Upcoming Raid Content & Class Changes, Blue Posts, Free Char Moves

Update 17:30 - Added an important blue post about TBC raid content changes.

TBC Raid Content Changes

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

To coincide with the upcoming new talents and mechanic changes for classes in the next patch, we are making some adjustments in existing raid content to provide a smooth transition when the upcoming patch is released. The creatures and bosses in raid dungeons that were introduced in The Burning Crusade will have their health reduced, and most will have their standard melee damage output reduced as well, but their spell and ability damage are not being changed. These changes are being made in all raid dungeons from Karazhan to Sunwell Plateau as well as the outdoor encounters of Doom Lord Kazzak and Doomwalker. On top of this Illidan is also doing his part and will stop casting Shear on players.

Druid - Upcoming Restoration changes

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

Here are the changes we're making next patch. See how they feel.

• Wild Growth: Coefficient and healing increased. Mana cost decreased. Cost should be about the same as Circle of Healing. It doesn't heal instantly, but will heal for about double what CoH does over its duration.
• Nourish: Reduced mana cost by somewhere between 15 and 20%. This is supposed to be your Flash Heal, but we recognize that it doesn't have the same versatility -- you can't just drop one on a wounded rogue or something since you need the hot up first. Hence the lower price.

Druids have quite an arsenal of healing spells now, and it can be tricky to find niches for all of them.

Paladin - Upcoming Divine Plea change

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

We are still showing good healing from Holy paladins. However, we are getting feedback that they may be struggling with mana and perhaps even with boredom. To help with both of these potential problems, We are going to change Divine Plea to only reduce your healing by 20% (up from 100%). However, the original nerf to the spell was partially because of it being difficult to stop a paladin in PvP, so we are going to make the effect dispellable.

We're still taking a look at some of Holy's deep talents and I do want to acknowledge that there have been many great suggestions to change some of those.

We understand that some Holy paladins still feel that their movement and group healing mechanics aren't sufficient yet. However, we still like Bacon of Light , Holy Shock and talents like Infusion of Light to help with these problems. We want to get a few of the kinks out and see them in action more before making further changes here.

We also want to reiterate that measuring healing is much tougher than estimating dps or tank mitigation. While healing throughput and efficiency are important, so is knowing who to heal when and with what spell. We're going to keep a close eye on this through the rest of beta, in the Burning Crusade patch and when Lich King goes live.

Shaman - Upcoming Enhancement changes

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

Here are our concerns: Lavaburst makes scaling from spell damage so good that Enhancement shamans were debating wearing Elemental gear. Enhancement shamans were also looking at using caster daggers to maximize procs. Both of these trends would cause us severe item headaches down the road and also don't fit the kit of the tree.

We're changing Maestrom Weapon to no longer affect Lavaburst. We are also changing the proc rate to a proc per minute mechanic instead of a chance on hit.

To compensate for lost damage, we are raising Flurry back up to 30% max haste and raising Dual Wield back up to 6% hit.

I don't expect this news to be popular based on previous receptions to my posts here, but I remain an eternal optimist that you'll eventually come to realize that we are trying to get all of the classes balanced. Please try to keep that in mind.

Blue Posts

Season 4 gear rating requirement
The rating requirement on the Season 4 gear will remain. It won't be till you're well on your way to level 80 that you start collecting gear that is better, so we're wanting them to remain somewhat limited in availability. (src)

Ghostcrawler on mana management
We do want mana management to be a part of the game. The right way to play, especially for healers, is not to spam all your heals as fast as you can and then go out of mana. Instead, we want to reward players who can rely on hots, limit overhealing, coordinate with other healers so they aren't double healing the same target, and knowing when a fight is won so you can take a break and start mana regeneration. If healers don't ever go OOM, then the only way to ever lose a fight is for the bosses to hit so hard that sometimes you just get bad luck, to have strict enrage timers so you have to learn to maximize your dps, or make the fights so complicated that they take a lot of explanation and practice. In the good old days, one of the best gear checks was could you keep the tank (and to a lesser extent the group) up without going out of mana. (src)

Death Knight
Frost tree to get some buffs
Disease damage went down a little, which will lower's Unholy's overall dps. Dancing Rune Weapon was doing a huge portion of blood's dps. We thought it was cooler to let it hit hard but be out less often.
When we made these changes, Blood's dps was higher than Unholy's, which was higher than Frost's. Frost is probably still a little light as I write this so they may get more buffs. (src)

New Icy Touch damage to be switched to Obliterate and Howling Blast
n our most recent tests, Frost's dps is still below Blood and Unholy. Icy Touch should make up some of those differences, but it will probably require more. We suspect Blood and Unholy just get a lot of bonus damage from talents like Bloody Vengeance and Ebon Plaguebringer that Frost can't quite yet match.

