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

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[chaos5061]

With the release of patch 5.0.4, we’re making all the races of Azeroth playable by anyone, no matter which version or expansion of World of Warcraft they own. This includes the enigmatic pandaren, who will become available for play when Mists of Pandaria is released on Tuesday, September 25. We want the entire World of Warcraft community to be able to embrace their inner goblin, blood elf, worgen, draenei, or pandaren from the moment they step foot into the world of Azeroth.

Now, the only hard part will be choosing a name. Who will you be next?

I've seen some confusion about when pandaren character creation will be accessible.

Just to be clear on the announcement, we're making it possible for people to create a character of any race, regardless of what expansions you've purchased. So if you only have the original game (which now has The Burning Crusade included), when patch 5.0.4 hits you'll be able to create goblin and worgen characters as well. And, once Mists of Pandaria is released, you'll be able to create pandaren characters, regardless of whether or not you own Mists of Pandaria.

So it says all races, what about though all classes? Just because Pandaren become available for play regardless if you have MoP or not, does this include the new monk class?
No, you'll need to upgrade your World of Warcraft license to Mists of Pandaria in order to unlock the monk class. The same is true for leveling from 85-90 and gaining access to the continent of Pandaria.

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Mists of Pandaria Beta - Build 15983

Achievement Changes

Collect
Pet Battles

• Can I Keep Him? now rewards 10 points, up from 5.

General
Guild

• Scenario Roundup now rewards access to Guild Shirts.

Set Bonus Changes

Druid (Forums / Skills)

• Item - Druid T14 Balance 4P Bonus - Increases the duration of your Moonfire and Sunfire spells by 2 sec, down from 4.

Monk (Forums / Skills)

• Item - Monk T14 Mistweaver 4P Bonus - Increases the healing done by Enveloping Mist by 5%, down from 25%.

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New Items

489	Miscellaneous	Finger	Band of Bursting Novas	Mogu'shan Vaults	Elegon
502	Miscellaneous	Finger	Band of Bursting Novas	Mogu'shan Vaults	Elegon
476	Miscellaneous	Finger	Band of Bursting Novas	Mogu'shan Vaults	Elegon
476	Cloth	Waist	Galaxyfire Girdle	Mogu'shan Vaults	Elegon
489	Cloth	Waist	Galaxyfire Girdle	Mogu'shan Vaults	Elegon
502	Cloth	Waist	Galaxyfire Girdle	Mogu'shan Vaults	Elegon
502	Plate	Head	Crown of Keening Stars	Mogu'shan Vaults	Elegon
489	Plate	Head	Crown of Keening Stars	Mogu'shan Vaults	Elegon
476	Plate	Head	Crown of Keening Stars	Mogu'shan Vaults	Elegon

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Item Changes

• Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury stats were buffed.
• Kri'tak, Imperial Scepter of the Swarm now has Spirit.
• Artisan Officer's Shirt and the other guild shirts are now BoP.
• Sigil of Wisdom is now BoP.

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Spell Changes

Death Knight (Forums)

• Blood Plague damage and AP scaling increased by 61%.
• Frost Fever AP scaling increased by 61%. Damage increased by 1444%.

Blood

• Crimson Scourge now increases the damage dealt by your Blood Boil by 20%, down from 40%.

Frost

• Icy Talons now grants 35% melee attack speed, up from 20%.

Druid (Forums)

• Mangle now does 280% weapon damage, up from 250%.
• Rake damage increased by 23%.
• Wrath damage increased by 12% and SP scaling (111.6% of SP) added.

Talents

• Displacer Beast now has a 30 sec cooldown, down from 60 sec.

Balance

• Starfire damage and SP scaling increased by 12%.
• Wild Mushroom: Detonate now costs 10.2% of Base Mana.

Balance & Restoration

• Wild Mushroom no longer has a mana cost.

Restoration

• Wild Mushroom: Bloom now costs 10.2% of Base Mana.

Hunter (Forums)

• Arcane Shot weapon damage increased to 100% from 75%. Additional damage increased by 76%.
• Aspect of the Beast no longer has a cooldown.
• Aspect of the Cheetah no longer has a cooldown.
• Aspect of the Fox no longer has a cooldown.
• Aspect of the Hawk no longer has a cooldown.
• Aspect of the Pack no longer has a cooldown.
• Kill Shot weapon damage increased to 420%, up from 300%.

Marksmanship

• Careful Aim now grants 75% crit, up from 60%.

Survival

• Explosive Shot damage increased by ~5%.

