***Official Wrath of the Lich King Thread***(Contains spoilers)***

I leveled my warrior and my mage myself. It gets boring if it is an alt as your doing it yourself but leveling my warrior along with my mates was one of the best laughs ever. We stayed at 60 for absolutely ages doing AVs and then we leveled through to 70 together(my mate got powerleveled from 64-70).....then we leveled together to 80(again my mate power leveled to get to 80 a day before me - how sad).

Leveling is better I think becasue you're seeing the environment and playing along with people doing the same thing and you learn your class a bit better. It's obvious who power leveled when you look at quests done and exploration. My raid leader got his dk to 80 and within 3-4 days is in pretty impressive gear, so i guess it helps to be in a higher end guild who can help you out.
 
Levelling definitely isn't part of the main game. There's more content at level 80 than there is at level 1-79 combined for example. It's always been that way, otherwise people will just get bored as soon as they hit maximum level. Blizzard acknowledges that levelling isn't all that either, by gradually reducing the duration of it, by doing various things such as reducing exp needed, reducing the levels needed for mounts and their speed, offering heirloom items that increases exp gained, etc etc.
 
I disagree levelling for me has been more fun than any endgame content, although I must admit I've seen some awesome things in WoW, but I still love to level even though it can be horribly painful and dull at times.
 
Anyone know what worst case scenario is time wise for a character transfer on the same account? everytime I've used it its been instant but its been a few hours now :( I want to play while I have spare time! :(
 
LOL at the 3.2 patch changes.

Destruction warlocks toned down and DK tanks basically raped and pillaged. Which are the classes I play :rolleyes:

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.2.0


General

* Construction of the Crusaders' Coliseum is complete. Testing not yet available. New raid normal and heroic modes for the Crusaders' Coliseum can be toggled using the Dungeon Difficulty setting. This applies to 10 and 25 player versions. 10 player (normal), 25 player (normal), 10 player (heroic) and 25 player (heroic) all share separate raid lockout timers.
o Trial of the Champion
+ 5 player (normal and heroic mode) dungeon.
+ Daily quest added to the heroic daily dungeon quest giver.
o Trial of the Crusader
+ 10 and 25 player (normal mode) raid dungeon.
o Trial of the Grand Crusader
+ 10 and 25 player (heroic mode) raid dungeon.
+ Crusaders' Tribute: Active on heroic difficulty only, the tribute system will limit players on the number of attempts the raid is allotted each week. Additional rewards can be earned depending on the number of attempts left in the tribute run each week when the final boss is defeated.
* Isle of Conquest, the new 40 vs. 40 player siege-style battleground is now available for testing.
o Two level brackets are available: 71-79 and 80.
o Defend the walls of your keep and protect your general by killing enemy players and destroying their siege vehicles.
o Capture the Docks, Airship Hangar, or Siege Workshop for access to destructive siege vehicles or strategic attacks on your enemy's base.
o Capture the Oil Derrick or Cobalt Mine for their resources to garner reinforcements and a steady flow of bonus honor.
o To claim victory, bust through the enemy's keep walls (or find other ways to get inside) and kill their general, or obliterate your opponents until their reinforcements are depleted.
* The Argent Tournament Expands
o All new Argent Crusader daily quests and rewards have been added for players with the Crusader title. Rewards include a new Argent Crusader banner and tabard (which can port players to the tournament grounds), a mounted squire (can periodically run bank, mail or vendor errands for the player), a paladin-exclusive Argent Crusader Charger mount, and new heirloom items.
o All new Silver Covenant and Sunreaver daily quests and rewards have been added for players exalted with these factions. Rewards include tabards, new ground and flying mounts, and a new pet.
o The Black Knight returns. Follow the continued story line as the saga unfolds before you.
* New druid art for cat and bear forms has been added. There are now five unique color schemes for each form and faction. Changing hair color (night elves) or skin tone (tauren) via the barbershop will change the look of one's cat and bear forms.
* Portals from Orgrimmar and Stormwind have been added leading players to the Stair of Destiny at the Dark Portal. Once there, players can access a flight path directly from the Stair of Destiny to Shattrath.
* A new zeppelin docking ramp has been added to Thunder Bluff allowing Horde players easier transport to and from Orgrimmar.
* The local Postal Service has grown tired of walking so far each day to collect mail and have decided to install a large number of new mailboxes to Stormwind, Undercity, Darnassus and Orgrimmar.
* Northrend Children's Week has arrived in Dalaran! Players can find out more by visiting the Eventide District.
* Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.



