Sign In
Register
Help
Expect more updates throughout the weekend related to build 10522. Also for those of you using the guild recruitment forums, I'll be contacting you via private message over the weekend to get your feedback on something we've been working on to help make recruitment a bit easier.
3.3 Undercity Changes
It looks like Kisirani's cryptic "letter" from the new NPC handling all of the old quests Varimathras offered had more meaning than we initially thought. The Horde are cracking down on the Forsaken after the events at the Wrathgate, and they've now populated Undercity with Kor'kron guards and other NPCs that are there to oversee any future work done by the Forsaken.
Check out the screenshots below (thanks to Leviathonlx) for some of the changes. It looks like all of the Abomination guards have been replaced with Kor'kron Overseers and the new NPC that handles the Varimathras quests is named Bragor Bloodfist.
Icecrown Dungeon Missing Portals Issue
For those of you having issues seeing the portals to the new dungeons, it's due to phasing if you've already done certain quests in Icecrown. This will be fixed next push.
Quote from: Daelo (Source)
Thanks for the feedback so far. We'll get he phasing related issues sorted out for the next push. As some of noted there are sounds, VO, music, and even some creature models that are not final.
Also note from a story perspective that this is the 2nd of the 3 dungeons. We had to disable the Forge of Souls for this initial PTR push due to a last minute crash bug discovered in the zone, and it begins the quest and story for the three Icecrown dungeons.
Coefficient Penalty Formula
In somewhat of a surprise move Ghostcrawler revealed the coefficient formula for penalizing downranking and also provides examples of what that does to a Druid's Rejuvenation heal.
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
Tealeaf, here is the formula for coefficient penalty for all spells that has been in effect for all of LK:
If caster level is less than max caster level, then the penalty = 1.0.
If caster level is at or greater than max caster level, then the penalty = (22 + max level - caster level) / 20.
The penalty is capped at 0. Max caster level per spell is also pretty inconsistent, but it's around 4 levels higher than the level at which you get the spell.
Basically, once the caster is 3 levels higher than the max cast level of the spell, the standard coefficient of the spell is multiplied by that penalty (losing 5% of the coefficient per level), with the coefficient reaching zero when the player is 22 levels higher than the max cast level.
For Rejuv, this makes the following table of coefficients for a level 80 player:
Rank 15: 0.376
Rank 14: 0.376
Rank 13: 0.376*0.75=0.282
Rank 12: 0.376*0.5=0.188
Rank 11: 0.376*0.35=0.1316
Rank 10: 0.376*0.25=0.094
Rank 9: 0.376*0=0
Rank 8 and lower: 0
As I said, the penalty is kind of an anachronism since the ranks all cost the same amount of mana now, but I can understand why you all might have expected rank 15 to jump in coefficient.
Blue Posts
Lots of blue posts as usual since this is the first build for the 3.3 PTR.
Cataclysm and removing spell ranks (Source)
Essentially there will be no ranks. Instead your spell will just grow every time you gain a level. The biggest difference you will notice is not having to train say rank 16 of Rejuv. Your spellbook would just say "Rejuvenation."
Base points can still increase. In fact they will increase every level instead of in big chunks.
Assume for the moment you get Rejuv at level 1 instead of level 4. Then imagine there are 85 ranks of Rejuv and you get a new rank automatically whenever you ding without visiting your trainer. It isn't a huge change conceptually, except that your level 79 Rejuvs would be buffed relative to what they are now. Mostly if just gets players to focus less on rank and more on player level (and then ultimately talents, glyphs and gear).
3.3 Premades (Source)
I think we've spread the premade characters out across the world sufficiently. Most of them should be starting in their home city (Human = Stormwind).
Death Knight
Glyph of Icy Touch Redesign (Source)
As several players pointed out, the old glyph was driving too many other decisions with regard to spec and abilities used. We want DKs to be a melee class with some ranged abilities, not a ranged class.
Druid
Rejuvenation Bug Fix (Source)
We don't want rank 15 to have that extra tick. It is technically a bug in that we didn't intend for it to have that behavior, but obviously we sat on the change for awhile. However since the popular Resto style has now become Rejuv on as many people as possible, we thought the extra tick had become problematic. Frankly we think druids can absorb the small nerf without hurting their overall healing much.
