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

[chaos5061]

Content Consumption Speed and Difficulty
Casual players can't expect to get everything spoon feeded just because they pay for it tbh.
Yet you can demand content that is up to your skill level? Why? I mean, they have as much right to demand content fit to their skill level as you have to demand content at your skill level.

If one argument is valid, there's no reasonable way to say the other argument isn't just as valid (if you do, then you're basically arguing that you are more valuable than other players).

Well, if he wants to do crippled boss fights in LFR, his business, but talking about it as an alternative to raiding, no. If I have no time to raid, I quit, simple as that.
That is your choice, but you can't expect nor force other people to just quit if they don't have what you consider enough time to raid.

My logic might not be 100% accurate but I believe Blizzard's is a faulty one. They say LFR is a great tool, this assumpion is purely based on fact how many people do it each week, almost everybody was doing it at launch, right? They know how many do that, but they do not know their incentives. Who knows, maybe 90% playerbase hate it and do it only for VP, who knows we will never know, right? Because in 7 years in a game we have been given no in-game feedback what we like/dislike, some sort of enquiry sheet.
Do you really think 90% of players do something they hate? I mean, 99% of the statistics on the Internet are usually made up.

So now you can see my problem with statement that LFR is a great success because almost everybody is doing it, but somehow they always forget to mention that running LFR was a must for raiders if they wanted to stay competitive and for the non-raiders it is the most effective VP grind. Sure there are alternatives to VP grind, but this one is the most effective.
It wasn't a must for raiders. Sure, the most hardcore players ran it until they could get the set bonuses completed. But you need to keep in mind that these players are so dedicated and focused on the race to be the first in the world. That they'll literally take whatever they can to get an edge over their competitors.

And very often, by putting means that aren't just available to pretty much any other guild, even those that are almost as hardcore as them.

The fact that my guild, who is casual as !@#$, breezed through normals on the first day of Dragon Soul release, should be proof that it is indeed way too easy.
Dragon Soul cleared on the first day of release is casual?

I'm checking WoWprogress (since it's a widely accepted site in the community to measure raid progression), out of curiosity, and here's what I've gathered:
4 guilds cleared Dragon Soul in the US on release day (and 101 on the day after)
225 cleared Dragon Soul on EU on release day.
14 guilds cleared Dragon Soul in TW on release day.
66 guilds cleared Dragon Soul on KR on release day.

Which amounts to a total of 410 guilds in the world (counting those 101 on the US that did it on the day after, otherwise, 309) clearing the raid on the respective release days of their regions. If that's casual (considering WoWprogress is tracking, by now, close to 60000 guilds), then I believe we have a serious issue measuring effort, dedication, and success, in the community.

One of the things that frustrate me about you, Draztal, and probably about Blizzard as a whole, is how you're not remotely sympathetic to people who have a different idea of what is good than what Blizzard's current design direction is.
I am sympathetic. And through 81 pages of discussion, I've tried to join a discussion with those players. There're few things that have really been made clear during this thread; and many of my questions and points have either been ignored or discarded, while the thread has mostly kept going on in their reasoning about why things should go in a different direction even when questioned about how things might look from a different perspective.

You could try to understand our points, yet instead you attempt to undermine us at every turn, twisting around our arguments to make it sound like we're a bunch of arrogant jerks who are only interested in being special snowflakes at the expense of other players.
Not at all, but if you want to argue something, there's got to be more flesh to it than "bring TBC back" or "because 1% of raiders seeing the last boss is good" or "because casual players don't deserve what we do".

And as I said a while ago, the only way to have a proper discussion is to actually see both sides of the coin. Some of the people posting here just refuse to even consider the fact that there's another side of the coin (or if they do, just to demean them).

But to see Wolfstabzor the worgen rogue in BoE PvP gear killing the LFR deathwing doesnt motivate me to kill DW 25 HC AT ALL.
Why? He's killing LFR Deathwing. While you're aiming to kill Deathwing on its hardest incarnation available.

So you saying "Look, I killed Heroic Deathwing! I'm good at this game!!" still stands on its own as something remarkable.

I've been against LFG and LFR since release and I think you should consider removing this.
Why would we remove something that is popular and that our developers have mentioned several times in the past that they are very happy with their popularity? This "let's punish everyone else because I don't like it" is not really an argument.

By this reasoning, let's go back to MUDs, because those were the true ways of a hardcore player, where you would even end up drawing the dungeon on paper because you weren't sure of where your character was. And you know what? That'll be good for the gamers because we just got it too easy in the 90s with all those 2D graphics and maps.

Yet I (and others) have done exactly that. Many of us have tried to explain that for us, it is not about being better than "the rest", it is about a sense of accomplishment - whether that takes the form of bosses you haven't seen before in a watered down difficulty, unique-looking equipment as a reward, "graduation" into the next tier of content or simply progression at our own pace instead of the pace Blizzard artificially dictates for us. You don't tend to answer these posts at all, and if you do it is to point out how wrong we are to believe such.
I don't believe you're wrong. But all those arguments have something in common: exclusivity. And that's fine. I mean, it's a valid point and it's feedback I can pass to the developers.
However, at the end of the day, those posts still ignore what I've asked. Why is it such a big deal that other players, in a much longer amount of time, can get what you're getting now?

