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Originally Posted
By Blizzard Entertainment.
Q: When are we gonna get a crack at the
official Talent Calculator for MoP? Even just a work in progress one
that perhaps could change as you guys make changes. Would be VERY
cool to see how the talents progress form now until release.
A: We are working to get one up soon
(TM). We want to include all of the core class and spec spells,
because the main concern from players (especially those not at
Blizzcon) is what happens to various spec spells. The talent
calculator will also help alleviate concerns about leveling up,
because you'll be able to see that you get new spells about as often
as you do today. Just remember that the individual talents and
spells will change a lot before we ship 5.0.
Q: Hello, the warlock community has been excited/intrigued/concerned
by the announcement of the three resources for warlocks in MoP.
Could we have more details about them, especially on the Infernal
Embers of Destruction?
A: While the new Warlock resources are
still in-development, here's the current iteration: When you
incinerate an immolated target, your character builds up Infernal
Embers. Infernal Embers increase the power of your next single
Conflagrate or Soul Fire by 10% each. That ability uses all of the
embers you have. There may also be additional abilities which
generate or consume Infernal Embers, but we're still experimenting.
Here's a little bonus: as you generate more and more embers, your
character slowly ignites, until you're basically a walking torch.
Infernal Embers currently have no cap, but we'll likely add one
before Mists ships.
Q: A lot of warriors feel like the stance mechanic is a bit
outdated. Are there any plans to make changes to warrior stances in
MoP such as giving the passive stance bonuses to each spec or
allowing all of the warrior abilities to be usable in all stances? I
say the latter because I know a lot of Arms warriors would love the
10% damage boost over the 5% damage boost and 5% damage reduction.
Thank you.
A: At the moment, we are considering
Berserker as a +AE damage stance and removing all stance penalties
and restrictions. Just use Battle for single-target and Zerk for AE.
That isn't set in stone of course.
Q: With Firelands, elemental shaman DPS was brought up to a very
competitive level primarily due to 2 piece T12 and fire elemental.
Are there any plans to change the cooldown of fire elementals in the
future so that elemental DPS isn't hurt so badly when fire elemental
is on cooldown, or any plans to reduce fire elemental damage and
compensating for it in other areas?
A: The 2T12 bonus for Elemental Shamans
was very powerful. Too powerful, in fact, as it was going to lead to
Elemental Shamans hanging on to their 2T12 bonus for so long. So, we
reduced the impact of the set bonus, and slightly buffed the damage
of the Fire Elemental for them, along with several other minor (and
major) buffs in 4.3. We're confident that Elemental Shamans will be
totally viable in 4.3.
Q: I want to talk a bit about Frost Presence for Death Knights. It's
sub-optimal for all dps specs right now, and it just feels so slow.
That said, I don't necessarily WANT to go back to Frost Presence. It
just feels SO slow. Honestly, I think if Frost Presence were to be
changed to be the best presence for Frost DPS, I would have to go
Unholy, which I don't enjoy as much right now. It would just be too
painful to give up the fast playing speed and the passive run speed
since we don't have a PvE gap closer. The extra run speed is SO
valuable that I don't want to go back. Right now, I feel more like
you need to find a new niche for Frost Presence, even if it's to
make it the "AoE" presence in some way, so that both Frost and
Unholy use it in certain situations, or make it a niche
kiting/control presence (maybe tying the Icy Touch slow/Chains of
Ice root into the presence somehow, instead of the spec). I think
that would be a better solution if at all possible. I'm not married
to the idea of Blood Spec + Blood Pres, Frost Spec + Frost Pres, and
UH + UH Pres. I think making the presences a little more dynamic
would be a great change. I was wondering what your plans are for
Frost Presence, and if you’re looking more at making it “married” to
Frost Spec again, or if you’re thinking of a more dynamic approach
to dps presences.
A: The intent is for the death knight
class to encompass a variety of DPS playstyles (the pet focus of
Unholy, a more variable and reactive Frost versus a more rotational
Unholy, and so forth). Earlier in Cataclysm, the difference in
preferred presence between 2H and Dual Wield Frost allowed for two
variants of Frost that used essentially the same set of abilities to
have a very different feel. The current niche of Frost Presence
clearly isn't ideal, and one of our design goals for Mists is to
ensure that both DPS Presences have clearly-defined purposes, while
allowing as many players as possible to find a style of play that
suits their personal preference while being effective.
Q: With the introduction to monk, many players are speculating
exactly how this class is going to heal. We were given that the
stance that allows healing would give mana, but what many players
are wondering is how will this effect abilities that require
chi(such as roll), and will healing monks be rewarded for meleeing
like the Paladin is, or will it become a requirement, making them
less appealing to fights with small range aoes, or has the idea of
melee healers been replaced?
A: The Monk will be able to choose
whether they want to melee DPS to heal or heal from range like other
classes, similar to how a Discipline Priest can choose to heal
through using Smite or to use mostly cast heals. So you could heal a
fight as a Monk without DPSing at all and still be competitive. Roll
may likely cost mana and get some kind of cooldown once you're in
healer stance. There's also currently a talent that changes roll
into a different ability that heals and does damage to targets you
"roll" through, which makes it interesting for the healer Monk.
Q: I'm very excited about the upcoming revisions to Warlock specs in
Mists of Pandaria. Looking at the new talent tree, I noticed that
Demonology warlocks will be casting a spell called "Malefic Grasp."
Will this be Demo's new filler spell in the rotation and how does it
play differently from Shadow Bolt and Incinerate? Last, does the
name of the spell imply that it will be a spell which is cast at
melee range?
A: Malefic Grasp replaces Shadow Bolt
for Affliction. It is a channelled nuke which increases the damage
of your DoTs on the target by increasing their tick rate by 100%.
Q: Is the Frost Mage ever going to be competitive in PVE? (I know it
is within about 10% but it's still the lowest DPS spec in the game
at the moment)
A: Part of why we are changing talents
in 5.0 is to let every spec have a shot at getting good utility.
This means we can abandon the current (and tired) model where some
specs (Frost, Subtlety especially) have to trade off dps because
they have good control / survivability / escape. The biggest
difference between Frost, Fire and Arcane in 5.0 will be which
spells (including procs and other mechanics) you use to do damage.
Q: ITEM SQUISHING QUESTION: Item squishing sounds smart, but have
you guys thought about the possibility of using item scaling like
you do for Heirlooms but backwards? Sets between ilevel xxx for
level 85 and xxx level 90 curve downward. Example would be at level
85 the item has 200 str but at level 90 the item has 100str because
the ilevel doesnt match the content. This would allow you to stay at
roughly the same numbers possibly.
A: We've looked at the item squish
problem from many different angles, and definitely considered this
approach. However, the solution you mention has problems. Players
are already very unahppy that their ratings get "nerfed" as they
level up. Doing what you describe would make that feeling of getting
weaker as you level even worse, as you saw your primary stats
decline as well. You could even have the effect of creatures getting
harder as you gain levels.
Q: Will the hunters be able to parry with bows in MoP?
A: No. Hunters will lose parry as part
of the trade-off for losing minimum range.
Q: Are there any plans to do something about Demonology Warlocks and
Pet Swapping for 4.3?
A: Yes, we plan to eliminate Pet
Twisting for Demonology. Step 1 - replace Soul Shards. Step 2 - fix
Demon Soul. One popular idea has been to give each spec a different
version of Demon Soul. However, we haven't finalized that idea. We'd
love to see some discussion about this on the Warlock forums.
Q: Any plans on making Ret paladin damage less random?
A: In 5.0 we moved Divine Purpose to a
talent, so if you skip that one then the main source of RNG will
just be Art of War procs, which should be a lot less random than
today if that suits your play style.
Q: Will hunters be able to equip melee weapons instead of a ranged
weapon in MoP, even if just for show ?
A: Yes.
