Elemental Shaman Changes, Hunter/Warlock Arena Issues, Blue Posts

Upcoming Elemental Shaman Changes

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

We are making some upcoming changes to the Elemental shaman tree. Our goal was to streamline a few of the utility-based talents while giving shamans a little more damage scaling in later tiers of gear.

1) Unrelenting Storm – reduced from 5 points to 3 points. Bonus is 4/8/12% of your Intellect returned as mana.
2) Elemental Warding – now reduces all damage (not just Nature, Fire and Frost) taken by 2/4/6%
3) Elemental Shields – this talent has been removed, since its effects were combined with Elemental Warding.
4) Storm, Earth and Fire – reduced from 5 points to 3 points, but keeps around the same net benefit. In addition to current effects, also increases Wind Shock range. The damage bonus to Flame Shock has increased to 60% at 3 ranks. Storm, Earth and Fire has been moved up the tree as well.
5) Shamanism – this is a new 5 point talent in the old Storm, Earth and Fire position. Your Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst gain an additional percentage of your bonus damage. We have not finalized the numbers, but it will probably be something like 10% for Lightning Bolt and 20% for Lava Burst at max ranks.

These changes will be available in the next minor content patch, and are in addition to the AE changes mentioned previously.

Arena Issues Discussion

Hunter (Source)

Because it is so difficult to get intelligent discussion on this topic, I am creating this new thread.

It will be heavily moderated.

You don't have to play a hunter to post here. But I am only interested in a discussion of mechanics, problems, ideas and solutions.

This is not a place to request a massive overhaul of talents. This is not a place for your 5 page manifesto on how to redesign the class. This is not a place to whine about past neglect or how Blizzard doesn't understand or care about class. This is not a place to declare hunters are OP and how we should pay attention to a different class.

Please stay focused. :)

Concise posts are more useful.

Warlock (Source)

Same text as Hunter post.

Blue Posts

Classes Becoming Too Similar (Source)

Getting to a point where different classes or specs feel too similar is definitely something we're concerned about. I wish players would consider that some players share this concern every time they ask for "a distance closer, because all classes have that," or "a use for Spirit, because all classes have that." Sometimes when we don't make a change that several players are asking for, this is why.

We think we have a long way to go before classes are truly homogenized, but it is a concern.

Spellpower Plate (Source)

It would feel very elegant to get rid of healing plate. But it is a pretty major change and one you aren't likely to see anytime soon.

The logical choice is to make Holy (and all paladin healing really) scale off of AP somehow. But then you also need to solve the mana pool and regen problems because melee dps rings don't have int or mp5 on them.

It's not an impossible problem to solve, but it is a big one. Changing melee druids to share a lot of gear with rogues has been tricky and something we are still working on.

Wrath's Dungeon Difficulty (Source)

We wanted to make sure players actually ran the level-up dungeons and we wanted to make sure players didn't hit the introductory raid content like a brick wall. Those are both good things, in our mind.

We certainly know how to design encounters that you can't just AE tank and AE dps your way through. In the meantime, it's nice that the instances are being seen by more than just a small percent of players. :)

Mana Regen and Spirit (Source)

As a few players have referenced, we thought mana regen got to a point at the end of BC where players could just generally ignore it and assumed that mana was just a system you eventually graduate out of (kind of like experience).

We don't want you to be out of mana constantly, but we do want the risk of that to exist. We balance some spells based on their mana cost for example and when you can always use your most expensive, least efficient spell without consequence, then your cheap and efficient spells don't compete.

Mana is a resource to be managed, much like health or cooldowns.

Dual Spec: No ETA (Source)

We don't have an ETA. We would love to get it in for 3.1 but if I said it will be in 3.1 and it isn't, then players get mad. It's easier if we just say "soon."

Druid (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)

Upcoming Feral Changes: Armor (Source)

We changed the way armor worked because we thought it was a bad design that a druid with the Naxx 25 armor trinkets would be amazing and one lacking them would be far behind, perhaps to the extent that you wouldn't be invited to tank. As a few people have pointed out, the change to the armor calculation is as much of a nerf as not getting those trinkets to drop is a nerf.

Having armor as a good stat is fun. Having armor as such a good stat that you don't really care what else the item has on it is a problem. (And to be fair, I initially didn't realize the situation was quite as broken as it was, so thanks to all the persistent druids out there on this and other forums.) While some of you liked the element of having to get a couple of fairly rare drops to be a really good tank, other druids seem to understand the problem and agree with the change.

Upcoming Feral Changes: Stuff besides armor (Source)

The other part of the design is that without bonus armor being so ridiculously good for druids, you are left with fewer stats on which you can try to improve your tanking survivability. This is the "It may have been broken, but it's all we had" argument.