Why those players that can't devote as much time, or don't have as much skill as you, should be excluded of experiencing content?

[chaos5061]

What should Blizzard learn from the new MMOs?
Again, one has to weigh up the benefits of spending time updating animations versus creating new content. Many would like to see more to do at level cap as the OP pointed out.

With more dynamic, player driven content in the game there would be a lot more to do at the level cap instead of just raiding or running arenas and rated BG's and, better still, there would be far less of a chance to burn yourself out. After all, if you have a wider choice of content to play through as you please, rather than a single raid with three difficulty levels, you'll grow tired of it far less quickly.
Remember you'll have scenarios to look forward to in Mists, not to mention the Challenge Modes.

Pet Collection Achievements
We have updated the chain of collection achievements with two new entries at 250 and 400. Both of these entries have new, unique pet rewards with custom idle animations. (Feral Vermling and the Jade Tentacle)

In addition, we will now count pets caught via the Pet Battle system towards these achievements. Keep in mind that the pets caught must be unique, we won't count catching the same pet twice.

RIP "Judgement"
We considered : Glyph of Judgement -- Changes the name of your Judgement [sic] spells to use their older name.

Sadly, cheekiness like that doesn't translate well into languages other than English.

Warrior Issues
One thing we are going to try is increasing the rage from autoattacks somewhat, but not all the way back to 5. Something like 3 or 3.5 might be the right ballpark, but then lowering the rage gained from Enrage.

To expand upon that, we wanted Enrage to feel exciting (insofar as any proc that happens routinely can feel exciting) and flood the warrior with rage. We also wanted rage to feel a little unpredictable, because that's what drives things like Heroic Strike use. With very predictable rage income, the resource feels too much like energy, and Heroic Strike doesn't get much use.

However, I think the problem we ran into was that rage income while Enraged was too high, which meant rage income when not enraged had to be too low to compensate. The bursts of rage feeling I described above are important, but the base rotation has to feel good as well! We're going to try some different things, such as Enrage granting flat 10 rage, but also increasing damage dealt by 5 or 10% while Enraged. Flat rage gain from Enrage will also help with scaling, because then crit and haste won't work in such synergy to increase rage generation at high gear levels.

We want crit and haste to be valuable of course, but we're trying to break the (exhausting) cycle where warriors are weak with bad gear and then so powerful with good gear that we have to nerf them. But we're also trying to keep some rage gain scaling with gear because that feels fun and helps the resource feeling unique. (Can you say overconstrained design challenge?)

I know I am tossing around a lot of rough ideas, and we will need to try a few internally before we release a new design into the wild. Remember the goal: we're not trying to nerf warriors. We're trying to make the resource something you interact with rather than something you ignore. We don't want warriors to be a cooldown-driven class.

[chaos5061]

We made the call to convert a number of non-capture pets into rare quality pets. We made this decision for a couple reasons. First off, we know that many folks are going to want to use some of their current pets in pet battles. We don't want players to feel like these pets are weaker than the others. At the same time, we don't want to make every single non-capture pet into a rare.

We decided which pets to change based on how difficult they are to obtain. This approach makes sense since it means that more time was put into getting these particular pets than other ones. This fits in with how you obtain a rare through the pet battle system; more time to seek out pets and fight them, hoping for a rare.

We know that we are not going to be able to please everyone, but this list is just a start and I'm sure we will make many updates between now and launch. Look it over and feel free to leave us your feedback. Thanks!

Brilliant Kaliri
Celestial Dragon
Feral Vermling
Jade Tentacle
Kirin Tor Familiar
Little Fawn
Nuts
Stinker
Clockwork Gnome
Crawling Claw
Fossilized Hatchling
Pterrodax Hatchling
Voodoo Figurine
Murkimus
Core Hound Pup
Cenarion Hatchling
Gryphon Hatchling
Guardian Cub
Lil' K.T.
Lil' Ragnaros
Lil' XT
Moonkin Hatchling
Pandaren Monk
Soul of the Aspects
Wind Rider Cub
Deathy
Grunty
Murkablo
Murky
Fetish Shaman
Frosty
Lil' Deathwing
Lucky Quilen Cub
Lurky
Mini Thor
Netherwhelp
Panda Cub
Darkmoon Balloon
Darkmoon Cub
Darkmoon Monkey
Darkmoon Tonk
Darkmoon Turtle
Darkmoon Zeppelin
Azure Whelpling
Crimson Whelpling
Dark Whelpling
Emerald Whelpling
Firefly
Fox Kit
Gundrak Hatchling
Hyacinth Macaw
Razzashi Hatchling
Sprite Darter Hatchling
Phoenix Hatchling
Chuck
Giant Sewer Rat
Magical Crawdad
Muckbreath
Snarly
Strand Crawler
Toothy
Dark Phoenix Hatchling
Elementium Geode
Crimson Lasher
Hyjal Bear Cub
Searing Scorhling
Panther Cub
Pebble
Disguisting Oozeling
Mr. Grubbs
Tiny Shale Spider
Bananas
Dragon Kite
Ethereal Soul-Trader
Eye of the Legion
Gregarious Grell
Hippogryph Hatchling
Landro's Lichling
Landro's Lil' XT
Nightsaber Cub
Purple puffer
Rocket Chicken
Sand Scarab
Spectral Tiger Cub
Tuskarr Kite
Lumpy
Baby Blizzard Bear
Onyxian Whelpling
Lucky
Mini Tyrael

