[WoRBot]

I'm sure you've noticed the new content topslot on the home page. This is intended to make it easier to access hot content on the site, and is one of a few changes coming to the home page to make things more simplistic and overall make the page more enjoyable to visit. There are currently some oddities with it on wide mode, due to releasing it a bit earlier than planned because of 3.2, but those will be fixed this coming week.

The Midsummer Fire Festival Begins

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)

Each summer, the arrival of the Midsummer Fire Festival (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/events/midsummer/) signals a time of merriment and a chance to revel in the hottest season of the year by lighting celebratory bonfires across the land and sharing in what the elemental spirits have to offer. This year (beginning Saturday, June 21st and continuing until July 5), the festival features achievements. Learn more about the Midsummer Fire Festival content in our recently updated page, (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/events/midsummer/) which also includes a screenshot gallery. (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/community/submission/screenshot-form.html) Once the event begins, submit your screenshots of Festival fun here. (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/community/submission/screenshot-form.html)

Blue Posts

Stopcasting macros (Source)

The intent is that macro will not work in 3.2 (for Ret paladins or Enhancement shamans). The intent is that you have to push the button at the right time, not just have the game push the button for you all the time.

Stopcasting a spell in this manner should reset your swing timer (at least for those two classes). We're not 100% sure at this time how the fix will work, but that's the intent or we would not have made this change.

Player versus Player

Spec representation on Arena teams (Source)

It is a priority to get under-represented specs to higher representation in Arenas. However, it is a higher priority to get under-represented classes up there. I'm sure you can understand why.

Also, while it isn't necessarily our vision for the PvP game, understand that many high-end players would be happier with a balanced experience with very few viable specs than an unbalanced experience with a whole lot of specs, and much of their feedback is given with this philosophy in mind. Obviously balanced and diverse is the ultimate goal.

Block changes and PvP (Source)

The change to the way block trinkets proc will make the rare gigantic Shield Slam much harder to pull off. That said, Prot warriors (or paladins) are not exactly destroying everyone in PvP right now so we're not super freaked about this. The resilience change will also make it that much harder to wade into a PvP environment in full tanking gear (since defense doesn't help against spell crits). No doubt none of this will stop the flood of LOLZ SHIELD SLAM IZ OP videos for the next few months.

Resilience in 3.2 (Source)

The only thing you have to remember is not to count the extra dot reduction that used to exist. Dots are now lowered by 12% just like crits and normal hits.

The only way this is a nerf to classes or specs the value crit is if a lot of your opponents start wearing more resilience now.

Death Knight

Frost as the dual wield spec (Source)

We're already trying to have Blood, Frost and Unholy tanks and Blood, Frost and Unholy PvP builds. Also having Blood, Frost and Unholy dual-wield builds just creates an impossible matrix. You have to support Blood 2H PvP, and Unholy DW tanking, and Frost 2H PvE. It just gets crazy.

Frost might still do okay with 2H. We didn't specifically nerf their 2H abilities. We just gave them a talent to make DW more viable. I don't honestly know how 2H Frost dps stacks up in 3.2 at the moment.

Where did Frost Strike's damage go? (Source)

We moved damage into Blood Strike.

Logic behind Desecration change (Source)

We split it into a PvP and PvE ability. It will cost more talent points to get both, so in that sense it's a nerf. It does however mean the Desecration graphic will be occluding the ground less often in PvE.

Why did Death Coil get a deep wounds effect with Unholy Blight? (Source)

Because we took away Unholy Blight's AE damage. Some of the "DK's do too much damage" claims from Ulduar were because of Unholy AE damage and a big part of that was Unholy Blight. Note that Scourge Strike received the same nerf as Frost Strike, so their burst did go down.

Blood Strike (Source)

I believe the Blood Strike numbers have already come down a bit from when we made those patch notes because it did seem like an all Blood Strike rotation might be feasible, which isn't something we want. But yet, we are going to have to see the numbers coming out of the PTR. We have learned our internal testing can only go so far.

Mage

Mage Q&A response (Source)

We knew that some players would approach the Q&As as a list of buffs for their class, and thus be disappointed. But that was never the intent, and we already have channels to do that. The Q&As were to address the kinds of questions we get all the time, such as "What do you guys see as the role of the mage class?" You can find a question like that about every day. I used to answer them, but then someone would ask it again the next week without looking to even see if there had been a previous answer. As such, the Q&As were designed to be more philosophical and long-term. We knew many of them wouldn't be up until after the patch notes for instance.

