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

Recent Fury changes
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
As I posted recently in the hunter forums, we increased the armor on level 83 raid bosses by 10%. This will be a nerf to warrior dps.

In the case of Arms and Protection, we don't think any adjustment is necessary at this time. Arms is doing very competitive dps, while Fury has fallen behind. We experimented with lowering the proc chance of Sudden Death, from where Arms gets a lot of its damage, but weren't happy with the result and ultimately decided to buff Fury instead.

First, we increased the percentage of AP that contributes to Bloodthirst from 45% to 50%.

Second, we reduced the hit penalty on special attacks on Titan's Grip from -12% to -5%.

As I have said before, we have been somewhat reluctant to give Titan's Grip such a huge buff. It is now likely more powerful than several other talents in the tree and risks being the 51-point talent to which all other classes compare their 51-point talent. Nevertheless, we feel it was the right change to make.

When a Fury warrior missed a Slam or Bloodthirst on a boss, they ended up building up a lot of extra rage that couldn't be spent fast enough. I understand some players suggested an additional attack for Fury, and that is something we may still consider when we see players hit 80 and start experimenting more with the build. But it would be a very big change that involved touching talent trees and glyphs, as well as a lot of time necessary to iterate on the right values. The Titan's Grip change by contrast was a simple one, and judging by the number of players who have asked for it throughout beta, one that will be welcomed by the community.


Upcoming hunter changes
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
As I have suggested a few times, we are concerned that hunters of all 3 specs are doing damage that is clearly superior to other classes. While we're trying to achieve closer parity among specs of all classes with regard to dps, and we want to particularly make sure that hunters, rogues, mages and locks are not left behind, we do think the hunters are too far ahead, particularly at 80, in good gear, when raid-buffed.

However, we have also tried to give hunters a substantial survivability boost in PvP and we don't want to do anything that hurts them too much in PvP.

So here are changes you will most likely see soon:

1) Ranged attacks no longer benefit from the haste effects of Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons. This is a nerf to hunter white damage.

2) We are also improving the armor on level 83 raid bosses by 10%. This will be a nerf to the dps of any class that does physical damage. For classes that would slide behind with such a change, we'll take steps to adjust them -- though it probably isn't as many as you think. The raid buff stacking overhaul was very beneficial to melee (and hunters). Sunder / Expose Armor alone can be a 20%+ dps increase, which is why we decided to attack the problem from this angle.

3) Now the armor change won't affect PvP at all and the haste buff change will only have a marginal affect in BGs and only in Arena teams that include certain comps. However, in order to make sure we didn't nerf hunters too much, we made two changes to Disengage. First, its cooldown dropped to 25 sec (from 30) which can be talented to 16. Second, it no longer requires a target, but does require you to be in combat. Now if someone closes to melee, you can leap back without having to select them first. We require you to be in combat though so we don't see a lot of hunters bouncing around IF / Org or using it like Blink to goofily speed up travel.
 
Account-Bound Items FAQ
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
With the launch of the Echoes of Doom patch (3.0.2), certain items in World of Warcraft now bind to an account (account-bound) rather than to an individual character (soulbound). These account-bound items can be transferred between characters as long as they are on the same realm, in the same faction, and on the same account. This FAQ will address some of the more common questions asked about this new form of item binding.

Q: Which items are currently bind-to-account?
A: The following items are currently account-bound:

Blue Murloc Egg
Murloc Costume
Tyrael’s Hilt
Big Blizzard Bear
Netherwhelp’s Collar
Diablo Stone
Zergling Leash
Panda Collar

Q: How do I transfer an account-bound item to another character?
A: You can use the in-game mail system to send account-bound items to eligible characters. Look for mailboxes outside of inns, banks, and other locations throughout the game.

Q: Can I mail account-bound items to characters on different factions? What about characters on different realms?
A: No. Currently, account-bound items can only be mailed between characters on the same realm, in the same faction, and on the same account.