[chaos5061]

We will be listing out upcoming changes to the Pet Battles system in this post. Most changes will be coming in the next push but we will hotfix whatever we can.

Pet Abilites
Healing Flame cooldown increased to 3 rounds.
Apocalypse is being increased to a 15 round ability.
Moonlight will be reduced to 50% bonus healing next push.
Humanoid passive will get a review. (We intend to max how many times it can proc in a round)
Moonlight healing reduced to +50%.
Cauterize cooldown increased to 3 rounds.
Powerball now applies a dummy aura to indicate your speed increase.
New Ability for the Terrible Turnip: Sons of the Living Root – summons 6 turnips who deal damage while you are underground.
Ability tooltips now show red or green damage numbers that indicate the total calculated strong or weak damage on the current target.
System

Reduced the scaling factor between quality levels by roughly 50%.
Stat gains per level have been reduced by roughly 20%.
We are in the process of converting a number of non-captureable pets to rares. Currently, all of the non-captureable pets are uncommon. The more difficult it is to obtain the pet, the more likely we will convert it to a rare.
Pet items are being fixed to work with captured pets. (leashes, biscuits etc.)
Reduced the amount of XP earned in 2 pet, 3 pet and NPC Tamer fights by roughly 25%.
Increased the spawn rates of battle pets in Elwynn and Durotar considerably.
Many caves and buildings have pets in them but no room to fight. We will be disabling these pets from battles and moving them to different spots.
Fixed an exploit that allowed players to fight NPC Tamers multiple times and earn XP.
Chat linking for pets is in! Shift-click any pet from the journal into a chat window to share it with your friends.
Matchmaking has been updated to find opponents in a much smaller level range. The range grows with time if we don't find a match.
Daily quests on the Grand Master Tamers will drop the Sack of Pet Supplies. (10 shots a day if you do em all.)
Fixed a bug that was causing pets to either die instantly or be set to 97 health in battle.
We will continue to post to this thread as we make more updates. Thanks!

[chaos5061]

LMFAO!!!!!

[cabby]

Yeah.. that's a good one.

[chaos5061]

New horizons await! Through this weekend and for a limited time only, you can initiate a Character Transfer to move one of your World of Warcraft characters to a new realm for 25% off the regular price.

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

Don’t delay -- this offer ends Monday, July 23 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

[chaos5061]

Well I'm over my sickness bring on the updates.

[chaos5061]

Druid Stag Travel Form

Druids got a new default travel form in this week's patch, the Stag! In the future you will be able to carry someone else on your back:

Glyph of the Stag

.

[chaos5061]

Beta Class Balance Analysis

Now given the current model with my gearing on beta its 60k ap at vengeance cap so that's about a 64k shield at 20 rage this model came with the understand that it was also nearly double at about 40-45 rage and 250 percent at 60 rage usage.
The formula mentioned earlier was for a maximum (60 rage) Frenzied Regeneration or Shield Barrier.

I'm still worried with the new change that FR will not be used as often as it once was before. I understand the 2500% of AP formula was a little overpowered but this new formula is only SLIGHTLY buffing what was previously supplied. My main problem is the fact that low level Frenzied regen is just not providing that much healing when you compare it to your total health. At top end Heroic DS level gear, the heal will only provide ~10% of our total health. At heroic 90 dungeon level gear your looking at 10-12% of the total health. Even if you estimate 60,000 Vengence AP and 500k health, you are only looking at 13% of the total health. Is it your intent to have FR that low in comparison to the total health? I can see it being useful at 15% to 20% but 10 just seems low even in top-end current content.
We’re making another adjustment to this in a future build: It uses that formula, or 2.5x your Stamina, whichever is higher.

We’re making another adjustment to this in a future build: It uses that formula, or 2.5x your Stamina, whichever is higher.
I am quoting myself here, but this mechanic for Frenzied Regen also applies to Shield Barrier to make sure the floor isn't too low. The 3000 Shield Barriers some of you are talking about would be more like 30,000 with this change. As I said earlier, we want those abilities to be good abilities, but we couldn't make them scale linearly with attack power without them being too good with bad gear or too bad with good gear.