Q: In the Dev watercooler 'Threat Level Midnight' GC effectively
stated that the short term solution for tank threat was to increase
across the board and a long term solution, if any, to be decided
upon at a later date. Have you decided what the long term solution(s)
is going to be yet? Can we get a followup on where you see threat
going into 5.0?
A: We're currently investigating a form
of 'Active Mitigation' for each tanking class. This means that tanks
will continue to do similar damage (relative to DPS specs) as they
do today, but that their skill usage in combat will directly impact
their ability to survive and mitigate damage. We aren't firm on any
of these mechanics yet, but we're considering options like no longer
generating rage from damage taken, only from ability usage and white
swings. For example, Shield Slam could generate rage instead of
costing it, and Shield Block could cost a large amount of Rage, but
have no cooldown. This would lead to offensive stats (such as haste)
increasing rage generation, and therefore increasing mitigation.
Q: Where is our moose at?
A: There's a pony you can ride in the
new 4.3 Darkmoon Faire.
Q: I noticed in a sample of the druid talent tree coming up in MoP,
that there seems to not be many restoration-specific talents. In
fact it seems a lot like hybrid-esque talents. Is this intentional?
Will the lack of restoration talents be made up for in the spells
they get?
A: The overall philosphy of the Druid
talent treee is to bring some hybridization back to the Druid class.
The 4 Druid specs have become very focused on never using the forms
that they do not specialize in. We would like to bring the whole
class back together more. So, interesting functionality themed
around the different combat roles has been introduced. Some players
have objected that they aren't good at the other roles, and those
abilities aren't worth the global cooldown they cost. To address
this, we are making the existing Nurturing Instinct talent baseline
to both Feral and Guardian Druids, and making a new talent which
grants attack power based on Intellect for Restoration and Balance
Druids. That will make the occasional use of core class abilities
that require other forms useful even to the Restoration Druid. In
addition, the combination of talents may let a Restoration Druid do
things like use Demoralizing Roar, which cc's nearby enemies,
triggers an instant heal (from Disentanglement), and increases armor
and health all in a single gcd. That capability is useful to
Restoration Druids even in a raid setting. Correction, not a new
talent, a new baseline abiltiy for Resto and Balance that grants ap
from Intellect.
Q: Is there any reason (other than balance) that you decided to give
healing Monks a Mana bar instead of their cool new resource? (I was
really looking forward to playing a healer with endless resources).
I feel anyone who wanted to play the old healing triage with Mana
can play one of the existing healers, and chi/orbs is a great new
and exciting way to heal (On top of the mobile healing the Monk
should provide)
A: Having the Monk not use mana was
discussed early on, and there's a (small) possibility we could still
go that route but the reason we didn't is because there is a
significant amount of design challenges for a mana-less healer. For
one, they could heal for literally forever. They would not value
stats other healers would. Mana potions and other power-ups that
raid bosses give would be useless to the Monk. Not that those
challenges couldn't be solved, but there would have to be some
compelling gameplay benefit to going through with it. And we're not
sure that would be true.
Q: Any additional information about how Soul Shards will work for
Affliction? How is the new resource going to change up the
"rotation"?
A: 1. Soul Shards are passively
regenerated out of combat. (1 per 45 sec atm)
2. Soul Shards are generated by Drain Soul, even if you don't kill
the target.
3. Soulburn has a 15 second cooldown, but each ability can only be
soulburned once a minute.
4. We're adding new Soulburn: X abilities. An example - Soulburn:
Curse - your Curses apply to all targets within Y yards of the
target.
Q: Hey there, since the arcane mage playstyle is a bit "simplicistic"
nowadays (one button spam in burn phase and two button use in
conserve phae) can we hope to see other, more engaging ways of spell
interaction? Would it, for example, be possible to get a resource
system out of arcane blast stacks or can we get more spells into our
rotation?
A: Arcane Mages' rotation (or
lack-there-of, depending upon your point of view) is something we
have plans for in 5.0. We still want mana management to be a major
part of their gameplay, but we want to mix up their rotation a bit
beyond that. Additionally, their rotation being entirely immobile is
debilitating for them at times. We're currently planning to include
Arcane Barrage in their PvE rotation, so that they at least have an
instant GCD that allows them to move small distances without losing
DPS. Arcane Missiles while moving is something that we've considered
several times, but currently aren't planning to use (that may change
though).
Q: Sometimes it seems you try to fix 'underpowered' class specs by
increasing numbers, rather than trying to solve the underlying issue
(like RNG in fire spec: you just increased numbers rather than
making the dps more stable)
A: RNG is what you are signing up for
when you play Fire. We don't view that as a crippling problem that
needs to be fixed. Now there is such a thing as too much RNG, but we
don't think Fire is in that spot. Sometimes you'll get a lot of Hot
Streak procs etc. and sometimes you'll get less. Our design intent
is that if that bothers you, play Frost or Arcane instead.
(Obviously the DPS needs to be similar overall for that to feel like
a real option.)
Q: I know this was an idea/plan for Cata, but for MoP is there any
plan to give discipline priests different shields such as a shield
for tanks.
A: Spirit Shell is a new cast-time
shield spell for Discipline priests coming in 5.0, that does not
cause Weakened Soul.
Q: Is the priest spell Holy Nova going to be changed to make it
useful in mop, as there is no need to even have it on you action
bars as it is atm.
A: We've talked about it. Its possible
we may make Holy Nova Discipline only and interact with Evangelism
in some way.
Q: While playing a Fury Warrior, missing Auto-Attacks when you are
counting on the rage from them is unpredictable and frustrating,
especially when it happens during an important timing. This random
event can mean the difference between performing poorly or
amazingly. Saving rage to have decent-sized bank can somewhat
provide insurance against this, but sometimes it doesn't provide
enough coverage when consecutive misses occur. This is especially
prevalent with the slower swings of Titan's Grip. Is it possible to
allow Auto-Attack misses to generate a full or partial rage gain as
dodges and parries do? To counterbalance, the Rage per speed
coefficient could be lowered from 6.5 to say, 6. I'm sure most
Warriors would be happy giving up a few rage per swing to have a
more predictable resource system.
A: One of the defining characteristics
of Rage, as distinct from Energy, is its unpredictability. If you
could predict with certainty what your Rage generation over the next
X seconds is going to be, then the two resource types become
essentially indistinguishable. That said, a dual-wielding warrior
should have enough combat events occurring that the randomness is
smoothed out in practice, and of course gearing for Hit and
Expertise allows players to exert more control over their rage
income if they want less variability, potentially at the expense of
other stats.
That said, we have some changes in the
works regarding Rage mechanics in Mists, including changing some
core rotational abilities to actually generate Rage instead of
consuming it (in addition to autoattacks). Currently, warriors need
to reliably have enough Rage to perform their core rotational
abilities at nearly all times, or the result can be very
frustrating. However, this doesn't leave much room for Rage
generation to grow without resulting in having more than a player
can reasonably spend (or a return to constantly hitting Heroic
Strike). This may also increase the sense of control you have over
Rage generation, while simultaneously allowing us to make Rage
itself more valuable and interesting as a resource.
Q: I have been very interested in the thoughts/discussions around
item level inflation, and the proposed solutions you have/are
considering. My question is more centered around how items will
scale in the future. Wouldn't it make more sense to try and keep the
item level gains uniform? If they begin to grow exponentially again,
you would have to 'squish' again, which might disrupt things even
further in the future.
A: We don't anticipate changing the way
item levels scale in the future. We've founf that in order for item
upgrades to feel good, they need to be a percentage increase over
prior items. That's the very definition of exponential growth. Using
a very simple example, if your first item is +1 str, and second is
+2 strength, etc., when you get that item upgrade that goes from
+100 strength to +101 strength, the upgrade is clearly not as
worthwhile. So, percentage growth has to exist in some form. Knowing
that reality, we are exploring to find ways to mitigate the impact
of very large numbers on the game, including the item squish as one
option.