While I think it is a bit silly to totally discount Stamina ("because nobody wants to be a mana sponge") and Dodge ("because it has diminishing returns") as bad tank stats, overall we are sympathetic to the idea that it's fun to get drops that make you a better tank and druids don't get to do that as much as other classes. We're talking about other ways to scale your mitigation through gear. I don't have any announcements to make about how that would work, but you should keep a couple of things in mind: 1) We wouldn't want to do it through armor or dodge, since making it easier to get those values very high unsolves the problem again, 2) Adding additional mitigation of any kind would probably mean having to nerf Ferals in other ways (like say armor) to keep you from getting too far ahead of other tanks. But we need to see what block actually does for paladins and warriors too.

Paladin (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)

Consolidated Changes Clarified (Source)

We have already announced or suggested all of these changes would be forthcoming in the next minor content patch. I thought I would list them all in one place for ease of use.

Divine Shield: Penalty changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% instead of a attack speed penalty.

1) Divine Protection no longer causes an attack penalty. Divine Shield's penalty was changed to 50% less damage done by the paladin.

2) Sacred Duty: This Protection talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional bonus Stamina.

3) Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection have a shared, 30-second cooldown. The Forbearance effect is no longer triggered by Avenging Wrath.

CLARIFICATION: You can use Hand of Protection while under the shared cooldown. You just can't use it on yourself.

4) Judgement of Wisdom now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.

5) All mana drain effects now return a percentage of max enemy mana (making mana drains less punishing to paladins and other characters without large mana pools.)

6) Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements in addition to its current effects.

7) Hand of Judgement - All paladins receive a single-target, 30 yard taunt on an 8 sec cooldown. This spell also does minor Holy damage in order to break CC and the like for pulling ease.

EDIT: Clarified HoJ, J o' Pure and taunt.

...more (Source)

I made some clarifications to my initial post.

You can use Hand of Protection during the internal cooldown, just not on yourself. The idea is to prevent the paladin from being able to combo damage immunity. We want you to still be able to use it on others.

The change to Judgements of the Pure is in addition to its current haste effects.

The taunt is called Hand of Judgement. It has a 30 yard range and 8 sec cooldown. It does a bit of Holy damage so that you can break sheep or freezing traps to pull mobs.

The change to Judgement of Wisdom was so Protection and Ret paladins (and Feral druids and whoever else) didn't feel like they were supposed to stack Int for mana, since there is none on their gear. We picked a number that shouldn't be a nerf to most Holy paladins, though it will mean that it won't keep scaling as your Int climbs, so I imagine it will be called a nerf anyway. :) We'll keep an eye on this -- perhaps adding an effect to a Holy talent or something to increase the return.

Shaman (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)

Totems (Source)

I realize buffing totems sounds strange to players who are used to loltotems. One of the designers just made the comment that telling Elemental you are buffing damage totems would be like telling Holy priests we are nerfing CoH and you're expected to area heal with Holy Nova now. :)

Totems are a core piece of the shaman design. We want to make them work, not remove them from the game.

Magma Totem Change Details (Source)

But the change to Magma Totem in particular is substantial. The base points went from 170 to 370 and the coefficient from 0.67 to 1.0. In our tests, the pulses were doing something like 600 damage. You would be hard-pressed to get that kind of increase out of Totem of Wrath, even considering its benefit to the whole raid.

Yes you have to run up, but we don't think that is too much to ask considering you can still Chain Lightning or whatever while the totem does its thing.

Warrior (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)

Heroic Leap (Source)

Heroic Leap on the other hand let players click anywhere they wanted to try and cheese pathing. Eventually, some of them found holes in the terrain they could jump through. Fixing all of those potential problem areas in the terrain was a pretty heavy price to pay for one talent.

We could have changed Heroic Leap to not have a targeting component, like Blink and Disengage, but we thought that would make it Blink and Disengage.

Please don't turn every issue into "Blizzard hates my class."

Realm First 80

Now that Wrath of the Lich King has been out for a while, it's likely that most NA and EU realms have a level 80.  What class/race was the first to 80 for your realm?  For Kilrogg, a Human Warrior and Night Elf Rogue both hit 80 at right around the same time (they were leveling together), though apparently only the Human Warrior got credit for the Realm First 80 achievement in the realm wide broadcast.

Sartharion with 3 Drakes Up

Quite a few guilds now have killed Sartharion while leaving the 3 drakes alive for the encounter.  This of course rewards the raid with the Heroic: The Twilight Zone achievement, "Twilight Vanquisher" title, and the Twilight Drake.  Head over to the Guild Progress forum to find out who all has done it, and feel free to post if your guild has too!

Share On: