keep it competitive with Shield Block with very high end gear (beyond even the gear available in the first tier). The problem is this is one of those situations where linear AP scaling can't really fit the curve nicely. Shield Barrier (and by extension Frenzied Regen) will either be too good at low gear levels or too weak at high gear levels. We could use a more complex curve, such as squaring attack power as long as that doesn't prove confusing. For sake of argument, imagine that Shield Barrier (and Frenzied Regen) is roughly half as strong as it is on beta when you're in greens, but scales up in strength about 50% faster than it currently does.

Hey GC, I'm fairly positive there's some crunching or something weird going on with Bloodbath for both Arms and Fury (and likely Prot as well). I noticed its damage seemed a bit low when I was testing it, but never really got around to seeing if it was truly bugged or something until today.
We’re not able to reproduce any discrepancy. Maybe you’re seeing some because you’re using Bloodbath in the middle of doing your rotation, making it difficult to clearly identify which attacks were made with Bloodbath active and which weren’t (combat log timestamps aren’t necessarily 100% reliable for this). Can you reproduce this if you hit Bloodbath, wait a second, then start attacking, and then stop using any specials at least a second before Bloodbath ends? This shouldn’t be an issue in practice, but the exact timing of the buff going up and fading make analysis of it difficult. It’s possible that there’s a bug with some damage being munched, and we want to solve that if so.

Hey GC, did you all do something intentional to rage generation? It was 5 rage per second for MH strikes and 2.5 rage for OH strikes (full report here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...015?page=7#129). Now it seems to have been reduced to 2.5 rage per second for MH strikes and 1.25 rage per second for OH strikes. Is this intentional or a bug of some kind?
We lowered it. Fury had an abundance of Rage for sure. For Arms, we need to balance the number of free attacks (CS, MS and OP) vs. the spenders (HS and Slam). There is some incentive to sit on Heroic Strikes to build up the stack rather than use them whenever possible, but if you sit on them too long, then you will overflow with Rage. We are trying to engineer a decision about when to Heroic Strike and when to Slam instead, but that decision is dependent on not having too much Rage (especially before everyone is geared in epics in the very first tier).

I acknowledge that this is different feedback than we have received from some players, so there may be something else going on. The feedback is never clear cut because we know that there are warriors out there who never want to feel rage limited and want to essentially be a cooldown-driven class and it's hard to separate that feedback from the players who understand the design intent.

The intended design is that we never fill all our GCDs, except maybe while Avatar and/or Bloodlust are up. So we'll never get close to where we were. Slam is the rage dump, which only works if you have the ability to use Slam when you need to dump rage. This means you need empty GCDs. Always. At every gear level.
I'd say that when you use cooldowns (even things like Battle Shout and Storm Bolt), it's fine to use every GCD, but that means there are times when you don't fill every GCD either.

We also don't have a problem with warriors eventually filling every GCD when they have the maximum amounts of haste and crit possible in the final tier of gear. But that needs to be an eventual destination, not where everyone starts in quest blues.

We don't want Arms to stand around waiting for 2-3 Mortal Strikes before being able to afford a Slam, even in quest blues. (We also don't think that's happening.) Once you have enough Rage to Slam regularly, then the only thing to spend Rage on is Heroic Strikes. Once you're able to hit Heroic Strike almost on cooldown, then there is no little room for warriors to scale with haste and crit (you'll get the extra damage of course, which is always nice, but you won't have the rage). We don't want to reach that point anytime soon.

[chaos5061]

On Monday, July 16, at 4:30 p.m. PDT (1:30 a.m. CEST, 9:30 a.m. AEST) you can join the World of Warcraft Encounter, Level Design, Class Design, and QA teams in the Mists of Pandaria beta for a few rounds of random battlegrounds. The blues will be testing Temple of Kotmogu and Silvershard Mine, and we hope you’ll join us.

Keep an eye on this thread in our forums for the latest information, as we’ll be updating it with details, and answering general questions you may have about the test.

As always, we ask that you post your feedback and questions about the specifics of the beta battlegrounds and PvP in our Beta Battlegrounds, Arenas, and PvP forum.

