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

[chaos5061]

Valor of the Ancients Buff
Mists of Pandaria is going to make it easier for you to earn Valor points on your alts once your main character is capped for the week. The Valor of the Ancients buff increases the Valor earned on all of your characters on a realm by 50%, after one character has capped for the week. This comes along with another change to Valor points that limits the amount you may hold at any time to 3,000 per character.

[chaos5061]

Jaina Audio for Theramore Event
One of the recent beta patches added some more audio for Jaina during the Theramore event. If you haven't already listed to the previous audio, listen to it first! See thelong standing thread about Jaina in the Mists of Pandaria forum if you are interested in more speculation and discussion of the lore!

[chaos5061]

Beta Class Balance Analysis

Warlock
There is some major bug going on with Fel Flame and Corruption & UA. Tagging a target with Fel Flame seems to cause Corruption & UA to over double in damage.
Warlock DoTs are incorrectly increasing their damage. This is a bug, and will be fixed in the next build.

Could a blue poster please confirm/deny this bug, or if it's intended? It looks like the 50% extra damage DOTs aren't benefiting from Spell Power buffs. It says 50% of normal periodic damage in the tool tip, so if this is intended, it's a pretty hard nerf from the original MG effect.
This was the aforementioned bug with Fel Flame approximately doubling the damage of Corruption, which was unintended (and doesn’t apply to the extra ticks granted by MG). For doing target dummy and theorycrafting testing, it’s probably best for you to not use Fel Flame as Affliction (unfortunately, Demonology has no such way to avoid extending Corruption). This bug has nothing to do with spellpower.

We understand that this bug is significantly skewing impressions of the Warlock specs, and hope to have a new build up to fix this soon.

Hunter
Glaive Toss incurs a 1.5s global cooldown, unlike the 1s incurred by any other direct damage hunter ability. Is this intended?
I've noticed and fixed that yesterday, actually. Fixed for the next build.

Shaman
So, if I am reading this correctly, on targets below 35% HP, each Chain Heal jump should have a 50% change to proc Earthliving, and each Healing Rain tick should have a 30% chance to proc Earthliving? Is this correct, or was the datamined change to Earhliving Weapon actually the removal of the 80% increased proc chance on Chain Heal and Healing Rain?
This is correct.

Is there any chance the developers could enlighten us as to Healing Rain's chance to proc Earthliving Weapon? It seems as though Chain Heal's is 0.2 x 0.25 = 0.05 (i.e. the chance is reduced by the maximum number of targets). Healing Rain is 0.2 x ??? = ???.

Either number will help me immensely! I am getting anywhere from 5.3 - 8% chance when testing it myself, and I just can't make these numbers reconcile with anything logical like "number of targets in the healing rain" or "number of targets at which the DR cap begins to apply". I'm interested in the proc chance when we are *above* 35% health. From there I can work out the rest. Thanks!
Earthliving has a 20% base chance to proc, and an additional 80% (additive, total of 100%) if the target was below 35% HP when the triggering heal landed. After that, the chance is multiplied by 0.3 for Healing Rain, and 0.5 for Chain Heal.

For example, a chain heal on a healthy target has a 10% chance to trigger Earthliving. A Healing Rain tick on a healthy target has a 6% chance to trigger Earthliving.

Mage
Here’s another bit of info I want to pass on sooner rather than waiting for a new build to get to you all, about Arcane Mages.

One of the defining characteristics of Arcane Mages has been that they can trade more mana for more damage, at a decreasing efficiency. In other words, they can play conservative, and use their mana as frugally as possible in order to maximize sustained damage. Or, they can play aggressively and increase their DPS now, in exchange for lower sustained damage over the course of the whole fight.

Arcane’s sustained damage is about where we want it (as well as Fire and Frost), barring some minor tweaks perhaps. But, they’re currently playing very high on their Arcane Blast stacks. The goal is to have their rotations change significantly based on which level 90 talent they pick. An Arcane Mage with Invocation should play very aggressively and frequently stop to recharge their batteries. An Arcane Mage with Rune of Power should generally play rather conservative, but stay at relatively high mana to maximize Mana Adept. And with Incanter’s Ward, an Arcane Mage should generally play the traditional mix of conserve/burn/evocate.

