Upcoming Honor Items & Points Reset, Beta Blue Posts, Brewfest

It's been a few days since we last posted a blue posts recap, so time to catch up!

Upcoming Honor Items and Honor Reset

Quote from: Eyonix (Source)

As many of you know we will be featuring a new Battleground, a dedicated world PvP zone and all new PvP items in Wrath of the Lich King. In order to make the transition from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King flow as smoothly as possible, all accrued honor points will be reset at the launch of the expansion. We do this to ensure select players do not have an unfair advantage at level 80 from stockpiling honor to instantly purchase the newest Wrath of the Lich King PvP rewards. For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system.

All Honor Tokens will be wiped as well. This reset should happen right before the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.

WotLK Beta - Blue Posts

As the amount of blue posts in today's news is bigger than usual, we splitted the blue posts in 3 sections, click on the one you want to go straight to it:
- General
- Dungeons and Raids
- Classes

General

how many builds are beta/ptr behind internal builds?
As of this post, we're working on 8977. You guys are playing 8970. (src)

Players/Pets health buff
We improved base health of players at higher levels. We're also going to improve pet's health to match it. (src)

Wrath Gate CG Movie
Cinematic is MIA in this build. I'm trying to track down what happened. (src)

Lake Wintergrasp Cooldown
In the next beta build the reset/cooldown is set to 2.5 hours. (src)

"Pet classes are a huge design challenge"
When the pet does 30-40% of your damage, and dies, you lose a chunk of damage that isn't comparable to any other dps loss by a class in the game. The alternatives aren't very appealing either -- the brick that can't be killed and does no damage, or the frail being that dishes out massive damage before collapsing when looked at. It's even worse when "pet" is a spec, as it is for locks and hunters, because then either the pet is disposable for the other specs, or it's OP for the pet spec. I can't offer any great insight into how we're going to tackle the problem, but it does keep me up at night sometimes. (src)

WotLK Itemization
We do want to revisit how we do stat allocations and avoid penalizing either specs that need a lot of different stats or those who don't need many. Both feel put upon from time to time. But that's a pretty major change, so in the short-term, we want Armored to the Teeth to solve the problem. If the number isn't significant enough yet, we can change it. Feel free to throw out numbers so we can get a feel for the discrepancy we're talking about.

The root of the problem is that especially in a PvE setting, armor doesn't do anything for a dps warrior. It doesn't really keep you alive much longer anyway and if things go right, you won't often be attacked in the first place. We have a similar problem with healers too -- priests can only use cloth, while paladins can use any kind of healing armor that drops. The mean way to solve it is to say that plate wearers can't wear cloth, leather or mail, but I think there are other ways to solve it too.

Gear is a really touchy subject, because ultimately every class and spec wants gear that is completely optimized for their character and to some extent the game is dependent on you always wanting better gear. (src)

More training dummies in all major cities
We'll be adding more dummies of different levels in all major cities. (src)

Death Knight Mount Model will be updated in the next build
Updated model coming in the next build. (src)

Grand Caravan Mammoth to be useable in the next build
The mammoth will be operational in the next build. (src)

Armory Snowy Gryphon to fly in the next build
Fixed in the next build. (src)

Armored Brown Bear price won't change
The brown bear will probably stay priced how it is in Beta. (src)

Low level quest tracking feature
Yes, low level quest tracking is in the game. Just click on the little magnifying glass on your mini-map and select the low level quest option. (src)

Avoidance and Combat Update
Everything on the server as it relates to combat ratings, critical hits, avoidance diminishing returns, etc. should now be working properly. I'm looking forward to feedback from the community about the changes, and especially any hard data from combat logs. I'll try to help with information as possible but we're very busy right now. Compressing all the information from various code and data sources into a coherent, readable post takes time that I and others need to spend on other things right now. I also have faith in the community's ability to construct an accurate model of it from empirical data. (src)

Hippogryph Mounts to get more colours in the future
We'll add more over time. (src)

Tigole on Tabard Storage
We don't have any immediate plans for a Tabard UI but something to consider is that the Tabard vendor in Dalaran sells most of the tabards for very cheap. There really is no reason to hang on to them unless you're wearing them. Also, the Tabard vendor there will replace certain quest Tabards (such as the Tabard of the Illidari) if you destroy it. (src)