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Mage (Forums)
Arcane

• Arcane Barrage damage and SP scaling increased by 20%.
• Arcane Charge now grants 22% damage per charge, up from 20%.

Fire

• Combustion damage increased by ~200% and SP scaling (300%) added.
• Inferno Blast damage and SP scaling increased by 30%.

Frost

• Frozen Orb damage increased to 678 + 51.1% of SP, up from 77 + 5.8% of SP.

Paladin (Forums)

• Crusader Strike now costs 15% of Base Mana, up from 3% of Base Mana.
• Hammer of Wrath damage and SP scaling increased by 25%.
• Judgment damage, SP scaling, and AP scaling increased by 10%.

Protection

• Shield of the Righteous damage increased by 35% and AP scaling increased by 15%.

Retribution

• Templar's Verdict weapon damage increased to 275%, up from 250%. Damage increased by 21%.

Priest (Forums)
Shadow

• Mind Blast damage and SP scaling increased by 25%.

Rogue (Forums)

• Ambush weapon damage increased to 345%, up from 245%. Additional damage increased by 103%. Dagger weapon damage increased to 470%, up from 355%.
• Eviscerate (Assassination, Combat) damage increased by 17%
• Eviscerate (Subtlety) damage increased.

Talents

• Deadly Throw damage increased by 25%.

Assassination

• Dispatch weapon damage increased to 520%, up from 350%. Additional damage increased by 120%.

Combat

• Killing Spree now increases all damage done by 100% for the duration, up from 20%.

Shaman (Forums)

• Earth Shock damage and SP scaling increased by 32%.
• Flame Shock damage and SP scaling increased by 32%.
• Frost Shock damage and SP scaling increased by ~30%.
• Lightning Bolt damage and SP scaling reduced by 15%
• Lightning Shield damage and SP scaling increased by 32%.

Elemental & Restoration

• Lava Burst damage and SP scaling increased by 16%.

Enhancement

• Stormstrike now does 300% weapon damage, up from 200%.

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Warlock (Forums)

• Shadow Bolt damage and SP scaling increased by 24%.

Talents

• Grimoire of Sacrifice (Affliction and Demonology) now has a 20 min duration, up from 15.
• Grimoire of Sacrifice (Destruction) now has a 20 min duration, up from 15. Now increases the power of many of your single target spells by 30%, down from 55%.

Affliction

• Haunt damage and SP scaling increased by 50%.

Demonology

• Soul Fire damage and SP scaling increased by 24%.

Destruction

• Conflagrate damage increased by 50% and 150% SP scaling added.
• Immolate damage and SP scaling increased by 24%.

Warrior (Forums)
Arms

• Mortal Strike now does 195% weapon damage, up from 150%. Additional damage increased by 67%.
• Slam now does 225% weapon damage, up from 200%. Additional damage increased by 26%.

Fury

• Bloodthirst now does 120% weapon damage, up from 200%. Additional damage increased by 125%.

Protection

• Devastate now does 220% weapon damage, up from 180%. Additional damage increased by 123%.
• Shield Slam damage and AP scaling increased by 10%.

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Professions
Blacksmithing

• Ghostly Skeleton Key 1.5 sec cast.
• Masterwork Lightsteel Shield Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (12). Trillium Bar (2).
• Masterwork Spiritguard Belt Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (7). Trillium Bar.
• Masterwork Spiritguard Boots Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (7). Trillium Bar.
• Masterwork Spiritguard Bracers Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (5). Trillium Bar.
• Masterwork Spiritguard Breastplate Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (12). Trillium Bar.
• Masterwork Spiritguard Gauntlets Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (7). Trillium Bar.
• Masterwork Spiritguard Helm Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (12). Trillium Bar.
• Masterwork Spiritguard Legplates Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (12). Trillium Bar.
• Masterwork Spiritguard Shield Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (12). Trillium Bar (2).
• Masterwork Spiritguard Shoulders Reagents: Ghost Iron Bar (7). Trillium Bar.

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Strings Changes

• DUNGEON_FLOOR_GILNEAS_TERRAIN22 - Main Floor
• DUNGEON_FLOOR_GILNEAS_TERRAIN23 - Upper Floor
• DUNGEON_FLOOR_GILNEAS2 - Main Floor
• DUNGEON_FLOOR_GILNEAS3 - Upper Floor

[chaos5061]

Druid Travel Form Update
The new Druid Travel form got a few updates this week, with some animations for dancing, grazing, cowering, sitting, sleeping, a mountspecial, and tweaked walking animation.