General Question: Have there been any changes in DoT mechanics in Mists, compared with Cataclysm? More specifically, how additional ticks are added with additional haste, and how recasting a dot while it's already up (which currently allows the next tick of the current dot then starts the new dot from that point)?
Nothing has changed in this regard, other than the few rolling periodic type spells we mentioned earlier. However, the benefit of this functionality (being able to clip the last tick with no loss) has been extended to a few additional spells. These spells have been turned into periodics, despite not really doing anything periodically, so that you can take advantage of this same ability to clip the last couple seconds with no loss. Inquisition, Haunt, Revealing Strike, Envenom, and Savage Roar work this way. For example, Savage Roar uses a 3 sec periodic tick rate under the hood, so that if it normally lasts 18 sec, and you recast it after 17 sec, it will have 19sec remaining. Total of 36 sec for two casts of it, despite clipping it by 1 sec. We hope this is a nice little quality of life change (and should obviously have no downside).

Ghost, I can't recall if you mentioned or wrote about this during the Cataclysm Beta (in which case, my apologies for asking again), but: Could you please explain the logic behind Death Knight diseases not benefitting from Haste?
In general, caster dots tick faster from haste but melee dots don't. We want the haste stat to let you "do more stuff." Haste already lets melee do more stuff because it brings them more resources, which in turn lets them do more stuff. DK runes regen faster with haste. Warriors earn more rage from more frequent auto-attacks. Ret paladins have the Sanctity of Battle passive to let them also "do more stuff" with haste.

If we ever needed to make haste more beneficial for melee, we'd consider it, but that's the general logic.

Death Knight
Changing the ghoul to have that behavior will make macroing "Claw" into all of our abilities mandatory, much the same way the Blood Tap macro was nearly mandatory. Why not just make Gnaw and Leap free?

Also, regarding Unholy's AoE rotation, is it intended for Unholy DKs to have orphaned Frost runes? Currently when we do our normal AoE rotation, we can Scourge Strike and Blood Boil...but the left over Frost rune either goes unused or we use Icy Touch.

Would it be possible to have Blood Boil attached to Reaping? Or have a cost change to 1 Blood/1 Frost rune, with a damage increase as well (100% more damage for Unholy?) Having to use Icy Touch to fill out our rotation does not feel like it is intended at all.
Why would that change require you to macro Claw into your abilities? Blood Boil is on Reaping in a future build.

1) DRW is currently completely bugged and dealing weird damage. Maths regarding this below.
We'll investigate.

What is the formula for Rune Strike? The datamined tooltip from Wowhead says 140% weapon damage + 10% of AP. The in-game tooltip suggests 140% weapon damage + 14% of AP. This second value seems closer to the reality, but it still doesn't really adds up to the numbers we're seeing when fighting. It seems to be very slightly higher in reality.
We’ve changed the formula for it to be 155% of weapon damage, but normalized (the fact that it wasn’t normalized before was a bug), in a future build.

Soul Reaper, when used as Blood spec, is not refunding its rune if parried. I'm not sure about dodges or misses, or about Soul Reaper (Frost) or Soul Reaper (Unholy).
Fixed for a future build. All versions of Soul Reaper should refund its rune if it misses, consistently with other rune attacks.

Scourge Strike's tooltip is incorrect. It states that it deals 18% additional Shadow damage per disease, but the reality in-game is that it deals 25% additional Shadow damage per disease (before any bonus through the Dreadblade mastery). What version should we use for our simulations?
It's 25%. We can update the tooltip.

The tooltips for Blood Plague and Frost Fever seem incorrect as well, and the reality damage values differ from the in-game tooltips in our spellbook. This is a very minor difference (talking about two-number digits), but a clarification would still be appreciated.
Fixed.

Reaping - Whenever you hit with Blood Strike, Pestilence, or Festering Strike, or Blood Boil, the Runes spent will become Death Runes when they activate. Currently this change doesn't work as I imagine it's intended because of a long standing bug involving Death Runes. When an ability that triggers Reaping is used the rune that is made into a Death Rune is based the cost of that ability, not the rune used to pay for it.
This is "mostly" fixed for a future build. I say "mostly," because there’s still one exception. It won’t work on runes that you couldn’t normally make Death runes by your spec (e.g., you made them Death Runes using Blood Tap or Plague Leech). This is because if you managed to convert your Blood runes to Death runes as a Blood DK, you’d end up able to use all 6 runes on Death Strike, endlessly. Similar issue with Unholy and Blood Boil.

[chaos5061]

Hunter
BM hunters also have a similar issue with their pets outside of raids. Special attacks that require focus (i.e., Horn Toss, Froststorm Breath, Burrow Attack) never go off (unless you spec Fervor or have Rapid Fire up) because our pets are very focus starved. You have to manually turn off their basic attack (Smack/Bite/Claw) to cast those specials. Any chance of upping pet focus regen or removing/reducing (or pooling) focus cost for those specials?
We reduced the cost of those specials to 20 focus, so the autocast will use them. Having it pool focus on the basic attacks would be problematic as it would cross over the 50 focus limit where it does 100% more damage for 120% more focus.

I am curious as to what happened with the Thrill of the Hunt talent for Hunters.
That build was taken in the middle of making some changes to Thrill of the Hunt. Internally, it’s currently 3 Arcane Shots or Multi-Shots at -20 focus cost, but that’s looking too strong, so we might change it to 2, or even something else, by the time that change gets in a build to you.