Challenge Mode Valor Point Rewards
But I'd like to see them reward more VP for a clear than heroic mode, such that for a skilled group they'll always be the most efficient way to grind valor.
Challenge modes do award Valor, and there will also be a questgiver that offers what is effectively a "random daily Challenge mode" quest for bonus Valor. If you have a group of friends with whom you enjoy running dungeons, Challenge modes will offer among the most lucrative sources of weekly Valor, even if you fail to medal. And if you have a skilled group, as you suggest, I suspect your wish is already a reality.

Pet Battle Training Cost
So do Pet Battles still require you to be Level 90 to do them?
To take part in the system you have to be level 5 and pay up 100g.

On another note, 100g seems like it may be a bit restricting to new players. I wonder if this is the intent. I can see new players wanting to try out Pet Battles, although they probably already have a lot on their plate as it is with all the other features currently in the game.
That's the current thinking. It's essentially a low, but notable barrier to entry to try to avoid distracting new players who may not know it's a mini-game that's very much auxiliary to the leveling experience.

None of this is completely final though, so everyone is welcome to provide feedback on any part of the system (including the cost of training) on the new forum.

PvPers Slapped With Unnecessary Restriction
I ask Blizz why are PvPers smacked with this restriction but PvErs are not? While they are getting all of their fancy mounts on their mains to use on alts, we PvPers don't have this option. This means more RBGs on more toons, and more honor farming.

I say we should have the same rights as PvErs. The whole point of everything being account wide now was to have it be about the player, not the toon. By restricting us PvPers of this feature you contradict yourselves. We, the players, earned the PvP mounts just like the PvErs. So please, allow us to take advantage of this as well.
No one is being "slapped" or "smacked" with anything here. The current feeling though is that if you earned a PvP mount on a specific character (class) it was a symbol of your PvP prowess with that particular class. I'm sure you could say that this should (or could) apply to PvE, but I don't think people quite associate these the same.

Feel free to discuss this (constructively) further if you wish, but just know this is not an attempt on our end to treat PvPers badly or to "slap" anyone "in the face". This is more of a nod to your ability with a specific class in PvP.

*Just a quick amendment, I'm reading through the thread and we'll be sure to pass on feedback. I'm not just tossing in an off the cuff statement then running away.

Yes it may be a pain in the butt to get all over again on another toon, but you still feel SOME accomplishment for getting it again on a whole new toon/class, right?
I've seen others in this thread say they would want the Gladiator Mount to be account-wide, so that contradicts your sentiments here. I'm just curious as to how many agree with them being restricted vs. being account-wide.

Again, I'm following along the discussion and can carry on feedback, just be aware that doesn't guarantee a change.

[chaos5061]

Content Difficulty and Consumption Speed
1% had good reason to stand around looking good while people stood there gasping at there achievements. It was the desire to be
I'm yet to see someone that actually gasped at another player. (Don't confuse this with players being surprised with what top guilds were accomplishing in their realms or even as world firsts, is not the same). It's one of those things that's kinda always been there as some kind of justification about why things were better back then.

Most of the whispers I was getting back then where "where did you get that from?" from players that were new to the game or even the whole genre and hadn't seen those things. And perhaps, questions from less progressed raiders about how were defeating a given boss.

Back in earlier expansions you had to progress for a long time to reach another raid content and that felt so damn amazing.
What was so amazing about knowing that you weren't going to make it into the next tier of content? I mean, the journey you mention has always been there.

If you were around when raiding began in Wrath of the Lich King, by the end of the expansion you had visited Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, Eye of Eternity, Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel.

If you were around when raiding began in Cataclysm, you've gone through Blackwing Descent, Throne of the Four Winds, Bastion of Twilight, Firelands and Dragon Soul.

The only difference with TBC and Vanilla in that regard, is that now there are alternative means to allow players to catch up with the newest content.

You have worked so hard to allow everyone to see the final raid of an expansion, that you've forgotten what would become of the first tier of raids. If there was progression involved between tiers, we (I) would have the chance of doing them.
The first tier of raids were seen by many as well. If you weren't around then, sure, you missed that content when it was current (and that sucks).

If there was this requirement of starting from the first tier of the expansion, and then progressing from there all the way to Deathwing. Wouldn't you feel frustrated (and perhaps, even feel unfairly treated) if at some point in your progression, the new expansion comes out, everyone moves on, and you are just forced to not see raids that were actually current content at the moment you were playing?