Q: Can I destroy account-bound pets or mounts after all the characters I play have learned them?
A: Yes, but if you do so, new characters you create on that account later will not be able to learn to summon the pet or mount. The exception to this is items that teach you to summon Collector’s Edition pets (as of The Burning Crusade, these include the Netherwhelp’s Collar, Diablo Stone, Zergling Leash, and Panda Collar), which are automatically mailed to each new character you create.

Q: Are pets and mounts obtained from World of Warcraft Trading Card Game Loot cards bind-to-account?
A: None of these items are currently bind-to-account.

Q: If I transfer a character holding an account-bound item to a new realm, will I be able to distribute the item to characters on the new realm?
A: Yes. However, please keep in mind that all of the normal transfer and bind-to-account item restrictions apply. For more information, please review our Paid Character Transfer FAQ here: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20558 . Also note that account-bound items will move with a character that is transferred to a different account; all normal rules and restrictions regarding cross-account transfers apply.

Q: Will other items be made bind-to-account?
A: Yes, we plan to add more bind-to-account items in the future, including the Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition pet and the heirloom items being introduced in Wrath of the Lich King.

Q: I have a Blue Murloc Egg (Murky pet) on an Alliance character on a PvE realm. Can I transfer the character to a PvP realm where I have Horde characters to teach characters there to summon Murky?
A: This is not currently possible. Account-bound items cannot be transferred between factions, and Alliance characters cannot be transferred to a PvP realm where you already play a Horde character.

Q: OK, so I can’t get Murky to Horde characters on that PvP realm. Can I transfer an Alliance character on a PvE realm to a PvP realm on which I play other Alliance characters?
A: Yes. As always, all normal transfer restrictions apply, but as long as you meet the eligibility requirements to transfer the character and mail the account-bound item, you should be good to go.

Q: Does this mean it’s now possible to get all three original World of Warcraft Collector’s Edition pets (Mini Diablo, Zergling, and Panda) on every character I play?
A: Yes! If you don’t already have one of each pet on existing characters you play, you could create three new characters, complete the Collector’s Edition pet quest on each one, and select a different Collector’s Edition pet for each new character. You could then mail those pets to every character on the same realm, in the same faction, and on the same account so they can learn to summon all three.

Q: I plan to create a death knight in Wrath of the Lich King, and I want to give the character one of the account-bound pets or mounts from a Blizzard Entertainment event. Will this be possible?
A: Yes. As long as the new death knight is on the same realm, faction, and account as the character that holds the account-bound item you wish to transfer, you should be able to mail the item to the death knight you create in Wrath of the Lich King.

Q: Why are Collector’s Edition pets bind-to-account when I can just make a new character and get them that way?
A: Now that Collector’s Edition pets are account-bound, players can restore pets to characters on an eligible account that may have lost the pets previously. It’s also now possible for one character to be able to summon all three Collector’s Edition pets.

Q: Is the Zhevra mount from the Recruit-A-Friend promotion bind-to-account?
A: The Recruit-A-Friend promotional mounts are not currently bind-to-account.
 
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Hallow's End - Horseman's mount and Squashling
Ooglop, the Horseman's mount is ten times as rare as the Squashling, in terms of pure numbers. You've just had a very strange run of personal luck. (Source)

Classes DPS unbalance in Sunwell
I wish we had fixed it. There isn't any kind of promise I could make that would really count for much, and making promises only tends to get us in trouble anyway.

I try to shoot straight with you all though and be honest when I think something isn't working or someone is OP or when we make mistake. So all I can offer is that we'll try to fix it if we see that problem again.

It's even more imperative to fix it now because the buffs are more easily replaced than they were before. In Sunwell, you would have brought a shaman if he sat there upping his leatherworking skill so long as he could WF and Bloodlust. If that happened in Ulduar, the shaman would get replaced. We have to make sure nobody gets replaced just because another class would do their job much better. (Source)

AoE Tanking in 3.0.2 and WotLK
I think it's more fun for more groups when the tank can hold a decent number of mobs. The only think we're slightly concerned about is we don't want to see PvE CC just go away. Several classes are designed around their ability to CC, and we don't want that to be neglected. In an ideal world, this would be less of an issue of threat management and more of an issue that if the tank tries to tank 4 and 5 pulls without CC that the incoming damage is too great.

