Ber om ursäkt för att det inte blev någon uppdatering igår, en resa till tyskland satte nämligen stopp för det. Det har kommit en uppdatering till patch 3.3.3 och en del av patchen går nu att ladda ner med background downloadern. Det blir ingen patch denna veckan tyvärr. Däremot får vi idag se en preview på mastery systemet blizzard håller på att jobba med till cataclysm och det verkar onekligen som et intressant system, ni hittar det här nedan.
Blizzard wrote:
Last week, we gave you an early look at the changes we’re making to the stat system in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and explained how these changes will ultimately provide players with more interesting gear choices and make stats easier to understand. Today we’d like to go into more detail about a brand-new feature that’s an integral part of this overhaul: the Mastery system, a set of new game mechanics designed to allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. With this system, we want to accomplish three things: give players more freedom in how they allocate talent points, simplify some of the “kitchen sinky” talents that try to do too much at once, and add a new stat to high-level gear that makes you better at your chosen role.
Here’s how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you’ll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree -- meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear.
One of our primary goals with Mastery is to give players more flexibility to choose fun or utility-oriented talents rather than make them feel obligated to pick up “mandatory” but uninteresting talents, such as passive damage or healing. (For examples of the kinds of powerful but boring talents we’re talking about, take a look at the talent tier just above the 51-point talent in many of the existing trees.) In a sense, Mastery makes it so every talent in (just for example) a rogue tree essentially has an invisible additional bullet point that says “???and increases your damage by X%.” This way, if you choose a talent like Elusiveness (which reduces your chance to be detected while stealthed) or Fleet Footed (which affects movement), you won’t feel like you’re giving up damage in exchange for utility.
There will still be talents that boost damage, of course, but those talents will also affect the way you play. For example, you can still expect to see talents like Improved Frostbolt, which reduces the cast time of the Frostbolt spell; it increases DPS, but it also affects the mage’s rotation. Piercing Ice, however, is just “6% more damage” and is the kind of talent we’re trying to eliminate by implementing the Mastery system.
As we get closer to Cataclysm’s release, we’ll go into more detail about the changes coming for each class, including individual talent-tree adjustments and how Mastery will affect them. In the meantime, here are a few examples to demonstrate the three kinds of passive bonuses we described above. Please keep in mind that we're still working on this system, and the handful of examples we're providing here are, of course, subject to change.
Holy Priest For each talent point spent in the Holy tree, the priest also gets:
* Healing – Improves your healing by X%. * Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent from the Discipline tree, which many Holy priests consider to be a “must-have.” Regeneration will also probably be determined by whether you are in or out of combat, and not the “five-second rule. * Radiance – Adds a heal-over-time effect to direct heals, such as Flash Heal. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.
Discipline Priest For each talent point spent in the Discipline tree, the priest also gets:
* Healing – Improves your healing by X%. * Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent. * Absorption – Improves the amount of damage absorbed by spells such as Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.
Frost Death Knight For each talent point spent in the Frost tree, the death knight also gets:
* Damage – Improves your melee and spell damage by X%. * Haste – Improves your melee Haste by Y%. This might allow us to remove some of the Haste in the Icy Talons line of talents. * Runic Power – Improves the rate of runic power generated by abilities. While all death knights want runic power, Frost death knights would generally have more runic power than Blood or Unholy death knights (who would receive a different benefit from their respective trees). An Unholy death knight who sub-specs into Frost would still be able to benefit from this bonus, though because they’re investing fewer talent points, they’d benefit to a smaller degree. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.
A couple other things to note: Currently, we’re not planning to retrofit the Mastery stat onto current level-80 gear when we roll out the stat-system changes prior to Cataclysm’s release. However, Mastery will begin appearing on select quest and dungeon items. You will also gain a small amount of Mastery by wearing gear of your intended armor type (such as plate for paladins). For players with dual specs, when you change between your two chosen specs, the Mastery bonuses and the benefit you receive from the Mastery stat on gear will adjust automatically based on your new spec.
We’ll have more details to share about these and other changes we’re making in Cataclysm in the future, and we’ll do our best to answer your questions about the Mastery system here on the forums. For information on many of the stat changes being made in Cataclysm, please check out our earlier update at -
* Note clarified - A maximum capacity of 200 frames per second has been added. To disable the frame rate limit, the following line should be added to the Config.wtf file: SET maxFPS "0".