Would it really be satisfying to leave Deathwing behind, untouched, simply because you were away from the game and joined too late? (for whatever reason, be it because you chose to, or because you had to, it doesn't matter).

The current approach still lets you experience these "old raids", at your own pace, when (and if) you want to, while experiencing the newest content in the game.

If this is your view of loot, why the hell do you even bother making legendary items? Only a small handful of players will see them, and according to you, only arrogance makes someone want to obtain an item not many players will see.
I'd hope people that go after legendaries go because they find them awesome for what they are, what they bring to the table, etc. Not because they are thinking "Oh lord, how much I'm going to brag about this!". It's not that bragging is bad, come on. If you're proud of something go and show it, by all means.

But don't try to use the "we should be able to brag about something" as the argument to justify excluding other players of content.

Why is it fine that someone can brag about a legendary, but the casual player that wants to brag about how hard was for him/her getting the Molten Front mount gets laughed at? As I've said in the past, everything has as much value as you want to place on it, not more, not less.

almost everyone had content to do at any one time that was challenging.
Unless you have an 8/8 Heroic character, you obviously still have content that is challenging to complete (not saying you don't have one).

why is it better in your eyes that I should kill Deathwing but not Ragnaros or Sinestra? (due to another break in the game, I never killed them either; yet general concensus is that actually they were far better encounters than Deathwing and his Dragon Soul cronies)
You should kill them all. The difference is that if you are in the point where you can kill Deathwing, the only thing preventing you from killing Ragnaros and Sinestra is finding other like-minded players to go back and defeat those bosses. Unlike the other way around, where it's not just a matter of finding other individuals to complete that content, it's also a matter of continuing to complete a road that you might not be able to in hopes of getting to see that final boss.

The "Do it while its current" when i have Exams or i am looking for a Job does not fly.
So, you think it's better to find out that, after coming back from those exams/finding a job and realizing that now everyone is even farther from you is a positive thing?

[chaos5061]

Honestly all I see from your posts is arguing with players who are giving you their honest opinions about the state of the raiding game, and defending the development team's design decisions. You should be listening to these (many) players and passing their genuine feedback upstairs, rather than trying to tell them how they should or shouldn't feel.
That's actually the point of my posts. There's no genuine feedback in "TBC was great, bring it back". That's an opinion, as valid as that of the player next door saying "I hated TBC". But it's one that doesn't have anything useful for the developers to consider. I'm not telling anyone how they should feel. What I'm trying to do is to present you the opposite perspective. I'm trying to make you cross the street and see things from the other side. Because that's one of the best ways to have a discussion going on. If we keep it one-sided, there wouldn't be much discussion on pretty much anything.

You want everyone to see Deathwing because, for some abstract reason it would be absolutely crippling for a player to finish the expansion but not fight him, but at the same time for those who missed the other 75% of Cataclysm raiding content, it just 'sucks for you'.
There's no contradiction. The only meaning of "and that sucks" is that not being able to experience it as the current content when it was released is unfortunate.
I do think is still a better prospect than having to experience it when you're in a new expansion because you were always behind of what, for the other players, was actually "current content".

[chaos5061]

FEEDBACK: Temple of the Jade Serpent (Challenge)
The Dungeon Journal only reflects Normal and Heroic abilities, and does not have a separate section for any added mechanics on Challenge mode. Consider that part of the challenge, as it were.

In the case of Befouled Waters, you may want to take a look at the buffs visible on the boss during the fight, as well as the combat log tooltip of the effect that is killing you, for a hint.

FEEDBACK: Temple of the Jade Serpent (Challenge)
The Challenge mode for this dungeon is unlocked for the weekend (and perhaps longer).

A few relevant testing notes:
You must have completed the Heroic version of the dungeon once in order to attempt the challenge mode.
Item level will be normalized to 463.
There is no queue system for challenge modes; groups must be formed manually and you must zone in from the outside world.
The current Gold/Silver/Bronze times are not final.
While the challenge is active, the group leader may Reset the dungeon at any time via a drop-down accessible by right-clicking your unit frame.
You may want to dig up those dusty keybindings for things like crowd control and interrupts.
Enemies in Challenge mode dungeons are 1 level higher than in Heroic versions, as a rule, such that bosses are now level 93.