It's probably fine for MgT. We'll just keep an eye on it at **0 especially in heroics. (Source)

Burst damage in PvP
We are concerned that burst dps is too high in PvP at the moment. Our hope is that damage increased a lot with the most recent patch at 70, but then when everyone hits 80 their health and survivability will catch up. The logic is that with limited talent points most players just go for whatever maximizes their damage, but gear hasn't changed.

However, we're not entirely convinced 80 will be better than 70. It's something we're talking about a lot right now. (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Hunter DPS in PvE
We are seeing autoshot damage as much higher proportion of total damage than you are seeing. And we are seeing hunter damage much higher than other classes. That is only true when hunters can get their shots off and aren't interrupted -- this is a PvE and not a PvP concern. (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Demonic Empowerment removed from the GCD
We compared this talent to other talents, such as Bestial Wrath which is not on the GCD, and decided to remove Demonic Empowerment from the GCD. The potential damage loss should no longer be an issue. (Source)

Developers Q&A (Source)
Curse of Elements - Moonkin and Deathknights provide this 13% debuff as part of their normal dps rotation without losing any dps. Warlocks have to give up casting a DPS curse to provide only a 10% benefit OR we have to spec deep affliction to get 13% benefit, but we still lose a DPS curse by applying it. This seems to go against the new debuffing philosophy.
One, this is an entirely new system. It's going to take some time to see how it feels and tweaks on our part to get right. Assuming the overall change ends up feeling good, then we do need to look at situations where one class feels like they are paying substantially more (whether it's cost, talents, procs, giving up dps or whatever) than another class.

Second, we don't want the buffs to be utterly identical or we lose some of the differences between classes and ultimately depth to the game. While we do want to do more work on it per my above statement, if the litmus test for players is that their talent has the same number of ranks and is located in the same spot on the talent tree and has the same duration and the same ease to apply, they risk being disappointed.

Blood Pact (Imp) - This debuff is inferior to the other increased health buffs AND requires a specific pet out. This also seems against your new philosophy.
Our logic was the lock always had the option of bringing out another pet whereas the other class might have to respec or just end up with a buff that wasn't needed.

Stealth Detection channelled on VW - This seems really clumsy and difficult to use. Why did you move it from a passive buff on the FH to an active channel on the VW. Surely it would be better as a passive buff on the VW.
The Felhunter just felt like a jack-of-all-trades PvP pet. One of the things we're trying to do with locks is get more of the demons feeling useful. The Voidwalker gets used a lot while leveling and then gets parked, even though it is one of the more -- perhaps the most -- iconic pets. A passive buff is something we'll consider though.

Backdraft - Any plans to make this affect the GCD? I dont know if the tech can cupport this, but making immolate not consume a charge(and i guess not receive the haste) would really help. Also, is backlashed spells consuming the backdraft charges intended?
Affecting the GCD is always something we're reluctant to do. Removing Immolate would be possible -- it's just a change to the spell description. We can discuss it. Having backlash and backdraft play nice together is harder. This problem creeps up for a lot of different classes when one spell can proc multiple effects.

Demonic Empowerment - I think this would be good off of the GCD.
Like I said, the GCD is there for a reason and we are always hesitant to let players remove it. When we do, it's often because you have a very reactionary ability. What is it in DE that you need to right now without waiting?

Fire and Brimstone - Are you happy with this talent, especially at 5 points?
I think the talent is fine. Five points might be a little steep. We do need some 5 point talents, especially in that slot, and all of them (throughout the game) risk becoming too general purpose, and therefore mandatory, if we keep buffing their effects. I'll put it on the list for consideration though.

Glyph of Souls - Could you explain the reasoning for changing to this to -70% mana cost. I dont like using hyperbole, but I can't think of any circumstance where this would be beneficial or useful. Unless you are changing Ritual of Souls?
We felt like it was a band-aid to the actual problem, which is that shards have changed from something to power certain powerful warlock spells to a generic resource. Rather than give you a couple of places here and there to opt out of them, we'd prefer to change the whole system. Bigger changes unfortunately take more time, but it's something we are talking about right now.