Q: Looking over the new talents for MoP, it still looks like there
will be "required" talents, or talents that obviously designed for a
certain spec. Demo warlocks would obviously pick the talent that
gives them the upgraded pets, or bear druids would pick the talents
that give damage reduction. Is there any plan to go back over these
talents and make them truly optional?
A: You know that's a great point and
we're still working on our talent trees. In the case of the Warlock
Grimoire of Supremacy and Grimoire of Service - both of those
talents benefit from your demon boosting mastery.... However,
Demonic Fury (currently) also increases the damage you do outside of
Metamorphosis and this value increases with your mastery. Which
means Sacrifice can be strong too...Disclaimer: This can and will
change as needed between now and Mists.
Q: In the old talent trees, a lot of the talents gave players
spec-specific gameplay mechanics that are core to its gameplay, such
as the Mage's Hot Streak talent. Others, such as Infected Wounds for
Druids, also provided important benefits/mechanics, but might not be
necessary to take depending on raid composition (i.e. if another
player brought the debuff). With the new talent system, how are
these mechanics going to be incorporated into the classes? It would
seem overwhelming to players to roll all of the core spec mechanics
into the "Level 10 Pick Your Spec" decision, and are talents like
Infected Wounds going to be made choices of some sort, or are they
also just going to be rolled into the spec?
A: In most cases, if it's a fun
mechanic, we give it to your spec. All Fire mages get Hot Streak at
a certain level. Feral druids (but not Guardian druids - the new
bear spec) learn Infected Wounds. As with every expansion, we are
taking a close look at buffs and debuffs, simplifying the matrix a
bit, and making sure you don't feel like you are locked into a
certain debuff.
Q: Hello, for the hunter Talent; Transmorph Trap. Can more of a
description be given on it? Is it the same as a hex effect, or can
you also fear the target after while they're turned into a beast?
A: Transmorph Trap is a nature trap
(and so can be placed at the same time as Freezing Trap), and allows
you to cast Scare Beast on the transmorphed target. It will have a
similar duration to Freezing Trap.
Q: Is intercept being replaced by charge for fury warriors now that
its usable in every stance?
A: With Charge being usable in combat
and in all stances, we didn't really see enough difference between
Charge and Intercept to keep Intercept around. Instead, we plan to
allow you to Charge more often (through talents) to get the same
effect.
Q: Retribution, and the paladin class in general, has seen many
iterations since release. The past few expansions have brought
changes that basically make spec unrecognizable to how it handled in
the previous expansion. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing,
players are forced to completely relearn the class with each
expansion. Will Retribution recieve another overhaul in MoP in
regards to Holy Power, resource management, and rotation, or are you
happy with the "feel" of the class as it currently performs in cata?
A: That's always a hard decision to
make (when to overhaul a class). Demo and Destro locks for example
are gettign a bit of that in 5.0. We like the Holy Power model for
Retribution (and all paladins) and aren't going to dramatically
overhaul it. We are fixing some issues with it that players have
brought up. We understand some players liked the LK version of the
Ret paladin, but we worry they liked it either because it was very
simple to play or because it did too much damage, neither of which
is great for the long term of the game. We think classes need a
resource of some form to be interesting.
Q: Are there any plans to simplify the feral cat druid dps rotations
or are you happy where they are right now?
A: The Feral rotation has been
simplified slightly in 4.3 by renaming the Glyph of Shred and
allowing it to trigger off Mangle instead. In addition, in 5.0
Mangle will no longer cause a bleed damage debuff and so no longer
be required in the rotation. At that point, the two abilities will
be interchangeable, changing only by whether a Feral Druid can
attack from behind or not. That will make Feral easier to play in
high movement encounters and encounters with facing restrictions.
The current Feral Charge and Stampede talents are becoming part of
Wild Charge, so you can select not to have that complexity with
Ravage. Past that, we are pretty happy with the rotation and feel
there is a strong Feral community that enjoys the current rotation.
Q: During the presentation at Blizzcon, it was announced that Shaman
Buff totems are gone, what exactly is going to replace them? How am
I going to get those buffs when 5.0 hits?
A: The core shaman buffs (like Strength
of Earth and Windfury) will likely become passive auras on the
shaman, the way Unleashed Rage currently works. The reality is that
originally, the restrictions inherent to totems (the GCD cost,
limited range, original group-only restrictions, etc.) served to
balance unique and powerful buffs. But in a world where buffs are
raidwide and exclusive, those restrictions serve less of a purpose.
And as we've noted, there isn't a tremendous amount of interesting
gameplay in dropping Strength of Earth relative to something like
Earthbind or Tremor.
Q: If there's no hybrid tax, what's the point of playing a pure DPS
class? Raid/pug leaders will always prefer players that can fill
multiple roles. When hybrids like Boomkin and Shadow Priests are out
DPSing the four pure classes across most parses, I think something's
wrong.
A: We want to make sure there are pure
DPS classes in raids. That doesn't mean that hybrids just have to be
support classes as they were back in the BC days. But it does mean
that you should neglect mages, locks, rogues and hunters at your
peril. There may very well be more hybrids, because they just have a
chance at more roles, so you can't just look at popularity of
classes, but we will take steps to make sure the pures don't vanish.
Q: What are your thoughts on the state of Demonology's pets? Our
Felguard does sub-par single target damage and is only used for its
Demon Soul and AoE, leading to a very clunky pet swapping mechanic.
Is there any chance that our Felguard could stand out like it
should, or are we going to have to wait until 5.0 to maybe use our
spec's signature ability.
A: While I can't speak for everyone on
the class team, I am really upset I haven't seen my succubus in like
two years - I promised her the heart of a gnome and fresh hunter
tears.We really want to make it viable for each spec to use a pet
that isn't tied to their spec. For that reason, the intent is to
decouple the pet from the spec and instead increase your pet choice
based on its utility.
However, I realize I haven't hit your
personal question - the Felguard. I love Jhootom as much as anyone
else, but it became quickly clear that if we made the Felguard
defacto better than every other pet for Demonology - you simply
wouldn't use an Imp, Succubus or Voidwalker. So our intent is to
make the single-target DPS close, but the Felguard remains the best
AoE pet. Oh - and Grimoire of Supremacy allows you to upgrade your
Felguard into a Wrathguard. (It was just missing from the tooltip in
Blizzcon)
Q: What was the main reason that Shaman-Buff-Totems are going to be
deleted in MoP?
A: We don't think the buff totems were
fun to drop and they competed too much with utility or damage totems
that are fun to use. As we said above, we'll still have shaman
provide the buffs, just not through totems.
Q: Since in MoP you guys plan on getting rid of relics for pallies,
shamans, druids, and stat sticks for hunters are you planning on
boosting stats in other areas to compensate? Or are the range slots
for the other classes being removed as well?
A: The ranged slot is being removed for
everyone in 5.0. Relics are gone. Ranged Weapons will be usable in
the main hand by appropriate classes. Wands will become a type of
main hand weapon. This effectively is a slight nerf to the stats of
everyone equally, so doesn't cause class balance concerns.
Q: There was a question a few minutes ago about Monk tanking, can
you provide some sort of idea on how it will work? Also, how will it
compare to the current tanks in PvP? Where most groups find anything
other than a warrior tank to be lacking.
A: All Monks (DPS, Tank and Healer)
will use the "dual combo point" resource (Force). So for the
Brewmaster (Tank), they will choose between using two different
types of mechanics through Dark and Light. For example, Dark may be
an absorption shield which is larger depending on how many Force you
consume. And Light may be increased avoidance. So you can do things
like build up and store Dark for a big shield when you need it, or
if you don't really need much self-survivability (maybe you have me
healing you then you can just spend your Dark Force on DPS instead.
The Brewmaster also has drinks as
short-term buffs, which restore Light or Dark Force, Chi etc.