Please use this thread to share feedback regarding the dungeon, including information on group composition and completion times.

If you speak to the large pandaren gentleman on the northwestern side of Halfhill, in the center of Valley of the Four Winds, he will teleport you into the instance at whatever difficulty you currently have specified, including Challenge.

FEEDBACK: Shado-Pan Monastery (Challenge)
The Challenge mode for this dungeon is unlocked for the weekend (and perhaps longer).

A few relevant testing notes:
You must have completed the Heroic version of the dungeon once in order to attempt the challenge mode.
Item level will be normalized to 463.
There is no queue system for challenge modes; groups must be formed manually and you must zone in from the outside world.
The current Gold/Silver/Bronze times are not final.
While the challenge is active, the group leader may Reset the dungeon at any time via a drop-down accessible by right-clicking your unit frame.
You may want to dig up those dusty keybindings for things like crowd control and interrupts.
Enemies in Challenge mode dungeons are 1 level higher than in Heroic versions, as a rule, such that bosses are now level 93.

Please use this thread to share feedback regarding the dungeon, including information on group composition and completion times.

[chaos5061]

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Through this weekend and for a limited time only, you can change your World of Warcraft character’s faction from the Horde to the Alliance (or vice versa) for 25% off the regular price.

To get started, simply click here. Alternatively, you can log in to your Battle.net account at http://www.battle.net, select your World of Warcraft account, and then click “Faction Change” at the bottom of the page.

Don’t delay -- this offer ends Monday, July 16 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

[chaos5061]

Mists of Pandaria Images on Battle.net

This afternoon the Upgrade Available icon appeared on Battle.net Cataclysm accounts as well as an image of the

previously leaked box art. A preorder or release date announcement is likely to be coming in the near future!

[chaos5061]

Behold! The Recruit-A-Friend program has unleashed an all new reward mount—the swift and sleek Obsidian Nightwing. Unlike most other mounts, the Obsidian Nightwing is not a mount you summon, but rather a mount that you become, enabling you to take to the skies with a friend riding on your back. And who wouldn’t want to ride (or transform into) a winged panther?

As

mentioned earlier

, the previous reward mount, the X-53 Touring Rocket has now been retired from the Recruit-A-Friend program (but those who already earned the vintage rocket in the past will keep it going forward).
Other than the new Obsidian Nightwing, the Recruit-A-Friend program remains unchanged, so you can expect all the same epic benefits as before:

You Get:

• A FREE Obsidian Nightwing mount for a single character - when your recruit pays for their second full month of game time
  
• 30 days of FREE game time - when your recruit upgrades to a full version of World of Warcraft: Battle Chest and pays for their first month of game time.

Your Recruit Gets:

• World of Warcraft: Starter Edition, enabling them to play FREE up to level 20

You AND Your Recruit Get:

• Friend-to-friend summoning, making it easy to travel and adventure together
  
• Bonus experience when grouped together and grantable levels so you can easily maintain a character to level up with your friend.

For more details on the Recruit-A-Friend program, be sure to check out the full FAQ. Otherwise you can start recruiting now and invite a friend to join you on your adventures in Azeroth.

[chaos5061]

Beta Class Balance Analysis

I'm curious about how pets inherit Mastery. Is this just in cases like where Frostburn increases Water Elemental damage directly via Mastery? Or does the pet gain some kind of bonus of its own from mastery. And if so, what kind of bonus? In many cases, the Master's own mastery bonus may not make sense for the pet (e.g., a Water Elemental has no way to gain or benefit from Fingers of Frost, a Succubus summoned by an Affliction Warlock has no use for Potent Afflictions, etc).
Sometimes it doesn’t have a use, but it’s done for consistency across a class. So yes, a Succubus has no use for Potent Afflictions. But a Water Elemental should do increased damage against frozen targets (broken in your current build, should be fixed in the next).