Given the huge numbers of questions that were asked, we knew it would be impossible to pick the set that would please everyone so we did the best we could. Just because the question wasn't of interest to you doesn't mean it wasn't of interest to someone or they wouldn't have asked it. But we would like to keep the series going long-term, so there is a chance that a question that didn't come up this time can come up again.

I'll just touch on two common themes:

We think mage PvE damage is fine. If you are routinely getting trounced by bad players in your raid, you might consider trying to figure out how some mages are getting really good numbers.

Some players have apparently misinterpreted my comments about mana. I was trying to say that the goal is that dps casters generally should not run out of mana, provided they aren't in over their heads and make reasonable use of their tools. We don't think those tools were adequate. However, we also didn't want to turn Evocate into Innervate, as is commonly asked. Instead, we went with the Ignite change (though I suspect the number will end up being something closer to 2% instead of 1% when all is said and done). We just thought it was a more interesting mechanic and felt mage-like. Since Arcane mages don't use Ignite, we dropped the Arcane Blast cost. Frost has some PvE damage problems, but Frostbolt is already a really efficient spell -- that isn't their big issue.

Mana gems being linked to Healthstones (Source)

We will try to get them unlinked. I can’t recall if this was done for reasons of balance or kit, but it seems unnecessary.

Spell Steal glyph (Source)

I was throwing that out there as a possible experiment. We intended Spell Steal to be a way to get a useful buff from an enemy. In practice it has become more of a generic dispel. Changing that could be both a buff or a nerf to mages depending on the situation.

Mana on boss encounters (Source)

You are supposed to have to manage your mana. You are not supposed to routinely run out. As an example of this if you are in a very short fight (like a hard mod with a fast burn) you should pull out all the stops. If you know the fight is going to go long, you should pace yourself. I would consider a mage who always did the same things in every given fight to not know their class mechanics as well as they could. Realistically, we have very few ten minute fights, and most are far shorter.

Paladin

Retribution DPS in 3.2 (Source)

Nobody has any idea of the numbers yet so they are guessing at best. PvP burst damage (say in the first 4 GCDs) should go down. PvP damage over time should be about the same (modulo the resilience changes). PvE sustained damage should go up.

Priest

3.2 Penance and how it affects PvE (Source)

When we looked at how much damage Disc was preventing with absorbs, it could equal the amount of healing done. That's a big number (though your mileage may vary).

Furthermore, some Disc priests were pretty much down to just casting PoM, PWS and Penance. Increasing the cooldown is much less of a nerf that decreasing the amount healed because you still have that time in which to use another spell, such as a Renew or Flash Heal. It's a fun spell and we don't think this change will make it any less attractive for PvP or PvE.

Rogue

Why Rogues were given the Axe skill (Source)

We have trouble dropping one-handed weapons in raids because there is so little overlap among the classes. Shamans can't use swords. Rogues can't (currently) use axes. DKs can't use fists. That means just about everyone gets maces.

We took an informal vote and everyone here thought shamans with swords went against a lot of the traditions of the class in the lore, and DKs with fists was kind of weird too. Rogues seemed like the class that would pretty much pick up any weapon in a fight -- they use a broken bottle in at least one notorious case.

Shaman

3.2 Ghost Wolf (Source)

The idea is that if snared, you can still run away (if you're a caster) or chase someone down (if you're Enhancement), but the ability is still more about movement and not a self-dispel.

Warlock

Arena representation (Source)

We think warlock representation is too low in Arenas. One solution to that is to nerf classes that counter them, which we have done.

We gave pets resilience and spell pen, which is a pretty significant change that affects one of the lock's biggest weaknesses. The Fel Dom change will help here too.

The resilience change is also a small relative buff to warlock damage. Your damage won't change all that much in PvP, while other classes will go down. Furthermore, as the average length of matches increases, classes with lots of sustainability can benefit, and locks don't typically have mana problems.

Player have a tendency to weigh class changes based on the number of bullets after their class name. Glass half-empty types see long lists of nerfs. But the quantity of the changes is usually unimportant.

[lora]

easy gold and achievements inc

[Flayne]

Quote

Saturday, June 21st

Umm, the 21st is a Sunday.

[kalze]

This is my first time posting a comment on WoR so please excuse me if I have made a mistake.

I understand that blizzard is trying to balance a lot of things in 3.2 patch.