On the subject of the effect formerly known as wild hunt, when I last tested this effect on beta (quite awhile ago at this point), it was doing 120% more damage for 100% more focus. This is consistent with how it works on live, although the tooltip stated (and still does) that it does 100% more damage for 120% more focus.
Actually, this was a bug. It had been intended to be a way to bleed off excess focus at a reduced efficiency (similar to Heroic Strike for warriors). However, it was actually acting as a *more* efficient way to convert focus to damage, which was a bug. This unintended functionality has the downside that it encourages you to only use Claw above 50 focus, to maximize damage; autocast won’t do that, so you have to do it manually. So, after discussing this a bit, we see 3 viable solutions:

A) "Fix" the bug, making it less efficient above 50.
B) Change autocast logic to only autocast above 50, and preserve the "more-efficient-above-50" functionality.
C) Change it to simply be 2x damage for 2x cost.

Option A, while the originally intended functionality, would feel punitive at this point, so we’re leaning away from that. Option B might cause your pet to waste significant focus when she gets surges of focus, such as from Focus Fire or Go for the Throat, and hits the focus cap. So, we’re leaning toward Option C, since there wasn’t really much engaging gameplay from this anyway, and this just allows it to be an overflow valve for excess focus.

Mage
It looks as if the damage of Pyroblast is so much higher than Fireball that a Fire Mage can theoretically drop Fireball from rotation; the higher DPET if Pyroblast almost exactly balances the reduced number of Hot Streaks:
Hot Streak will increase Pyroblast’s damage by 25%, and Pyroblast’s normal damage has been reduced by 20% in a future build.

Is Frost being a competitive PvE spec possible, or am I getting my hopes up a little too soon?
While I hate to say something like “No, really, we mean it this time!”, yes, we’re trying very hard this expansion to get Frost equally PvE viable with Arcane and Fire. We’re aiming for Arcane and Fire being as PvP viable as Frost is, too. We added the recent ramping mechanic because we were worried about Frost's damage being too good in both PvE and PvP.

Paladin
It's not like Ret or Prot needed damage nerfs, either.
You're going to be see a lot of number tweaking from here on out. If you think any of the changes are off base, I'm afraid you're going to have to offer a little more evidence to support your claim, or else this forum is going to be reduced to "don't nerf me, bro" posts.

Ret was doing too much damage. Prot's damage is fine even with the change, and to answer a related question, that is assuming spending some Holy Power on Word of Glory.

There's already enough proof and parses out there showings rets damage is barely middle of the pack on the beta currently. I really wish we could see gregs proof or parses whatever you wish to call it and really see ret paladin numbers.
If you have proof or parses, please share them here.

We welcome and appreciate player feedback, and the discussions in this thread and elsewhere have been excellent in pointing out design problems or bugs. However, we aren't going to get ourselves into a situation where we have to convince the community to allow us to make the design or balance changes we feel are appropriate for the game. We don't think that would end well. Sadly, if you think our numbers are off, the burden is going to be on you to convince us of that fact. We show Retribution in ilevel 463 gear doing almost identical damage to warriors and DKs, which is as it should be.

[chaos5061]

Shaman
Are there any plans of restoring Greater Healing Wave at all to the Resto Shaman toolkit? I haven't seen any acknowledgement from the developers of this issue thus far.

Currently Healing Surge without Tidal Waves is barely less HPM than Greater Healing Wave, but with the availability of Tidal Waves, Healing Surge soars past it. Due to the massive HPS gains of Healing Surge and the nearly imperceptible difference of HPM outside of Tidal Waves, Greater Healing Wave becomes practically obsolete except for the occasional Natures Swiftness if you chose the talent.
We are talking about reducing the cost of Greater Healing Wave slightly to match Healing Surge (which is how the equivalents are for priests). This may mean that shaman can heal efficiently with Healing Surge (with Tidal Waves) but we think that might be fine for them. GHW would still get use because sometimes the Healing Surge just isn't sufficient to keep someone alive. Healers also tend to migrate from their efficient heal to their big heal in later tiers, which we're fine with. It makes it feel like all those gear improvements are doing something.

Warlock
Simulationcraft #'s are up for all 3 Warlock Specs @ Level 90 (Pre-raid gear)
We aren’t able to debug your simulations, but will say that those very much do not reflect the numbers we’re seeing. We’re seeing Destruction slightly above Demonology (1-3% difference) on a single target, and Affliction slightly (3-5% difference) above Destruction. Those are gaps that we expect to tune tighter by ship. I’m not sure if your simulation of Affliction/Demonology is too high, or if your simulation of Destruction is too low, or if our results are off. Providing statistically significant logs of these performances would be very helpful.

Warrior
Warriors and Barbarian's Fury
Rage isn't something you manage, like energy or mana, its something you build up until you're ready to unleash its power onto your enemies...
So less like energy or mana and more like... combo points?