What we’re actually seeing are all three styles playing much more aggressively than we’re aiming for. There’s effectively a ceiling of just how much you can convert more mana into more damage. Invokers are playing so aggressively that they never drop their Arcane Charges at all, Rune users are staying at a 4 stack for a majority of the time, and Incanters are able to play more aggressively during their conserve phases and burn longer.

In order to try to solve this, we decided to try raising the ceiling. So, in the next beta build, you’ll find the max Arcane Charges has been raised from 4 to 6, and the damage increase per stack is back up to 25% from 20%. I’d like to emphasize that the goal of these changes are to create the gameplay flexibility that we’re hoping for there to be with Arcane, not to change Arcane’s overall DPS. There will likely need to be additional changes after this to readjust their damage back to where we want it. Feedback about how it feels, and theorycrafting analyzing the effects this has on them are especially appreciated.

Death Knight
Also, a little tidbit for DKs who kept reading through all that Mage stuff: Blood Tap is back off the GCD in the next build.

Doing LFR I realized that my bloodworms were doing about 35% of my healing done (compared to live, where it does less than ~5%.). I was also competing against healers on healing done. (I was averaging out to 40k HPS on the stone guards, compared to other healers who are just a bit higher.) Is this intended?
Nope, it wasn't intended. Bloodworms were getting significantly more health (and therefore healing) from pet scaling than intended. For theorycrafters, they dropped from 25% to 6% of the Death Knight’s max health.

Thanks for letting us know, this has been fixed for the next build.

[chaos5061]

Subscriber Losses
A very clear drop happened after Diablo was released. I'm confident Mists will be incredibly strong.

Monk Leveling Speed Benefits
Any word on the faq on Scroll of Resurrection and Recruit a Friend guidelines for monks?
We're still working on gathering a few remaining details. We'll have more info for you... next week, maybe? Hopefully!

Mists of Pandaria Collector's Edition
If I purchase the MoP CE, will I get the mount and pet on all my accts, or just the one that's a CE?
It applies to all licenses attached to your Battle.net account.

So if you have 2 wow accts, you get the mount and pet on both? Even if you onky make one a CE?
That's how it should work as long as they're all on the same Battle.net account.

[chaos5061]

Pandaria Faction Capital Changes
The last patch added some of the things that people have been requesting since we originally previewed the new Faction Capitals. You can now find a Void Storage and Transmogrification NPC near the Reforging NPC. Training Dummies have also been added outside of the city and the Horde city now has the 60% speed buff to help you get around quickly. Finally, all of the NPCs have dialogues and sell the items that they are supposed to!

[chaos5061]

Lorewalker Story: Between a Saurok and a Hard Place
In Mists of Pandaria there are several extra lore related achievements to go with the regular zone exploration achievements.

Once you have found all of the objects for an achievement, Lorewalker Cho will send you mail that asks you to meet him at the Seat of Knowledge. Once there he will narrate a small story that gives you some more information about Pandaria lore.

In the video below, the Between a Saurok and a Hard Place story is told to you.

[chaos5061]

World Boss Preview
Blizzard published a preview of the Salyis's Warband encounter today, but if you want to see a video and the full list of skills, check out our new boss pages! Loot tables are not available yet.

Check out the Mists of Pandaria preview website and get a first glimpse at one of the two new roaming world bosses: Salyis’s Warband! These extremely powerful monsters will do everything in their power to make your life more... “interesting” as you explore the mysterious continent of Pandaria.

World bosses spawn in the open world and can be attacked by any player (un)fortunate enough to cross their paths. Salyis's Warband will be quite rare, while the expansion's other boss will appear with fairly regular frequency. But before you charge headfirst into battle, keep in mind that it will take the combined efforts of a full raid to bring one of these guys to their knees.

Taking down a world boss is no small feat, but the rewards make it all worthwhile: achievements, fabulous items, and massive bragging rights will all be yours if you and your comrades in arms succeed in felling one of these roving terrors. Check back soon for more info on the game's other world boss, the Sha of Anger!

[chaos5061]

Beta Class Balance Analysis

Hunter
I've been trying to get accurate pet focus regen numbers but it's difficult to test accurately in game given the limits of the display and the fact that none of it ends up in the log. Currently it looks like the base pet focus regen is around 5 fps, but is it possible a blue poster could confirm if that's the correct number? It would also be extremely helpful if pet focus regen (and crit chance for that matter) were added to the pet display.