Here are 3 major changes I'm looking at right now:
1) DW viable again?
2) Tank Nerf
3) PvP dmg Nerf

1) DW viable again?
First of all, DW is going to be viable again, but I am not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. DW spec was very good (or somewhat OP) when it first came out because they acted like casters in melee range just spamming IT and HB. It's got lot of attention and some of them did better DPS than 2H DPSers.
Obviously, it was nerfed and no one ever switched back to DW spec. However I don't see many people complaining about going back to DW other than the people asking "why do we have a talent for DW and blizz not even making use of it"
And they are right, I think it's really time to just get rid off DW spec.
TBH blizzard is trying too hard to make DW spec viable again; it's almost like making 2h wep viable again for enh shamans.
What about the loots? most of the one-hand weps out there are Agi weapons because they are used by rogues, enh shamans, and hunters (I'm not sure if AGI is gonna even worth to get over STR we lose from 2H weps). The only STR one-hand wep I can really find is the tanking weapons and I don't think blizz wants to make another set of STR DPS one-hand weps just for DKs since I dont think any of those warriors would downgrade themselves to DW one-hand weps.
Unless this DW spec is as close as the pre-nerf spec, let's try not to go in there too deep because we can live without DW specs and that's my view on the DW changes in 3.2.

2) Tank Nerf
I think this change is due to a lot of the raid grps asking DK's to MT many fights in Uldar apparently. Before I talk more about how unfair I feel about this nerf, I want to you to know that the only reason raids asking DK to MT is that because of their CD rotations, not their HP nor their mitigations.
Let's see what kind of Tanking nerf we got in the past and find out where we are standing atm.
We recently got armor nerfed from frost presence. Thanks to that, now we are getting hit much harder (on your tooltip, it's only about 3% dmg reduction lose compare to pre-nerf, but thats only against lvl80 mobs and the actual calculation invloves more than that; you can find more about this calculation on different forums such as Elitist Jerks) and we feel that our dmg taken from uldar bosses are about the same as warrior and paladin tanks. DK's still probably have slightly more armor than those two classes, but since the other two classes got blocks, it puts us about the same dmg taken.
Another nerf we had in the past was Blade Barrier (Original version of this talent was 10% parry when the blood runes on CD instead of 10% dmg reduction). I think this nerf was definatly got our DK tanks loose their title of being an "avoidance tank" as I undestand how blizzard initially designed the class to be, but at the same time i could say it was reasonable nerf since many WotLK bosses hit slow but hard, and that makes blocks for war/pally tanks somewhat meaningless mitigation.
Comparing DK's present HP Pool/Mitigation/Threat generation with other 3 classes, we are standing just slgihtly above them due to our fast CD rotations but NOT ANYTHING ELSE (When you compare high-end geared war tank vs high-end geared DK, their dodge and parry are almost the same, usually 25% dodge and 20% parry; warriors got extra 25% blocks unbuffed and DK's got 10% dmg reduction on using blood runes.)


Alright, I just explained what I think about where DK is standing right now and let's talk about how this DK tank nerf in 3.2 will affect the class.

DKs Tanks are getting 3, possibly 4 nerf in this 3.2 patch.
First, we are getting our HP nerfs. I'm not sure where this HP nerf came from but this 6% stm instead 10% HP change will make me lose about 2k HP since i got 36k HP unbuffed in blood. On top of that, blood specs also getting 3% stm lose from VotTW which used to be 6% stm (Warrior's Vitality is exactly same as pre-nerf VotTW???)
Paladins getting their HP buff in this patch to get closer or slightly above warriors, too. So just by looking at this HP changes, we DK's HP pool will be just about the same as these other two tanks. Let's move on to next nerf.

IBF CD increased to 2min instead of 1min.
As I said above, this is the main reason why we DK's have been MTing a lot of fights in Uldar. We have 1min IBF, 45sec AMS, one extra 2min CD from the spec you chosen. Warriors got 5min SW (Glyphed and talented: 1min CD) and 3min LS (2min when glyphed). You can see that DK's have slightly better on CD's since they don't need to glyph to reduce CD timer and got AMS that goes well with 4pc T8 bonus.
Just by looking at IBF nerf, this change is reasonable to put us DK on same level as warriors. However, when you look at the whole thing, we are not just getting CD nerf but HP nerf prior to the armor nerf.
In fact, war and pallys getting extra buff that the block values will be doubled in this patch.