I'm not just being snarky. I think it's a legitimate point. If you have yellow attacks that produce X rage and then a finisher that consumes Y rage, then you have a system that works fundamentally a lot like combo points or Holy Power. Ultimately we know that system works, but I'm not sure that means that every class should use it. It's a little deflating when you switch characters only to discover that the resource mechanic feels almost the same.

I actually think we're pretty close on the rage design for Mists and that what some of you are reacting to isn't the mechanic as a whole but the current numbers on beta. By moving some rage generation to yellow attacks we have given warriors and bears more control over building up their resource rather than it being totally passive. By reducing some of the exponential scaling of the resource model with gear, we think we have broken the cycle of warriors who are weak at launch and overpowered by an expansion's end. Recently, we felt like rage generation was too high in starting gear, which wasn't giving warriors too much room to grow. We lowered it, but that ended up feeling too punishing at low level, so we're trying to strike a balance.

These aren't the kinds of decisions that can easily be mathed out, because so much of it comes down to the *feel* of combat, which we can only get a handle on by trying different designs and playing them ourselves, and asking other players (like you guys) to try them as well. Blizzard is famous, perhaps infamous, for design iteration. You sort of have to stand back and let us do our jobs here. We need to be able to adjust things in beta without the community freaking out every time a number goes down (and I'm not just talking to warriors here). I totally understand that beta design can feel like a roller coaster, which is one of the reasons we try to limit design churn after launch. It's totally fine -- and in fact we welcome it -- to provide feedback along the way. Helpful feedback is the sort of thing several warriors did when they said they felt like rage generation from white attacks was too low and rage generation during Enrage was too high. It's a little disappointing to read "rage generation feels low now, therefore the entire system must be scrapped."

I could wax philosophical about the similarities and differences between warrior rage and barbarian fury; indeed the strengths and weaknesses of various resource systems is something the WoW designers discuss frequently with the Diablo designers. Just remember that the combat situations are very different. D3 is about very short fights against huge groups of enemies when you are often alone or in a small group. Even if you have a tank, you don't really have a healer. Except for the boss fights, the fights are unscripted and unpredictable. I'm jealous of the combat situations the D3 designers can put you in, because there is room for a lot of different AE attacks and survival buttons and movement abilities. On the other hand, because the fights are short, there isn't a lot of opportunity for the rotations and situational abilities that the WoW classes have and I've always enjoyed the emphasis on the synergy of large groups of players in WoW (whether it's a raid or a BG or just a guild hanging out in chat). It's actually a little refreshing both as a player and a designer that they do feel so different (to me anyway).

[chaos5061]

Challenge Mode Feedback
I see the blue post in this thread says something about mass resurrection. However you should also consider the possibility of a group with a shaman or a combat res for that matter. You can train through the entire dungeon towards a safe spot and have a combat res on one person that then resses everyone else. I doubt I have to explain shamans ability to do the same.
Casting single-target resurrection spells to recover from an intentional wipe takes quite a while when you're aiming for a new best time, such that doing so to clear debuffs like Sated is unlikely to be a net gain. As for suiciding to skip mob packs, the intent is for the "Enemies" counter for a given challenge mode to force you to engage most of the enemies in your path. Skipping patrols and sneaking past things using clever tactics is fine, but if you use a suicide or mass-stealth approach to bypass content, you should come up short on the counter.

Philosophically, we want to try to permit the use of all player abilities in challenge modes. The restriction on Mass Resurrection is different, because guild perks were always intended to be conveniences and not competitive advantages; in a challenge mode where time is everything, however, saving up to 40 seconds on wipe recovery was a clear advantage.

Content Difficulty and Consumption Speed
Personally I'd like you to explain why (for example) things like: the title "Hand of A'dal" doesn't exist anymore, or why the LK HC mount no longer has 100% droprate, or why the old ZG/ZA mounts are unobtainable etc when you argue that "everyone should be able to experience the same content" yet you still hand out the same reward for other vastly different content (0% vs 30% nerfed DS).
These things you mention (Hand of A'dal and Invincible's Reins) were changed when the next expansion was released. It's a different timeframe. Players could get the mount from the Lich King at the 100% droprate while the 30% buff was active in ICC, in that regard, it's the same thing with Deathwing these days.

And I'd argue that DS is not "vastly different" with a 30% debuff on. It might be much easier for you on those bosses where you didn't need that in the first place (or required something much lower), and that may allow you to do crazy things, sure, but it's still the very same place, and challenging, to other players that will need to go through the same issues you had when you were clearing that content.

The point is, when you do something while its at it's hardest you want something to show for it. You do not want "Wolfstabzor the worgen rogue in BoE PvP gear" (as someone humorously used) to have the exact same thing to show for it a few weeks after, when it was 30% easier.
It's not a "few weeks after". It's close to half a year later, which is something that needs to be put into perspective. Which by internet time measures must be like five centuries later. It doesn't mean your point isn't valid, but I do think time is a factor that it's not being properly valued, and that's a question I've yet to see an answer about. What's so terrible about a player getting something you did, half a year later?