Warlock * Talents
o Affliction
+ Dark Pact: This ability no longer requires line-of-sight with the summoned demon, and the range has been increased from 30 yards to 100 yards.
Blizzard wrote:
Healing and Mana Efficiency in Cataclysm If you use your efficient heal 100% of the time, then sometimes people will die for want of a quick or big heal. If you use your quick or big heal 100% of the time, then sometimes you will run out of mana. If you use the right heal for the job, you will be awesome and get fat purps.
[...] We want the choice that downranking provided (don't use a big heal when a small one will do) without all the problems of gaming the coefficients of the lower level spells.
[...] Prior to LK, healers wouldn't use their quick / big heal every GCD. They would even stop heals to avoid wasting mana. We're not really trying to bring back cancel macros in a big way, but we would like for the best healers to be the ones who know when to use the right spell at the right time.
Tanking Threat I would be very curious to see those numbers. You're making a jump from "Sometimes AE pull off of me" to "AE will always pull off of me," and that's just not what we're seeing. I totally buy that a warrior may work harder to generate as much, or less, AE threat as a paladin. We've acknowledged that is a problem. But that is the comparison I would make, not the comparison between "Sometimes I have to do stuff to maintain threat" and "Under no circumstances should I ever have threat problems."
It isn't the goal that dps can never pull off of you under any situation. If that was the goal, we're wasting an awful lot of the game space on all of these +threat and -threat talents and abilities, when we could just institute a rule that mobs will never retarget off of their initial target (which would hopefully be the tank). I don't think that would make tanking more fun, though it would definitely make it easier.
The threat-related goals still remain:
1) All -- Get threat to scale better at higher dps levels. 2) Paladin -- Nerf the threat capacity of HoR and SoC. 3) Druid -- Something to do on AE packs besides Swipe. 4) DK -- More burst threat, which the Icy Touch change should accomplish. 5) Warrior -- As I've said, we're pretty happy with, minus points 1 and 2 above. 6) I'll add that if taunts retain the ability to miss at all, it should be something you can gear your way out of. It's also possible we'll just make them always hit.
Ghostcrawler verkar ha varit rätt så aktiv på det amerikanska tanking role forumet. Han svarade på ett par väldigt intressanta frågor och ni hittar det här nedan.
Blizzard wrote:
On warriors needing more AE threat I don't think warriors need more sustained AE threat. You have Incite + Deep Wounds for Thunderclap and also Shockwave. Maintaining threat is supposed to take some effort. I don't think tanking would be anymore fun if you hit Tclap and never had to hit a button again.
The actual problem, in our minds, is threat scaling. Warriors (and all tanks) could AE tank just fine in Naxxramas.* It only became a problem overtime when the dps of the dps classes grew so much more quickly than the tanks, largely because the dps classes have so many dps stats on their gear while plate tanks have Strength. Tank damage was pretty close to 50% of dps damage in the first tier of content, which was our goal, but has slipped to 25 to 30% of dps (your mileage may vary) in Icecrown.
We need a system that keeps tank damage scaling at the same rate as dps damage. However, that system can't be dependent on gear stats (unless you're willing to see tank gear go away) and isn't as ridiculous as deep talents that say "You get 5 AP per point of Strength."
I think you just notice threat issues more on AE pulls because things like Tricks and Misdirect mask any problems on single target pulls. Separate problem.
And yes Paladin tank AE damage and threat generation is still too high, largely because of Seals and HoR, but long-term we're going to nerf that instead of making all tanks able to trivially maintain threat in all situations. Referencing the other thread on the threat a little, why as a tank would you even care what buttons you push if maintaining threat is a foregone conclusion?
* - AE tanking was fine in Naxxramas. AE damage was, and has remained, over the top. We prefer a model where the risk of tanking too many mobs is that the tank dies, not that you can't maintain threat on them all (within reasonable limits of course). We also prefer a model where the dps do AE damage on some pulls and switch to single target dps on others.
On warrior tanks being balanced around having Incite / Deep Wounds Yes, you're balanced around it. Yes, I can read the tooltip on the talents. I'm saying the solution, in our minds, is not "I hit Thunderclap and it autocrits, applies Rend to everyone and then ticks for 10,000 K for the next 30 minutes." We might as well just remove the cooldown from Challenging Shout if that's how Tclap is going to play.
