Dual Spec Changes, 3.1 PTR Notes Update, 3.1 PTR Blue Posts

3.1 PTR Info Compilation

Don't forget to check the 3.1 PTR Info Compilation for everything found so far on the PTR. I'll continue to update the site as new things are discovered, especially once Ulduar testing begins (and once I can stop crashing!)

Dual Spec System Changes

Yesterday there were a few blue posts by Zarhym that detailed changes to the Dual Spec System from when it was originally announced. Here are the changes.

Level requirement has been lowered to 40.
Reagent requirement (Lexicon of Power) has been removed!
Cooldown has been removed, though you cannot swap specs in combat, or in Arenas/Battlegrounds.

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

You literally just click a button, and after a 5 second cast, your specializations, glyphs, and action bars swap. You must be out of combat, and it still cannot be used in battlegrounds or arenas. There is currently no cooldown on the ability to swap specializations though.

More... (Source)

Yes, the feature is available to level 40 or higher characters. I believe this change is live on the PTR now, but am not sure off-hand what build the change was made in, and whether or not that is the build that's live.

I have tested on a level 80 character though on the PTR to confirm that the lexicon is not needed and the swap can be done from anywhere.

How do talent-specific cooldowns (like Arcane Power) work when you swap specs?

The cooldowns will remain and continue counting down, even if you flip specializations back and forth.

3.1 PTR Patch Notes Updated

Some time yesterday, the official patch notes for the 3.1 PTR were updated, so I updated them on our 3.1 PTR Patch Notes article too. A handful of the changes players noticed on the PTR that were missing have been added, primarily for Mages. A recap of the additions and changes. Things marked out were removed.

Death Knight

Talents
- Blood
  - Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the Death Knight. In addition, it will now only echo Death Knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.
- Frost
  - ~~Black Ice now grants 2/4/6/8/10% Shadow damage in addition to the Frost damage.~~
  - Blood of the North: Now also increases damage dealt by Frost Strike by 15%. (Was: Blood of the North is 3 ranks instead of 5 for the same effect.)
  - Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff (up from 30%). ~~Moved to position currently occupied by Glacier Rot.~~
  - ~~Glacier Rot: Third rank added, and damage bonus increased to 7/13/20. Moved to position currently occupied by Endless Winter.~~
  - Howling Blast: Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree, and damage bonus to targets afflicted by Frost Fever reduced from 100% to ~~20%~~50%.
- Unholy
  - ~~Epidemic: Epidemic now has 3 ranks (adding an additional 3 sec of disease duration).~~
  - Outbreak: Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 15/30/45% and Scourge Strike by 10/20/30%. (Was: Outbreak bonus for Scourge Strike lowered to 10/20/30%.)

Druid

Maim: This ability is now considered a stun, and shares a diminish category with all other stuns. It no longer has a chance to break from the target taking damage.
Talents
- Feral
  - Savage Roar is now considered an Enrage effect and now increases physical damage done by 30% instead of increasing attack power. (Was: Savage Roar is now considered an Enrage effect.)
- Restoration
  - Living Seed: This talent now accounts for total healing including overhealing. (Was: Living Seed: This talent now accounts for your ineffective healing, rather than effective.)
  - Intensity: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

Hunter

Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 sec.
Talents
- Survival
  - T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%~~, and gives your Explosive Shot a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Immolation Trap effect on the target~~.

Mage

Mage Armor: Now grants 50% of mana regeneration while casting.
Talents
- Arcane
  - Arcane Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.
- Fire
  - Pyromaniac: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

Paladin

Talents
- Holy
  - Improved Concentration Aura: The resistance to silence and interrupt granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Concentration Aura.
- Protection
  - Improved Devotion Aura: The additional healing granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Devotion Aura.
- Retribution
  - Sanctified Retribution: The bonus to damage done granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Retribution Aura.

Priest

Talents
- Discipline
  - Divine Aegis: Divine Aegis effects will now stack, however the amount absorbed cannot exceed 125*level (of the target). It will also now take into account total healing including overhealing. (Overhealing note added)
  - Meditation and Improved Power: Word shield have changed locations with each other.
  - Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting
- Shadow
  - Improved Spirit Tap: Now grants 17/33% of mana regeneration while casting.