Mallet of Zul'Farrak and Goblin Transponder
We have plans for these items (and getting them out of your bags). Unfortunately, we won't be able to get to it in time for Wrath of the Lich King, but we do want to eventually address how these work. (src)

Dungeons & Raids

Tigole on the fourth raid instance
After Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and Malygos, Ulduar will be the fourth raid instance. (src)

WotLK Boss abilities
Fear on bosses isn't nearly as scary as it used to be since they don't switch targets. Plus there are lots of ways around it with Tremor Totems, Fear Ward and even PvP trinkets. It's also pretty rare in LK. Bosses who silence or mana drain the tank might not even exist. We still like to silence the healers though. It makes their lives more interesting. (src)

NAXXRAMAS (10 Player)
Four Horsemen chest is fixed internally, next beta patch should have it back. The issue with the infinite respawning spiders in Faerlina's hall is something we're looking into right now. (src)

Next beta patch should have the issue with the Faerlina hall fixed.
Kel'Thuzad's Mana Detonation was inadvertantly made WAY more extreme than intended, this is also fixed. (src)

Azjol-Nerub HEROIC
We ran into the issue with Anub'arak not wanting to stay burrowed internally, and have a fix that the next beta patch should pick up. There was also an issue with Hadronox not using his web pull ability that will be fixed next go around. It's in the LFG system now too, thanks for that bug. (src)

Halls of Lightning HEROIC
We've been tuning this dungeon from both internal and your feedback over the last week. Loken should be a bit more manageable with some specific strategy adjustments based on some changes we've made. (src)

Gundrak HEROIC
Thanks for the Gundrak feedback. We've been tuning various elements of the fights, and the difficulty should be a bit more even. Slad'rah also drops loot from his Heroic table now, nice catch. (src)

The Oculus HEROIC
The Heroic Bosses in Lich King should not drop the same loot as their non-Heroic counterparts. If it does, it's a bug. Eregos not dropping Heroics has been fixed in the next beta build, and he won't evade. We've also been tuning various elements of the different fights to make them more understandable. (src)

Utgarde Keep HEROIC
Thanks for the feedback, and we found the issue with the Helm dropping in two places. The trash creatures on Heroic have a different table to pull from that their normal counterparts. A quick check looks like they seem to be order. If you have further information about what specifically dropped the item that would be helpful. (src)

Utgarde Pinnacle HEROIC
The encounter team has been playing through Heroics and that gauntlet was... rather vicious. Fun, but vicious. We've toned down the gauntlet in Heroic. (src)

Halls of Stone HEROIC
We've fixed the trash mob dropping 1 of 3 blue items every time. We've also tuned down the Brann event based on our own internal feedback and yours. Thanks!  (src)

Drak'Tharon Keep HEROIC
We're tracking down several of the instance geometry issues currently, thanks for those reports. We've also fixed some bugs with the first boss not being attacked by trolls. Thanks, all. (src)

The Nexus HEROIC
Thanks for the feedback, Keristrasza and the other bosses definitely got some tuning over the last few days based on internal and beta feedback. We also threw in a little something extra to the Ormorok encounter for Heroic. (src)

CoT: Stratholme HEROIC
Greed now has Stamina instead of Spirit. We noted a lot of the same difficulty feedback in our internal playtests as you all did, and the bosses all got a little bit of attention and tuning. There's also a new timed event for Heroic that I'm interesting in you all trying for the next beta patch. (src)

Classes

Druid
Balance changes
While I'm sure every class would say this, it's probably no surprise to you that Balance damage was low. Way too low.

We are addressing most of it through base spell damage changes to Wrath, Insect Swarm and especially Starfire. Hopefully that will give you some more talent choices because some of the damage talents will feel more optional (or as optional as more damage ever feels), instead of the bare minimum you need to be close to other casters.

We also fixed a few bugs with Star Fall and Typhoon. Not sure those changes will boost dps much, but playing your class should be less annoying. (src)

Wrath casting time lowered
Okay, we'll lower it back down. No problem. (src)

AE Tanking & Swipe
We are still working on Thunder Clap and Swipe. We think paladins can AE tank fine and DKs are probably close. Warriors and druids are still limited by the target limit of their abilities. Removing the target limit may be the answer, but we want to explore the issue first. (src)

New druid form art
It's not going to be in for Lich King. Sorry. Doing an entire animal texture takes a lot more art than a hair change. But we all agree it's high time for new druid form art. It's a high priority after Lich King.
You absolutely deserve new skins and we want to do it right, and we want to do it soon. I don't want to promise any more specifics than that until we see what problems arise when LK ships and what we need to fix. In our opinions, Raven Lord and epic flight form set the bar. (src)