Also if I'm testing correctly, it looks like spiked collar does not increase pet focus regen (even though it is called haste and not attack speed). Which haste and attack speed bonuses increase regen for pets has never been incredibly clear or consistent. The terminology doesn't seem to be a reliable clue and measuring pet focus regen precisely is difficult. Is there a chance of this getting clarified at some point?
Base pet Focus regen is 5 per second (which is different from base hunter Focus regen, which is 4). Spiked Collar is indeed just attack speed, not actual haste; we’ve fixed the tooltip for the next build. Thanks for pointing that out. Same with Berserking; we’ve updated that to say Haste instead of Attack Speed.

Druid
Question about the Guardian 4pc bonus. Does the 10% to Savage Defense mean:

0.45 * 1.1 = 0.495
or
0.45 + .1 = 0.55
It was multiplicative, but since that can be read ambiguously, we’ve adjusted it to say that it adds an additional 5% dodge chance (yes, that’s a very slight buff).

I dont know if its intended but the last spell cast in ether Eclipse is not buffed when fully cast. For example, when casting wrath with 15 or less solar energy the spell says its buffed however when the cast completes it uses the unbuffed damage. The same for starsurge and starfire in lunar. Its very misleading.
Unintended; we’ll get that fixed.

Monk
Any there any plans to change the way Shuffle refresh is managed for Brewmasters?

What I mean in regard to this is how Shuffle is unable to refresh to the full 12 sec duration unless it is 6.0 seconds or below. At the beginning of a Shuffle application you can get it to 12 seconds. However at any point above 6.1 seconds Shuffle will never refresh to 12 seconds. This makes it very frustrating because you have to watch the time on Shuffle to be below the 6.0 mark to reapply it. I understand a Brewmaster wouldn't want to waste Chi by reapplying Shuffle too early or often but even at 6.1 seconds it will just waste 2 Chi without increasing duration to 12 seconds.

I wouldn't even mind if you say had Shuffle at 7 seconds and did a BoK that it went only to 12 seconds (the cap right now of time) than simply eating our 2 Chi and that's that. However, I think it'd be best if any reapplication of Shuffle above 6 seconds should automatically refresh it to 12 seconds.
In the build after next, you’ll find that Shield Block, Savage Defense, Shuffle, and Shield of the Righteous will always add their duration to the existing buff if there is one, instead of just adding an imaginary tick. If you hit Blackout Kick with 7 seconds left on Shuffle, it’ll go up to 13 seconds remaining.

Shaman
There are several changes coming for shaman in the next build, some of which won’t be easily datamined, so we’d like to let you know about them. We shifted around where damage comes from for both Elemental and Enhancement. The overall damage should be down a bit, but both specializations should still feel strong. Remember, if you’re giving feedback and making comparisons to other classes and specs, please list who you’re comparing to, as it’s quite possible that you’re feeling underpowered compared to someone who is overpowered.

The Fire Elementals were stronger than we wanted, so we reduced the amount of spell power that the standard version gets to 40%, down from 55% (Primal: 60%, down from 82.5%). The Primal Elementalist talent was also too strong, so we reduced the damage of the Primal Fire Elemental’s Immolate DoT by 65%. Also on the topic of talents, Elemental Blast was too weak, so we increased its damage and stat effects by roughly 17%, but reduced its proc chance with Echo of the Elements to 6% for Enhancement (previously it had a 30% chance to trigger an Echo for Enhancement, which made that talent pair too strong).

Further, on the topic of shocks, we recently reduced the shared cooldown of shocks to 5 seconds for Elemental shaman. More recently, we lowered Earth Shock’s damage a bit and significantly increased Flame Shock’s damage.

Specific to Enhancement, we wanted to bring DPS down a bit and also make them feel like more of their damage was coming from their active buttons, rather than passively. The one significant change that you probably won’t be able to datamine is an increase to Feral Spirits’ damage. They now get 50% of your attack power each, up from 30%. And their Spirit Bite ability’s damage has more than doubled. The net result should be that Feral Spirits are significantly stronger than before, probably somewhere between 70% and 100% stronger, depending on gear.

Priest
Renew seems to be benefiting from 15% bonus when in Chakra: Serenity-- akin to it being considered a Single Target Heal. Additionally, it also seems to be auto-refreshing (and thus, gaining an additional tick). Is this intended performance? If so, it dramatically affects the value of Renew and its corresponding Chakra: States as well as the Glyph of Renew when running Sims and Spreadsheeting haste values.
The 15% benefit to Renew from Serenity is intended. We decided it made more sense to associate Renew with Serenity and not Sanctuary. Renew refreshing itself to get that extra tick is not intended and we will fix.