Bug Fixes

Death Knight
- Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the Death Knight. In addition, it will now only echo Death Knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.

Blue Posts

As expected, lots of posts by Ghostcrawler (and Blizzard in general) related to the 3.1 PTR. Don't forget to check the 3.1 PTR Known Issues Thread on the official forums before reporting bugs, to help reduce clutter on the PTR forums.

General

Traveler's Tundra Mammoth: No longer able to kick vendors? (Source)

It's not intended. Looking into this now.

Only two specs in the Dual Spec system? (Source)

We may consider allowing for more at a future point in time. At this point, we're going to sit at two and see how the system works out.

Why no tanking Kirin Tor ring? (Source)

The needs for improving tanking gear is fairly PvE specific (yes, generalizing a bit here) so we try to focus on having this gear gained through this content.

Colorblind Option Explained (Source)

The option can be accessed in the interface panel. There are no drastic changes such as changing the game to black and white, however we've tried to implement changes that make it easier to identify things such as item quality, if a mob is hostile or not, etc.

As I'm sure many have seen, we've changed things here and there in boss fights (in the past) to help those that may have problems identify colors with some other indicators where possible as well. This is just another thing we thought might be helpful. We'd love to see feedback from those of you that try out the new option.

Be Mine! on the PTR (Source)

To clarify... Be Mine was not removed from the meta; it's still there. However, the achievement has been changed to require any six of the eight possible candies. As such, the effort involved is still present, but it's no longer quite so reliant on pure luck.

Raids & Dungeons

Kel'Thuzad's Threat Wipe Removal (Source)

There didn't need to be a raid wide threat wipe when Chains of Kel'Thuzad is cast because we no longer charm the main tank. So I removed the threat wipe.

Who is Jillian McWeaksauce? (Source)

Jillian McWeaksauce is Wrath of the Lich King's version of Flaskataur for use on the PTRs. We'll also bring Ursula McWeaksauce out when we want to test specific hard modes, as she gives out the Shirt of Uber. The Shirt will effectively increase your items' statistics so we can simulate testers having the full Ulduar gear we assume they will have for hard mode.

Death Knight

Is Ebon Plague stacking being fixed? (Source)

It is something we want to fix. There is just a lot we still want to do on 3.1.

Why was Dual Wield entirely dismantled? (Source)

If we didn't want death knights to dual wield, then we would have just removed the ability for them to dual wield. However, the damage DKs could do with DW was absurdly high in some cases, and that became the standard to which all other classes were comparing themselves. Hmm, if DKs are doing 6500 dps, then clearly my spec can anticipate yummy buffs in 3.1.

More on Dual Wield (Source)

DKs are a new class without four years of theorycrafting history. Some of the current builds being used were not the ones being used originally -- they developed over time as players experimented with mixes of specs and gear. As good as the community is at theorycrafting -- and it is very, very good -- not many people can look at a list of changes in a vacuum and predict what builds players will be using a couple of months from now, especially for a new class like this.

We think there will be other DW builds that develop. Some we have in mind and some no doubt the community will surprise us with. But we think the pendulum had swung too heavily away from 2H for the class. To be sure there were some 2H builds whose damage was also too high, and we have nerfed those as well.

What's with the major shift in the talent trees? (Source)

If we never again see DKs pick up one-handed weapons, then we will make changes to prop up that playstyle more. But I have tried to be very clear that we do not want to see the entire DK class gravitate towards DW as the only sensible way to do dps, and that is exactly how it was trending. We needed to change the trees so that something existed besides hybrid builds trying to skim the best talents off of all three trees. That meant the deep talent trees were not competitive, which is why we made so many changes. (And no, when DKs were already doing 6000+ dps, we weren't going to inflate those talents to compete with hybrid DW builds.)

Why were DK Aura talents changed? (Source)

Unholy Aura was becoming mandatory as a raid buff. We considered giving it to other classes, but realized we would just be accepting all players moving faster all the time (which subsequently also makes some boot enchants look bad). Frost Aura was kind of lame, but I'm sure we could have come up with something better. Mostly, the mechanic was just a little awkward and hard to explain. We like the new one better.