Races: General

* Axe Specialization (Orc): The weapon bonus from this effect now applies to fist weapons in addition to axes.
* Tauren now have the option of changing skin tone by visiting the barber shop.

Items: General

* Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
* On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier 8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier 5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier 5 warrior Shield Block bonus.
* Emblem System Changes
o Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
o Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
o The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
o The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
o New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.
* Mounts
o The cast time for summoning any ground mount is now 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds.
o Apprentice Riding (Skill 75): Can now be learned at level 20 for 4 gold. Mail will be sent to players who reach level 20 directing them to the riding trainer.
o Journeyman Riding (Skill 150): Can now be learned at level 40 for 50 gold. Mail will be sent to players who reach level 40 directing them back to the riding trainer.
o Expert Riding (Skill 225): Can now be learned at level 60 for 600 gold from trainers in Honor Hold or Thrallmar. Faction discounts now apply (Honor Hold for Alliance; Thrallmar for Horde). Flight speed at this skill level has been increased to 150% of run speed, up from 60%.
o Artisan Riding (Skill 300): Faction discounts now apply (Honor Hold or Valiance Expedition for Alliance; Thrallmar or Warsong Offensive for Horde).
o In order to further equalize the number of purchasable mounts available to each race, a new 60% speed ground mount has been added for night elves, and a new 100% speed ground mount has been added for the undead.
o Flying over Dalaran and Wintergrasp is now possible so long as players keep a healthy distance above the ground.
* Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.
* Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage over time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion. The other effects of resilience (reducing critical chance, critical damage and mana drain effects) have not changed.

Classes: General

* All pets now receive 40% of their master's resilience and 100% of their master's spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.
* Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).
* Silence, Strangulate, Silencing Shot, and Arcane Torrent: These abilities will also apply a 3 second interrupt effect against non-player controlled targets, making them more versatile against creatures immune to silencing effects.

Death Knight

* Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players.
* Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.
* Chains of Ice: Now reduces movement by 95% instead of 100%. The main effect of this change will be that targets of Chains of Ice will not have to re-issue a movement command to continue moving.
* Frost Presence: 10% bonus health reduced to 6% bonus stamina.
* Frost Strike: This ability can now be dodged, parried, or blocked. Weapon damage bonus reduced to 55%, down from 60%.
* Icebound Fortitude: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
* Talents
o Blood
+ Dancing Rune Weapon: This ability now has a fixed duration of 12 seconds (which can still be modified by its glyph) and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
+ Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.
o Frost
+ Blood of the North: Reduced to a 3-point talent. Increases Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 5/10/15%. There is now a 33/66/100% chance whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates.
+ Lichborne: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 2 minutes.
+ Threat of Thassarian: New 3-point talent. When dual-wielding, your Death Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes have a 30/60/100% chance to also deal damage with your off-hand weapon. Off-hand strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike.
+ Toughness: This talent now grants 2/4/6/8/10% armor instead of 3/6/9/12/15%, placing it in line with similar abilities of other classes.
o Unholy
+ Desecration: This talent has been reduced to 2 points for 25/50% snare and no longer increases damage done by the death knight. It has also been moved one tier earlier in the tree and its spell effect has been made more transparent.
+ Desolation: New talent. This talent is in the position formerly occupied by Desecration. It causes Blood Strikes to increase all damage the death knight deals by 1/2/3/4/5% for 12 seconds.
+ Scourge Strike: Weapon damage bonus reduced to 40%, down from 45%. Damage increased by 10% per disease on the target, down from 11%.
+ Summon Gargoyle: The gargoyle now flies lower to the ground, making it susceptible to melee attacks. This ability now has a fixed duration of 30 seconds and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
+ Unholy Blight: This talent has been redesigned. It no longer deals damage to nearby targets. Instead, when you deal damage with Death Coil, the target will take periodic damage for 10 seconds equal to 30% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.

