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Design A License Plate Contest Winners
Congratulations to the 3 community members below for their winning entries in the Design A License Plate contest! We received a lot of great entries, so expect to see some honorable mentions over the next week. The rules were to create a WoW-themed license plate, whether it be the digits on the plate itself, or the protector / frame around the license plate.
Cheya
- Entry Type: Digits
- Entry: BRMGNKR (Blackrock Mountain Ganker)
Heavygear
- Entry Type: Digits
- Entry: GCNRFME (Ghostcrawler Nerfed Me)
Severnaya
- Entry Type: Protector / Frame
- Entry: Top - "Stay off my ass..." | Bottom - "I have tail swipe"
25-player Algalon the Observer Video by Ensidia
Ensidia has released a video of their world first kill of 25-player Algalon the Observer, which happened earlier this week.
We now present our World First of Algalon the Observer in 25 man Ulduar. Algalon is only accessible once you defeat the four watchers on hard mode, additionally you are only allowed one hour per reset to defeat him.
Points of View
Ragebar - Arms Warrior 
Munken - Marksman Hunter - Kungen - Protection Warrior
Music
World First Herald of the Titans
Congratulations to Gentlemens Club of US-Korgath for completing Herald of the Titans, by killing Algalon the Observer with no items better than those available in 10-player Ulduar from hard modes (or normal mode 25-player)!
Blue Posts
Announcing class changes far in advance of patches (Source)
We have to be very careful announcing changes. Last patch, we listed out some specific things we were working on. Some of them came to pass and some did not. For the ones that did not, some players took it very hard. They became upset. They posted that we didn't care about them or weren't doing our jobs. Now it's easy to ignore a few bad apples, but when a large enough portion of your community responds negatively, it can affect the entire community. It can cast a dark cloud over these forums. That isn't fun for anyone.
Check out this link. It's a press release about Blizzcon. Scroll down to the bottom and you'll see a painfully long explanation about forward-looking statements. Most of that is more geared towards business issues than class changes, but ultimately it's all part of the same philosophy. It is unfortunate that that is the world we live in. Announcing stuff too early when we aren't 100% sure we can do it just gets us in trouble. :(
http://w
Class overhauls (Source)
If you are looking for a major overhaul for any class in the game, you're going to be disappointed. Whenever we see that term, it's a near certainty that the players making it have an entirely different vision for the class than the developers do. The changes to the paladin class seals and judgements are about the largest "overhaul" you're ever going to see, and that one was an extreme. We like the way the classes work. Nearly all can be improved, some more than others. None of them need an overhaul.
Future healing changes (Source)
Of course we do, but as many players above pointed out, the changes we'd need to get to that spot would cause a lot of upset players in the short-term. We nerfed regen a little, knowing it probably wasn't quite sufficient, and there was quite a bit of name-calling in this very forum. We'll get there, but it's important not to freak out too many players in our efforts to eventually make things better.
I will note that nerfing regen doesn't affect PvP as much as you might think because even 5s have far fewer buffs from other players and PvP gear typically doesn't have much in the way of regen stats.
Yes tank avoidance would need to come down along with many other long-term changes, but from a healer point-of-view what we'd like to achieve is a clear distinction between your bread-and-butter heals and your emergency heals. The latter are typically made expensive to discourage their casual use, but when you have the mana for it and the tank always requires those big heals, there is no reason not to use them. It may be that mana costs are not the best way to balance spells. Maybe it's cast time. Maybe it's cooldown. Likewise, maybe we should have more fights where say 5 players take damage at once rather than the whole raid. Then the smart, instant heals wouldn't be quite as attractive in every situation.
There were some good aspects of the healing in vanilla, but we're not eager to go back to the days of /stopcast macros and healer rotations (meaning someone sits out for OFSR regen while a fresh healer steps in). That's not what we mean when we say that the risk of running OOM has to exist.
Raids & Dungeons
Healing on XT-002 Deconstructor (Source)
We were talking about healing this very fight just yesterday. One of the designers had an interesting experience. Their first Holy priest had much larger healing (total and effective) on the fight than their second Holy priest, so they asked the second priest to go Shadow. They kept wiping. They then swapped them, and made the star Holy priest go Shadow. The second Holy priest's healing was much lower, but they won on the first try. The second priest just had better timing and cast the right spell at the right moment, even though his total and effective healing was lower overall. The moral of the story is meters are very useful, but like any tool, their ability to measure what happens in reality has limitations. In my experience, players put too much emphasis on them, especially for healing.