Master Conjurer - Any chance on tuning this talent a bit - it's nearly there but just needs to provide a little bit higher buff to the stones imo.
There are technical limitations to that prevent some of the buffs we would ideally grant to the stones. We might end up having to redesign the talent slightly.

Curse of Exhaustion - What's the reasoning behind the nerf to 30%?
It was 30% for a long time. We tried it at 50%, but it's ranged and renewable so it seemed like it shouldn't be as good as Hamstring and Wing Clip.

Drain Mana - I think it's pretty safe to say all warlocks consider this spell to be of very limited use. It really seemed not to scale at 70, and at 80 it drains even less of a % of a targets mana pool. Have you considered Drain Mana's usefulness in the expansion?
Rank 7 drains more than rank 6 and so on, so it does improve with level. It doesn't scale in the coefficient sense. To answer your question, we have considered it and didn't find it to be much weaker than it is today. It's something to keep an eye on though.

Reading back on this makes me a little paranoid that you will interpret my answers as our feeling that locks are broken. That isn't the case. In a game of this size there are always some things you'd want to look at given more time. I have just tried to be candid about what some of those areas are for warlocks. They exist for all classes though. It's an MMO. It changes over time.

Warlock's trees balance and DPS
Warlock single-target dps should be competitive with mages, hunters and rouges. We try not to balance classes around their AE ability since that is situational (but often very useful).

In our internal tests, warlocks are close to mages and below hunters, which as I've already suggested (or was that in another thread?) is a problem. I often regret posting what we're seeing at the moment, because it just leads to other questions. I offer it only to say that we do not reach the conclusion that warlock dps is sub-par. Hunters may be OP however.

Affliction and Destro are pretty close. Affliction probably continues to be a trickier rotation to pull off, even with the recent (and previously announced) change to Haunt. We're not convinced yet that Affliction is the black diamond slope for experts only, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on.

Demonology may be lower, but we're also not sure it would be fair for Demo to get the extra survivability and do the same dps. However, we do think it is much less the case now that Demo = PvP only and Destro = PvE only.
 
Sinister Calling and Squashling pet low droprate
I understand completely that people want to get the achievement, the title, and the mount, and therefore the concept of an achievement that may be intended to be uncommon is not a popular one. I wish everyone the best of luck; while I realize I may have frustrated you today with my answers, but I simply wanted it known that everything brought forth as a concern regarding the Sinister Calling achievement was discussed and the achievement was judged reasonable. We'd read the feedback and we understand where you're coming from but the achievement is still right about where we want it to be in terms of being able to complete it.

That isn't to say we won't make tweaks to the availability of the items in question, but chance will still play a part if we do. We have no intent of making the items use a quest, token, or other guaranteed system to achieve. (Source)


Rogue (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
ETA on Shadow Dance fix
I think I said before that changing the bar won't happen soon. It will be after Nov 13 and Lich King ships. The change to the cooldown on the openers should be in now on beta and very soon on live. (Source)

Fan of Knives and single-target DPS
We'd love to get rogue AE higher if we can do it where Fan is only used for AE and not as a general part of the single-target rotation. Also note that comparing anyone to a Ret paladin recently, and especially at 70, isn't going to be a great comparison. Elemental isn't designed to have an advantage over mage single-target dps, but rogues should have an advantage over warrior single-target dps. (Source)

Combat Potency changes and Fan of Knives
So it turns out the Combat Potency change to nerf Shiv also keeps Fan of Knives from generating Energy. Making the cooldown zero might do weird things to PvP when a rogue stands there and throws out knives to attempt break stealth. But we can probably lower it to 10 sec or so. That's Thunderclap / Whirlwind range. (Source)

Hemorrhage
But the charges are the entire point. Hemo is supposed to be a debuff, not an alternative to Sinister Strike. It in fact yields better damage per energy than Sinister Strike untalented and it's only the talents that prop up the latter ability. Adding more Hemo talents just gives you another high dps, spammable attack.