Dude pulled aggro does not represent a failure of class design any more than you sometimes dying represents a failure of class design. Both are going to happen sometimes unless you're absolutely at the top of your game. That's part of the challenge of playing your role. For our part, we'll make sure you have the tools to do your job, and for the most part you do. I don't think the tools are the issue, as I said above.
I'm talking philosophy here, because I assume that's usually more interesting to a wider audience. Philosophically, tank threat generation is working correctly (i.e. as we intend) with perhaps 4-5 exceptions that we would like to fix:
1) Paladins can do a little too much AE tanking "splash" damage, often without even setting out to do so. 2) Tricks and MD take too much of a burden off of the tank / hide issue #3. 3) Damage and therefore threat generation aren't scaling well at very high levels of gear. <-- this is the big one. 4) There is too much incentive to AE every pull, which puts a burden on the tank to AE tank every pull. 5) You could probably add that bears need a button to hit besides Swipe.
On how rogues and hunters help single-target threat generation My point was more that tanks would probably be complaining a lot more about single-target threat in Icecrown without rogues and hunters. Using Tricks or Misdirect on a pull or when new adds show up feels awesome for the rogue / hunter and tank. Using them rotationally to keep threat high feels crappy for both. The tank feels gimp and the dps dude is annoyed by the maintenance required. For sake of argument, imagine that Misdirect and Tricks have the taunt tooltip that specifies the threat transfer only happens if the enemy is not already attacking the target.
On AE tanking being challenging to pull off Then you seem to be in the camp where Challenging Shout should have no cooldown. In other words, threat isn't a game you want to play and all mobs should attack the tank (at least raid trash and heroic dungeons) since that makes tanking easier for you. I can understand that viewpoint, but our problem is that not all tanks feel the way you do, and we want them to still have fun as well.
We've also made no trash raids, such as ToC. Some players like the efficiency of doing nothing but bosses. Others think clearing a dungeon on the way to the bosses is part of the raiding model and makes it feel more epic and ultimately more rewarding for them. But I really don't want to derail this discussion onto the value of trash or not. Suffice to say it's part of the experience and will have to be tanked. It shouldn't be pull-your-hair-out frustrating to tank, but it shouldn't be AFK-able either.
Source Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.
To review previous in-game fixes, please visit:
3/4
- In the Lord Marrowgar encounters, the boss will no longer reset threat after a bone storm and will now wait a small amount of time before attacking at the end of a bone storm. - In the Deathbringer Saurfang encounters, the boss is now less likely to cast Blood Nova on targets affected by Mark of the Fallen Champion. - In both normal and heroic versions of the 10 player Rotface encounter, the mutated infection ability will not be cast as quickly while the fight progresses. - In the 10- and 25-player heroic Festergut encounters, the malleable goo ability should no longer target pets. - In the Valithria Dreamwalker encounters, the duration of Emerald Vigor and Twisted Nightmares were slightly increased. - In the Sindragosa encounters, the duration of the instability debuff was slightly reduced.
In this interview, World of Warcraft Game Director Tom Chilton talks about the hectic final months leading up to the game’s launch, crafting an MMORPG for a wide range of play styles, and the ongoing effort to improve the game through expansions and content updates.
Det har även släppts ett nytt Wallpaper. Det är en bild som warcraft fans över hela världen tillsammans varit med och skapat. Det kan nog kan vara den snyggaste bilden hittills. Det finns tillängligt i många olika upplösningar.
Thanks to the combined effort of Warcraft players from around the world, we have reached twenty thousand submissions, and the final piece of the World of Warcraft BattleCry Mosaic has been revealed. Head over to the World of Warcraft anniversary site now and check out the complete mosaic, which can only be described by one word: epic.
You can now look at the complete mosaic using the site's mosaic viewer, download the original artwork wallpaper, and of course view the legendary-sized mosaic wallpaper. And while you’re there, make sure to also check out all the previously unlocked content.
Thank you to everyone who sent in their pictures to help us create a little piece of Warcraft history, and thank you to all our players around the world for your continued support. Lok'tar!