[chaos5061]

Beta Raiding Class Balance
When I'm being outhealed by a factor of two by any Joe Schmoe paladin or monk who happens to wander into a raid...I'm sorry, but skill is simply not going to overcome that. I don't even want to think about what a good paladin could do. At least not until I have one.

But be realistic. Do you think Blizzard will let such a disparity last into Live and if so, for any real determinate amount of time? Even during "Your class brings utility, shut it" era of TBC the numbers never went for that big of a spread.
It's probably not possible to overcome that much of a difference. Fortunately, you don't have to, because paladins and monks both had some egregious bugs that inflated their healing. We actually hotfixed those bugs but then a new build broke them again. Until you get a new build or we hotfix the issues again, you are probably better off comparing druid, priest and shaman healing. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Overall, I would recommend not deciding who you're going to bench based on beta testing until we are very close to ship. It's not a great strategy to try to get your character buffed either.

there being no Spirit whatsoever on the Legendary Sha weapons
Well, the weapons themselves aren't legendary, but the Intellect mace is supposed to have Spirit on it. That's a bug.

Also one thing to consider is that benching and stacking of classes in the top guilds has less to do with SimCraft numbers and more of certain mechanics being very powerful on certain fights. Case in point: Paragon's 11 Druids on their first Heroic Nefarian kill.
Agreed. Remember guilds in those world first situations are doing content very undergeared compared to what we expect because they are skipping the weeks of farming. In those situations players have to resort to some unusual strategies to make up the difference. In general (though not always depending on what they feel like they have to do) those type of machinations are fun for the guilds in questions and very few players are affected overall.

When we see widespread stacking, that crosses the line. In retrospect, the dependence on quick burst for a fight like Spine might cross the line. Overall, we didn't see a ton of stacking or sitting for the Cataclysm raids and we'll try to do even better for the new content.

For the record, I believe there is evidence the PW: Solace thread that druids are outpacing priests and shaman as well, but not nearly as much, the major issue seems to be the longevity.
That is possible. As I have said repeatedly, if every priest is taking Solace, we'll continue to nerf it until the perception is that it is on par with the other talents. We don't want Solace to be a required talent.

I believe we have the paladin and monk fixed and we have some more raid testing ongoing so we'll be able to get some better data.

We're in a situation again where we have made several changes to a variety of class mechanics but haven't been able to get a build up with fresh data.

[chaos5061]

Feeback on Priest Changes
This is a combination of responses to some points in this thread and a couple of others, such as the "bench" thread.

When we stop seeing posts that rank Solace priests ahead of Mindbender priests, then we'll feel like the talents are in a better spot. Not every priest wants to have to cast nukes as part of their healing rotation, and we are just not going to make Solace mandatory. If you enjoy the style, awesome. That talent is for you. You shouldn't have to take it though. (When I heal, I tend to play the mana game a lot, because healing just enough without overheating is fun for me. Rather than overheal, I'll gladly sit idle a lot rather than waste a heal. Solace would work well for me. Other healers, even some I play with, want to stay more active and keep spells queued up and cancel them or just keep everyone topped off. That's cool too. The game supports lots of different healing styles, except for the one where you just spam your highest HPS spell and nothing else, which hasn't been supported since Icecrown.)

We're not noticing a big longevity problem between priests and druids. Shaman seemed a little low so we are examining the impact of the Water Shield and Resurgence chances. We may also lower the cost of Healing Rain. It is definitely a challenging thing to sim out how much mana the various healers use because it has a lot to do with spell choice. You should be able to use your more expensive heals somewhat, but you should also be casting a lot of Heals as well.

We don't feel like mana regen in 5-player dungeons is at all a problem. Mana felt tighter (too tight in retrospect) in Cataclysm launch. If you are running out while healing a dungeon boss, I would suspect it's because you are using Flash and it's equivalents too often or you're just used to the rapid mana regen of full Dragon Soul gear. It's possible mana is tighter in raids, especially 25 player, but we're running a lot of raid tests right now and it's just not a common theme we're hearing from those players, which again leads me to want to understand what is going on for players who feel they are struggling. Again, being as specific as possible would help. Which bosses? How far into the fight are you struggling for mana? How quickly are you having to Shadow Fiend? Are you wearing Mists quest greens, Mists PvP gear, or scaled up Dragon Soul raid gear?

