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

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Arena and Rated Battleground Season 11 is scheduled to end on Wednesday, August 29. At that point, we will determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards, a process that should take approximately one week. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for Arena titles and/or the Cataclysmic Gladiator’s Twilight Drake to refrain from transferring their characters to another realm or faction until after Season 11 ends. The awarding of Season 11 titles and mounts will occur approximately 1 week after the season ends.

At the end of the season, Conquest Points will be converted to Honor Points, possibly exceeding the 4,000 point Honor cap. There will be no cap on Honor until Mists of Pandaria is released on September 25. At that time, any Honor accrued above the 4,000-point cap will be converted into gold at a rate of 35 silver per point.

All Season 11 items will cost Honor Points (equivalent to their previous Conquest Point cost) when the season ends, with the exception of any items with rating requirements attached. These items will no longer be available for purchase.

The next Arena and Rated Battleground season will begin for level-90 players approximately one week after Mists of Pandaria launches. During the break between seasons, all Rated Battleground and Arena matches will be unavailable. Matchmaking (MMR), Team, and Personal Ratings will all be wiped when Season 12 begins.

[chaos5061]

So I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, but is anything being done to make heroic spine beatable after the nerf to dispels that are going out? Considering how rapidly you have to dispel on it, it seems impossible with the new dispell reductions.
When the pre-Mists patch goes live, Blood Corruption on the Heroic Spine of Deathwing encounter will transform into the positive type after a single dispel.

Somewhat related, successfully dispelling Wrack on Sinestra will reset the cooldown of the caster's dispel ability, keeping the gameplay there unchanged.

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Character Creation Screens
These screens are only used during the Character Creation process, not Character Selection.

Character Selection Screens

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New Mounts and Pets Interface

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Misc Interface Changes

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Dungeon Journal Expansion
The Dungeon Journal has been expanded to cover all of the old dungeons.

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New Maps
If you still get lost in Caverns of Time, things are about to get much better. This patch also brings many, many maps for areas that don't show up on zone maps very well, such as caves, underground areas, and starter zones.

Graphical Changes
Patch 5.0.4 will bring us an improved lighting system, SSAO support, and slightly improved reflections. Many of these changes are hard to see without actually playing the game!

If you don't have a higher end computer, you may have to turn down some settings, especially once Mists of Pandaria and the new zones are released. If this sounds like an excuse to upgrade some hardware, head over to our Computer Forum.

The lighting system is more dynamic now, with flickering lights actually changing the light levels on the scene around them. SSAO adds shadows between objects that are very close together, making lighting look slightly more realistic. Mounts and players now appear in the reflections.

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Kite Mount Preview
The Horde and Alliance Kite Mounts were recently added to the game. They are a reward from the Pandaren Ambassador achievement. You are required to be exalted with the following factions to earn it:

• Golden Lotus
• Shado-Pan
• The Lorewalkers

• Huojin Pandaren
• The August Celestials

• The Klaxxi
• The Anglers

• The Tillers
• Order of the Cloud Serpent

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Turtle Mount Vendors
Both the Horde and Alliance finally have vendors for the new Turtle Mounts! Old Whitenose in Stormwind and Turtlemaster Odai in Orgrimmar will sell the turtles to Pandaren characters. If you are not a Pandaren, you are out of luck for now, but you can buy a Tabard to give you rep with the faction that will likely be required to purchase the mount as a non Pandaren.

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20	Mount		Reins of the Green Dragon Turtle	1
20	Mount		Reins of the Brown Dragon Turtle	1
20	Mount		Reins of the Purple Dragon Turtle	1
20	Mount		Reins of the Red Dragon Turtle	1
20	Mount		Reins of the Black Dragon Turtle	1
20	Mount		Reins of the Blue Dragon Turtle	1

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40	Mount		Reins of the Great Red Dragon Turtle	10
40	Mount		Reins of the Great Black Dragon Turtle	10
40	Mount		Reins of the Great Green Dragon Turtle	10
40	Mount		Reins of the Great Blue Dragon Turtle	10
40	Mount		Reins of the Great Brown Dragon Turtle	10
40	Mount		Reins of the Great Purple Dragon Turtle	10
1	Miscellaneous	Tabard	Huojin Tabard	10
1	Miscellaneous	Tabard	Tushui Tabard	10

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Beta Class Balance Analysis

How does the game cope with non-integer results from the above formula? For example, say I'm using a 3.0 speed 2h. According to the above formula for 2h, 2.4 and 3.6 speed correspond to 2 and 3 stacks respectively, so 3.0 speed should generate 2.5 stacks every crit. Since only integer numbers of stacks are ever applied in game, though, this means that my crits should be split 50/50 between providing 2 and 3 stacks. Is there a mechanism in place to ensure that this is the case (that I'll get exactly 50% 2-stack procs and 50% 3-stack procs with a 3.0-speed 2h)?