It is true that the rogue personally may not benefit a lot from Hemo when the charges get used up correctly. I think the attitude that that is "bad" just stems from the "winning the damage meters" mentality, not whether the ability helps you beat the boss. I'm not saying that looking at damage meters makes you shallow. I understand a nearsighted raid leader may not take you if your personal dps is low, but we're also not sure what to do about that until we can come up with some kind of "raid contribution" measurement that includes your buffs and debuffs. (Source)

Developers Q&A (Source)
Like what you plan to do with sub?
We recently made some changes to boost it, such as moving Dual-Wield Spec to tier 1 combat.

Why is hemo so bad?
It has a great debuff that boosts raid damage. It’s not intended to be Sinister Strike.

Why is Shadow Dance dagger only?
We agree with the above comment that it can do a lot of different things. You may just be focusing too much on it as a +dps cooldown.

Whether you feel rogue mobility is fine?
Rogues have a lot going for them in the way of stuns, damage avoidance and “get out of jail” cards. When you get up on other classes, they do have a tendency to die. We’re not sure we want rogues to also be zipping around the battlefield like warriors.

What is happening with Lightning Reflexes?
We mentioned this as a possible change (or perhaps we even promised it -- I don't recall) but it didn't materialize because we found other knobs to turn in combat that felt better during playtesting. Because LR is a passive talent, the side benefits would also end up being passive.

What is the deal with the Glyph of Sprint?
If I understand the qustion, I think it's just a tooltip bug. The glyph was made before the base cooldown of Sprint was lowered from 5 minutes to 3 minutes (2 min talented). If that's not the issue, can you elaborate a little more?

Why is there a major glyph of feint?
Basically, rogues have relatively few abilities, and we were desperate for something that wouldn’t have serious PvP balance ramifications. I agree this might be a good candidate for a minor glyph. Remember that we are going to be adding a lot more glyphs over time. You shouldn't view this as one of your very few useful glyphs is less useful, because you'll eventually have a lot of choices.

Why is Fan of Knives so weak with daggers, and even weak with swords?
It's designed to give you a button to hit when you want to AE. It's not supposed to turn you into an AE class, if that makes sense.

Are you happy with Hunger For Blood being horrible for PvP, and like the old Rampage for PvE?
No, not completely. We understand that CC + a short duration limit how often you can benefit from it. Obviously, we think removing MS and Hamstring was a little too good, just because those are generally hard debuffs to get out of.

How exactly are expose, mind numbing and wound major raid utility, when they so obviously are not?
Couple of things here, and forgive me for being a little brief.

First, I am reading between the lines a little here that it would be really nice to have a unique buff or debuff. Everyone asks for that, but it defeats the whole point.

Second, Expose is one of the strongest debuffs in the game. The dps increase can be 30% or more. So I suspect what you're really getting at is that "we'll always have a warrior with us doing that debuff." The whole point of the revamp is we can’t assume you have anyone but we still want you to be able to get the buff. Mind Numbing is a cast speed debuff that is only offered by one other class (that doesn’t even exist in the game at the moment). Granted, it doesn't offer the benefit of Expose. Wounding Poison offers the strongest debuff in the game for PvP, and also offers some dps to not over-penalize rogues who are balanced around poison damage.

Third, ultimately we still want raids to want rogues because they bring good dps. We just don't want it to feel that only the rogues (hunters, mages and locks) are doing the group's dps.

Will there be a mutilate/HFB/cold blood/Assassination oriented glyph made before release?
Probably. We do want to add more glyphs over time, just like new gems started to show up in BC.

Overkill - why is it the pre-req to mutilate?
It's always a hard call to decide what prereqs to what. We do like talent prereqs, and it seems like a good talent regardless. Are you wanting to skip it?