We're not trying to hide a nerf, and we can certainly change the patch note to not say bug fix if that makes it go down any easier.
We'll look into any discrepancy in numbers between rank 14 and 15 and make sure things are working as intended.
---
The max rank coefficient is correct for a 12 second spell. The error was that the spell was 15 sec long. It was an unintended buff to the max rank. We sat on it for awhile, but decided it was time to make the change. The coefficient is 0.376 on live and will be 0.376 in 3.3.
Hunter
Avoidance being a pre-req for other pet talents (Source)
It is likely we will just replace the hunter pet Avoidance talent with one that increases pet dps. It is too situational to have as a talent now. Hunter pets will just take 90% less damage from creature AE the same as other pets do (meaning "for free"). We offer that avoidance as recognition that Fluffy doesn't have the AI to get out of the fire on boss fights and likes to go in straight lines between you and a target, even if that means crossing fire.
Ninety percent avoidance should be enough to survive almost all boss AE attacks for a second or two -- enough to get a heal or move your wolf (or sporebat). It isn't intended to let your pet just ignore AE completely and stand in void zones. If you're a pet class, you are going to have to manage the pet a little in dungeons and raids.
It was never our intent that pets just shrug off AE in PvP situations. In fact, it's a little goofy if you think about it. We just technically couldn't distinguish between creature and player AE before. We only go to that distinction as a last resort, since we like for PvP and PvE to work similarly. However we thought it was necessary in this case, since the complexity of boss encounters just doesn't always leave pets with a way to avoid the AE damage. We think PvP AE damage often is avoidable (dude isn't literally Bladestorming the entire arena at once), but we still understand that this is a PvP nerf to pets and we may buff them in other ways to compensate.
Don't add another pet DPS talent, the pet trees are already bloated (Source)
That is by design. Before we added the bottom row of pet talents, BM hunters felt that their 51-point talent wasn't attractive because they couldn't actually improve pet dps with those points. If we made it too easy to cherry pick the dps talents, I fear we'd be in the same situation again.
You can have 5 different pets now, so even if you find a talent somewhat situational, you can probably find a pet to give it to.
Besides, judging from these responses, most pets already had the points in Avoidance, so you should just see pet dps increase with the current build (assuming we stick with this plan).
Paladin
Seal of Corruption (Source)
Seal of Corruption's tooltip incorrectly stated that it did higher damage than it actually did. It actually did (and still does) the same damage as Seal of Vengeance. Vengeance's tooltip did not have the error. We changed Corruption's tooltip to be correct.
Actual damage did not change. You were not nerfed.
Rogue
Vanish Change (Source)
We need to make Vanish work as advertised. As I've said, if this results in a massive net buff for rogues, we will compensate in other ways. However, the intent isn't that it's another version of Cloak. We just want to compensate for server lag, missile travel time and the like. It's entirely possible 1 sec is too generous to accomplish the job and a smaller number will work. That's the kind of thing we will be evaluating through the PTR process.
Unless my understanding of the spell is completely wrong, Flare actually removes stealth, so it should work in any case. I will verify this part tomorrow.
Shaman
No Avoidance for Spirit Wolves? (Source)
The change should apply to all pets. I think that includes every class but warrior, paladin and rogue.
Dwarf Totems (Source) - Screenshot
They're designed in the Wildhammer fashion, of course.
I told you they wouldn't be kegs when the discussion first came up, heh.
New Race-specific Totems (Source)
Much of the design of the totems also came from the racial crests. I ask you to look at the wallpaper I linked earlier and then explain if you can't see the correlation. :)
http://www.worldofraids.com/img/class/small_warlock.gif Warlock
Curse of the Elements (Source)
Datamined info is datamined.
Curse of the Elements rank 5 is still 13%.
It's possible the reference refers to rank 4 going from 10% to 11% (since rank 3 was also 10%). OMG lock buff! :)
Curse of Elements rank 5 has not changed between 3.2.2 and 3.3.
MultiQuote
Course everything looks worse on my UI on the PTR considering I don't bother using my addons (and bartender is broken in 3.3).
" - quoted from the forum where GC made the statement about all pets losing avoidance.