We think what we might end up doing is shifting some of that damage from Icy Touch to Obliterate and Howling Blast. We got Frost's dps up a lot, which is good. It's also cool to see Icy Touch feel like a nuke again. We just want to back off of it a little and buff the double rune abilities. (src)

Death Knights having less mitigation than the 3 other tanks?
Druids mitigate a lot more damage at the moment than warriors do without any block at all. If DKs are low, improving their armor will have a similar effect. We just have to be careful, because DKs do have a lot of cooldowns, and it's possible they'll mitigate too much if we overcompensate.

Now, it's possible that block might eventually surpass druid armor for mitigation, but that makes a lot of assumptions based on fights, item levels and content in general that doesn't exist yet. We have done some comparisons based on theoretical gear, but it's going to be theoretical for many months.

Also remember that while avoidance is still dangerous to rely on as a tank, it is less dangerous than it used to be since bosses won't be doing back to back crushing blows. Druids were amazing tanks in BC even with crushing blows, and only started to fall down because they ran out of gear to improve their mitigation, hit the armor cap, and ran into Sunwell Radiance. (src)


DK Tanking - Block & Parry
Thott is correct that warrior block gains more from Strength than DK parry does. But we don't really want DK parry to reach crazy levels. A death knight with 80% parry is probably a very bad tank, not a great one. Block on the other hand always does a great job of mitigating physical damage, as long as it continues to grow.

Abilities like Forceful Deflection are intended to make up for differences such as not having a gun or shield with mitigation stats on it. To actually get death knight mitigation where it needs to be, they are going to need a lot of block like a plate-wearer or a lot of armor like a druid. The second option is far more likely. (src)

Druid
Bear tanking to be "nerfed"
However, we are probably going to have to nerf bears. If we don't, they will be the only MT choice for serious guilds. At the moment, bears in decent gear take less damage, have more health and generate more threat than the other 3 classes by a wide enough margin that we think it's a problem. This is even true on bosses that do a lot of magic damage (like Malygos).

I use the word "nerf" because players use it, and I don't want to hind behind euphamisms. But changing the numbers doesn't have to mean nerfing you into the ground. We just don't want you to dominate. I'm sure you'd feel the same way if Protection paladins were just head and shoulders above the other tanks.

We understand that some Ferals felt they were nerfed in BC either prematurely or in such a way that kept them steadily behind other tanks. (Though Sunwell Radiance was largely for bears.) We will try to make intelligent changes so that you're still out there tanking the Lich King himself. We want you to be about as good as warriors, paladins and death knights, not way above or below them. (src)

Typhoon bugged
We are getting widespread reports that it is still happening in some form. Relearning the spell should fix it. But any druid who had the bug before and did not untalent may still have it. (src)

Hunter
Pet level rate change
We just recently increased the pet level rate. Pets needed 1/16th of hunter experience to gain a level, but don't benefit from quests or rest. Those two account for a lot of experience, especially at higher levels (where quest content tends to be denser).
We changed the experience needed for 1/10th. You should notice a big jump in pet level rates. I am not sure if that change got in the most recent data push. (src)

New Growl rank added
We recently added a new rank of Growl. Once we have the final numbers in for it, that should help with threat a great deal. (src)

Ghostcrawler answers to a few questions (src)

• Polar Bear Cub -- This wasn't intended to be a tamable pet, and it looked ridiculous.
• Black Arrow -- This was an ability we were experimenting with. It isn't actually in the plan for hunters at this point in time. Usually we hide internal abilities better, but we're trying to get beta builds out quickly and this one slipped through the cracks.
• Freezing Trap -- The intent was that this trap break on a flat damage amount. However, we found that pets did not respect traps set up that way as CC and would happily break them. When and if we get the pet AI fixed, we'll revert it to the less fragile form of the trap.
• Lock and Load -- The design we settled on is 2/4/6, making it better than Nightfall (for comparison). If it's too low, we'll adjust it.
• Aimed Shot -- The intention is that it is better than Multi-Shot against a single target, and that the two share a cooldown so that hunter shot rotations don't get back into crazy land too quickly again. It should not reset your auto shot and should have the same cooldown as Multi Shot. It apparently isn't doing that on your version of the beta build. It will next build.

Mage
Arcane Blast mana penalty lowered
We are going to lower the mana penalty after the first blast... but it's possible you already have that change. (src)

Water Elemental not inheriting Master's hit
We'll check it out. (src)

Paladin
Protection Paladins and AoE Mitigation
In our tests, Protection paladins have mitigation right up there with warriors and probably better threat generation. If there is anything we're concerned about, it's that eventually paladin block may not stack up to warrior block because of e.g. talents like Critical Block. But that's something we're keeping an eye on and please note that we're talking about theoretical encounters and gear that don't actually exist yet. The game could be completely different by the time we get to that point. We have made a ton of changes to the way classes work and haven't even gotten to see them on Live yet.