There's also an Ox Statue that they can summon which will do
something cool
Q: Moonkin are losing many of their core talents to the general
"druid talent tree." How will they be compensated? It seems like
we'll probably be forced to take these talents while the other druid
specs will have options. Why were many more (500%?) balance talents
taken away while talents from other specs werent?
A: If you look at the tree carefully,
you will find that talents from other Druid specs were also placed
in the tree, such as Tree of Life, Feral Charge, Feline Swiftness,
and Nature's Swiftness. In general, if a Druid wishes to keep the
exact same abiltiies they have today, they can, they are just
locking themselves out of some of the new choices. In particualr,
the level 60 row has Feral Charge vs. Tree of Life vs. Force of
Nature. Each of the existing 4.3 specs has something in that row,
and the exciting opportunity to take something that belonged to a
different spec instead.
Q: Forgive my obsession with visuals: any chance Templar's Verdict
will get a new spell effect/animation in the near future? It feels
wimpy!
A: We know Retadins love their Divine
Storm, so we want to make TV use a similar graphic (perhaps just one
spinny hammer) so both finishers will have the same feel. DS goes
back to a finisher in 5.0 since Ret and Prot both have Hammer of the
Righteous. We are looking a lot at spell effects for melee in 5.0
since their attacks just aren't as flashy as the casters'.
Q: A while back you guys mentioned the ability for Warlocks to
change the gender of their pets. Is this still being talked about? I
didn't hear anything about it at Blizzcon and I'm still very
interested in customizing my pets.
A: We haven't forgotten about this -
however, when it comes down to getting a cool, new race for Mists or
getting a Femguard model - we need to make the right choices for the
whole game.
Q: What are your intentions for Rogue poison design in Mists? The
talent preview showed new poisons that could be taken, but without
changes those will be limited to PvP use because it's too big a DPS
loss to break the Instant/Deadly combo.
A: Our current intent is to allow
players to use one damaging poison and one utility poison at a time
in Mists. Currently, rogue damage is so dependent on dual-damage
poisons that, as you note, running a utility poison entails a
drawback that is often too large to justify the benefits. Allowing
damage poisons to compete against each other, and utility poisons to
do likewise, should result in more interesting choices. The logic is
similar to what led to splitting up warlock Banes and Curses.
The poisons will effectively be on both
weapons at once, and running Deadly should essentially duplicate the
current functionality of dual Instant+Deadly, allowing you to focus
on which secondary poison best suits your current situation.
Q: As a hunter I love collecting the odd pets that only a BM can but
I dont get to use them much while raiding because to max my DPS I
raid MM. I spend the time and effort to get these pets but noone
sees them very often. Will we in the future see hunters be able to
use these pets in any spec?
A: We're actually excited to see how
spec balance for Hunters turns out in 4.3. We're pretty confident
that their raw damage is competitive between all 3 specs now, and so
hope to see more exotic pets in raids, as well as survival hunters,
and specs chosen based on the situational utility that they offer.
We definitely want to reserve exotic pets as a BM-only perk though.
Q: Is Word of Glory still going to be on a 20s CD for protection
paladins? With the new active mitigation paradigm, it would seem
"paladin-ish" to heal myself every time I can (or to choose a heal
OR a holy shield).
A: Word of Glory does not need a
cooldown in 5.0. Prot can choose whether to use it for healing, Holy
Shield for absorption, or Shield of the Righteous for block.
Q: You talked about making resilience a base stat that would
increase with level. Are you going to make a way for people who
spend their time obtaining PVE or PVP gear do the PVP / PVE content
in the gear they are in and be able to stand a chance. It seems
right now that PVP gear can enter PVE content with ease but you
can't obtain PVE gear and stand a chance in PVP.
A: The goal of providing resilience as
a base stat is to make players who primarily do PvE content able to
enter the PvP space with their PvE gear and remain competitive. We
feel resilience is doing the job we intended of slowing down PvP
combat, but has become a must have to play. This change will let you
play PvP content in PvE gear without feeling like you die much too
easily.
Q: Will there be some changes to the Warlocks Affliction spec in
4.3? I've only seen changes for Demo and Destro
A: We feel internally that Affliction
is one of the best feeling specs in the game. While not planning any
major changes, internally, we've implemented a system that allows
you to refresh Corruption, UA or Bane of Agony up to 6 seconds
before the DoT falls off without clipping any ticks.
Q: Considering the remove of melee weapons for hunters in Cataclysm,
will the currently existing utility spells that require a melee
weapon be replaced. (especially Raptorstrike Glyph)
A: Removing melee weapons from Hunters
and removing their minimum range on their attacks will have many
different balance implications. We will carefulyl evaluate all their
defensive abilities to make sure they don't become too survivable,
or conversely too easy to kill. Mechanics on glyphs will be kept in
some form if we feel they are valuable to the design, but some glyph
mechanics may go away as no longer necessary.
Q: Regarding healers : do you have any plans for more proximity
spells ? That is spells that use your real position in the world
rather than clicking on health bars ? I really can't stand the UI
anymore. I miss so much of the fight.
A: We did do some of that in Cataclysm,
with Healing Rain and Holy Word: Serenity and Light of Dawn. The
Monk healer will also involve a lot of non-targeted healing.
Anything can change, but I'd like to say you could heal as a Monk
competitively without ever having to target a friendly player.
Q: Is it possible to get some new Warlock demon designs? Like a
random imp model when you first summon it and if you want a
different look you pay like you do with the names. Is this possible?
I mean it can't be too hard, you have different color variations on
most of the models...
A: You know, while that sounds easy,
the underlying system that supports the Warlock pet system is
slightly different than the Hunter pet system. I would love to have
a bright green Felguard - however, if we were to add such a thing,
I'd rather it be something you earned as a player, rather than just
adjusting a slider on your character screen.
Q: Is there any possibility of giving us a few more talent choices?
to decrease the chances of having everyone in the same spec, some
abilities will end up being a given in certain fights
A: We actually looked at having more
than 6 rows and having more than 3 choices per row, but felt that
both options did a couple things we didn't like. They introduced
additional combinatorial complexity which would make it much more
difficult to balance and tune. The number of different ability
combinations on a potential PvP opponent shouldn't make your head
explode. In addition, we found that when we had more choices and
rows, the choices often weren't very compelling or creative.
Lowering the number of choices let us focus on a good strong design.
New rows may always be introduced in some future expansion.
Q: Regarding about the Tanking version of the Monk Class. Will we
see some "Tipsy" animations for activating dodge increase abilities
like bending backwards to take a drink?
A: Currently the Monk Brewmaster stance
is an animated "drunken" stance, so you do look... well, "tipsy" at
times.
Q: Haste and Crit are terrible secondary stats for Enhancement. Have
you any incite on what may be done to increase their value for
Enhance? I do 25k on Alysrazor DPS'ing adds, when I go up in the
air, I do 26k with 25 stacks. With Time Warp/BL/Hero the rest of the
raid shoots by me, and the only thing I can do to prevent that is
pot/blood fury/trinket. I feel like I'm cheating when I pot before
the pull just to get some extra DPS. People with a proc trinket and
no racial must have it REALLY bad. Any thoughts?
A: While the value of various secondary
stats for many specs (such as haste for Enhancement) are unlikely to
change in 4.3, we do have plans for 5.0 in that regard. We'd like to
bring the value of primary stats down closer to the level of
secondary stats (but probably not all the way down; they still will
likely be clearly better), and we'd like to bring the value of the
various secondary stats applicable to a spec closer together. There
will still be some stats that are better than others, but we don't
want to have the situation where some stats are so terrible for your
spec that you just immediately ignore any gear which has that stat
on it. Primary stats being stronger than secondary stats is
important to preserve so that higher tiers of gear are more
attractive than lower tiers of gear. By tightening up the values of
the different secondaries, we have room to bring down the primaries
without endangering that.
Q: Will there be any talent info released for Monks before 4.3? I
feel the community is interested in getting a feel for how the class
might play out.