But seeing that random pugs can kill THE HARDEST BOSS IN THE GAME AVAILABLE (on HC) doesn't make much sense to me.
Are you saying that random pugs can kill Deathwing on Heroic? Or am I reading this wrong?

Don't reply to our posts and tell us we have no argument, or twist around what we're trying to say because a lot of us aren't the best at communicating. Be honest and tell it how it is.
I've never said you don't have a point in what you say (and if it looked that way, I certainly didn't mean it, at all). What I'm seeing, however, is that in many of these arguments, the fact that other players might do something you've done is something negative, yet when I'm asking why those players shouldn't do these things, the answer tends to be very vague, or something demeaning those players.

I like raiding. I like challenge. but why would I take a challenging route when its faster to do it the easy way? It's why I dont like LFR.
So you like challenge, but you wouldn't take the challenging route? I'm honestly missing something there, because otherwise the only possible conclusion is that in fact, you don't really like/enjoy that level of challenge, which doesn't seem to be, at all, the message you're trying to get through.

Well, based on your answers in this thread, what worries me is that the feedback you're sending back is "these guys want to be special snowflakes" and going on about exclusivity when many of us have been trying to explain that's not what we're talking about.
If that was my view on the subject, I would have stopped posting on this thread long ago.

"Others experiencing the same content" is something I'm okay with. What I'm NOT okay with is that in the end, the hardcore players will be indistinguishable from the casual players. If everyone can or rather WILL get the same gold medal in the end if they want it, then the effort is pointless in the long run.
Achievements have the date on when you achieved it. Basically, time is a big factor there. Even if a million guilds killed Heroic Deathwing, would suddenly mean that those guilds are as good as Paragon, Stars, etc? Obviously not. That would be insane to even consider by most accounts, right?.

Yet, apparently it is a consideration when some guild does achieve it later than you did (despite noone daring to say they're as good as Paragon because they killed HC Deathwing two weeks after, at least not anyone that is considered a "sane" player).

[chaos5061]

Is your worth as a raider valued by what others achieve, or what you, by yourself, achieve?
Prestige is not doing something anyone else can't do, prestige is doing something better than anyone else and being recognized as a consequence.

You need players in this game that can be looked up to, and these players should also be looked up to, respected and rewarded by you
We "need" players that can and should be looked up to? Why exactly? What does such a player bring to the game and the rest of the community?

And I'm talking about in-game stuff, not about players out there that do amazing work on fansites in the form of guides, blog articles, videos, machinimas, etc (and in some cases those players aren't even in "top raiding guilds").

I've heard this mystical argument for quite some time now, saying that hardcore raiders actually drive playerbases (not just in this game). And the truth is that over the years, many hardcore raiders (and "well-known guilds") have left the game... and the community at large didn't even knew who they were in the first place. Sure, there were other hardcore raiders that knew who they were and were sorry about it.

That's the first time in 7 years that I clear a tier of content on week one (I've always been playing with the same people in these 7 years, so, if the group has not changed, the contest has become easier).
Doesn't it make sense that, if you've been playing with the same people in these 7 years, you've actually got better at the game? The luxury of playing 7 years with the same players is that things like coordination actually happen as something "natural", and hurdles that are actual issues for other players, you can overcome much quicker.

Perhaps you don't even need to ask who's using a cooldown at a given moment because you already know who in the raid is going to take care of it. That on itself is something that many other raids don't have.

Problems with Cataclysm
1) The entire low level experience - which could have been great with the new quests - is spoiled by insanely powerful heritage gear. It ruins dungeons, which are already too easy by turning them into a pathetic zergfest, and destroys PvP by allowing 30% of the players to 3shot the other 70%.
As people point out regularly, heirloom gear is entirely optional. You have to put time and effort into purchasing it. It’s intended to make things a little quicker for players who have already seen end game on at least one character and would like a quicker leveling experience, allowing them to see end game on another character a little sooner.

Not everyone has heirlooms; many low level dungeon groups have some players without them. If you’d like more of a challenge in instances, try running ones that are aimed at slightly higher levels than your character, or make groups with less than 5 members perhaps. For the ultimate test, why not try soloing them?

Low-level PvP is challenging due to several factors. At the end of the day, heirlooms are equivalent to blue quality items. In many situations, it’s possible to find or craft similar non-heirloom gear, although admittedly it’s harder to do so. But having heirlooms available to you is a plus-side of having an end-game character help your low level one, something that’s always been a benefit.

2) Gear inflation in PvP is still ridiculous. S(n+1)-geared people nomatch S(n)-geared people, turning random BGs into "who-has-the-highest-amount-of-undergeared-gets-camped", and forcing people who haven't played all previous seasons of the expansion to spend months getting raped in BGs / Arenas before they can actually start playing the game.
There have been a number of changes to make it easier for people to jump into PvP quicker and gear up faster, while at the same time not invalidating the efforts of people who have put lots of work into getting the best gear. But ultimately, PvP is what you make it, and good gear is not a replacement for skill. Those who win at PvP were in blues too at some stage, they worked at gearing up just like everyone else. Try teaming up with friends, getting organised and focusing on strategies to make the path easier.