Also, in the provided formula, what exactly is the WeaponSpeed variable? Is this simply the paper doll value for weapon speed, or are procs taken into account?
It's random; if that formula says that you should get 2.4 stacks on average, then 60% of the time you get 2, 40% of the time you get 3. WeaponSpeed is the raw weapon speed, not hasted.

What exactly are the proc rates, ICD (if any), and hidden rules of the MoP weapon enchants?
Ask, and ye shall receive:
River's Song: 2PPM on melee attacks that land, or are dodged, or parried.
Dancing Steel: 1PPM on melee attacks that land.
Colossus: 3PPM on melee attacks that land, or are dodged, or parried, with a 3-second cooldown.
Elemental Force: 5PPM on melee damage, or non-periodic spell damage/healing, with a 0.1-second cooldown.
Jade Spirit: 10% chance on spell damage or healing, 50-second cooldown.
Windsong: 1PPM on melee damage, or non-periodic spell damage/healing, with a 1-second cooldown.

So my co-tank and I verified tonight that not putting up Weakened Blows will give you more Vengeance.
Good point! We’ll factor Weakened Blows out of the Vengeance calculations.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Soul of the Forest does not give energy when used on Ferocious Bite, it correctly works with SR/Rip/Maim.
Yep, we found this bug and we'll get it fixed as quickly as we can. It actually wasn't always working with Rip, either.

Is it intended for there to be such a disparity between Starfire and Wrath?
Yes. Lunar side should be noticeably stronger single target damage than Solar side.

Is the healing of Wild Mushrooms still being reworked? Transferring the mana cost to the Bloom spell instead of the Mushroom summon spell was a great change, but the Mushrooms themselves still do not heal for enough to warrant their usage. I could see very occasional use for them in fights where there is a long lull and the 3 seconds we spend setting up the mushrooms does not interfere with our healing, but honestly, using the GCD to blow them up is just not as compelling as using that GCD instead to cast a Wild Growth, or a Swiftmend, or even 1.5 Rejuvenations!
Wild Mushroom: Bloom (and Detonate) are instant and off the GCD. If you place them ahead of time, detonating them does not take any time away from casting anything else. They’re not intended to be used for sustained healing or damage, only for burst healing or damage.

Dream of Cenarius is not increasing the HoT portion of Swiftmend, even though that is now part of the spell itself and no longer an additional talent with a different spell name. DoC does work to empower both the direct heal and HoT components of Regrowth, which is IMO a similar enough spell to Swiftmend now that it should work both ways.
A fair point. It's not built such that that would work, but we'll consider making it work that way for the future.

Soul of the Forest is not affecting Tranquility at all, but Tranquility still consumes the Soul of the Forest buff.
The devs just tried this out today and when they looked at the data, everything seemed to be functioning properly. The haste from Soul of the Forest is reducing the channel time of Tranquility. It does not affect the HoT from that Tranquility, though, because it’s already been consumed by reducing the channel time.

Force of Nature Treants should cast Healing Touch back-to-back so long as there are viable healing targets, so they do not lose potential casts under Heroism or even just from our own Haste. They are also maybe not inheriting our Crit? I got 3 crits out of 40 trials of 18 casts each, and my Crit rating is a lot higher than 0.4%
We’ll see if we can get the trees to be more responsive. They should be inheriting your crit and haste, just not mastery.

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*Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
About brewmasters and Gift of the Ox
We're going to change the 0.03 coefficient for one-hand weapons to 0.037.




I'm consistently getting 2 charges of Elusive Brew per crit with a 3.6 speed weapon (buffed attack speed is listed on the paperdoll as 2.26).
Is this still happening for you since we applied the latest build? A 3.6-speed weapon should always give 3 charges which is what we're currently seeing in-game. Only the raw speed on the weapon matters--no haste, attack speed buffs, passives, or anything else matter.




*Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
In testing Inquisition, I am not seeing the new clipping mechanic that was mentioned a while back. No matter when I refresh it, I always receive exactly 10 seconds per Holy Power used, no extra duration despite pressing the button with some duration remaining.




Is it working as intended? Did the design change? Am I missing something?
It seems to be working for us. As someone else mentioned, it gives extra time in 2-second chunks. If you have 1.8 seconds left on it, the new one will last 11.8 seconds.




Is it intended that Glyph of Word of Glory does not trigger when Word of Glory is used as an attack with Glyph of Harsh Words? It used to work and was changed with no change to tooltips recently.
Yes, this was an intentional change. We just haven't updated the tooltip yet which we plan to in an upcoming build.




*Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
How close are the lvl 45 Priest talents on DPS? My testings show SW:I the lowest (~49k), Mindbender ok (~51k) and FDCL procs seems to be bugged (~54k). I've seen 300k+ crits come out very easily with just one spellpower proc.
There was a bug where Mind Spike damage was being calculated incorrectly, but we believe that was recently fixed.




*Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Just wanted to check on one thing that I've seen since the recent Lightning Bolt nerfs - Is it intended that Lightning Bolt be below Chain Lightning for single target situations in entry level gear?
While a little bit of this is alright, we don’t want it to be a significant difference. We’re currently planning to increase the % of the damage that is chained through Chain Lightning, and reduce the initial damage at the same time. That will in effect nerf it for use against a single target but not against a group.




HST and HTT still not scaling with Haste
We're going to change Healing Stream and Healing Tide Totems to benefit from haste, crit, and mastery.




Zizith's Chain Heal/Resurgence mechanics post - I am pretty sure Resurgence procs from any critical Chain Heal bounce on live servers, and it's a huge loss in potential regen to have it only working if the first bounce of the Chain Heal crits.
We're seeing all bounces of Chain Heal independently able to trigger Resurgence. Could you double-check this, please?




Is resurgence intended to proc off each jump of chain heal? Because it's currently only proccing on the initial hit (not the jumps).
Yes, Resurgence can proc individually off of each Chain Heal jump.




*Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Is it intended to have Grimoire of Sacrifice only work with one talent in the level 45 tier?
Actually, all of the level-45 tier warlock talents function fine with Grimoire of Sacrifice. When you have Soul Link, Grimoire of Sacrifice also increases your max health by 20%. If you have no pet out (for instance, if it was sacrificed), Sacrificial Pact will absorb an amount equal to your current health in exchange for costing half your current health. And Dark Bargain has no pet interaction, so that works fine.




Soulburning a pet seems to be triggering a cooldown to manually summon a pet. This is also happening to Soulswap while glyphed after soulburning. Is this intended?
The first part is intended; the second is a bug.

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Broken Pets
This is a bug and will be fixed in time for launch. Caging is not available until Pandaria box launch, these will be fixed by then.

Thanks for the report. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hit and Expertise Scaling in Challenge Mode
Hit and expertise are needed in challenge modes; in fact, creature level is increased by 1 in challenge mode, so that the hit and expertise values needed are identical to those needed for raid content. When you enter a challenge mode, your absolute hit and expertise percentages will not change; your other secondary stats will be reduced proportionally to compensate.

If you have +7.5% Hit and 6% dodge reduction from Expertise in your normal gear (let's say item level 489 raid gear), when you enter a challenge mode, you will still have +7.5% Hit and 6% dodge reduction from Expertise. You can think of it as us reforging your gear for you to make sure that you stay at your pre-scaling Hit and Expertise values, so that you don't need to deal with a separate set of gear, gemming, and/or reforging.

Watcher real quick question, and it's something that has been nagging me a bit, but what would happen to special procs?

Say a a trinket or special weapon (like No'kalad) that does a burst damage or increases a primary stat. How will these procs be handled for Challenge Mode? Will they be scaled down or will they do the same damage?
Procs will function, but will be scaled down. A hypothetical ilvl 500 weapon or trinket that has a proc effect that deals 50,000 Shadow damage might only deal 35,000 Shadow damage when you are in a challenge mode (numbers are made up -- heavily rounded for simplicity).

On a separate note, at this time, our plan is to disable set bonuses from functioning entirely inside challenge modes -- they are not always precisely balanced against each other the way classes as a whole are, and due to the gear normalization, if bonuses were functional, the optimal challenge mode gear at the start of the expansion would likely be PvP sets.

That said, there will be very slight power creep as players get access to items that have ideal stat distributions for them, more sockets, and so forth, but we view that sort of optimization as interesting gameplay that we'd like to preserve, especially bearing in mind that when everything is scaled down to a fixed level, an LFR version of an item is equivalent to the Heroic version for the purposes of challenge mode effectiveness. Overall, though, the difference in power will be very slight, and this sort of min-max'ing will only be relevant to players who are vying for the top spots on realm- or region-wide leaderboards. The benefits of doing 1% more damage from having an optimal set of gear will pale in comparison to the time saved or lost by dodging a specific patrol, or aggressively pulling the next pack as you're finishing off the current one. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Challenge Mode Dungeons
By that I mean, it would have been nice if there was the option to run the Challenge modes as part of progression. Maybe JP for bronze, VP for silver and both for gold? Hell, I'm making it up, but hipefully I'm a bit clearer this time.
There's a daily quest that will reward you valor points for completing that day's challenge dungeon.

i want soem challenging 5 man content, not a race content i play with my 70 year retired father, he can complete challenging content but can not rush cotnent making the challenge modes pointless and the heroics dull for us.
Although in challenge dungeons you're competing against the clock, these are tuned harder than heroics and in some cases there're additional pulls and even boss mechanics. So hopefully it'll be content that you find challenging!