Hunter
Pet stat layout
Yeah, the pet stat layout has totally not kept up with the times. It needs an overhaul and we hope to work on it as soon as LK ships.,Aside from players just knowing what their pet's stats are, it will help people improve their pets, as well as help us realize where the problem areas are. (src)

Hunter DPS & Mana regeneration
Frankly, Hunter's DPS right now is balanced with Aspect of the Viper in mind. If we, say, reduced the amount of time you were in it drastically or the damage penalty we'd have to do something equivalent of reducing Hunter's total DPS by at least 10-30%. While you guys might not notice it with the pre-mades, the Hunter class is currently king of DPS.

What I do buy is that when you're soloing, between pulls or not able to attack, you aren't gaining the regeneration. What we just did is make the regeneration passive and not require you to attack, but basically just regenerate mana. (It would still have the damage penalty though) (src)

Agility mail gear won't have any MP5
There won't be MP5 on AGI mail gear. (src)

Mage
Frostbite and Fingers of Forst
It is intended that with both Frostbite and Fingers of Frost fully talented, Fingers never triggers independently.
It is not intended that the Fingers procs get consumed too early when that happens. (src)

About the Arcane Blast change
Arcane Blast ended up being so good that we were concerned you could remove all your other buttons, and that every mage would go spec deep Arcane. Rather than just nerfing it, we are trying mechanics that let pushing the button be awesome, but pushing it twice in a row be less awesome. For what it's worth, I would be very surprised if the 300% penalty was our final implementation of this spell. (src)

Paladin
Divine Plea changes
I believe the only change we are making right now (aside from some general bug fixing) is a change to Divine Plea. Divine Plea will have a longer duration but the same total percent mana returned per cooldown. (src)

Shield and Hammer of the Righteous
Shield of Righteousness was going to scale way too well as a multiplier on block value. We already saw cases where it was 40% or more of paladin dps with very few hits. I'm not sure if you got the entire change in with the hotfix, but it's now 100% of block with a flat component and two ranks. See how it feels in the next beta build. (src)

It's not critical that Shield Slam and Shield of Righteousness hit for equal amounts, so long as overall dps and threat are pretty close. We're trying to keep them as distinct as possible, since there are already concerns about the two classes moving too close together. (src)

Wer'e going to buff Hammer of the Righteous. That should even out with the Shield of Righteousness nerf, plus give you a little more reason to hand that +spell power blade back to the warlock. (src)

Tanking in WotLK
We want paladins to be *competitive* MTs if that makes you feel better. If your block is worse than warriors, we'll get that fixed. It's possible to make a lot of progress with theorycrafting, but at some point everyone just needs to get out there and see what happens in a "real world" environment.

To reiterate, we're not that crazy about trying to strongly reinforce niches or special abilities for fear that those lead to certain tanks being more desired than others. That design strategy probably works okay for dps and healing roles, because you tend to have more of them and they tend to be slightly more interchangable from raid to raid. For better or worse, groups tend to stick with their main tank.

Even after LK goes live, you have my assurance that we'll try to keep parity. If something unforseen (the weird interaction of a glyph and new set bonus perhaps) causes one tank to get far ahead, we'll get it taken care of. (src)

Priest
Imp Inner Fire swapped with Imp Power Shield
Finally, something I can work with! I'll do this tomorrow morning. (src)

Holy Tree Changes
Improved Holy Concentration -- We'd like to keep this based off spell crit. Its possible we're too conservative with the numbers. As for other crit talents, Surge of Light now also procs an instant flash heal. (We're looking into fixing the Surge of Light/Improved Holy Concentration bug with them eating each others charges btw)

Desperate Prayer -- We had to give it a mana cost to balance the spell with its new cooldown (It went from 10 minutes -> 2 minutes).

Divine Providence -- 10% healing for any healing spell that heals more than one target is pretty good. Granted its not very complicated or flashy, but I don't think that makes the talent bad. I mean we could tack on something like "Your healing spells are increased by 10% when your mana is above 50%" but that would really just be tacked on in an effort to make it feel different and interesting.