Blizzard Voice Chat The Blizzard Voice chat is actually pretty cool, and has improved greatly since it was released. We do see it as a success. We're completely fine with players using third party voice chat programs. It was simply important to us that an option was available for those who didn't want to rely on a 3rd party voice chat program -- no matter their reasons.
Additionally, there are a great deal more players who use it than you probably realize.
Dual-Wield DPS itemization in Cataclysm We will be making one-handed weapons with Strength on them.
Hit in Cataclysm As I've said, it doesn't really work that way though. Say you need 300 hit (using arbitrary numbers here) and your tier set provides 250 hit and you get the rest from gems and jewelry. Everything's cool. Now a new patch comes out and your tier set has 230 hit. No problem. You get rid of some of the gems and jewelry. Now a new patch comes out and your tier set has 240 hit. Now you curse Blizzard every time an item drops with hit on it.
In short, later gear has more of the same stat on it. When the stats are easily capped, the larger pools become hard to work around. I compared it today to playing Tetris with really large pieces. It's hard to make the puzzle work.
Warlock: Unstable Affliction "nerf" in the latest PTR Build Tooltip clarification. Move along. [...] I will say that Unstable Affliction backlash being unaffected by resilience really feels like a bug. I don't see how it's a necessary warlock perk
Patch notes till starcraft 2 släpptes i helgen och ni hittar dom här nedanför. Än så länge så är det mest balans förändringar vilket är ett gott tecken för en tidig release.
Blizzard wrote:
StarCraft II Beta - Patch 2 (version 0.4.0.14133)
Balance Changes
Terran
* Banshee o Cloak: This ability no longer requires Fusion Core to research.
* Barracks o The build time for this building has decreased from 65 to 60.
* Factory o The build time for this building has decreased from 65 to 60.
* Reactor o The build time for this building has decreased from 40 to 25.
* Reaper o The build time for this unit has increased from 30 to 40. o Nitro Boost: The build time for this upgrade has increased from 90 to 100.
* Starport o The build time for this building has decreased from 55 to 50.
* Tech Lab o The build time for this building has decreased from 30 to 25.
Protoss
Mothership o The build time for this unit has increased from 120 to 160. o The food cost of this unit has increased from 6 to 8. o The number of shots fired by this unit has decreased from 8 to 6. o The shield of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350. o The health of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350. o The acceleration of this unit has decreased from 1.3125 to 0.3125. o The deceleration of this unit has increased from 0 to 1.
* Nexus o Chrono Boost: The duration of this ability has decreased from 30 to 20.
Zerg
Corruptor o The damage done by this unit has increased from 12 (+8 massive) to 12 (+10 massive).
Blizzard wrote:
StarCraft II Beta - Patch 1 (version 0.3.0.14093)
[bBALANCE CHANGES[/b]
TERRAN o Viking + The armor value for this unit in Fighter Mode has decreased from 1 to 0. + The damage done by this unit in Fighter Mode has changed from 6 (+8 armored) to 10 (+4 armored).
o Reaper + The damage done from D-8 Charges has decreased from 40 to 30. + The delay between attacks for D-8 Charges has decreased from 2.5 to 1.8.
o Orbital Command + The build time for this upgrade has decreased from 50 to 35.
PROTOSS o Observer + Gravitic Boosters: The cost of this research has decreased from 150 minerals and 150 vespene gas to 100 minerals and 100 vespene gas.
o High Templar + Phase Shift: This ability has been removed from the game. + New ability: Feedback - Drains all energy from the target unit and causes damage equal to the amount of energy drained.
o Colossus + The building pathing radius for this unit has decreased from .75 to .5625.
o Mothership + Vortex: The energy cost of this ability has increased from 75 to 100. + Vortex: The target radius of this ability has decreased from 3.0 to 2.5. + Temporal Rift: This ability has been removed from the game. + Wormhole Transit: This ability has been removed from the game. + New ability: Mass Recall - Teleports all of the player's units in the target area to the Mothership.
o Nexus + Chrono Boost can no longer target allies.
o Gateway + The build time of this building has increased from 50 to 65.
ZERG o Infestor + Fungal Growth: The damage done by this ability has decreased from 48 to 36. + Fungal Growth: This ability now prevents affected units from burrowing. + Neural Parasite: Functionality changed - The Infestor now channels this spell, which lasts 10 seconds or until the Infestor is destroyed. You can now target all units with this ability. + Terran Infestation: The ability’s energy cost has reduced from 50 to 25 and Infested Terrans now spawn 1 at a time.