Players often wish for a buff so awesome that it guarantees them a raid slot. But that is exactly the mentality we were trying to prevent with our big buff and debuff overhaul. In the Sunwell era, raid slots were already so precious that there is a good chance a DK might not have even earned a spot, and having more than one would be a total waste... unless we gave them two mandatory buffs, in which case the Retadin, Boomkin or dps warrior might have gotten the heave ho.

The new model is designed to let you get as many buffs as you want through several different configurations of classes and specs and still have some slots left over to bring who you want.

Druid

Maim Change (Source)

The change to Maim is probably a buff to the solo or BG druid. You won't be able to use it as well for chaining CC, so in that respect it's a nerf to Arenas.

CC definitely has a huge role in PvP, but being chained for too long with no reasonable ways to get out is not a fun way to play the game. You aren't making decisions. You are just dying and hoping you die slow enough for the rest of your team to somehow pull off something truly amazing. CC needs to be about checks and balances. It needs to be about using it at the right time and deciding when and how to break it.

Immediately burning someone down at the start of the fight while they are chain CC'd isn't a clever strategy that makes you a really good player. It is something we are trying to improve.

Owlkin Frenzy (Source)

The nerf to moonkin frenzy was because moonkin kept standing in the fire in order to enhance their dps, which seems like not the kind of gameplay we should be encouraging and makes healers write us nastygrams in all capital letters.

We realize it's a PvP nerf and we're trying to come up with other ways to solve the problem. It may be that the current implementation on Live is the best one after all.

http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/class/small_hunter.gif Hunter

Trap Launcher (Source)

1) Trap Launcher is a very cool idea and something we would love to do. However, it requires a lot of tech and may end up beyond the scope of what we can do for patch 3.1. We don't want to give hunters a buggy, half-baked ability. If you are going on the PTR to test Ulduar or just mess around with numbers, I wouldn't worry about this ability, at least for now.

Black Arrow (Source)

2) Black Arrow is on the trap cooldown timer, and we assume largely for PvE. Black Arrow is your ability to proc things normally caused by traps (like LnL) in PvE situations when using a trap is a pain or the target is immune.

Lock and Load (Source)

3) Think of Lock and Load triggering from traps (esp. Frost Trap) as a PvP mechanic. Think of Lock and Load triggering from periodic ticks (esp. Black Arrow) as a PvE mechanic. In PvE, you may want to use traps on trash or group pulls however. In PvP, nothing is stopping you from using Black Arrow if it works for you.

What about "Trap Dancing" on raid bosses/PvE for a guaranteed L&L proc? (Source)

You won't be trapping raid bosses to get LnL procs, even if they are immune to the effects. You probably won't be trap dancing much at all in PvE. You should really use Black Arrow for that purpose.

If the proc rate ends up being too low, that is certainly something we are willing to adjust.

http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/class/small_priest.gif Priest

Discipline Changes (Source)

I believe there are 1 or 2 more Disc talent changes you don't have yet that boost healing a little more.

We're not worried about Disc mana generation, because it was really good before, but let us know if you get on the PTR how it feels.

Defense Against Viper Sting (Source)

Viper Sting vs. priests is something we plan to address.

http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/class/small_rogue.gif Rogue

Shiv PvE Nerf Possible (Source)

Shiv is an ability primarily designed to get poisons on a target quickly. It is primarily a PvP ability. We don't want to just nerf it for PvE or it kills what it is doing for PvP. But it is not ideal that it makes a main ability like Sinister Strike look like poo. And we can't just buff Sinister Strike et al. (more on that below).

I understand that rogues, and particularly optimized players, will gravitate towards whatever spec and rotation maximizes their dps. That's cool, but it doesn't mean that we should just celebrate any bizarre way to play that comes up just because that happens to maximize dps.

I also understand how from a player point of view it always makes sense that when you see a big number and a bunch of little numbers that we should buff all the little numbers. It may be fun, but it rarely makes sense from our point of view. For starters, it causes game inflation at a much faster rate (and it is already pretty fast). It makes us have to buff other classes that are supposed to be on par with the target class. It might even make us buff encounters. That is a lot of work with a lot of risk compared to lowering perhaps a single number.

Poisons Being Changed to Procs-Per-Minute (Source)

We are committed to improving rogues in PvE, and we have had trouble doing that without a major patch because small tweaks tend to have ripples throughout the class, making whole trees too good or too bad in PvE or PvP. But 3.1 is a major patch and we can touch as many things as we need to touch to get to the target we want.