Ghostcrawler: I don't believe this was ever specified in your posts, but our initial tests after this patch seem to indicate that melee pets inherit our melee haste rather than the maximum of our melee haste and our spell haste. We had assumed it would work similarly to crit, where you said it would use the maximum of our spell crit and our melee crit. Is this discrepancy intentional?
Yes. Crit is done that way because Agi and Int give a huge part of your overall crit chance, and are physical and spell crit only, respectively. For example, a Warlock’s melee crit will be significantly lower than her spell crit. But that’s not the case for the different haste types, which are typically within 5% of each other, and most importantly scale together. Additionally, it would be odd if something like the 5% spell haste raid buff increased your hunter pet’s attack speed and focus regen rate.

Is it intended that Increased Critical Damage Meta gems don't apply to crits done by pets?
This is something that we’re keeping an eye on, but for now, yes, that’s intended.

GC, in an earlier post you said pets would inherit the highest % of our crit (between melee/spell/ranged) and use it for all of their abilities; however, the fire elemental appears to be using spell crit for its fire blast casts. As an enhancement shaman, I have virtually no spell crit to speak of (in these solo tests I'm doing, I only have 8.26% on my character sheet => 5.26% chance to crit with spells against level 93 boss mobs).
We’ll investigate. it does appear to current give the highest crit to melee crit, but only spell crit to spell crit, which is a bug.

Death Knight
Necrotic Strike doesn't seem worth it, and here is the math that agrees with me.
Great theorycraft. We increased Necrotic Strike’s damage from 100% weapon damage to 150% weapon damage, and its heal absorb component has been increased from 70% of AP to 100% of AP and benefits from PvP Power now. It’s fine that it varies in usefulness based on the damage reduction of the target, but it should almost always be worth using when the heal absorb is going to be fully used.

Is the Gargoyle still bugged or has the guardian fix build not been released yet? It does not appear to be getting any of our spell haste. With 0 gear on, it casts 11 times while up. With gear on and roughly 10-11% haste, it still only casts 11 times.
Make sure you’re looking at spell haste not melee haste? We just verified at least in our current build (and I don’t think this has changed in the last week) that increasing haste from 15% to 66% increased the number of casts the Gargoyle got off from 11 to 16 (that’s obviously a very extreme amount of haste, not realistic).

Druid
Now that FR has been reworked, I have some new numbers. Nothing has changed.
Your current build doesn’t have the changes to Frenzied Regeneration and Shield Barrier yet. If you’d like to get a head start on theorycrafting their value, the current formula for their heal/absorb is: 18.6 * (AP/1000)^2 - 0.047 * AP.

Mage

Assuming they don't already and I just missed it, should pets inherit damage multiplier buffs? This is an issue for Frost and the Mage L90 talents -- the Water Elemental is worth about 20% of our total damage, and if Incanter's Ward is the only L90 talent that benefits the Water Elemental, it's got a big leg up on the other two options; a Frost Mage will pretty much always choose it over Invocation or Rune of Power, even if all three talents are comparable for the other two specs.
In the next build, you should find Incanter’s Ward giving increased spell damage like the others, and the Water Elemental benefiting from the level 90 talents.

[chaos5061]

Monk
So there hasn't been much commentary from Blues lately about Monks compared to the other classes. Does that mean we're perfect already or just that we're still under so much work there isn't much to tell us about?
I believe the build you currently have still has Zen Sphere is way way too strong. For testing content and giving feedback, it’d be helpful if you didn’t use Zen Sphere.

I noticed earlier today while beating on dummies that Xuen seems to be triggering Eminence now. This was as a WW too (which I assume is bugged), so I'm not sure how much healing he would do for a Mistweaver, but it might be something to test out.
Yes, Xuen should be triggering Eminence (but only for a Mistweaver in Serpent stance; always triggering it is a bug in the current build). He also will soon learn a bit about how to tank; increased armor and health, and if you’re a Brewmaster, he gets a provoke and increased threat generation.

Is Shuffle intended to be capped at 12 seconds? Even if it is, Shuffle needs to refresh to that cap if Blackout Kick is used with >= 6 seconds left on Shuffle rather than just wasting the Chi as it does currently.
Yes, the 12sec cap is intended. While you’ll never want to refresh it with >6sec remaining on it, I’ll look into possibly just refreshing it to 12sec if you have >6sec, so that it lessens the pain of that mistake.