Druid

* Flight Form: Can now be learned at level 60. Flight speed increased to 150%.
* Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.
* Lifebloom: The final heal that occurs when this spell blooms has been reduced by 20% on the base and on the spell power coefficient.
* Mangle: Ranks 4 and 5 base points reduced by about 11%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
* Rake: Ranks 6 and 7 base points on initial and periodic damage reduced by about 7%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
* Rip: Ranks 8 and 9 base points and points per combo point reduced by about 6%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
* Savage Defense: The animation for gaining this buff will no longer make the bear stand upright
* Shred: Ranks 8 and 9 base points reduced by about 10%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
* Swipe (Cat): Percent of weapon damage done reduced from 260% to 250%.
* Travel Form: Can now be learned at level 16.
* Talents
o Balance
+ Balance of Power: Now reduces all spell damage taken by 3/6%, rather than reducing the chance to be hit by spells by 2/4%.
+ Eclipse: The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30 second. cooldowns. In addition, it is not possible to have both buffs active simultaneously.
+ Owlkin Frenzy: Now also restores 2% base mana every 2 seconds for the duration (10 seconds) in addition to its current effects.
o Restoration
+ Empowered Touch: Now also increases the amount of bonus healing effects for Nourish by 10/20%.
+ Improved Barkskin: No longer provides dispel resistance to all effects on the druid, but now reduces the chance your Barkskin is dispelled by an additional 35/70%.

Hunter

* Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.
* Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect.
* The time that traps will exist in the world after being put down has been reduced to 30 seconds, down from 1 minute.
* Traps now have separate 30 second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.
* Talents
o Beast Mastery
+ Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.
o Survival
+ Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap.
+ Lock and Load: Now has a 22 second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.
o Pets
+ Roar of Sacrifice: Redesigned. This ability can now be used on any friendly target to make that target immune to critical strikes, but the Hunter pet takes 20% of all damage taken by that friendly target. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.

Mage

* Arcane Blast: Mana cost reduced by 12%.
* Invisibility: Can no longer be interrupted by a hostile action or damage done during the 3 second fade time, however an invisible mage can still be stunned or silenced.
* Talents
o Fire
+ Empowered Fire: In addition to its existing effects, this talent now also grants a 33/67/100% chance to regain 1% of base mana each time the Ignite talent deals damage.

Paladin

* Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.
* Charger: Can now be learned at level 40.
* Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
* Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.
* Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
* Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.
* Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.
* Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal over time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.
* Seal of Blood: This ability has been removed.
* Seal of the Martyr: This ability has been removed.
* Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage.
* Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%.
* Warhorse: Can now be learned at level 20.
* Talents
o Holy
+ Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.
+ Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.
+ Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.
o Protection
+ Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.
o Retribution
+ Art of War: Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism instant.
+ Crusader Strike: Damage reduced to 75% weapon damage to match the new 4 second cooldown.
+ Seal of Command: Redesigned. This seal now deals 36% weapon damage on every swing, and deals substantially less judgement damage.
+ Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout.

Priest

* Prayer of Healing: The percentage of spell power this spell gains in healing (per target) has been reduced from 80.7% to 52.6%.
* Talents
o Discipline
+ Penance: Cooldown increased to 12 seconds, up from 10 seconds.
o Holy
+ Inspiration: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.

Rogue

* After much quiet contemplation, rogues now possess the ability to learn how to use one-handed axes.
* Talents
o Combat
+ Sword Specialization: This talent is now called Hack and Slash and applies to axes as well as swords.
o Subtlety
+ Shadow Dance: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute. Now lasts 6 seconds, down from 10 seconds.