3) World PvP has been low for quite a while, it still existed though when there were Dungeon Stones and people actually had to move to some places to do stuff. Now, it's dead, you consume the content from Orgri/SW with your bottom on your dragon, flying around like an idiot with hundreds of shiny mounts around doing the same thing.
One of our aims in Mists is to get people back out into the world again. We’ve heard from players time and time again that the world outside the city gates feels empty and that’s another reason we’re implementing the cross-realm zones. In Mists, you’ll see more players out and about in the world when you’re traveling from A to B — which you should be doing more often thanks to some of the new features in the expansion.

[chaos5061]

4) There is no RvR. Tol Barad is just another BG, you get TP'd to it and it has a limited duration. The alliance/horde conflict, which is quite great through low levels zones, means nothing in end-game content. BGs are more like some kind of FPS, you're blue team or red team but you don't give a crap. Anyway, you can just switch factions for a few dollars.
The war between the Alliance and the Horde is also something we’re getting back to in Mists. For instance if the Horde were, say, planning something nasty for Theramore, the Alliance may want to do something about that. If I were you, I’d be sharpening my weapons. Things are about to heat up.

5) The *dungeon finder* farmfest. It boggles my mind how someone who is supposed to get paid may have believed that people would actually enjoy that stuff. Sitting on your mount in Stormwind, the fastest - the only viable - way of gearing up is rushing a hundred times through heroics and raids that are so easy that only 3/5 or 15/25 people could do it without an issue. And you get the best gear available.
I was really shocked when I discovered the LFR tools, only a few days ago. I played as a healer, and not only were the fights insanely boring, with almost nothing to heal, but they were also crazy long. It felt like bringing down some fat passive NPC with 100000000 HP and then looting it.
Actually, LFD and LFR have been very popular tools. When time is short, being able to queue for a quick dungeon while going about other things such as gathering or doing daily quests is very useful. Again, it’s not mandatory and you’re still able to manually form groups with friends, even cross-realm now.

In regards to the difficulty level of encounters, well we’re at the end of an expansion and most people have had ample time to gear up well past the entry level gear requirements for these instances, of course it’s going to seem easier now if you have people in the group with such high-end gear.

6) The stupidity of PvE progression. Instead of simply leaving the great vanilla/TBC system, where you dinged 70, then had to go through normal to get access to heroics, then heroics to get enough gear for raids, then Kara, then T4, then T5, then T6 etc. and where you felt like you had a huge path ahead of you, and the content felt so immensely rich, they decided it would be a smart move to flush all previous content down the drain every new patch.

I skipped Firelands, so I'll never get to see it. I didn't do all BWD/BoT, I'll never get to do it. Oh of course, I can zerg through it with ilvl410-geared guys who will oneshot trashmobs. But there's already LFR for that kind of stuff.

The "we want everyone to see the whole content" is the stupidest thing I've heard from a video game company in a while. Does Bethesda rush-teleport me into every single god damn cavern in Skyrim because if they don't I might not take the time to clean them all ?
I wonder if there is like 1 madman who has a prominent position in their dev teams and has all these dumb ideas, or if they actually - as a whole - are bad enough at their jobs to think it's going to work.
The old way of progression meant the majority of players never got to see the last boss in an expansion, and we wanted to change that. Not only is it counter-productive for us to put out these exciting, epic encounters that only a fraction of the players will ever see while they’re current, it also leaves many players with a feeling that they missed out on the end-game.

The system we have right now means that those who are at the cutting edge of raiding will still get to progress through all the raids in the order they become available, they’ll have the best gear before anyone else, and all the other fun things that come with being a hard core player. Anyone, like yourself, who skips content because perhaps they joined the game later or didn’t have the time required for this kind of progression doesn’t have to do all the encounters if they don’t want to — but the option is definitely still there if they want to see the story. It totally depends on how you want to play the game. This way, people aren’t forced to grind through non-current content (and often fail to make it to the end before the next expansion) to be able to see the end of the game.

Also, comparing two completely different types of games is bad, please don’t.

7) Last but not least, the uniformization (does that word even exist in english ? Might be.).
Classes, races, factions, professions...
Everything is being mirrored to everything. You no longer need a priest for that buff, or a hunter for that debuff. 3 classes can do the same stuff. Choices are cosmetic, at the end of the day you won't need to have the balanced groups of specs / classes you needed back in the old days, which is for me the essence of an MMORPG.
“Back in the old days”, if you played a Paladin, you were pretty much forced to heal in raids because other classes did DPS and Tanking better. Obviously lots of players were miffed about that sort of thing. We made changes over time to make other specs for each class more viable for not only raiding, but for other aspects of the game.

Having said that, the developers actively work hard to make sure we don’t see all classes ending up exactly the same, while trying to ensure different specs and classes are valuable in their own right, each having something to add to a group and making sure one character’s ability is not vastly more useful or overpowered than someone else’s.