BUG FIXES
* Addressed an issue causing people to receive an “Internal Battle.net Error” message with their game client. * Muting your microphone will no longer cause your microphone to be turned off in the operating system once the program has exited. o Please note that the voice chat functionality has only partially been implemented. There are many known issues with voice chat that we expect to address in a future patch.
* The “Medium” graphical settings were reconfigured to work better on appropriate machines. The video settings “auto-detect” functionality has been reset as a result. * Added a frame rate limiter to the game menus to prevent some graphics cards from running at higher frame rates than necessary.
Så har Lich King äntligen dött i heroic mode. Det var guilden Paragon från servern Lightning's Blade (EU) som lyckades döda honom i 10 manna. Dom använde den nya 5% zone buffen för att lyckas.
Quote:
We have now killed The Lich King on hard mode in 10-man Icecrown Citadel. Good job everyone who were on the kill and to all those who participated on the endless strategy discussion.
The encounter had a bug in the spirit phase, which we reported two weeks ago, but the bug didn't get fixed until today. The bug made the encounter somewhat harder. We had already worked our way around the spirit problem on last week's reset, so the kill was definitely within our grasp even without any extra attempts or buffs.
And just for clarification: we did have the +5% buff active on the kill.
* Note clarified - The amount of Honor awarded for an Honorable Kill has been increased by 100% for characters of all levels. This change will effectively double the amount of Honor received from Honorable Kills, or for completing Battleground and Wintergrasp objectives; however, the amount of experience gained from completing Battleground objectives and the amount of Honor rewarded for completing each Wintergrasp quest remain unchanged.
Druid
* Talents o Feral Combat + Mangle: The debuff from this talent now lasts 60 seconds, up from 12 seconds.
Mage
* Talents o Arcane + Torment the Weak: This talent now also applies to Pyroblast damage.
o Fire + Empowered Fire: This talent now also applies to Pyroblast damage.
Rogue
* Talents o Subtlety + Serrated Blades: This talent now allows the rogue to ignore up to 3/6/9% of the target's armor, rather than a fixed amount of armor ignored per level of the rogue.
Warrior
* Talents o Arms + Trauma: The debuff from this talent now lasts 60 seconds, up from 15 seconds.
o Protection + Improved Revenge: This talent can no longer trigger a stun, and instead causes Revenge to strike an additional target for 50/100% of Revenge's damage.
Items
* Glyphs o Glyph of Mangle: This glyph now provides 10% increased damage done by Mangle instead of increasing the duration of the debuff.
* Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster's Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%. * Shaman Tier-10 4-Piece Elemental set Bonus: This bonus has been slightly adjusted to account for the fact that haste now modifies Flame Shock's periodic damage ticks. The bonus now makes the shaman's Lava Burst cause Flame Shock to tick at least two additional times before expiring.
Technical
* Frame Rate: A maximum capacity of 200 frames per second has been added.
Det har varit mycket frågor angående twitter chatten som var i helgen och många svar har givits, här nedan hittar ni ytterligare förklaringar och svar till chatten.
There will be exceptions. There might be some spellpower cloth with no hit or Spirit that healers and nukers may want. There will likely be Elemental tier sets with no Spirit. Jewelry and cloaks will be more class agnostic than actual armor pieces.
I wrote that quickly, so hopefully I didn't mangle anything. Smiley EDIT: You get a small mastery bonus for wearing the highest-armor gear capable for your class. Hunters in mail get a bonus. Hunters in leather do not.
Mastery bonus and armor type There is a small Mastery bonus for wearing "your" gear. So a Balance druid who takes cloth will be essentially giving up free stats. Sometimes that may be worth it to them (just as sometimes it's worth it for a Resto druid to take that piece of +hit gear), but often times it won't be worth it especially if it's an upgrade for you.
Reforging Think of reforging like enchants. It's not that you take a piece of gear and turn it into whatever you want. You pick up specific scrolls with specific conversions. We haven't decided on them all yet, but I imagine crit -> parry is not something you're likely to see. Maybe we'd do hit -> dodge for the tank who is full on or doesn't want hit. Maybe we'd do block -> parry to help DKs benefit from more plate.
