New Arenas, EU Compensation, Pet Defensive, Blue Posts

While the Beta forums last we'll be labeling posts on them with a Wrath () icon so you can quickly tell before jumping to them where they are.  Since some won't have access to join in on that particular discussion, it should be fairly useful.

Arena End Reminder

Quote from: Crygil (Source)

We wanted to remind everyone that Arena season 4 is coming to a close. During next Tuesday's maintenance, all arena teams, as well as ratings, will be wiped and arena charter NPCs disabled. Thus, arena points will, unfortunately, not be rewarded for rated games played this week.

The next Arena season will begin on December 16th, and once that happens players at level 70 will be able to participate in rated matches against level 70 opponents and gain Arena points for item purchases but will not count towards the end of season rewards. At the same time, level 80 players will be able to compete in rated arena matches where they can gain arena points which can be used to purchase level 80 arena gear, as well as compete for end-of-season rewards. Additionally, players at level 70 will continue to be able to play skirmish Arena matches against other level 70 opponents even after Wrath of the Lich King launches. It's also important to note that two new skirmish brackets (71-75, 76-80) will be available for players who wish to hone their Arena skills while leveling in Northrend.

Two Arenas Added in 3.0.3

Though this was strangely left out of the 3.0.3 patch notes, Nethaera contacted us to let us know about two new arenas that were added in Tuesday's update.  She also posted on the official forums about it, to make the community as a whole aware.  While Osirisofdoom reported it here on the 4th, it's nice to finally have it confirmed by Blizzard as intended.

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

With the latest patch release, we’ve added two new arenas: the Dalaran Sewers and the Ring of Valor in Orgrimmar. These arenas offer new obstacles and challenges for strategy savvy players. The arenas have been added to the random rotation and are accessible via the queue system as Skirmishes. For more information on these two new arenas, please visit http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/insider/11/arena.xml . Both Dalaran Sewers and the Ring of Valor will also be available for tournament play during Arena Season 5.

EU Realm Compensation Complete

Quote from: Wryxian (Source)

We have now credited all eligible accounts with this compensation. You should be able to see this in your Account Management.

Pet Defensive Change

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

We recently changed the way defensive stance works for pets. In the old design, the pet would not attack a target that you were attacking until it did something to generate threat - typically attacking you. In the new design, as soon as you attack a target, the pet will attack the target too. Our thinking was that this made defensive a little easier to use and you still have passive to override that behavior.

However, we have heard from some players (hunters mostly, though this isn't just a hunter issue) that they prefer the old defensive stance. We wanted to get a little more feedback from players on the issue.

In order to keep this readable, please don't stray into other hunter or pet issues that don't directly affect this topic. Also please don't attempt to redesign the feature (such as having four stances).

Blue Posts

More attention being given to Damage Dealing forum? (Source)

Sadly, probably half of my posts on the DPS forums are trying to correct perceptions about the new forums or to explain that I can't respond to every post. I still read the healing and tanking ones a lot, but honestly they're just working a lot better. There are some great discussions already comparing healer roles and healing problems in general.

Like any forum, you probably won't be interested in every thread. If there is a thread solely dealing with say Chain Heal and you're a priest, maybe you skip over that one. That's cool -- it doesn't mean the forum is a failure. But if there is a thread on AE healing in general, that might be of interest to you and the kind of discussion that was really hard to have before.

Collector's Edition Availability (Source)

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Q u o t e:

Neth, since you're right here... how come the Collector's Edition is so impossible to find? Every store in the area sold out of their very limited stock within an hour of preorders opening up. Seems like if demand is that high Blizzard could just print some more?

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You'd have to talk to the retailers about that. I seem to recall last year some retailers having extras set aside for release night, but I couldn't tell you if that will happen this year again or not.

Role Forums: PVP Discussion (Source)

I think the forum is being dominated by PvP concerns right now, which is not our intent. However we also worry that splitting it into two forums would cause some of the same problems again where the same discussions were happening in multiple places.

It's something we are definitely keeping an eye on though.

Blizzard Lore Team (Source)

We have a Historian and a department dedicated to the lore, the characters, and the worlds that have been created. They have a lot on their plates but they do a fantastic job.