Returning Holy Concentration to a higher value is extremely unlikely. We felt that created more class balance problems than it solved. We are more likely to lower priest and or shaman heal costs if we think it is needed. We just don't want to be in a situation where we improve priest and shaman healing now and are then forced to nerf them after launch. Nobody will be happy with that outcome.

I'll dig into the "Realistic 60 sec Holy priest average" posted. You shouldn't feel, with any mana talent choice, that are you are sitting around a lot too scared to heal. (The example I used for my healing style above is just one play style, not the only valid way to play. I could overheal a lot more and still be fine.) The risk should be that any time you replace a Heal with a Flash Heal that it's going to hurt a little, but sometimes that is still the right call. A priest casting nothing but Heal should last indefinitely. That isn't true of say a paladin who uses a lot of free spells. PW:Shield for Disc is a little more risky. It has a lot of benefits, but overall you should be rewarded for shielding folks who are taking damage and not just throwing it around indiscriminately on the raid. The former should benefit you through Rapture. The latter should slowly run you OOM.

[chaos5061]

Content Difficulty and Consumption Speed
If blizzard actually believe LFR keeps people interested beyond 2 weeks, I am SERIOUSLY worried for the game. They must see how shallow and short spanned it is.
There's a broad spectrum of players on this game. And the LFR is interesting to some of those players, just as Heroic, soul-crushing bosses are interesting to a different set of players, and then you get everything in between. The community is way more different that what some of you think it is. Even the motivation behind each of us is entirely different in some cases. Some might raid for the loot, some might raid for the lore, others for the achievements, others for the challenge, others for the social experience of tackling content with their friends... and so on.

Madness Heroic and Ragnaros Heroic Mounts
Will the mounts be an 1% drop ish in MoP? Or do they stay as current 100%?
The developers haven't decided yet how they'll handle it, but it's likely they'll make some adjustments.

[chaos5061]

Mists of Pandaria Beta - Build 15952
A new beta build will be deployed on beta realms soon. We will be updating these notes frequently, so keep checking back! Don't miss another new Item Upgrade string, ITEM_UPGRADE_STAT_AVERAGE_ITEM_LEVEL, indicating that Valor Upgrades are still in the works!

[chaos5061]

Set Bonus Changes

Druid (Forums / Skills)

• Item - Druid T14 Guardian 4P Bonus - Increases the healing received from your Frenzied Regeneration by 10% and increases the dodge granted by your Savage Defense by an additional 5% (was 10%).

Paladin (Forums / Skills)

• Item - Paladin T14 Protection 4P Bonus - Increases the healing done by your Word of Glory spell by 10% (was 20%) and increases the damage reduction of your Shield of the Righteous ability by 10%.

Priest (Forums / Skills)

• Item - Priest T14 Shadow 4P Bonus now also increases the damage done by Shadow Word: Insanity by 15%.

Warrior (Forums / Skills)

• Item - Warrior T14 Protection 4P Bonus - Reduces the cost of your Shield Block ability by 5 Rage (was 10) and increases the damage absorbed by your Shield Barrier by 5%.

[chaos5061]

Achievement Changes

Feats of Strength

• Collector's Edition: Baneling (New) Owner of the Startcraft II Heart of the Swarm Collector's Edition Baneling pet. Account Wide.

Pandaria Raid
Dungeons & Raids

• Straight Six was reworded: Deactivate six Empyreal Focuses within 10 seconds of eachother, and then defeat Elegon in Mogu'shan Vaults on Normal or Heroic difficulty.

[chaos5061]

New Items
For a full list of the new items, check out WoWDB!

1	Junk			Cache of Sha-Touched Gold
1	Junk			Marauder's Gleaming Sack of Gold
90	Other			Misty Satchel of Exotic Mysteries
90	Leather		Head	Replica Shado-Pan Helmet
516	Leather	Physical DPS	Legs	Legguards of Failing Purification
503	Leather	Physical DPS	Legs	Legguards of Failing Purification
90	Mail		Head	Replica Shado-Pan Helmet
503	Mail	Physical DPS	Shoulders	Waterborne Shoulderguards
516	Mail	Physical DPS	Shoulders	Waterborne Shoulderguards
90	Plate		Head	Replica Shado-Pan Helmet
78	Dagger	Physical DPS	Off Hand	High Warlord's Razor