Rogues have always had a problem where weapon speed can trump all, and we are seeing it now where blue weapons like Librarian's Paper Cutter can out-perfom much better weapon just because of the weapon speed. Usually when chance per hit is pushing players into doing unusual things like this it is because hits are being over-emphasized, and fast weapons hit more often. Our usual solution to that is to go to a proc per minute where slow weapons proc more often per swing than fast weapons so weapon speed itself becomes a lot less relevant compared to other other stats on the item and players actually have the option of benefiting from a higher level item that drops, rather than having to pass on it because it isn't 1.4 speed or whatever.

Glyph of Hunger for Blood (Source)

The HfB glyph is, if I recall correctly, just a flat 3% to the ability and doesn't mention stacks.

http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/class/small_warlock.gif Warlock

Siphon Life Changes (Source)

1) The change to Siphon Life just adds a healing component to Corruption. It does not inflate Corruption's damage and it does not add a second dot to Corruption.
2) Protecting debuffs with junk debuffs is not a part of the game we want to encourage, and in fact will probably spend more effort to prune.
3) Losing Siphon Life alone would be a damage loss of maybe 6 to 8% in an ideal raid setting. However you have to remember that you are buying time to work in say additional Shadowbolts.
4) In addition, other changes in the tree should buy you some free talent points (in Suppresion perhaps) that you can then invest in dps.
5) All in all it should be about a wash or possibly a small nerf. Affliction dps is very high in most raid settings, particularly once so many other classes get brought under control. So we weren't at all trying to buff Affliction with these changes, and all in all a small nerf is probably fine.

Pandemic in PvP: Weaker in 3.1? (Source)

Under the new system, dots don't get hit more from resilience than direct damage spells.

If the dot doesn't crit, then its damage is reduced as it is on live today. If it does crit, then it is treated like a normal (non-dot) spell and the damage is reduced from the crit, but not the dot.

That may sound confusing, so I will try and explain it another way. Resilience does the following (among other things):

A) Reduce the chance to crit
B) Reduce the damage of crits
C) Reduce the damage of dots

If a dot has a chance to crit, then A applies. If the dot does not crit, then C applies. If it does crit then B applies (the same way it does to Shadowbolt) but C does not.

Reasoning Behind Warlock Changes (Source)

1) Affliction required Siphon Life for PvP. Without it, Affliction is doomed.

First, we are making many changes to warlocks for 3.1. We can't be too scared to make a change we think is needed because of the status quo. We thought Affliction had to maintain too many dots, which did bad things to the class, such as making them feel underpowered in short PvE or PvP fights. Along with these changes come many other changes that are going to make players rethink the builds they are even using for PvP. Second, we don't believe dot (or buff or debuff) protection is a fun mechanic. If your dots are too easy to dispel and that hurts locks, we would rather solve it in other ways than to give you more protection dots. Third, Arena matches can't just be about instant cast spells or a whole lot of spells in the game are going to have to be re-designed.

2) Warlocks are still terribad in PvP so why nerf them?

I don't want to derail the entire thread here, but we don't believe the entire success or failure of Affliction in Areas was dependent on Siphon Life. Abilities, especially on-demand ones, tend to have a much bigger effect in PvP than just raw damage, unless it is very bursty damage, which Siphon Life wasn't. I'm a little skeptical that SL was 30% of dps for too many Affliction locks in Arenas, but even if that were true, it doesn't mean the only solution is that SL is somehow sacred. If warlocks aren't competitive in PvP, we will buff them. Perhaps we will even juice Corruption through the Siphon Life talent if that's what it takes. But we have to be able to change spells and rotations in order to move the game design forward. "You can't cut Siphon Life -- we need it," is not a very strong argument. "We want to be competitive in PvP, and Siphon Life helped to do that," is totally valid, but we care a lot more about the first part of that sentence than the second.

3) We don't want to spam Shadowbolt.

I think this is just trying to be argumentative. In BC, warlocks spammed Shadowbolt the way Frost mages spam Frost Bolt. It was dull and we tried to fix it for LK. Our intent is not that you take Shadowbolt off your bar. Our intent was that it doesn't become the centerpiece of your entire rotation, and I don't think it is any longer. My point was actually that you can't just subtract the Siphon Life damage and call it a nerf because you are going to end up using the time and mana on another spell.