Test of Faith -- Compare it to Holy Specialization(5% crit), its 6% crit and 6% healing for 3 points vs 5% crit for 5. 50% happens more often than you'd think, and extra healing and crit chance is most important when a target is at 50% or under.

Guardian Spirit -- I agree with this, we boosted the heal from 10% to 50%. (src)

Shadow Priest DPS
We test single target DPS with blue, epic and green gear. In all trials the Shadow Priest was doing more than expected DPS, I believe it was around ~2500 in epics. This was solo in a 5-minute trial (without raid buffs). In a raid setting, your DPS would probably be significantly higher. In a nutshell, we feel we've made a lot of progress in our goal of bumping the Shadow Priest DPS numbers/scaling to where we want it to be. Unfortunately players won't really be able to see these numbers on their characters because you are using low tier PvP gear. (src)

Shaman
Riptide & Imp Water Shield changes
We improved the base heal by 33% (Not sure if you have that build or not). It also now procs Tidal Waves, and we've changed Tidal Waves to two charges now (up from 1). Improved water shield will also be changed to affect riptide. (src)

Riptide and Imp Chain Heal are now unlinked
Done. (src)

Warrior
Devastate compensation
It will probably be in Revenge or Shield Slam, but we're still working on the exact implementation. (src)

Titan's Grip
Titan's Grip needs a counter-balance because two-handed weapons are more powerful than one-handed weapons. Period. Nobody would argue this I imagine or else you wouldn't be interested in the talent in the first place.

So the only thing that is really in contention is whether the increased dps is higher than we typically offer in one talent point. We think it is. We tried it as a 5 point talent, but that felt awkward because it was one of those where the first talent point expenditure is worth so much more than the additional talent points.

Once the dps numbers are balanced, if we see a lot of Fury warriors skip over Titan's Grip, then we'll know our estimates were off and we'll lower the penalty. I don't predict that will happen, but I make bad predictions sometimes like everyone else. (src)

Thunderclap and threat
The threat on beta was reduced because the damage was increased. Give me some time to a full analysis of the numbers though and I'll post them here. It could be you aren't factoring in something, or it could be we have a math problem somewhere.

As I said in another post, we are still figuring out how the damage, targets, threat and cooldown of Thunder Clap. One of the problems with the numbers before the most recent nerf is that at high gear levels (beyond Naxx I mean), Thunder Clap would do more damage and threat than many other core warrior abilities. It would go from being situational to being in your main rotation (aside from the debuff which you obviously want to renew). (src)

Death Knight
DK PvP Changes
We're starting to get a lot of PvP data in, and several classes are having trouble beating rogues, Frost mages, Ret paladins and death knights.

Death knights have a lot of options at the moment, which is cool, but makes it really hard for another player to catch a break and burn a death knight down. So we're going to try some changes. I won't sugar-coat it -- these are nerfs.

-- The ghoul is doing too much damage. He is receiving 100% of death knight strength, which is much higher than most pets.
-- Chains of Ice is going back to be being dispellable. It is probably the best snare in the game at the moment, for a class that already has Death Grip.
-- The same is true of both Strangulate and Mind Freeze. Strangulate's cooldown is going to go up. Mind Freeze remains the quick interrupt.
-- We're increasing the cooldown on Anti-Magic Shell. We don't think this will hurt DKs in PvE much, and it still leaves you with Icebound Fortitude to use often.

As always, if we overdid it, if DKs are now too weak in PvP, we'll adjust. But we were at the point where we weren't getting a lot of good numbers because some fights were just over too quickly. (src)

DnD and Blood Boil graphics
The previous version (the dark smoky one) made it hard to see what was going on. We started to hear "DK, don't use that spell!" on boss fights. Not good. The NPC spell swap was a temporary fix to see if it resolved the problem.
There is a new Death and Decay and Desecrate art that should be in next build... or possibly the one after that depending on when they take data. Both do a better job of showing you the outer limit of the effect, which is generally the most important thing to know (for DK and victim). (src)

Desecration damage
Desecrate's damage not working is actually a code bug so it's a little hard to fix. We've obviously known for some time that it's a problem but it's not a trivial one to fix. We'll get it eventually. (src)

Scourge Strike
We lowered the percent weapon damage on Scourge Strike because it was the only ability that ended up scaling too well. Several other abilities didn't scale well enough and we made adjustments accordingly. But even after those changes, at some gear level Scourge Strike would have outpaced other DK abilities, forcing everyone to go Unholy. Bypassing armor is just a huge benefit. (src)