What's the intended interaction between Combo breaker mastery procs and Tigereye Brew? Currently Tiger Palm procs do not contribute to generating brew, but Blackout Kick procs do. Which is bugged? Ideally, they should both add stacks.
The free Tiger Palms and Blackout Kicks from Combo Breaker should count toward Tigereye Brew.

Paladin
At present it seems that Retribution and Protection Paladins get some sort of extra passive mana regen every couple of seconds that isn't accounted for by mp5. Unlike mp5 regen which is constantly ticking this unknown regen only ticks every few seconds and adds somewhere between 1k and 2k mana. There's no hint of this extra regen in the spellbook or the character sheet that I can see.

Is this extra regen intended? And if so, what are the details of it? i.e. how often does it tick and how much for?
Guarded by the Light and Sword of Light grant 6% of max mana every 2 sec, but isn’t mentioned in the tooltip currently. Guarded by the Light in particular was starting to read like a novel. We can add it back though to reduce confusion.

Shaman
Last Build, Feral Spirits had a minimum (character un-geared) damage range of ~555 to ~833 at level 85. In the latest build, their base damage is now 516-517. Is there a reason their damage was nerfed and the range reduced to Base+1?
The base damage may have been reduced to line up with where we wanted the desired scaling rate to put them. The damage range being only 1 is a bug that we’ll get fixed (what you currently see is the average damage).

We also calculated their attack power scaling to be 31%, is this the intended value?
Like I’ve mentioned before, I don’t want to get into confirming or listing every coefficient, but yes, Feral Spirits get 31% of your attack power.

The tooltip damage for Spirit Bite is 96-144, but in practice it seems closer to 158-206. Is there a tooltip error at work here?
Where are you seeing the tooltip for Spirit Bite? The one I see is “Bites the enemy, causing Nature damage.” No damage value listed there. Regardless, 96-144 is the correct base damage range, but it also is increased by attack power.

Both normal Elementals and Empowered Elementals benefit from the Orc Racial Command (+5% damage). Why don't Feral Spirits also get this benefit? Is it a bug that the Elementals get the racial bonus?

Normal Fire Elementals benefit from the Enhancement Mastery for ALL attacks, but the Feral Sprit's Spirit Bite (nature spell) does not. Is this intended?
Feral Spirits should benefit from Command and Mastery. This is fixed for next build.

The Totemic Restoration talent does not appear to be working as the spell description indicates on totems with longer than a 1 minute CD.
The examples you gave seem to match what is intended. The cooldown is reduced by half the percentage of the duration that was lost. If your Spirit Link totem is pulled back up after 3sec (50% lost duration), its cooldown will be reduced by 25% of the full cooldown, or 45sec.

Echo of the Elements gains no benefit from Healing Storm glyph.
We’ll look into this. These sort of single-use buffs commonly get consumed by the initial cast and not apply to any proc effects, but I see how you’d want it to. So, it may be intended, but we’ll discuss it.

Enhancement currently gets the Burning Wrath +10% spell power buff. Spell power buffs do not work on enhancement at all, so is it supposed to be the +10% AP buff?
This is intended. Enhancement themselves do not benefit from it, but the rest of their raid does.

It appears that elemental's primal fire elemental can't glance its auto-attacks, but enhancement's can.
Testing this in our latest internal build, both of them are getting glances, and I don’t see why that would be different in yours. I do note that your log there is attacking a Raider’s Training Dummy, whereas Bink’s log is attacking a “Training Dummy”; not sure which one, but some lower level dummy. Chance to glance is lower on lower level targets, all the way down to 0 on targets lower level than you. I’d guess Bink’s elemental was attacking an 85 dummy while he’s 90.

[chaos5061]

Pet Battle Blue Posts

500 Pets Limit
Yes. You can get one of every pet well within the 500 limit.

Listing of Pets for Each Zone
The filters in the journal have an option to sort by "Pet Battle". This option will show you all the pets you can capture in the world. The info text (hover over the pets icon in the top slot) will tell you what zone you can catch it in.

Pet Battle Anonymity
The intention is for queued battles to be anonymous. The next push will remove the ability to chat and will not show the opposing players name.

Pet Battle Music
This is the final music. Glad you guys like it! We had a ton of fun picking out the tracks and running filters on them to fit the theme of the content.

Custom Pet Name Visibility
Other players will see the name, that's the point!

Non-Tradeable Pets
"Most" pets are intended to be tradeable. A pet that is greyed out means that it is either in a battle slot, or has lower than 100% health. We are adding messaging for both of those situations in the next push.

All promotional, CE, Blizzard Pet Store, TCG and quest pets are currently not tradeable. All of the pets that you can catch in the game world are tradeable, as well as a massive amount of the pre-existing pets.

Collector's Edition Pets
All of the collector's edition pets are not tradeable. These pets hold a certain amount of prestige and we want to retain that. Along those same lines, promotional pets like Murky or Tyrael will not be tradeable either.

Pet Battle Availability Time
The feature will go live with the box release date of MoP. It will be available to all players, MoP is not required.

Pet Health
Pets heal 50% of the damage they take in a fight after every battle. You can also full heal and revive your entire team every 10m with the Revive Pets Spell.

Going to the Stable Master should be a last resort. If we find that people are going excessively, we will look at the numbers again. We are happy with the balance we have right now though.

At least let us know the purpose of the mechanic. Is it to encourage us to use a wider variety of pets rather than building our favorite go-to team and just using them? I wouldn't think it's a money sink at 10 silver per stable master visit. If it's an obstacle without a clear purpose, it should be changed.
Attrition is built into the system to encourage folks to care about winning a battle and taking as little damage as possible. A full heal after each battle would eliminate that completely.

It also encourages you to use different pets instead of the same ones for every fight. Deathy is down to 68 health? Just swap him out with the Tiny Harvester thats sitting at full health and earn some levels on a new pet. By the time you do a few fights your heal spell will be off cooldown and you can heal your entire team.

Normal Pets are Weak
This is a known bug and we are working to get a hotfix out for it ASAP. Normal pets have a much better shot at winning the low level fights.

[chaos5061]

Here's some food for thought:

[chaos5061]

Mists of Pandaria Beta - Build 15882

A new beta build will be deployed on beta realms soon. We will be updating these notes frequently, so keep checking back!

Achievement Changes

Battle

Pet Battles

• Cat Fight! now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Experienced Pet Battler now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Experienced Pet Brawler now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Gettin' Lucky now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Master Pet Battler now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Master Pet Brawler
• On A Roll now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Pet Brawler now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Take Em' All On! now requires you to win a solo pet battle, rather than a pet battle.

Cataclysm Dungeon
Dungeons & Raids

• Bear-ly Made It now has Account Wide progress.

Collect
Pet Battles

• A Rare Catch now awards 10 points.
• An Uncommon Find now awards 5 points.
• Building a Team now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Can I Keep Him? now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Going to Need More Leashes now requires you to collect 250 pets, down from 300. Now rewards a Feral Vermling.
• He's Mine! now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• High Quality now awards 10 points.
• Lil' Game Hunter now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Pet Tamer now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Plenty of Pets now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Plethora of Pets now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Quality & Quantity now awards 10 points.
• Shop Smart, Shop Pet...Smart now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• That Was Close! now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• That's a Lot of Pet Food now rewards Venus.
• World Safari now awards 10 points, down from 25.
• Zen Pet Hunter no longer rewards a pet.

General

• Get to the Choppa! now has Account Wide progress.
• Grand Expedition Yak now has Account Wide progress.
• Traveler's Tundra Mammoth now has Account Wide progress.
• Vial of the Sands now has Account Wide progress.

Level
Pet Battles

• Growing Up now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Just A Pup now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Newbie now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Old Timer now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Pro Pet Group now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Pro Pet Mob now awards 10 points, down from 25.
• Rookie Pet Group now awards 5 points, down from 10.
• Time For A Leash now awards 5 points, down from 10.

Pandaria
Quests

• Savior of Stoneplow (New) Defeat the Ik'thik Colossus.

Reputation

• Pandaren Ambassador now rewards Pandaren Kite String.
• Pandaren Ambassador now rewards Pandaren Kite String.

Pet Battles

• Taming the Wild now awards 5 points, down from 10.

Scenarios

• Scenaterday (New) Complete all of the scenarios listed below on a Saturday.

Wrath of the Lich King
Reputation

• Ice Mammoth now has Account Wide progress.