4) But I liked Siphon Life!

WoW has a huge and vocal community. Almost no matter what change we make to the game, somebody is going to disagree. Even the most annoying and weak spell in the game probably has a few fans who would be sad to see it go. We just didn't want to keep Siphon Life as an active spell any longer. We wanted to reduce the number of dots Affliction had. I'm sorry if it was a spell that you really liked for whatever reason.

5) You lied to us GC! You lied! Why? Oh why?

Be reasonable. We change our minds. Stuff can change very fast when it is in iteration mode sometimes. We sometimes mistate things or have mistaken assumptions about how things work. I know the spells and abilities very well, and still I do it all the time. We try to always be very, very careful in our correspondence with players to caveat the heck out of anything we say. "Assuming nothing changes. At this time. For now." Those get tacked on to everything we say just to avoid players freaking out if we are working on A ,and A ends up getting cut or we do B instead. WoW is a living game. It's going to change over time. You have to give us room to manuver and not try to nail us to the wall anytime something changes. The only thing I am ever going to promise with a capital P is that we will do the best we can to make WoW a great game, and that we will listen to your feedback and take it seriously.

Does Imp. Shadow Bolt stack with Imp. Scorch? (Source)

The idea was to make a very potent dps buff (though slighlty less potent now) a little more availale. No, they do not stack.

http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/class/small_warrior.gif Warrior

No Protection Warrior Changes? (Source)

There are Prot warrior (and warrior in general) changes coming.

My experience on game design changes in general is they are probably not as sweeping as they should be in your mind. :)

Titan's Grip Change (Source)

Anyone who has been following Fury since beta can probably recite this history of Titan's Grip.

1) We implement the talent. The warrior community doesn't think the talent will work with a penalty and predicts nobody will take it.
2) Fury damage is a little low at the time, so we finally drop the penalty to an almost trivial amount.
3) We later just pull the penalty off altogether because it wasn't really offsetting the huge bonus of the talent any longer.
4) Fury does too much damage as a result, and Titan's Grip becomes the new talent by which all others are measured. ("Man, my 51 talent doesn't increase my dps by over 10% a point.")

Fury warriors who think their dps will be too low after this change in PvE are probably comparing themselves to classes or specs with inflated dps who are also being brought down (even after the Deep Wounds fix). If you are worried about the PvP ramifications, I think we can probably agree that a 10% swing in dps is not what is going to determine whether warriors are viable in Arenas or not.

Why Fury Was Nerfed (Source)

We don't balance base around class populations. We might look at those numbers, however, and try and figure out why some are higher or lower than others. Overpowered specs tend to be popular, but so do specs that are fun, easy to play, consistent with a player's play style, or perhaps even iconic. We do not however just nerf popular specs in order to force players to abadon them.

Whether you want to use the word "hybrid" or not, our goal is that *all things being equal* rogues, mages, locks and hunters are slightly ahead on the meters. I emphasize all things being equal, because they often are not. The specifics of the encounter, other buffs present gear, skill and even latency all have an effect. Sometimes warriors will "win the meters." Sometimes bad warriors will be down there with the healers.

Fury warriors were doing more damage than we wanted them to do.

However, I have also noticed a consistent theme on the forums of players comparing themselves to overpowered classes and concluding that they are fine (or perhaps even expect buffs).

Blizzard Theme Park Contest: Win StarCraft II Beta Keys

I'm not the only one excited about this, am I? Blizzard is running special "Theme Park" contest, and one of the prizes included is a StarCraft II Beta Key. Sure, your entry is also shown off at BlizzCon 2009, but who wants that when you can play StarCraft II before most of the world?!

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

What would you do if you could design the Blizzard Entertainment theme park of your dreams? Here's your chance to show us! We're inviting you to illustrate your own original Blizzard Entertainment theme park, complete with rides and attractions based on the Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft universes. The most creative and fantastic designs will receive prizes including StarCraft II beta keys, a chance to have their entry displayed at BlizzCon 2009, and more. For more information, head to the contest page ( http://www.blizzard.com/us/inblizz/contests/themepark/ ) or read the official rules.( http://www.blizzard.com/us/inblizz/contests/themepark/legal.html )

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