2. It has been stated that there is a plan to still have some poison immune mob/bosses in WotLK, what can a mutilate rogue do during these situations. Mages were helped with frostfire to combat the fire immune/frost immune mobs, but the poison requirement on mutilate still exist and when dealing with poison immune mobs, we're(for the lack of a better term) seriously screwed in our dps. I still don't understand why our signature move(for assassination) still has this requirement when it still cost 60 energy.
Poisons are what the rogues are balanced around, so we need to be pretty careful about that now. I can't promise there won't be any poison immune bosses -- resistance and immunity are things we can change on a boss to make the fight play out pretty differently from the previous boss. But there won't be a lot of them.
 
THere ya go, basically the latest posts / changes on the classes... if any of the info is a repeat sorry, I didn't really read it well since I am meant to be doing some search engine optmizing for a website :p
 
BFCTom said:
I don't like how Assassination is going to overtake Combat for PvE damage, I hate daggers ;x
Click to expand...

They did state that they will keep an eye on it / fix it I believe.

Blizzard are still working on numbers, and they have said 100 times now that they want all specs to be viable, especially in PVE.

About bloody time too.

Shadow Priests also recieved another much needed boost.

Shadow Form now increases the damage DOTS do as a percent of your crit, so in other words if you crit is 10 percent, your dots do 10 percent more damage, Devouring Plague does more damage, and the coefficient of Vampritic Touch has been doubled. FInally, Glyph Of SHadow Word Pain now increases damage done by mind flay by 10 percent while sw:pain is up on the target.

Downside is that Vampritic Embrace is nerfed to 5 percent for party healing, but you still get the 25 percent HP return to yourself.

I must admit though, I had 1 point in Improved VE, and was placed in the tank group in 25 mans and ZA. I was out healing some healers because of the constant damage the tanks / melee were recieving. Now it has been nerfed it makes me sad I can't do this, but it really was a little much, especially as we are getting another DPS boost. Blizzard are speculating that it will be around another 20 - 25 percent increase in our damage, we shall see though.
 
Cheers for posting the change notes.

Dark_Angel said:
Shadow Priests also recieved another much needed boost.
Click to expand...

I have one of these as well and the class is pretty much unkillable in AV choke hold standoffs. DoT up everyone, hit them with 36 yard Mindflays and then run off under the cover of Dispersion if you get focused. I felt just like a Warlock. Got the '20 killing blows without dying' achievement really easily.
 
Dispersion sucks close range though, or in 1 and 1 situations.

The person will either wait it out, or dot the hell out of you, or simply use the time to bandage :(

Good in PVE though to avoid aoe, or the nuke from Rage Winterchill for example
 
I hope they give Shaman a bit more attention - all specs are currently extremely squishy in PvP and extremely easy to CC. Elemental Shaman are currently the worst DPS spec in the game, with damage output close to the tanks and desperately need some major buffing.
I play an Enhancement shammy and dps seems ok with the new talents, though the spirit wolves have a couple of issues as they don't seem to scale with gear as they should and their abilities aren't as controllable as they could be.
I just hope we get more balance in the game than we've had recently, it gets very boring when everyone rolls the FOTM class (rogues, arms warriors and resto Druids until recently, now joined by ret paladins and doubtless unholy specced Death Knights very soon).
 
Unholy Death Knights have been nerfed, and probably will be again. Paladins already where hit, and now are more balanced.

In the end Blizzard are trying to give no class a clear advantage, we shall see if they manage it however.
 
Dark_Angel said:
Unholy Death Knights have been nerfed, and probably will be again. Paladins already where hit, and now are more balanced.

In the end Blizzard are trying to give no class a clear advantage, we shall see if they manage it however.
Click to expand...

I think one of the Blizzard reps summed it up best, 'balance is a journey, not a destination'.
 
Any else getting rubbish latency and fps? I'm getting sub 30fps most of the time even though I have an 8800 GTS with shadows turned off. I'm also always sat on about 250-300ms ping. I'm the Thunderhorn realm.

Regarding FPS though... I run 1680x1050 with an 8800GTS 640, 2GB RAM and 2.5GHz Opteron 165. Ran on full settings before the patch without issues, not I get sub 30 even with shadows turned off. Is this common?

EDIT: Just noticed the BE/O2 thread regarding pings in Networks - That'll be why.
 
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