Death Coil damage
Death Coil's coefficient was increased. We more recently changed the base points, say from 390 to 440 at rank 5. You probably don't have this last change yet. If you used a Death Coil every rotation, that's a lot of extra damage. (src)

Ghoul damage and Unholy
The ghoul does too much damage. He gets, IIRC, 100% of the master's Strength, which is very generous when most pets scale at 30% or so of the master. (src)
We did structure Unholy's talents in such a way that you can completely skip over the Ghoul if you don't like pets. This is a different tact than we took with Demonology or Beast Mastery. You can get fine dps out of Unhloly through AE spells or focus on Scourge Strike. (src)

Rune Strike and Runic Power
I personally don't find the comparisons to the old Kill Command very apt. Kill Command was an almost trivial cost so it always made sense to use it whenever it was up. Rune Strike on the other hand uses 15% of your total runic power, or more than 30% of a Death Coil.

We found that the real problem, IMO, was Death Coil and Frost Strike weren't hitting hard enough relative to other DK abilities, so they didn't feel like they were worth the button push, and subsequently, building up runic power didn't feel like a big deal. Both Death Coil and Frost Strike received serious buffs. You may still find yourself at full runic power when killing mobs while leveling that take only a few hits. If you're at full runic power on bosses, something is going wrong. (src)

8970 Bug List Q/A and upcoming DK changes
Scourge Strike hitting for significantly less damage.
Looking into this. We dropped the weapon damage down to 60% but then buffed the flat points. I suspect the bugs you're reporting are more due to the crit / hit problems. However, even though Scourge Strike does Shadow damage, it should still be able to be blocked, dodged or parried. Those are properties of melee attacks. Scourge Strike is not a "spell" even though it does magical damage. It crits for 200% for example.

Wandering Plague is still getting resisted all the time.
Think we finally fixed this.

Desecration still does not grant +5% damage.
This is reported fixed but I can't verify yet.

Death and Decay is being affected by Crypt Fever.
Fixed.

Shadow of Death still buggy, not always triggering on death
Need to figure this out. It could be that the data gets messed up when existing DKs get the new data without talents being wiped.

Necrosis
I know it's annoying, but not all abilities will work right on target dummies. Try and specify when you notice a bug if it was on these, a mob or another player.

Rime not working
We are trying to make this talent work better, but it's going to take some code. Known issue for now.

EDIT:
Scourge Strike doing correct damage again.
Strikes consume Cinderglacier.
Rime works now as intended.
They tell me Desecrate works now. We'll see. :)
Hopefully you will see these changes next build. (src)

 
Brewfest - Blue Posts

Brewfest Mounts
These festive mounts are no longer purchased with tickets. Instead, they are random drops off of Coren Direbrew. (src)

Quest changes
"Pink Elekks on Parade" - Removed.
"Catch the Wild Wolpertinger" - Removed.
Wolpertinger Pet has been added to the Brewfest token vendors and is available for 50 silver.
The quest "Did Someone Say "Souvenir?" has been replaced with "Say, There Wouldn't Happen to be a Souvenir This Year, Would There?". (src)

New Locations
New locations have been added for Brewfest this year; now even more brew is accessible! (src)

Brew of the Month Club
Do you wish that Brewfest could last all year long? Join the Club... literally! (src)

Dark Iron Invasion
Dark Iron Dwarves are back! Having been silenced mid-event last year, they are angrier than ever. So instead of partaking in the fun, they'd rather crash the party. (src)

Last minute notes
Failing the ram race will make the players unable to try the quest again for 12 hours.
The tickets have changed to tokens from other years, if you want you can exchange them for the new ones.
The Dark Iron fight is not awarding tokens anymore due to a bug. (src)

Brewfest achievements
Just to clear it up, you won't be able to do a number of the achievements until the Achievement system is actually in. Item achievements remain, but others, such as Drunken Stupor or ones involving consumables, won't be retroactive. (src)

About the Brewfest Mount
The mounts will remain on the boss.
The chance of getting a mount is five times greater than that of getting a Scorched Stone in Heroic Ahune, which was bumped up from Normal. I know the numeric drop rate. I can't give you specifics, but it isn't nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. It isn't common, no, but it isn't supposed to be. (src)

Brewfest mount not prereq for Alliance?
For now, we fixed it so that both require the drop. It's now fair between Horde and Alliance. (src)

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