Shaman

* A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.
* All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
* Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
* Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.
* Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.
* Talents
o Enhancement
+ Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman's attack power, down from 30%.
o Restoration
+ Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.
+ Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
+ Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
+ Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
+ Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman's health.
+ Nature's Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30 second internal cooldown, and increases the shaman's maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
+ Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
+ Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
+ Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

Warlock

* Banish: Effect will now be canceled if Banish is recast on a banished target.
* Dreadsteed: Can now be learned at level 40.
* Felsteed: Can now be learned at level 20.
* Soulshatter cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes
* Talents
o Affliction
+ Pandemic: Now also increases the critical damage bonus of Haunt by 100%.
o Demonology
+ Fel Domination cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 15 minutes.
o Destruction
+ Empowered Imp: The warlock's critical hit chance is increased to 100%, up from 20% for the next spell cast after the Imp critically hits a target.
+ Fire and Brimstone: Reduced to 2/4/6/8/10% increased damage from Incinerate and Chaos Bolt on targets afflicted with Immolate, down from 3/6/9/12/15%.

Warrior

* Talents
o Fury
+ Armored to the Teeth: This talent now provides 1/2/3 attack power per 108 armor, up from per 180 armor.


From MMO-champion
 
Gah, disc priests getting hit by the nerf bat.

Truthfully, I am getting pretty tired with this from Blizzard. I don't mind game balance, but sometimes they completely change a class to the point it is getting silly.

Ret paladins seem to get massive changes each patch, new spells added, spells removed. As are DK's and more besides. Though it may be for the "greater good" to many classes aren't even working right at the moment. Perhaps I am just feeling this though because I am feeling sick of the damn game.
 
Gah, disc priests getting hit by the nerf bat.

Just seems like we'll be throwing out another Flash Heal instead of Penance.

Blizzard saw us ditching the Glyph of Penance for other abilities and the market for it collapsing so I guess that's why they removed the glyph nerf for this change.

With all the 2v2 PvP whining about Disc Priests (and healing in general) I wasn't too surprised, although I do find it amusing that they've ditched 2v2 for gear now. What did Blizzard think would happen though with making Disc Priests such powerful single target healers? I also note that Paladins are now seen as single target healers for 2v2 so would expect whining about them.

I think we'll be seeing more nerfs since RMP will see an increase in whining on the forums since everyone expects to easily kill priests.
 
More rubbi... I mean helpful stuff from Blizzard about WOW.


Death Knight (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Frost Dual-Wield in 3.2
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. (Source)

Druid (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Moonkins in 3.2
I wanted to correct a few misperceptions.

Owlkin Frenzy is caused by all types of damage, not just physical. We were considering making that change a few patches ago (3.1?) but ended up not doing it.

The resilience change does nothing to the relative damage caused by crits and non-crits. If you are a crit-dependent class, this change does absolutely nothing different for you. If 40% of your damage came from crits before, 40% of your damage will still come from crits. The only way I can imagine it having an effect is promoting more players to wear resilience which makes you less likely to crit. However the same phenomenon will also cause you to live longer.

The spell miss chance was very RNG, which was frustrating for both the druid and casters attempting to get binary spells off. Changing it to spell damage will also include melee attacks from DKs and paladins that struck for Holy and Shadow damage, for which the Moonkin's prodigious armor did nothing.

We realize the Lifebloom nerf does hit Balance druids too, but unlike critical damage above the resilience change does affect the relative power of healing -- it buffed it. Consider that it is harder to cause damage to someone in PvP now but no harder to heal it. As such, the LB nerf will either not be felt at all or will be a slight buff relative to the amount of damage you take. At full resilience, you are going to take ~12% less damage in PvP. That's a lot. (Source)

Mage (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Mage Q&A Feedback
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. (Source)

Developers Q&A (Source)
Mages in general are not pleased with the seeming lack of control on their damage output. This is most noticeable in the case of fire mages. A complete dependence on RNG-based procs combined with a lack of worthwhile cooldowns leads to a "spray-and-pray" approach to casting. When can mages expect more control on their output?
I think this phenomenon is overstated. The reason I say that is I know of mages who consistently outperform other mages with very similar gear (even within the same raid, when presumably buffs and leadership are constant). You could argue that the random numbers just always line up for them every time, but I don’t find that argument compelling.