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Mists of Pandaria Gamescom Trailers
A few new trailers were released at Gamescom today, building up to the release of the cinematic tomorrow!

[chaos5061]

Beta Class Balance Analysis

A new beta build is going up soon that has damage nerfs for many classes and specs in order to hit our target goals. Predictably, this has led to many posts of what I would generously characterize as light on useful feedback.

Here is how to prevent your posts from falling on deaf developer ears:

Tell us how much damage you were doing before.
Tell us how much damage you are doing now.
Tell us how much damage you think you should be doing.
Tell us who is beating you.

Will tanks be encouraged to get to the parry cap for expertise?

Unless there were changes to bosses, while melee DPS classes do not need to hit parry cap, as bosses can't parry from behind, tanks do not have that luxury. While I can appreciate needing hit and expertise (especially when I remember successfully running raids in Wrath of the Lich King with less than 1% hit rating), it seems like a lot of stats to ensure that our active mitigation abilities are able to hit.
Our general philosophy is that you should want hit and expertise to make your resource-generating attacks hit (paladin example: Crusader Strike) but not to have your active mitigation abilities work (paladin example: Shield of the Righteous). Probably the right call is to have the damage portion of SotR miss but always get the defensive benefit in the way Shield Block always works. This one-size-fits-all strategy might not work for every ability, because Death Strike is just such a different model than Shield of the Righteous, but that's out general philosophy.

Do you have an updated list of what you consider tuned or not? That post a few days ago was very useful and after the recent changes it would be nice to see what is considered tuned and what isn't.
I do. The problem is that A) even with this recent build, our changes are still ahead of yours, so what I say may not make sense without the full context of every change, B) it seems like the majority of players (though not all) worried about their damage are basing their concerns on the Simcraft work (typically done by other players) and not actual damage tests from beta. We understand that everyone is very concerned about their own DPS, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, we can't easily tell if it's the sim or the in-game damage that is off. (Though again, part of the purpose of this thread is to help improve the sims, and the new test dummies should help that process as well.)

Internally, Windwalkers and Frost mages are a little high (though Frost is even more RNG than Fire now so it takes a large sample size to determine this) and Shadow and Unholy (and maybe SMF Fury) may be slightly low. Tank single target is tuned, though AE is not, and healer DPS is not tuned.

Overall, damage in the current beta build (the one most players are discussing) is a little lower than damage in our current beta build, so the good news is that many classes will see buffs next time around.

Current simcraft of all classes. http://simulationcraft.org/504/Raid_T14H.html

Currently maining a shadow priest, and don't see why further nerfs were needed considering we were still only at 108k before these recent nerfs. But that's just my little complaint of the day.
I'll post this and let the topic lie for a bit, because I'm sure everyone is sick of reading it. We can't buff and nerf actual class numbers based on posts like this unless the sims are very accurate. Do you feel comfortable making that claim? If not, is there some contribution you can make to improving the sims?

The latest sims don't look promising: www.simulationcraft.org/504/Raid_T14H
We're just going to delete posts like this going forward. No offense intended, but it's a long thread already and we need to improve the signal to noise ratio.

If you have information that will improve the sims, have questions about the sims, or can help demonstrate where the sims do or do not mirror actual numbers on beta, then those are potentially great posts.

Harken back to the very first post in the thread, which says:

First and foremost, as a ground rule let’s keep this one thread free of pleas about ability feedback, DPS being too low or other subjective declarations. This thread should be about information sharing. If you aren’t a theorycrafter, this thread may not be for you.

Hunter
Wasn't Dire beast on a gcd before? I got on the beta and it seems to begin to trigger a gcd when I use it but It cancels the gcd and I am able to use other abilities immediately. Is this intended?
Dire Beast is supposed to be on the GCD. We are seeing the weird self-cancelling GCD bug as well though.

Paladin
Quick question GC. The recent built that nerfed Light of Dawn. Was there a particular reason for that outside of the possibility you guys thought it was too strong? I'm just curious for that nerf to me seemed out of the blue considering it has a potential long ramp up time outside of cd's like Holy Avenger and if it has a faster ramp up time it usualyl costs a hefty amount of mana.
We were seeing a strategy in some heroic raids of Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, Crusader Strike -> Light of Dawn that took almost no mana and was very effective. We want Light of Dawn to be a good button (we didn't like using Holy Radiance and ignoring Light of Dawn when the going got tough) but we want paladins to use cast time heals too. As a consequence of this, we also made Crusader Strike cost much more mana for Holy. Using CS should be an option, not the only viable way to heal.