Jobs in that department fall under Creative Development for those wondering. (Source)

More Profession Recipes Post-launch (Source)

It is very likely that we will be adding more recipes to all trade skills as the content progresses. The reason the crafter only weapons were done away with however was that most people chose to take the profession purely for the purposes of being able to skip ahead of the content or not do the content because smithing provided them with something far easier to attain than anything else they could normally get. While this is ok from time to time with an occasional piece of gear, the concept of crafters making "best in slot" items was more or less considered bad from our end. When many people dropped the trade skills they enjoyed simply because taking a different trade skills made them more powerful (Stormherald, Frozen Shadowweave) than that is clearly not what we intended.

As far as "what do I get from profession X", well I think many of the posters in this thread have pointed that out. All trade skills now provide some special benefit to the crafter that isn't just a super item. In the case of blacksmithing it's the ability to add sockets to your gear. Most of the profession perks are relatively equal in terms of what they provide, some are slightly better than others, but not enough so that you should feel ou are missing out by doing the profession you enjoy doing.

Beta forums receiving reduced attention (Source)

I know we have neglected the beta forums. Beta is ending soon and I thought it was more important to try and invest a little energy in getting these role forums off to a good start.

Hunter

Autoshot not doing damage during Volley (Source)

That is by design. Even if it wasn't by design, the current implementation is a good idea because Volley does so much damage now.

Exotic Pets vs. Cats: DPS (Source)

We made a big pass on pet dps for 3.0.3 so I'm not sure if your tests are reflecting those changes or not. Cats are still a good dps pet, but they shouldn't flat out beat every exotic. The exotic balance is obviously tricky. BM of all hunters shouldn't be forced to only be able to pick from the relatively small pool of exotic pets.

Mage

Ignite (Source)

Unfortunately, they are apples and oranges with regard to fixes. Ignite sometimes munching charges has a lot to do with Internet lag. We just can't always tell when one hit lands a split second before another one. We are still working on it though because it's a cool talent. I know I have personally answered this question many times, so I'm surprised you couldn't find that answer.

Disengage being fixed before Blink (Source)

If we can fix the problem with slopes and minor obstructions that will apply to both talents. Disengage has some additional bugs that Blink doesn't have.

Mages consider Spirit a "throw away" stat (Source)

Strength is a throw away stat. Spirit benefits you, just not as much as you'd like. We're talking a lot about all of the "converts one stat into another talents." Many of those were implemented to solve problems with different specs sharing gear. We're not sure we want to go down the road of providing talents to convert every second tier stat into a primary stat. That list would get long.

Arcane Rotations (Source)

We would like to give you a new rotation mostly because Arcane Blast doesn't really work in PvE and because the PvP "rotation" seems to be: something -> something -> bored -> ARCANE BARRAGE!

On the OP issue, here is one of those times where people are calling for nerfs but we don't believe it's a problem. To everyone who thinks we knee jerk based on QQ posts, here is a case where that's not happening.

Shatter and PVE (Source)

You have some. If you mean in PvE, we would like to provide some. The two things standing in our way at the moment are: 1) Frost PvE dps is already high, so we would have to nerf it in order to build it back up through combos (which seems to be fine with a lot of Frost mages, but isn't the highest priority ATM because the issue is "not interesting enough" instead of "broken"), and 2) Frost Bolt just does more damage than Ice Lance. If we buff Ice Lance, then PvP shatters are too high. So we need to rebuild the spells and talents to make the whole thing work -- it's not an easy fix. But it's something we want to do.

Paladin

Sanctified Wrath: Not giving 50% armor bypass (Source)

We think we accidentally broke this effect. It wasn't an intentional nerf, but we're still looking into it.

Update: We did break it. We should be able to hotfix this soon. (Source)

Shaman

The fun factor (Source)

Fun is very relative. I think shamans are fun now. Obviously other players may disagree. I think the part where shamans aren't as fun is actually at low level when you don't have a lot of spells and are forced to either slowly drop your totems every fight or just live without them/.

I think the shaman is definitely playable now. The class doesn't crash your client when you play one and if your damage is low at all, it certainly isn't at 50% of other specs.

Being a good raid member now (and at 60) is important to us, but far, far less important than at 80. The number of raids being done at levels less than max is a trivial number and we would be doing a disservice to most of our customers if we spent too much effort to solve such edge cases. I also think there would be howls of protest if we announced we were slipping LK in order to address balance concerns at 60 and 70. Everyone knows Lich King is going to ship next week. We tried to give you plenty of fun things to do (achievements, raiding EZ mode, zombies) since some of the class changes to prepare for LK started going in several weeks ago.

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