Summoning Change, BlizzCast #6, Blue Posts

Upcoming Warlock Summoning Change

Yes, this was posted earlier today.  Yes, I'm posting it again, because this is a pretty huge change for Warlock summoning.

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

As we have mentioned, we are discussing some exciting changes to how soul shards might work. This is not an announcement of an overhaul to that system, but it will make shard use slightly less painful.

When a warlock casts Ritual of Summoning, instead of creating a portal, they will summon a new creation similar to a dungeon meeting stone. It will cost one shard to create this item. Then, anyone in the warlock’s party or raid can use the “meeting stone” to summon other members of the group. For example, once the warlock summons the stone, then party members B and C could summon D without the warlock’s direct involvement, and most importantly without requiring additional shards. You will be able to bring the rest of a 25-person raid quickly (since you can summon folks simultaneously), for the cost of a single shard, and with less clicking on the part of the lock.

The “meeting stone” will last 5 minutes with a 5 minute cooldown. It will not be usable in areas where summoning is currently restricted, such as battlegrounds or in combat. Creating the stone still requires 2 people in addition to the warlock. Summoning actual party members only requires 2 people.

This change will be in for the next patch, which will occur before the 3.1 Ulduar content patch.

BlizzCast Episode 6

Included in BlizzCast is a chat about the tools Blizzard uses, including WoWEdit -- their largest tool to date -- used to create pretty much everything in World of Warcraft.  It's very interesting to hear that a single tool comprises so many aspects of World of Warcraft's development.

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

In the sixth epic episode of BlizzCast, we spend a day with a developer and find out what life is like for World of Warcraft Lead Tools Programmer Monte Krol. Next, we take a look at StarCraft II unit design from concept to creation with Senior Art Director Samwise Didier and Lead Game Designer Dustin Browder. In our third segment, Bashiok spends some time with Anthony Rivero, senior artist for Diablo III, and discusses "bridging the gap" in the series’ character design. Bornakk wraps the episode up by answering some questions from the community.

http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode6.xml

Blue Posts

There weren't really that many useful blue posts today, but the ones found are below.

Does GC like Hunters more? (Source)

It's funny when someone says I like the hunters and druids more. You should ask the hunters and druids. :(

This is why we try to discourage you from commenting on which topics or posts we respond to. It's just not helpful in the long run. Even if I kept a running tally of every class I responded to every day to make sure everybody got a cookie, then the problem would be that some response weren't substantive enough, or didn't address PvP (or PvE), or weren't polite enough or whatever.

Sometimes posts get blue responses. I really wouldn't try to read between the lines on it beyond that.

Druid

Feral Weapons (Source)

On the subject of weapons, this change should be transparent to most druids. You will end up having a few more items that you can use, but your feral staves will continue to do the damage they do now. If it makes it clearer, imagine that feral attack power is not going away as a concept, but weapon dps will instead translate to their current FAP values. This is also not license for us to never again add weapons which are optimized for druids. It should just provide more options in between major upgrades.

Feral Armor (Source)

On the subject of armor, the intent of the change is to give you more options in which trinkets and other jewelry you use, instead of always having to rely on the (relatively rare) bonus armor pieces. (We don't think the solution of just dropping bonus armor pieces everywhere is a great one either -- no single stat should trump the others by that much.) The change isn't intended to be a nerf at all. A lot of numbers have been thrown around in this thread. Give me some time to review them and see where any discrepancies lie.

Our design remains to have fewer specialized items drop so that more loot is actually valued by someone in the group. A lot of the druid itemization was a relic of the older system and we have been wanting to convert it over. But with any change like this, it may take some time before all of the rough edges are smoothed over. To use a tired cliche, the designers tend to take the stance that the design of WoW is a journey not a destination.

Bear Scaling (Source)

I realize some players have made some passionate and intelligent arguments for other ways in which bears can scale from gear. That isn't something we are going to do at the moment, but something we may investigate in the future. I understand that it's fun to improve tanking gear, and while we don't want it to be such a burden to get the +armor pieces, we also don't want the choices to be so meaningless that you aren't gearing for tanking at all. Let's see how things stand after these changes go live.

Block Mechanics (Source)

Block is a very good stat now, and we have read a lot about the notion that "unblocked hits are the new crushing blows." We don't want the block mechanic to mean that death knights and druids (and possibly even paladins) are left behind. Again the goal is to have four viable tank classes. That doesn't mean identical, but it also doesn't mean that druids get swapped out for some fights or relegated to permanent off-tank status.

Comic Strip Club: Lich Daddy

For those of you that follow comicstripclub.com, they have a new World of Warcraft comic out, called Lich Daddy.

Pronunciation Time: Dalaran

This thread has a few blue replies, but it's nothing serious.  That said, it made me very curious: how do you pronounce Dalaran?  Feel free to share it in the comments!

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