Another Armor Nerf!
Toughness is now 10% at maxed instead of 15%. 5% loss in armor buff is gonna hurt us even greater. As I said on above, your tooltip might say about 3% dmg reduction loss, but that doesn't mean you are taking 3% less dmg from lvl 83 boss mobs and you will need to calculate to figure out how much extra dmg you actually going to take.
With this armor changes, I am not even sure if healers want to even heal DK Tanks now. Think about it, if a healer has a choice to heal a warrior tank or a DK (same armor, same hp, same avoidance, same CD timers, but warrior got extra 25% block unbuffed), If i were the healer, I am not healing the DK cuz it sounds like a Tank with only enough armors to endure the dmg.

the last possible nerf could be the DK's Threat. This is probably due to warrior and paladin's buff but not directly on DK's ability nerf. Since War and pallys getting buffs from doubled block value, their threat also goes up. Obviously Blizz already mentioned that Shield of Righteousness deals 100% instead of 130% but they are also getting buffed from Seal of Vengence for more threat. (There is no indication about warriors' shield slam modification yet). One thing we are sure at this point is that DK's are getting nerfed but not buffed.

I am not quite sure is this nerf really necessary for DK tanks. From my observation, people who know how to play their classes do as fine as all other tanks. I've seen many war/pally tanks don't even know how to gem their sockets right or what kind of gears they need for better tanking...and if this changes is for those less knowlegeable players to have easier time to play their classes, then im not very convinced. I could be biased on some points, but I don't think this nerf is necessary. It really gets to some point where each classes lose their unique characteristics and they all become kind of same, such as how DKs were started with their unique tanking style as "avoidance tank" and now it's getting changed over time compare to when it first released out. People were worried how DKs would tank without a shield, but at the same time many tanks switched to DK to try out their avoidance tanking style, which we don't have that anymore. I used to be paladin tank back in BC, and I liked the new style of DK's avoidance tank (more like feral druid, you have big HP pool and high avoidance, you're mainly focusing to avoid their dmg, but if you are unlucky with avoidance and get hit by an attack, you need a lot of heals to heal back)
TBH, I rather play paladin tank if i had put as much effort on my abondoned lvl70 paladin. It just there is no uniqueness of DK tank anymore....lost avoidance, lost armors, lost CDs, lost HPs...and I don't know what's next.

3) PvP dmg Nerf
I am not gonna mention about PvP too much since I spend more time in PvE and there are better comments from PvPers about this nerf.
One thing I can say is that most of DKs start with unholy pvp spec until they get the sigil of the vengefulheart in Uldar25 then they go for PvP frost spec.
Nerfing frost strike to 55% from 60% is reasonable and gargoyles flying lower is reasonable. But again, PvP got more to add on this so I am gonna just stop here.

Surely, this 3.2 patch doesnt sound great for many DKs and I am not really satisfied with what we are going to see on PTR. Yet, we got lots of time to improve on this so I hoping to see some changes near future.

[Zuelu]

kalze said:

This is my first time posting a comment on WoR so please excuse me if I have made a mistake.

Not trying to act the part of a moderator, but if you have your opinions on the patch, try posting in the patch notes, or if you have class specific concerns, the Physical DPS board or the Tank board. Welcome to WoR Kalze.

[Ideon]

hmm

if i have gotten all the flowers last year from flames all over the world...how am i supposed to get 200 flowers this year for the pole dance? (the only 1 achievement im missing)

[Leviathonlx]

Ideon said:

hmm

if i have gotten all the flowers last year from flames all over the world...how am i supposed to get 200 flowers this year for the pole dance? (the only 1 achievement im missing)

This holiday is like all holidays and you will be able to do all the flames again.

[Ideon]

oh joy...i'll have to wake up at 4am then to avoid the traffic

[sluggs]

i hope they at least scale ahune to lvl 80 instance boss with some decent drops.

[lora]

sluggs said:

i hope they at least scale ahune to lvl 80 instance boss with some decent drops.

only if that bastard drops the staff again

[Ideon]

big news: we cant take the fires again...
10 day farm for my boots incoming...

[monster08]

I hope there is an hotfix incoming. I need 400 blossoms and by doing the Northrend flames we end up at 120. + doing the dailies everyday wont give me 400 As i desecrated and honored all the flames last year but cant this year for some reason.

[Leviathonlx]

monster08 said:

I hope there is an hotfix incoming. I need 400 blossoms and by doing the Northrend flames we end up at 120. + doing the dailies everyday wont give me 400 As i desecrated and honored all the flames last year but cant this year for some reason.

I'd imagine we will see it hotfixed tomorrow.