[chaos5061]

Druid
Beta Balance Druid Changes
There were two problems. Balance druid DPS was high, not even considering DoC. Second, DoC was too much of a DPS increase. Some players attached themselves to the story that DoC caused them to get nerfed, but that wasn't what happened.

We changed the set bonus to 2 seconds. That means 14 sec without the set bonus and 16 sec with the set bonus. We won't keep offering that set every tier.

You should not be 20K DPS behind mages. We also aren't seeing that.

Before DoC was nerfed, it was the clear choice for that talent "tier". With the current dmg set at 50%, will this bering it down enough to where it won't be the obvious choice over NV.
With the current data, we believe all 3 talents are pretty close. Heart of the Wild is slightly high compared to the others since you can't control the timing. You can use a cooldown exactly when you need it, which means overall it's probably going to let you tune damage better. That's why we left Heart of the Wild a little high.

If you think they aren't the same though, please let us know.

Paladin
Beta Retribution Feedback
now we will be doing 70k dps for 1 min 40 secs then 175k dps for 20 secs (rince and repeat)... that's prety shame
Are these real numbers or just something made up?

That does not follow. All it means is that they'd like a consistent baseline for our tests, and that this is one that everyone can manage without any trouble.
Yes. The PvP gear is on a vendor available for gold.

You guys do your job some of the time right? Pretty sure you should know what the numbers are....Being sarcastic as usual? You must think the DPS is fine, but are you basing our dps around our CDs? The concern is sustained damage.
So if you're concerned about the delta between your burst and sustained damage, why don't you make a post saying "I believe that our sustained damage is X and our burst is Y, so my concern is that our DPS is only Z when our cooldowns are down?"

Maybe you could just come clean and tell us what the numbers you have are. Because I'm sure a lot of us are tired of doing your job for you, we just get called liars anyway
Balancing the game is our responsibility, and is a task which we are comfortable doing. However, we understand that many players want to be able to contribute to the process or at least offer their feedback, so we thought we'd make it easy for you to have a forum where you know we'll see your opinions and concerns. We totally understand that doing rigorous testing is not trivial. We totally understand that many of you may not have the inclination or time to make that kind of commitment. Honestly, we're not asking you to. However, if you are interested in doing so (and historically many players are), here is place to communicate your results. Comparing those to ours is beneficial for us. It does catch bugs and design problems. But we consider it all bonus information -- we're not depending on it to do our jobs.

Don't confuse our providing a spot for conversation with our asking you to design the game for us. It's not responsible for us to make number changes based on hunches or suspicions that your DPS is too low. You're welcome to still make those claims, and we'll investigate them, but if you're still not sold, then the burden of proof is on you to convince us of the fact that something is wrong. It's not going to work out well if we have to convince the community to let us design or balance the game as we see fit.

Seems like most of these parses are around the 40-50 k range. Which isnt much better than live.
Well, you're comparing ungemmed and unenchanted PvP gear to (I presume) final tier heroic raid gear. We recommended that particular gear setup because it was easy to acquire, not because we think it's representative of what players will actually have.

You need a lot of combat ratings to make up for the drop that occurs every time you level up. Once you start getting raiding gear again, your DPS will be much higher than it is today. Furthermore, a level 85 player after the 4.0 patch should also not see their DPS decline, provided they modify their rotations to account for design changes.

Yeah, too bad they stripped another 15%wpn off Crusader Strike in this build. Do the developers even play this game? Never mind Ret at this point, we'll be sitting. I wonder if Prot will even be able to hold aggro by the time they're done.
If you want us to take anything from this thread, tell us how much damage you were doing before, how much damage you're doing now, and how much damage you think you should be doing. Making a "I don't like it when my number goes down" post isn't super helpful to anyone.

We will continue to lock or delete threads that just come across as whining. There are plenty of other places on the internet to do that.

Priest
Shadow Priest Feedback
I'm done trying to bring attention to the issues with Shadow in a PvE setting with yet another round of nerfs. I guess I need to pick a new main for Mists as I have provided evidence of the issues with Shadow and the numbers we are putting out. I would like to know why we continue to get nerfed over and over again.

How can you justify yourselves? Why are you constantly nerfing us? Have you changed around how a Spriest is supposed to play and feel so much that you completely forgot what to do with us? You say bring the player not the class correct? How do you expect me to take comfort in this motto you want to live up to when the class is imbalanced? How can we enjoy ourselves if we are so lackluster?