In BC, it was not a goal to have paladins be able to MT every encounter. It is now. (src)

Priest
GC on moving Fort & Shield
We liked the idea of moving Imp Inner Fire. There seemed to be a lot of disagreement about whether Imp PW:Shield or Imp Fort should move down to take its place. We talked about it some, and we're cool with moving Fort up and Shield down. (src)

Rogue
Regarding Poisons and Sap
The immune bosses is a topic we're discussing. This applied to elemental resist and disease immune bosses too.

On the one hand, I totally understand why it can be frustrating. On the other hand, there aren't that many of them the last time I looked, and we do like to have variety in the boss fights. You should have to approach each one differently and not just immediately fall into the same rotation the second the pull happens. I realize it's a narrow path to tread without it being too punative.

We discussed letting sap get refreshed a lot. We did fear some problems with PvP so we decided to try expanding the number of targets on which it can be used first. If that doesn't make rogues good enough at CC, we'll consider other buffs to sap.

In my experience, sap pays for its inability to be renewed since you can do it before a pull. With traps or sheep, either the CC'er pulls (bad idea) or has to grab incoming targets and CC them before they get within the range of the AE threat generation. The biggest downside I find playing with a rogue is the time it takes. When it's a good rogue that you run with a lot, they can be setting up the next fight while everyone is still drinking. But when you're in a pug or with a timid rogue, having to mark, then sap, then pull can really slow down progress compared to just pulling and hoping the CC works itself out. (src)

Shaman
Enhancement - Some recent nerfs to physical damage might be undone
We're still not happy with how pushed Enhancement feels towards caster gear and feeling like a caster in general. We want to keep the spell damage in there, but it will probably end up being less to push Enhance back towards melee. This might let us undo some of the recent nerfs to physical damage, but no promises until we get things to a state that we like. (src)

Enhancement - Spirit Wolves
The last numbers I saw, the wolves did fairly nice dps. They do scale their strength, stamina and resistance from yours and inherit your hit. We can make sure nothing broke though.

They are intended to be burst damage, like the elementals. The root breaking is useful and the healing is a little bonus. The taunt will probably always be pretty situational, but the idea was you might be able to save the day sometimes if adds are running amuck. (src)

Warlock
Developer Q/A (src)
Firestone/Soulstone – Will there be a Crit/haste swap? Will they be useable in arena?
Firestones and Spellstones should be usable in Arena. We'll get that fixed.

Is there more 'polish' coming to the trees? Destro is pretty odd in terms of skills and rotation still.
We will continue to polish the trees. I want to be careful saying that though because I have apparently made various classes think that we promised to overhaul them all.

Deaths Embrace is not affecting DoTs, only Shadowbolt and drains. Is this intended?
This sounds like a bug.

It has bee stated that the lower utility you bring, the more DPS you should have. Will this extend to Destro locks? (It has the lowest utility of all 3 specs, and still lower than a mage).
Our philosophy used to be that big buffers had to have lower dps. We decided there were problems with that design and are now trying a system where buffs (or utility if you'd like) are easy to procure and less of a deciding factor and individual player skill (and gear to a lesser extent) are more important to determining your effectiveness. In short, we don't balance utility to much of a budget as we do dps.

While some scaling has been great, are there any intentions of resilience/armor/avoidance (some still die easy)? A pet, especially in Demonology, should live past 2-3 hits.

As you know, we have been very reluctant to give resilience to pets. We don't want to see players dying before they can even kill the pet, let alone the master. We try to provide the warlock and hunter with tools to keep the pets alive. But this is something we're watching closely, and I'm not sure we've seen enough PvP yet to really know how pets are going to stack up. We did recently buff pet health yet again, and we are going to let them inherit the spell pen of the master (they already inherit the hit rating).

Will a PvE element be added into demonic circle (Standing in it grants buff X)?
Our concern was that once we do that, the lock drops it every fight and stands in it. The spell becomes just another buff and all of its other effects would be ignored.

Will fear be altered so that it can be used more effectively in PvE? (We can no longer ‘curse juggle’)
Curse juggling was a very hardcore tactic. Yes, it demonstrated mastery of the class mechanics, but it also made groups reluctant to have the lock fear at all, because it wasn't easy to do. With the flat damage break, you should still have control over when the fear ends.

Warrior
Deep Wounds bugged
Last I checked, Arms and Fury were a little low, but getting closer. We found a bug in Deep Wounds (not sure if you guys have it or not) that wasn't doing Arms any favors. (src)

Europe - Free Character Migration

Quote from: Thundgot (Source)

Due to population differences between the highest and lowest populated PvP realms, the following Free Character Migration will be available from from October 1st to October 7th:

From: Al'Akir, Kazzak, Stormscale
To: Boulderfist, Xavius

Please note that this migration may be closed at any time should a destination realm's population rise too high.

If you have any questions about this specific migration, please feel free to add them below. However, note that migration is opened based on realm population analysis, not popular demand, so requests for other free migrations will not be responded to.

FAQ: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/faq/charactermove.html

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