The patch notes you have released show a combination of factors that will reduce mana availability to mages. This tells us that you feel that mages currently raiding Ulduar have a surplus of mana. Is this the case? If not, are we going to see more steps taken before 3.2 releases to provide additional mana resources?
I worded that answer poorly. The point I was trying to make is that our design is on challenging encounters the risk for healers running OOM should be much worse than casters running OOM. We want mages to use gems and Evocate, but if they do so reasonably well, then they should be fine on mana until the fights go for more than say 10 minutes. However, we don’t think the mage mana regen mechanics were cutting it, which is why we implemented the new mana return on Ignite. I think the patch notes said the return was 1%, but 2% might be more appropriate. (Source)

Mages feel that Mana Gems and Healthstones should not share a cooldown as we are the only class in the game currently forced to choose on this matter (and with the apparent intent of our mana regen mechanics, it is not a choice at all.) When can we expect these to be unlinked?
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. (Source)

Mage AoE is limited by the ground-area focus and significant mana cost associated with their AoE Spells. Other classes have more flexible AoE with significantly better at-will resource regeneration (i.e. Life Tap, AotV). This causes mages to be excluded from planning for AoE phases when possible and causes the need to drink constantly on trash packs. The feeling amongst some mages is that our AoE spells should be reasonably costed but with damage balanced to the point that with few targets (say, less than 3) they are impractical due to low damage, but scale better with more targets. This would be as opposed to making them overly costly mana-wise which makes them all but unusable now. Is this something that we could reasonably see happen?
I really don’t see situations where mages are not taken seriously as AE classes. Yes, some classes have higher burst AE on some trash packs. Mages still do great with Blizzard, and with the Ignite change we might even see a return of Flamestrike on some pulls. (Source)

You suggest that Spell Steal could be improved with a glyph. Many mages feel that we have too many mandatory major glyphs at this point and too few useful minor glyphs. Is there any chance in this expansion of us seeing the Spell Steal as a minor glyph, or other minor glyphs in general that could provide some enhancement to the class?
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. (Source)

Q7: Torment the Weak is considered so mandatory by both Frost and Fire players that virtually every serious raiding mage in those specs has 18 points in Arcane despite having to waste points in the lower tiers for talents that have absolutely no benefit (not bad talents, just not relevant in any way to Frost or Fire). Additionally, on fights where we are forced to target non-snared mobs (think Kologarns arms), mages dps suffers heavily. The last time we saw a talent this mandatory was with Evocation. If mage dps is so dependant upon this talent, shouldn't we be expecting for it to be removed entirely, mage baseline dps improved, and the lower tiers of arcane spruced up with some more inviting talents?
It’s hard to persuade us that mandatory talents are a bad thing. The alternative is that talent specs aren’t compelling because you could throw darts at your trees and have a viable spec. Furthermore, once you chill out a mandatory talent, then the next most powerful one is considered mandatory. I can’t think of a single talent tree for any class without a mandatory talent. It only becomes a problem when the character is severely restricted in being able to get fun utility talents because so many talents are tied up in the mandatory ones. But even in this situation I doubt mages are alone. (Source)

Q8: You have told us that "Arcane is a little bloated." But unlike with Shaman, you've provided little explanation as to what you would like to see happen with this tree to correct some of the bloat. Can you give us examples of some of the changes we could expect to see?
I am reluctant to do this because then if the changes did not materialize in the next patch, Arcane mages might be upset. In the Q&A I believe I mentioned Prot warrior and Ret paladin of models of how we would like to see all of the talent trees – very thin with an almost inability to spend all of your points in one tree. (Source)

You seem to insinuate that Mirror Image actually reduces threat when all current data shows it as nothing more than a fade. If Mirror Image actually reduced threat generated while active, it would be a vast improvement. Can we ever expect to see this functionality? Can we ever expect it to come back off the GCD?
Mirror Image divides your threat among the images. I thought this was well known unless I am misunderstanding the question. (Source)

If you are going to continue to have longer fights, why do mana gems have charges? Really.
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. (Source)

Playing with Fire has always been a neat flavorful talent. But with the sorts of AoE damage flying around nowadays, it is starting to feel like too much of a liability. Why are mages unique in having a talent that actively hurts you?
Kit. Homogenization is something we struggle with a lot. We don’t like it when two classes have very similar talents, though this is understandably one of the first things players suggest when they find a talent wanting. (Source)

Paladin (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Holy changes
None of the changes you mention were because of PvP balance.