So far, since priests are just garbage class now, I'll turn my legendary raider into a farmer and Rper. So sad to see this but, he's not raid worthy when 5.0 comes out.
These are not helpful posts. Every time we have to read posts like this is time we are not spending working on the game. Please don't use this forum to vent.

Spirit Shell
The biggest challenge Disc has currently is learning how to use Spirit Shell effectively. You can simply use it on CD on some fights, or use it on CD and pad a tank. SShell will shine particularly after we learn the fights and understand the damage patterns. Its the same as prepping a raid/group with POH/DAs prior to big damage coming out. (or PWS Spam in the WOTLK days). You just get to do it via cast/SShell and its ALL absorb. Learn the fight. Prepare for damage. Mitigate. --- that is Disc. It is arguably the most proactive>reactive healer in the game.
Well said.

Warrior
Second Wind Feedback
Second Wind is really powerful in duels. We don't balance all of our PvP around duels however. Outside of duels, it feels like a coordinated team should have no trouble overcoming the heal, especially considering that many execute abilities also come into play during the time Second Wind is beneficial. It is one of those abilities that is really hard to put a number on, compared to an ability with a duration of X and a cooldown of Y. In a contrived situation, Second Wind could account for 300% of your total health in healing. Who wouldn't take that talent? But it's more likely to be far less.

What will be most telling is if every PvP warrior ends up taking Second Wind. Then we'll know it's too good, or at least too good relative to other talent points on that tier.

IMO, this topic is best served discussing Second Wind, not "I wish my execute hit harder."

This. Second Wind has few counters other than raw damage, so we are free to state that our supposed counters to it are weak.
You're free to state anything you want (within forum guidelines). You're also free to ignore my opinions. Understand however that that strategy is less likely to get us to change our minds.

The reason I believe that steering a discussion of Second Wind towards your own executes is counterproductive is that we believe the counter for a player being tough to kill in PvP should be to coordinate with your teammates, not that you can individually hit so hard that you blow them up no matter what.

Execute Feedback
Someone made a post on EJ asking about warriors switching to SMF for Execute phases. This is a valid concern since it just requires weapon swapping now. I personally like the idea (I like abuseable stuff), but I can see it's not intended. Maybe turn SMF and TG into a out of combat toggle mode or something like that?
We are going to use the same solution we did for Frost DKs, which is that a weapon swap will prevent the passive bonus for applying for 30 sec or so. In this case, if you switched to SMF for Execute, you wouldn't benefit from the SMF bonus for a long enough time that it's probably not worth it. There are very few legitimate cases where a warrior would want to switch from TG to SMF in the middle of an encounter.

All three of those recent Execute parses have a very high crit rate. I assume you were just getting lucky (or unlucky as it were if you're trying to demonstrate that Execute does too much damage) or had popped Recklessness.

In any case, we don't think it's a problem. I haven't seen a compelling argument for why it's bad design to do a lot more damage during Execute. It's still around 10-12% of total damage even for the very lucky parses, so it's not like Execute accounts for half your damage. Even a warrior who forgot to Execute would do decent damage. Once in awhile we do a boss that stops fighting at 10% health or something, but we also do bosses that start wounded.

Warriors (some at least) want smaller executes and paladins and priests want larger ones. We like the classes being different. We think that's ultimately better for the game.

[chaos5061]

Pandaren Race Changes
Quick question, will people be able to race change to Pandarians Day 1 or will it be a few weeks later?
You'll be able to change on day one.

Pet Battle Healing Changes
A few updates:
The bandage drop rate from Battle Pet Tamer quests has been increased significantly.
The number of bandages dropped has been doubled.
The stack limit has been increased to 10.
We have reduced the cooldown on Revive Battle Pets to 8m.

We will be watching the cooldown feedback at this new value but we think that combined with the bandage drop rates, most players will be happy with the results. The increased chance at bandages are a great way to supplement any extra healing you may need while the heal is on cooldown.

Greater Pet Family Ability Diversity Needed
We will be adding more diversity as we progress through the patches, it's something we know about it. You have to remember that most of the critters in the world were animals. We added as many new pets as we could without disrupting the general feel of the world. There is a unique pet in almost every zone in the game now. We took care to try and make these pets fit in the different family's. (undead, dragonkin, aquatic, elemental etc.)

This is just the beginning, we will be supporting the system with new updates every single patch.

Duplicate Pet Restrictions
The only pets that are flagged as unique are in the categories listed below. This can of course change at any time, but this is what we are looking at for MoP release currently.

Achievement Pets
Blizzard Pet Store Pets
Promotional Pets
Guild Pets

Everything else will be allowed up to 3x of the same pet.