Beta Class Balance Analysis
Rather than quoting several additional questions and issues, we'll just do a lightning round of out of context replies. As always, just because I did not respond directly to an issue does NOT mean that it is being ignored. Please try to be reasonable about the "I'm going to keep posting until I get an answer" posts. Those never end well.
- Hurricane being stronger than Astral Storm is intended.
- Blacksmithing having a stronger profession perk is something we’re investigating.
- We’re investigating some bugs on Tranquility and Wild Growth under extreme haste (e.g. Soul of the Forest).
- Eternal Flame being on the GCD for Protection is unintended. The hot not benefitting from mastery is intended, or that talent might feel mandatory for Prot.
- Battle Healer costing mana is a bug.
- Force of Nature should scale with your crit and haste.
We're just not seeing healing priests falling behind on HPM or HPS in the current raid or challenge mode testing. I don't want to dismiss the concerns though, and we will keep an eye on it. Lack of "raid utility" is a very slippery beast. In my experience, healers always think their particular character lacks it. We believe however that all of the healers will continue to see plenty of PvE use, as they did in Cataclysm, and we want to get more of them competitive in PvP.
Warlocks, we want to mention that one thing inflating Demonology on beta currently is a bug with Decimation, which is making it trigger from Shadow Bolts on targets at any health % a majority of the time. That’s going to significantly influence target dummy comparisons. That’ll be fixed in the next build. (This isn’t to say that Demonology isn’t higher than Affliction/Destruction, but it's a discrepancy worth noting.)
Druid
Is it intended that Bonus Armor is affected by Guardian Mastery? For example the Mantid Elixir which provides +2250 Armor is multiplied by the Guardian Mastery for a bonus of 2475 armor (before gear and buffs).
Yes, this is intended. Guardian Mastery should be a final multiplier on all armor.
Bloom's nerf now puts its mastery buffed healing per Shroom at 9.25k (LvL 90, full PvP gear, no gems/enchants/buffs).
For a 25man that number is somewhat acceptable if you manage to heal 10+ people with all 3 Shrooms for a total of only 277.5k healing done (without DR or AoE cap). After at least 3 GCDs of set up that just does not make it that attractive of a spell.
Bloom is not intended to be worth using rotationally. It should be worth planting the ‘Shooms when you have downtime, or lulls in healing requirements, and then Bloom them later on when you need burst healing (since Bloom is off the GCD). The numbers do appear off a bit for that design so we will adjust.
Hunter
One concern about the latest changes to marksmanship hunters- the new mastery proc rate seems problematic to me. If I'm doing the math correctly, this puts a 7200 mastery rating hard cap on MM hunters, since that seems to be the amount of mastery rating at which you have a 100% proc rate on wild quiver.
A valid concern. Mastery being capped is not something we were intending with that change, and so are going to bring mastery back to 2% chance to trigger Wild Quiver per point, and double Wild Quiver’s damage back to 100% weapon damage (normalized).
Paladin
Sanctity of Battle and Spell Haste
The intent is that Sanctity of Battle is based on melee haste instead of spell haste but we are waiting on a code change for that.
Shaman
Purification + Water Totem Healing
It should work as the tooltip of Purification says; it not working is just a bug, and is fixed for the next build.
Rather than quoting several additional questions and issues, we'll just do a lightning round of out of context replies. As always, just because I did not respond directly to an issue does NOT mean that it is being ignored. Please try to be reasonable about the "I'm going to keep posting until I get an answer" posts. Those never end well.
- Hurricane being stronger than Astral Storm is intended.
- Blacksmithing having a stronger profession perk is something we’re investigating.
- We’re investigating some bugs on Tranquility and Wild Growth under extreme haste (e.g. Soul of the Forest).
- Eternal Flame being on the GCD for Protection is unintended. The hot not benefitting from mastery is intended, or that talent might feel mandatory for Prot.
- Battle Healer costing mana is a bug.
- Force of Nature should scale with your crit and haste.
We're just not seeing healing priests falling behind on HPM or HPS in the current raid or challenge mode testing. I don't want to dismiss the concerns though, and we will keep an eye on it. Lack of "raid utility" is a very slippery beast. In my experience, healers always think their particular character lacks it. We believe however that all of the healers will continue to see plenty of PvE use, as they did in Cataclysm, and we want to get more of them competitive in PvP.
Warlocks, we want to mention that one thing inflating Demonology on beta currently is a bug with Decimation, which is making it trigger from Shadow Bolts on targets at any health % a majority of the time. That’s going to significantly influence target dummy comparisons. That’ll be fixed in the next build. (This isn’t to say that Demonology isn’t higher than Affliction/Destruction, but it's a discrepancy worth noting.)
Druid
Is it intended that Bonus Armor is affected by Guardian Mastery? For example the Mantid Elixir which provides +2250 Armor is multiplied by the Guardian Mastery for a bonus of 2475 armor (before gear and buffs).
Yes, this is intended. Guardian Mastery should be a final multiplier on all armor.
Bloom's nerf now puts its mastery buffed healing per Shroom at 9.25k (LvL 90, full PvP gear, no gems/enchants/buffs).
For a 25man that number is somewhat acceptable if you manage to heal 10+ people with all 3 Shrooms for a total of only 277.5k healing done (without DR or AoE cap). After at least 3 GCDs of set up that just does not make it that attractive of a spell.
Bloom is not intended to be worth using rotationally. It should be worth planting the ‘Shooms when you have downtime, or lulls in healing requirements, and then Bloom them later on when you need burst healing (since Bloom is off the GCD). The numbers do appear off a bit for that design so we will adjust.
Hunter
One concern about the latest changes to marksmanship hunters- the new mastery proc rate seems problematic to me. If I'm doing the math correctly, this puts a 7200 mastery rating hard cap on MM hunters, since that seems to be the amount of mastery rating at which you have a 100% proc rate on wild quiver.
A valid concern. Mastery being capped is not something we were intending with that change, and so are going to bring mastery back to 2% chance to trigger Wild Quiver per point, and double Wild Quiver’s damage back to 100% weapon damage (normalized).
Paladin
Sanctity of Battle and Spell Haste
The intent is that Sanctity of Battle is based on melee haste instead of spell haste but we are waiting on a code change for that.
Shaman
Purification + Water Totem Healing
It should work as the tooltip of Purification says; it not working is just a bug, and is fixed for the next build.
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