Many Holy paladins (on these boards even) said they were weary of only using HL spam on the tank and were willing to trade their virtually unlimited mana for the ability to contribute to raid healing in other ways. As I tried to explain in the article we posted earlier, the SS change encourages more FoL use. The Beacon change encourages you to heal targets other than the tank, while still contributing to tank healing. The Beacon change (through the HL glyph) and the SS change give paladins a little more versatility in raid healing and healing on the run. The Beacon change with a nerf to mana regen would have made paladins the strongest healer in the game by almost any estimation. We figured the regen nerf was tolerable since it never even comes into play on many fights, and you still have Divine Plea.

We think healer homogenization is a very dangerous risk. We're not going to give every healer an AE heal or a hot or a shield just so they all have the same tools. We already have 5 viable healing specs for PvE, and many raids were inviting all 5. That's better than we've ever done in the history of WoW. That's not to say there weren't some problems though, which this patch hopes to address. (Source)

Out of curiousity, is the new FoL/SS HoT replacing the current +crit to FoL granted by SS? Or is it in addition? And does the size of the hot increase on crits? Or is it based on the non-crit spell size?
The crit is on the Sacred Shield tooltip and the hot is on FoL itself, so they should both work. I didn't actually try it just now, but based on the way the spells appear to work if you crit, you crit, and the hot would be larger.

Flash of Light now says "Heals a friendly target for X. If the target has the Sacred Shield effect, they heal an additional 100% over 12 sec." (Source)

Healing Cycle
When you are deciding between high throughput or high efficiency you have a choice and the better paladins can make better choices on when to use either one. When you have one spell that is the only choice no matter what the circumstances, well that is no choice at all. We think this is a major problem with the Holy paladin spec. Many players complained about that. We’re not asking you to all agree on every change before we make them, but you also have to understand that this was something several players were asking for. We discussed our options and came up with a solution that we think makes the healing style more dynamic and interesting without fundamentally changing it. (Source)

Holy mana regeneration
What Odes said. We allowed Holy paladin regen to be very high for a long time because we thought there was an okay trade-off for being so limited in scope. We expanded the scope now. Paladins will be able to contribute a lot more (almost double in ideal cases) to non-tank healing. I understand some of you are saying you did run OOM. It’s hard for us to balance around the experience of every single player. In the end we have to try and follow trends and what we are seeing in the data. Paladin mana pools were large, which exacerbated percent mana restores, and Illumination allowed HL to never be a choice and by contrast every other heal to feel paltry by decision. If down-ranking existed in the game right now, you would never need to do it. (Source)

/cast Exorcism /stopcasting macro

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. (Source)

Priest (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Penance cooldown increased in 3.2
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. (Source)

Penance Glyph
Yeah I agree with Odes in this case. Many, if not most, Disc priests had the glyph already. While it would be swell in an ideal sense if every spec had 6 or more legitimately equal options for glyphs, we realize that within the confines of raid progression it's likely that some are going to win out. Many websites declare the best major glyphs for any given spec. I can't imagine you consider your talent options to be extremely flexible, yet that doesn't seem to have garnered this much attention.

We'll try over time to add some more choices through major glyphs, but really it's hard to imagine all of this consternation is because "We now have less glyph flexibility!"

But I do want to understand if for some reason the 2 sec holds special significance. I understand if it only leaves you room to cast a Flash Heal, but really adding another spell to your rotation isn't the worst thing in the world. (Source)

Warlock (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Warlocks in Arenas
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. (Source)

Same source as last time, mmo-champion.
 
Thank goodness i play a DPS DK, looks like Frost has really been toned down.

Also, what have they done to Unholy Blight? Key attack for AoE completed destroyed unless im reading it wrong.
 
Thank goodness i play a DPS DK, looks like Frost has really been toned down.

Also, what have they done to Unholy Blight? Key attack for AoE completed destroyed unless im reading it wrong.

I believe it is being turned in to a dot effect base on 30 percent of the damage of Death Coil on a single target. So in other words you hit for say a 1K DC -> target takes 300 damage over X amount of time.