A: Monk class design is still too early
to have a talent tree fully designed. Anything we showed you now
would be so subject to change it would be meaningless. You're going
to have to be patient and wait for beta testing on monks to see what
their talent trees look like.
Q: I'm wondering if you plan to make runeforging for the DK more
interesting so DK's aren't stuck with just using one runeforge
depending on their spec?
A: Yes, we're going to do something.
We'd love to hear your ideas on the DK forums.
Q: Class homogenization has been problematic in the eyes of the
player base. How are you planning to make classes feel unique while
still maintaining the "bring the player, not the class" ethic?
A: Homogenization is one of *the*
hardest challenges we face. Players become upset if they feel like
they are losing what is uniquely theirs, but then they get just as
frustrated when they lack e.g. self-healing or mobility or a cool
toy that another class gets. With 11 classes and parties, (some)
raids and PvP teams much smaller than that, we can't make every
class mandatory and we don't think it's reasonable to have 11 (or
even 34 if you include specs) spells, buffs and mechanics that are
unique but completely equal. We just try to keep the pulse on the
community and see when players think we have gone too far or not far
enough. This next bit might start a firestorm of controversy, but we
heard from a lot of 10-player raiders who asked "Why make a rogue
legendary? We don't have a rogue." When we asked why, they said
'Rogues don't bring anything we need, so we don't want them." That's
not cool. I'm not saying the legendary is the answer for why bring
rogues, but you should feel like you have room for rogues without
sacrificing something else and that rogues should bring something
that makes you happy they are there.
Q: You mentioned at Blizzcon that all mages will be getting Living
Bomb. How will this along with talented Scorch be balanced so that
it is not too powerful for fire and too underpowered for other
specs? Because certain spells like Arcane Blast and Frostbolt will
be only available to their respective spec, does this mean the
specialization bonuses such as "your fire spells do X% increased
damage" are being removed and the extra damage worked into the spell
itself, so that cross spec spells such as Living Bomb do the same
amount of damage no matter which spec you are in?
A: Mages don't really need their +fire,
+frost or +arcane specializations in 5.0 because only Fire mages
will have Fireball. So Fire mages won't do more damage with LB or
Scorch. They will still feel like Fire mages though because of
Fireball, Ignite, Combustion and Hot Streak.
Q: How exactly did you land on 6 talent points?
A: Originally, we had a grid that was
10x3. When we sat down and looked at the talents we had, we realized
that the number of permutations to balance was immense - and that we
were diluting our design to fill out that many slots. Kalgan asked
frankly - how few rows can we do and make them feel awesome. We
started cutting until we had 6.
Q: About the level 90 shaman talent "Elemental Harmony". There seems
to be no limit on it. Does this mean i can place every single fire
totem on the ground? or is there a 4 limit restriction like one of
each totem?
A: Elemental Harmony does not apply to
Fire totems, and does not allow you to drop multiple of the same
totem, just multiple of the same element type of totem. For example,
you can drop Mana Tide, Healing Tide, and Healing Stream Totems, all
at the same time. You cannot, however, drop three Healing Stream
Totems. You can indeed drop more than 4 total totems at the same
time using this talent.
Q: Speaking of Warlocks, I really miss the Imp Cannon build from
back in the day. Will the little guy be given some more love in
either Demo or Destro spec?
A: I'm going to be collecting feedback
on Warlock pets from the forums this week. Let me know what you
loved or hated about them on the class forums.
Q: I'm glad to see you guys are still interested in making the
talent system as unique as possible, but it seems like by giving so
few choices that cookie cutter specs will be even MORE easy to come
up with then now. i know there will always be "the best choice". but
if you guys do all this redesigning just to have the same outcome,
what do you have in store to try and fix it from there? and are you
concerned the new talent trees might not offer the unique build
options players want to have?
A: Since so many of the talents focus
on survivability, movement, and utility we are skeptical that there
will ever be a talent build that is the perfect build for every PvE
fight in the game. It is likely that as players learn specific
encounters, each spec finds an ideal set of talents for that
encounter. Those will be the "cookie cutter" builds. However, that
will mean that players are interacting with the system and picking a
unique set of customizations on a frequent basis. This is a vast
improvement over a system that is solved once by a dps spreadsheet
and then everyone copies that build once and ignores their talents
for the rest of the expansion. In addition, there will be likely
disagreement over which talents are best for which encounters.
Q: How do you plan on balancing healer mana management in MoP? I for
one enjoyed the beginning of Cata when healing was a little more
challenging but now Disc and Druids barely have any worries while
shamans and Holy priests have a little harder time.
A: We agree. It's a nearly-unavoidable
consequence of gear scaling under our current system. Fresh level
85s in mostly quest gear need to have enough mana and regen to be
able to set foot in dungeons and sustain a healing rotation for a
couple of minutes in the face of reasonable incoming damage. But
then a healer in Heroic Firelands gear now has nearly double the
stats of a healer fresh out of Uldum questing, and the mana cost of
that healer's spells is unchanged, often resulting in a large mana
surplus.
Our current plan for Mists is for Intellect to no longer directly
increase the size of player mana pools. We intend for our mana-based
DPS and Tank classes to be entirely self-reliant regardless of mana
pool, so the gameplay impact for those players will be nil. For
healers, Spirit will remain as the pure regen stat, and healers
after multiple tiers of raid progression will clearly have far more
mana at their disposal, but there will be more of an inherent
tradeoff between regen and throughput stats. A healer with amazing
regen will have amazing regen because of a choice to focus their
stats in that direction.
Q: Frost Presence and the Improved Frost Presence talent only
increase the Runic Power generation of runes consumed, but doesn’t
increase the runic power generated through other means, such as the
Chill of the Grave, Might of the Frozen Wastes, Scent of Blood, etc.
talents (which, for the record, represent more than half our RP
generation). Is this going to be corrected in 4.3 ?
A: Yes.
Q: Any chance we can go ahead and change Judgement to produce Holy
Power baseline for 4.3? It's so needed. And it's a shame to have
wait to get the tier bonus just to have stable rotation.
A: We currently plan for Judgment in
5.0 to have a 6sec cooldown, 30yd range, and to generate 1 Holy
Power. In 4.3, the set bonus should be fairly accessible, to get the
Holy Power generation.
Q: Retribution have some issues with Hand of Freedom and Wings being
dispellable. Especially against mages I feel like it's bad using
Hand of Freedom because it can be spellstolen so easily
A: Dispels are just too frequent. They
are supposed to be decisions, but they aren't. We don't think the
answer is to give everyone dispel protection. We think the answer is
to make dispels harder. In 5.0 we want dispels to have a cooldown
and duration more like Spellsteal but get all buffs or debuffs at
once to make them more tactical -- you can dispel Avenging Wrath if
you really want to, but then you won't have it if the paladin uses
Freedom immediately after.
Q: Some of the MoP talents seem really "OP", is this intended?
A: One of our core design philosophies
is "Make it Overpowered". As much as possible, we like to start with
abilities being very strong, and then correct problems as they
occur.
Q: Why won't Blizzard hotfix overpowered classes between major
content patches more often?
A: Sometimes a spec is genuinely broken
and trivializes the other classes. In those cases, we try to address
the issue. However, sometimes players just haven't discovered the
optimal way to play a particular class. For example, Unholy,
Survival and Subtlety have the capability to perform far better than
most people realize.
To add to that, we do it when we think
it is necessary. The community has a tendency to always think
balance is the worst it has ever been, but if you look back
objectively, it's probably the best it has even been. We also see a
tendency for players who lose a PvP engagement or get beaten in DPS
by a friend view that things are HORRIBLY OVERPOWERED and then
assume everyone agrees with them. Try to keep in mind that forums
have a huge echo chamber effect.
TLDR: They may not be as broken as you think.