Player versus Player
MLG Class Representation (Source)
We think it's an interesting phenomenon. A lot of the complaints you see, especially in these forums, don't always jive with who is actually winning in Arena (though to be fair, sometimes they do).
There has been so much discussion about double melee "Cleave" teams and the death of casters while RMP has continued to be really strong if not dominant in 3s. Now maybe it's only at the lower ratings where it's an issue, or maybe players are noticing an up-and-coming trend while the tournaments tend to emphasize groups who have a lot of experience playing together.
I'm not saying everything is perfect, and ideally we'd love to see more mixed comps than RMP so often. But it is interesting when the Internet buzz doesn't always match who is winning.
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You can pretty easily find numerous complaints about Resto druids, Ret, Arms, Destro, Frost (mages and DKs), Unholy, Holy paladins, rogues and Disc priests. I'm sure you could find complaints about every class if you searched far enough. I think that when players see an "overwhelming consensus" they are still including some statements and disregarding others either consciously or subconsciously.
Which is why we don't put much emphasis on how many people say something or how loud or persistently they say it. Or even their use of CAPS LOCK. We focus on the strength of the argument.
CC in Arenas (Source)
But isn't that basically saying that Arena is all about CC and that classes without very strong CC are by definition not cut out for Arena? We don't give the warrior class much in the way of CC. What they have is mobility, snares, interrupts, some survivability tricks and MS. Faceroll or die?
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it sounds like you're saying that a team without a rogue, druid or maybe mage is by definition faceroll and shouldn't typically win. CC is part of the game, no doubt. It's not supposed to be the whole game. (Neither is always killing your initial target in 5 sec.)
All specs being viable (Source)
Having all specs viable in PvP is a goal, but it's a long term goal. It's more important that every class has at least one PvP option.
Having all specs viable in PvE is also a goal, and we're a little closer on that one, but not quite there yet.
PvP is harder to balance, which should be no surprise to anyone. When to make a change to PvE you often only affect one class or spec. When you make a change to PvP, you affect everyone.
Paladin
How to fix Retribution (Source)
2-Divine Storm/Crusader Strike Changes
Divine Storm base damage reduced significantly.
Crusader Strike now adds a debuff to the target that increases damage dealt by Divine Storm by a significant amount (a stacking debuff that is not consumed).
How does this really change anything though? As long as you CS a GCD before you DS, the upfront burst damage would be the same. You would have to make the DS damage so low that it essentially becomes a rogue-like finishing move. Do 3-5 CS and then finish with a DS. But that basically means you can CS and then autoattack for awhile until the next CS. Is that fun?
Holy changes in 3.2 (Source)
We have some plans for Holy paladins in 3.2. We'll talk more about them when we get closer and we are more confident that they are the actual changes that will go live (modulo PTR feedback).
Shaman
Chain Heal in raids (Source)
I know some amazingly good shamans too from guilds you've heard of and they still use Chain Heal. That isn't to say it couldn't be better, but we are not at all convinced that the right thing to do is abandon the spell.
Changing Chain Heal and adding a cooldown (Source)
We wouldn't want to see a cooldown on it either. Honestly, the throughput it gives is good on the first couple of targets. But perhaps it does fall off too fast. We're happy with the cast time -- the game has too many fast spells already to the extent that players are asking for faster spells as much as they're asking for things to be off the GCD. The range of the jump could be an issue, particularly in the 10-player instances. Some of the mods that tell you how far away you are from other players seem to use 10 yards as the magic number (even though many of the attacks they are trying to avoid only go to 8 yards).
Healing Wave (Source)
We're less concerned about HW than we are CH. As you point out, it does have a role with NS and ultimately trying to carve off niches between smaller and bigger heals that are otherwise similar is tough unless you make mana so expensive that you are loathe to overheal. That's not the way Ulduar is though.
Are Resto Shaman worth bringing on raids? (Source)
The thing is that cutting-edge and casual guilds alike are bringing Resto shamans to Ulduar. The impression I have (though maybe I'm wrong) is that you are judging everything based on healing meters instead of whether your shamans are contributing something to the raid. Priests were saying many of the same things a couple of patches ago. They wanted to be THE BEST at something. That's not the way we design the game. You should want a player because they are a good healer, not because their class has the special ability or functionality that enables you to unlock the encounter.
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