I am happy I rerolled from a DK. I like the class, but the constant toning down, change of play style each patch, the fact everyone has one, the fact that everyone hates them, just made me glad to re-roll.
 
I believe it is being turned in to a dot effect base on 30 percent of the damage of Death Coil on a single target. So in other words you hit for say a 1K DC -> target takes 300 damage over X amount of time.

I am happy I rerolled from a DK. I like the class, but the constant toning down, change of play style each patch, the fact everyone has one, the fact that everyone hates them, just made me glad to re-roll.

Damn that sucks. I only AoE when i really need too, but UB in its current state helps a lot :(
 
Noticed how they buffed rogues again :D

Lead developer must be a rogue, the most OP class yet every patch they seem to get even more help to ensure they can kill you faster than you can say "Oh **** stunlock death again..."

(talking PvP here, not sure how the changes will effect PvE rogue balance)
 
Only rogues with top end pve gear are op but with the resilience changes thats not gonna be the case anymore, I cant really see any rogue buffs tbh
 
Rogues deserve it, they were too weak for ages :p

Truthfully, I am getting pretty tired with this from Blizzard. I don't mind game balance, but sometimes they completely change a class to the point it is getting silly.

Ret paladins seem to get massive changes each patch, new spells added, spells removed. As are DK's and more besides. Though it may be for the "greater good" to many classes aren't even working right at the moment. Perhaps I am just feeling this though because I am feeling sick of the damn game.

Yeah, they constantly totally rebalance the game. Paladin for example is not even the same class it was in the original game, every single move and even the mechanics of how the class actually works has changed.
 
It is becoming annoying. I understand large changes at the expansions, I also understand bug fixes, and I also understand increasing a class that is under powered BUT:

How the hell can Blizzard basically go from one minute "the class is fine" to "OMG we need to tone them down".

How can tanks struggle with content, so rather than balance the two tanks that are struggling, nerf the encounters and the other two tanks that are doing fine? O.o

I mean each time I looked for almost two months something in ulduar was being nerfed to oblivion.
 
My only complaint are the badge changes - not being all scrooge-y or anything, but I waited literally weeks and weeks to get tier 8.5 chest and head, only for some berk who runs VH heroics get to be able to nab exactly the same thing.

Rewards have to be proportionate to the effort put in. I've always agreed with Blizzard's ethos of making the game accessible and great to play for everyone, but it is horrendously overkill to be able to grant Mimiron or Hodir drops to people who only run 5 man heroic instances. It won't even take that long at all either.

It's absolutely utter madness to have badges of conquest, the emblems of the 25 man version of the absolute foremost and hardest raid instance in the game, to drop in lowly 5 man instances. Absolutely stark raving bonkers.
 
They are pandering to the majority of players, whom wether we like it or not, are casual players with limited attention spans who want shiny armour and will probably go play another game if they dont get it.
 
It is becoming annoying. I understand large changes at the expansions, I also understand bug fixes, and I also understand increasing a class that is under powered BUT:

How the hell can Blizzard basically go from one minute "the class is fine" to "OMG we need to tone them down".

How can tanks struggle with content, so rather than balance the two tanks that are struggling, nerf the encounters and the other two tanks that are doing fine? O.o

I mean each time I looked for almost two months something in ulduar was being nerfed to oblivion.

Blizzard has said for the longest time they plan to tone down the DK's excessive passive stats and excessive defensive cooldowns. You know something's wrong when you don't even have to move Vezax during berserks with Death Knight tanks. We practically cheesed the fight with our DK tank. A tank is supposed to -die- if he gets pumelled on by Vezax during that phase. We can't do the same with any of the other tanks, and it's not meant to be cheesed (tanked on the spot with zero movement). That's how overpowered they were, and for the longest time, we were making our DK handle everything instead of our MT; this change was long coming. Vezax is just one example out of a myriad of many where death knights were the clear superior choice of tank due to extremely high mitigation, stats and superior cooldowns.

It's not about nerfing Death Knight tanks, it's about being sensible and bringing them in-line with the other tanking classes. About bloody time as well.
 
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