Q: With the previously mentioned removal of the +bleed debuff will
Feral druids have Mangle taken away to become Guardian only and
Shred lose its positional requirement. Without the bleed debuff and
its obvious lower damage output than shred, Mangle is extremely
situational especially when somebody else is already providing the
ability. Or will Mangle debuff on the target just increase the feral
druids bleeds and shred damage?
A: Mangle and Shred will both exist for
Feral (cats). Mangle will no longer apply a debuff, but will be
usable from any facing, whereas Shred will offer slightly more
overall DPS if you are able to stay behind the target. Guardians
(bears) will have Mangle, but not Shred.
Q: For the Druid talent: Incarnation, what does this talent do to
Balance/Moonkin Players?
A: Incarnation for Balance transforms
the Druid in to the Chosen of Elune Form, which currently increases
spell damage done and Solar and Lunar energy generated. That is, of
course, subject to change.
Q: Why did you pick Blast Wave, Dragon's Breath, and Slow as the
level 90 mage talents? Most every other class has gotten new skills
at 90. Why put spells we mages get a lower levels at 90?
A: You know, that's an excellent point
- we've heard from several people that Mages could use a few more
new talents. We'll take a look.
Q: I noticed in one of the screencaps from Blizzcon that Slam was
considered an Arms ability. What is going to replace slam for fury
warriors?
A: There is a new attack called Wild
Strike. At the moment it is an off-hand attack without Slam's cast
time. The Bloodsurge proc then lets you do 3 cheap Wild Strikes on a
1 sec GCD. Wild Strike also has the MS debuff, replacing Furious
Attacks.
Q: One of the first Warlock talents mentions Shadowbolt, Incinerate
and Malefic Grasp. Are those going to be the 3 main nukes of the
various Warlock specs? If so, what are sub-10 Warlocks going to use?
A: All Warlocks get Shadow Bolt at
level 1. Then Shadow Bolt will transform around level 40 based on
your spec. Affliction: Malefic Grasp, Demonology: (in Meta) Demonic
Slash, Destruction: Incinerate.
Q: Is Inquisition on a ret pally going to see some changes,
currently it's needed for decent DPS but has such a short duration,
to a point the ability feels awkward.. People liken it to Slice and
Dice, but Slice and dice has such a nice long duration even with a
single combo point, and feels so much more natural to keep it
running.
A: We're currently considering a glyph
for Inquisition which would significantly increase its duration, at
a cost of slightly reducing its effect. We're interested in hearing
feedback on how people would feel about that sort of glyph.
Q: Rogues and Feral Druids currently spend a good portion of their
attack time just sitting and Autoattacking because they have to wait
for Energy regen. Is there anything that you guys are thinking about
to help lessen the waiting?
A: Honestly, we would prefer if all
classes worked like that. The Energy model is the one that is most
tolerant for lag, player error, movement and just giving players a
chance to stop tunneling so much on the target and pay a little
attention to the rest of the fight. We don't like it when any class
fills every GCD. It works okay for casters, as long as they aren't
using all instant spells.
Q: I just saw that you guys will improve the range of resurrection
spells across the board in 4.3, but no Soulstone love for now. Any
plans to do it? If not, why? I think that SS has the lowest range of
all res skills (saying by experince, cant find range on tooltip),
which makes me run around a lil' bit to res someone in midfight.
A: Soulstone will indeed get a 40yd
range in 4.3.
Q: Hello, for assassination rogues, will there be a faster ramp-up
time? (other than the mutilate change)
A: We would like to reduce the impact
of ramping mechanics for all rogue specs in Mists. The combo point
generation system that is core to the rogue class already causes
them to prefer staying on a single target, with abilities like
Redirect serving to create occasional exceptions to that general
rule. Layering additional sources of ramping on top of that, such as
Deadly Poison stacking, or Bandit's Guile for Combat rogues,
compounds the problem without necessarily adding additional gameplay.
Deadly Poison will likely no longer stack, and Bandit's Guile may
become an inherent buff on the Rogue, maintaining the cyclical
gameplay without making life quite as painful when you need to
switch targets.
Q: Once there are no more cookie cutter builds, a player doing low
dps will have no excuses. He will not be subpar because he has the
wrong talents. He will just be bad at his rotation. Do you see it as
purely a good thing? Or some inevitable outcome?
A: Separating dps choices from the
talent trees will be a good thing, but I would not call the new
trees "cookie cutter." There are a host of decisions that can make
one player worse than another at dps: gear choices, talent choices,
glyph choices, latency, ability sequence used. Removing choosing bad
talents as a way for a player to go wrong will raise up the players
having the hardest time with the game, and make them better able to
compete and have fun.
Q: For the warlocks new minions, would their jobs be the same as
their lower form jobs? Lke Felgaurd being for groups of bad guys,
void walker for Tanking, Imps for magic blastic, and succubus for
single targets and seduction? Also, I hope the Shivan's are awsome.
Can you give us some of their abilties?
A: Actually... we were talking about
Shivan abilities yesterday. We don't know what she'll have yet. What
would you like to see? Let us know on the forums.
Q: I think this is the main question that feral druids seems to have
right now: when you said that Shred will do "slightly" more damage
than Shred, did that mean that mangle is going to get buffed a
little to provide less penalities in the several encounters we can't
Shred? Because the difference between those skills is pretty big
currently. ^^
A: Our own internal numbers show that
once the Glyph of Shred works from Mangle as well as Shred, the
difference between a Mangle and a Shred rotation is actually fairly
small (in the 5% range).
Q: At first excuse my english. It is not my first language. As a
person who is playing in a very ambitious 10 men raiding guild we
have problems to bring all the buffs out there to our raid. So
sometimes I, as a rogue, have to raid without melee-haste or without
sunder armor. You may know that it is very frustrating to fall
behind in damage because of reason like this. We are also trying to
recruit the missing classes for our setup, but can not find players
who are good enough. Are there any plans to bring all the buffs more
easily to a 10 men raid?
A: The current 5.0 model is that there
are 8 raid buffs: health, attack power, spell power, melee haste,
spell haste, crit, mastery and stats. We'll get CATERING TO THE
CASUALS feedback on that, but we don't want the "fun" of raiding to
be assembling the group. Neither do we want you to be able to stack
just the highest DPS or healers for certain fights. Also remember
there are still debuffs and utility abilities, such as knockbacks
and snares.
Q: Currently, Shadow Priests are very RNG dependent for Shadow Orbs.
This can affect our dps a lot, especially the beginning rotation
when we start dotting up the boss. It usually isn't as much of an
issue mid-fight, when we can manage to keep the dots running with
ES. Is there going to be any changes to the Orb mechanic in 5.0?
A: Shadow Orbs are random because
otherwise you would always have a full stack when your Mind Blast
was off cooldown, and you wouldn't even care about the mechanic. To
address that in 5.0, you will never "cap" on Shadow Orbs. Mind Blast
will cost 1 Orb, and have no cooldown. So the more orbs you generate
"through RNG" the better, whereas currently if you generate more
orbs before Mind Blast is off cooldown its kind of a waste.
Q: How are you planning to rework glyphs with the new talent system?
A: We're not happy with how Prime
glyphs have worked out, and are considering removing them. Don't
worry, scribes, if we do this sort of change, we'll keep you heavily
in mind; we don't intend to 'nerf' Inscription in any way with this
potential change.
Q: Are the new spec abilities replacing must have talents going to
be in the order you would get them now, or are you going to change
it around a little bit (For instance, getting Hot Streak together
with Pyro)?
A: We are completely reflowing when you
get spec abilities to make the gameplay the most fun we can make it.
We want to spread the abilities out over as many levels as possible,
but core mechanics should be learned early, and more situation or
raid-oriented abilities come later.
Q: What is the reason for adding additional resource management to
so many classes now? (combo point systems). How is it any different
in gameplay than a proc? ie, in both cases, you wait a certain
amount of time to use a certain ability or choose between a couple.
Why not just use the cooldown system? It's all essentially the same.
Cooldowns are just the most reliant.
A: That's a great question. We try to
keep our classes as simple as possible. Resource bars are more
visible than a proc, but consume more of the player's attention. The
line between where a stacking buff and a resource bar comes to play
comes down to how often the player cares about that value. For
example, we could make make the enrage effect on Warriors a resource
bar - one that goes from empty to full. However, that would be more
annoying than helpful.
tl;dr - its a tough judgement call with
no easy answer
Q: In regard to healing, specifically holy priests. I love lightwell.
Awesome spell. Probably one of the most OP healing spells in the
game. Is it possible to give every player a macro for using it ?
Kidding, but are there any changes to make it a more viable talent
for Holy priests without becoming completely repetitive (click the
lightwell, click the lightwell, click it damnit)
A: We've talked about this issue. We
like that you have to look at the gamespace to click it to heal
yourself, but creatures getting in the way or its hitbox can be
problematic. So its possible we may get a new model for Lightwell
that is "taller" and make it less of an issue to see it and click
it.
Q: Whenever Ele shaman need a buff, it is always Shamanism that gets
buffed slightly. It started out at a 10% modifier in 3.0 and has
eventually crept up to 36% in 4.3. Have you considered buffing Ele
shaman in a more meaningful and interesting way? Perhaps adding a
DoT component to Lava Burst or rolling the new T12 2pc into a talent
(a la Feedback in 4.0)?
A: It is interesting to me that players
sometimes view passive buffs as a cop-out of some kind. When we like
the rotation then the clear choice for us is to buff damage across
the board. Buffing Shamanism also means we don't buff, nerf or
change Enhancement's rotation as an unintended consequence.
Q: For the DK talent, Gorefiend's Grasp, it mentions "friendly"
targets being affected. What is meant by "friendly" in this context?
(My guild leader is excited about mass-pulling the raid into...
dangerous situations...)
A: It works like mind sear - only enemy
targets are pulled, but you can center the gravity well effect on
either an enemy, an ally or yourself.
Q: How do you plan to balance Titan's Grip and Single-Minded Fury in
5.0? Will Wild Strike now hit with the main-hand as well, and if
Deep Wounds is still available to Fury warriors (or all warriors in
general and not an Arms-only ability), how do you plan on making
that not so not-terribly-great for SMF warriors?
A: It will activate the appropriate
effect based on the item you have equipped.
Q: The new "Vendetta" talent allows the rogue to perform a ranged
attack. What is the main aim of this ability?
A: The requirement to be in melee range
to deal damage to an enemy is an inherent restriction of the Rogue
class. We think that being able to essentially "break the rules" for
a short period of time will allow for some fun gameplay. Obviously
the final numbers will be important, but the intent is for a rogue
to be able to operate at nearly full damage capacity against the
marked target from range, while Vendetta remains active.
Q: Prayer of Healing only affects people from 1 raid group. So the
priest has to make the raid groups accordingly. In your eyes, is
this a fun design as it adds a particularism to the Priest class or
is there a plan to modify it?
A: From a pointy-headed designer
standpoint, it isn't ideal because the party within the raid doesn't
mean anything in the game world (compared to say targeting an area).
But we think PoH feels really different from say Holy Nova, CoH etc.
and it's a fun spell so we don't think it needs to be changed.
Q: As a Druid, I feel that the level 90 talents feel too much like
work. You guys put so much effort into making the Moonkin unique and
more complex, so why force us to shift more often to "fill other
combat roles?" Poor kitties are going to have a nightmare of a time
dealing with this...
A: The level 90 Druid talents
deliberately come in 3 different levels of work required. Heart of
the Wild is perfect for an encounter where there is a period where
increased healing is needed for a short time, and dps is not the
need of the encounter. Something like the Chimaeron encounter where
more healing is needed at certain times, and dps is less important.
Master Shapeshifter targets the Druid who is willing to do a lot of
work shifting back and forth or occasionally needs to heal or
damage, such as Blood Queen Lanathel, where a Tranquility boosted by
the talent would help your group a lot during her air phase.
Disentanglement is there for the "lazy" Druid who doesn't want to do
that work, but still gets some benefit from a well-timed shapeshift.
Q: How "Kij'jeaden cunning" will work? I stand still and cast spell
at normal rate, then move so casting speed slows down and if I'll
cease moving will casting speed increase to normal again?
A: If a spell would have been
interrupted by movement, the spell casting speed slows down (to half
speed) for the remainder of the cast, regardless of whether you stop
immediately after.
Q: Hey, you guys said that Talents would be as easy to change as
Glyphs are, how do you plan to go about this?
A: The current idea is that Dust of
Disappearance becomes a "Training Manual" or something and that the
same consumable can be used to blank out a glyph or a talent. The
cost of the consumable means that players can change when they think
it's important but won't do it for trivial gains. Remember it only
needs to compete against the inconvenience of visiting a class
trainer.
Q: What is your plan for dealing with all the interrupts currently
in PvP. There is a greater risk/reward for a healer trying to juke
an interrupt than their is for a DPS trying to interrupt it. What I
mean is, if a healer gets interrupted, they can't heal for 4 secs
which is a long time in PvP. But, if a DPS gets juked, the only
punishment they face is the have to wait 10 secs to try again.
A: We want mana to be a finite resource
in PvP that you want to spend intelligently. So if you have two
healers on either side, the one who spends his/her mana more
effectively has an advantage. Because of lot of factors (self
healing, too much mana regen, class mechanics) that is diminished a
bit. So you shouldn't be killing healers just because you burst them
down and keep them interrupted, but because you cause them to have
to use mana inefficiently. We aren't there yet, but that's the goal.
Q: How will low level balance be fixed in Mists of Pandaria.Right
now you can one shot a lot of npcs or players at low levels.
A: We plan to put some additional
careful effort into balancing low level combat for MoP.
Q: im saying this for most hunters but y hasn't the snake trap
damage been increased I have used it at max lvl a few times but the
trap when the snakes attack each one only does like 25 damage each
is there a way you can fix this trap so that it does more damage
A: Snake Trap is intended to be
utility, not damage. The damage on it is just there for flavor,
really.
Q: Is there a specific reason leap of faith has a facing
requirement? When used to save a life, I usually have less than a
second to cast it, but when you add in I need to figure out where I
am facing, where my target is and orient, it's often too late. As
all heals have no facing requirement, would it be possible for leap
of faith to be the same?
A: We want healers to have to pay
attention to the gamespace more, not less. We don't intend you to
just look at your raid bars for low health targets to use Leap of
Faith.
Q: Hey Xelnath, there's the same problem with rogues! All 3 of our
level 90 talents are ones we already have (albeit tweaked a tad)!
A: In the case of the Rogue - you're
getting an ability you otherwise couldn't have obtained previously.
In addition - the rogue 90 abilities are pretty amazing.
Furthermore - the increased control on Killing Spree allows you to
control how frequently and how many times you teleport. That's far,
far sexier than the original.
Q: During blizzcon you said that rogues and warriors will be able to
"throw" their weapons. is it just going to be the throw ability we
have now scaled by our main hand weapon dmg ?
A: Yes. Throw is a base rogue and
warrior ability that uses your MH. You can also get Deadly Throw as
a rogue talent. Warriors still have Heroic Throw.
Q: Whats the plan on Blood and thunder and it's heavy use for prot
warriors? Is it going to become a prot only spell, a class spell
with pvp implications, or is there a new War AoE in the works?
A: Arms and Protection will both get
Blood and Thunder. While we're here - I'd just like to give a huge
thank-you to the players who have been testing on the PTRs. The
amount of feedback and testing we've gotten for 4.3 has been
amazing.
Q: There hasn't been any questions answered about Resto Druids yet.
Can you talk about our extremely weak state in PvP and the fact that
we're the only healer not only not seeing a buff but seeing a nerf
in 4.3?
A: We will definitely be addressing
some of the PvP weakness of Resto Druids in 5.0. For one, the
ability to recreate the Restokin builds of earlier expansions was
introduced in the talent trees. Carefully selecting talents like
Typhoon and Wild Charge together will give Restoration Druids a lot
more opportunity to control. One of the new abilities Resto Druids
will get baseline is a replacement for Barkskin that can be cast on
others with the same effect and cooldown. Finally, we have a new
level 87 ability ability in mind for all Druids called Symbiosis
that will blow your mind and potentially add a lot of flexibility
and utility, including survivability options.
Q: Will the various races animations for Monks be uniform (for the
most part)? Or will each race have unique animations for their monk
class?
A: Because the Pandaren taught all of
the Monks of Azeroth - they use similar stances and style, though
there might be slight variations between races.
Q: Is it possible to get another character slot for MoP? I know it's
a big tech problem, but would really like to try out the monk class
without without having to go to another server.
A: We are exploring that option.
Q: I love ring of frost AND Cone of Cold, why will i have to choose
?
A: We think choosing between two
powerful things is a lot more fun and interesting than choosing
between a no-brainer and pile of poo. In this case specifically, we
thought that mages and Frost in general have too many CC abilities
and we didn't want to keep adding more and more with every
expansion. But if you have to choose which CC you want, then it
gives us the design space to keep adding potentially interesting
alternatives.
Q: @Community Managers, Is there any chance of a PVP-focused Q&A in
the future? =D
A: It's possible. It all depends on
what we feel fits and is relevant to what's going on within the
development halls. We'd also like to start doing some live Q&As for
Diablo III and StarCraft II as well.
Q: A big concern for me and a large part of the Rogue PvP Community
has been that Preparation and Shadow Step were put into the same
Tier of Talents, along with Burst of Speed. While Burst of Speed and
Shadowstep are a great two talents to choose between, Preparation is
a very powerful cooldown, and instead of feeling like it's making a
hard choice between abilities, it feels like we're getting nerfed,
because we already have Preparation and Shadowstep currently. Are
there any updates to this situation and what was the reasoning
behind grouping these abilities together?
A: We definitely understand why it's a
source of concern, but ultimately the Subtlety tree offering the
combination of Prep and Shadowstep is the core reason why it has
become the de facto (and perceived mandatory) PvP spec. If we moved
Preparation to a different tier, then the community is clearly
saying they'd all take it, and that runs counter to our aims with
the new talent system. And if we add a baseline class-wide ability
that resets multiple cooldowns, then we may as well just adjust the
underlying cooldown lengths directly and save people a keybind.
In defense of that rogue tier as it currently stands, if we know
that rogues with Prep are sacrificing a high-uptime movement
ability, then we have the flexibility to balance (i.e. buff) the
class as a whole around that restriction. If rogues can (and thus
will) take both abilities, then the class as a whole gets balanced
around the survivability and mobility of having both.
Q: You guys must have nerves of steel when visiting the official
forums. do you ever take what players say about class design &
balance seriously or just brush it off as angry nerds venting?
A: I actually spent about a week
reading through the class feedback threads. There was a ton of
well-written, thought out posts. Believe it or not, we really do
read those threads. A lot of the changes that came in 5.0 were the
result of players pointing out broken or difficult mechanics.
Q: One continues result of character design and stat inflation that
devalued my experience in wow was that characters started feeling
too powerful, back in vanilla it would take skill, knowledge and
consumables to solo an even leveled elite mob (unless playing a
paladin or bm hunter) as opposed to this in cataclysm players seem
to have little issue soloing a mob with 7 times their hitpoints and
a fair amount of damage output, are there any plans to bring the
players power back in line and return the feeling of being mortal
once more?
A: If you play through Twilight
Highlands with a fresh level 84 character, I believe you will find
that you cannot attack multiple creatures or elites with impunity.
It is quite possible to overpull and get killed. This philosophy
will most likely continue in our end zones for Pandaria.
Q: So since all these warlocks are talking about their demons and
pets and whatever the case may be. How will you make it so that
Unholy Death Knights can change the Gender of their ghouls?
A: This is already live. Didn't you
notice the eyeliner on Cryptgobbler last night?
Q: What about Windwalker Monks is gonna make us wanna play them?
Like, what skills/abilities/buffs will they bring to the raid comp
that's gonna make people wanna bring them along?
A: Here's one Windwalker mechanic. You
can summon what are similar to Diablo III health globes with a
maximum of 3-5 or so that heal players when they run through them.
So you could setup a few of those in an area, and players who have
to run from beams or fires can run through your orbs for some quick
healing. Not "must have" but something other healers dont' exactly
bring right now.
Q: Aspect of the cheetah/pack have seemed a little outdated with the
daze on hit mechanic and can't really use them effectively in raids
or pvp. Are there any plans to change these aspects to more a
cooldown spell like stampeding roar or a self run speed for aspect
of the cheetah?
A: Yes, we plan on it not dazing you
but turn off the speed bonus for a short while when you get hit in
those aspects (or at least Cheetah).
Q: Have you considered having a pet stampede spell where our 5 pet
stable rushes our enemy for a 5min cd? Too epic for GC?
A: Yes
Q: A lot people are worried that with druids being able to do well
at our other roles, we'll see the return of the "hybrid tax". It's
the same old story: if we can perform any role when needed, raids
will stack us, unless we don't do as well in our specific roles, in
which case we're bad at what we most want to do. What assurance can
we get that we won't have this problem?
A: We are very interested in opening
opportunities for more hybrid gameplay in druids, as you can see in
the level 90 talent tier, while still allowing an option for players
who want to never do anything outside their role. We don't intend
for that added hybridization to be offset by any sort of DPS nerf.
While DPSing, a druid's DPS will be entirely competitive with other
DPS. We hope to see druids that do things like, "DPS in Cat Form
most of the fight, but during one phase, when healing is super
difficult, pop out of Cat, hit Heart of the Wild, Tranquility, and
spam heals on the raid to help top everyone off, then go back to Cat
and resume DPSing." In that sort of the situation, the Cat will have
spent less time DPSing than other DPSers, but his/her DPS while
DPSing would have been competitive, and in exchange helped save the
raid when healers were falling behind. You can probably think of
many situations where this would be useful in raid content, or in
some 5man content, and frequently in PvP. To clarify a bit further
on how the druids will perform at their off-roles: Ferals and
Guardians will have Nurturing Instinct, which increases spell power
based on Agility, and Balance and Restoration will have Killer
Instinct, which increases attack power based on Intellect. They will
have a smaller toolbox of spells for their off-role, but the
strength of those spells will be competitive, when under the effects
of those hybrid talents.
Q: Firelands seemed to do a good job at highlighting a disparity
between healing classes and specs. Some, like shaman, have had to
struggle to maintain healing numbers that were reasonable for the
content and comparable with other healers, while other healers just
shot ahead of everyone else with seemingly little effort. Are there
going to be systems in place to keep this from happening again? Is
this problem something that has been actively reviewed? How will
healing balance be maintained while adding a 5th healing capable
class?
A: We've made some class-level
adjustments to healer balance for 4.3, but healer performance often
ends up being as much a reflection of the encounter design in a
particular tier as anything else. Healer specs in their current form
have strengths and weaknesses, and niches in encounters that play
into those strengths. Using your example of shaman, there were fewer
situations that were ideal for shamans in Firelands than in Tier 11
(or in Tier 13, for that matter) -- If there had been more
encounters like the second phase of Beth'tilac, for example,
perceptions might be different.
We feel that it's important to maintain those niches to ensure that
the different healer specs feel distinct from each other, and that
means that some fights will play to some specs' strengths and less
so to others. Of course, just because a fight doesn't fall squarely
into the niche of a given spec does not mean that anyone should feel
unable to perform adequately in that situation. Our ongoing healer
balance efforts aim at ensuring viability in all setting, but
particular encounter mechanics will often dictate what is strictly
optimal. Our class and encounter designers work closely with each
other to keep things diverse and balanced on that front. |