Rest assured that we're not going to promote a system where Prot paladins want dps plate for tanking more than tanking plate. Part of all of these changes are to discourage behavior like that. We don't want to recreate it immediately in a different form.
Haste in Cataclysm Haste will basically remain the same for casters. It is changing for melee classes, however. Haste will also allow melee classes to recover their resources more quickly, effectively letting them hit their buttons more often.
Gem sockets and item budget We take gem budgets out of the most attractive stat on a piece of gear, in order to avoid anything with sockets always trumping similar gear without sockets. As such, socketed tanking plate has less base stamina but with gems, you’ll almost certainly end up with more health than dps classes.
Mastery Bonus You get a mastery bonus (i.e. free stats) for wearing your gear. If shaman or druids wear cloth, they will do so at a slight stat loss. Sometimes that may still be worth it.
Spirit Spirit is currently on a lot of cloth gear because it is considered a healing AND dps stat. We are changing it to just be a healing stat. There will still be a lot of it on leather though, just not every piece. Both Spirit and hit are the kind of thing you want enough of and no more than that. Since there won't be any buffs that boost hit or Spirit, you shouldn't often find yourself in excess.
[...] If we solve the Spirit -> hit conversion through a talent, it will be tacked on to an existing talent so that you aren't really paying for it. We like the talent approach more than a passive ability because the talents let you tell the game "I'm trying to be a caster, not a healer now."
I've read several players say that they like to reach their hit cap and then be done with it. But that doesn't really happen because every tier there is more and more hit on gear, forcing you to either swap out some of your excess hit or avoid the new stuff completely. The new model is more that all that extra hit on higher ilevel gear will have a use.
Plate / Cloth Armor differences Plate will still possess much more armor than cloth, the difference just wont be as significant as it is now.
[...] posted something similar in the Cataclysm forum, but let's look at actual numbers. A level 80 Prot warrior in Icecrown gear unbuffed has like 45,000 health and 30,000 armor. A level 80 mage in Icecrown gear unbuffed might have 20,000 health and 2000 armor. Yes, 2000 armor. We have a lot of room to narrow the gap a little. It's a big gap.
[...] Someone (Angua?) had a post awhile back that explained this using numbers. Cloth won't have as much armor as plate. But maybe it will have half as much armor as plate instead of one fifth as much armor as plate (or whatever the ratios end up being at higher levels).
Really, cloth isn't the issue, since cloth wearers have spells to buff their mitigation. Leather wearers are the ones who end up the most fragile. Mail would be bad too except that shaman can use shields when needed and hunters typically don't get hit by melee much. We just want to bring things a little closer to each other. It's easier to establish a baseline for how hard a particular attack should hit for when one dps spec isn't literally four times as survivable as another.
Is threat fun? When threat doesn't matter as a tank, then maximizing your rotation doesn't matter much either. To use the warrior example, you could skip Devastate, Revenge and Shield Slam and just autoattack and use defensive cooldowns. Is that fun? On the other hand, many of the requests we see are for harder hitting attacks, especially on the AE front, so that in essence it's less work to tank multiple mobs at once. Is this really what you want?
I would assert in the current game that threat is almost never an issue. It might be an issue in the first few seconds of a fight (including when new adds join the party) or when the dps severely outgear the tank (such as in a Dungeon Finder situation). Especially in a world with Misdirect, Tricks of the Trade, and Tauntable bosses, tanks on single-target raid fights get so far ahead of the dps and healers, that catching them would be almost impossible. We could definitely tone this down a little such that tanks needed to fight for threat a little more than they do now. Some players would welcome that change and some would say that Blizzard hates tanks and makes them work too hard.
Tank specs in Cataclysm Tanks will still be required to tank raids and I expect most heroics. You're not in any danger of being upstaged by a dps spec who has slightly more armor and health than they do now.
Tank vs non-tank classes Let's compare a level 80 tank to a non-tank. Unbuffed, a level 80 mage in Icecrown gear might have 20,000 health, 2000 armor, 5% dodge, 0% parry, 0% block. Unbuffed, a level 80 Protection warrior in Icecrown gear might have 45,000 health, 30,000 armor, 25% dodge, 20% parry and 20% block. To be fair, the mage can cast armor and has a few defensive spells. The tank has Defensive Stance, cooldowns like Shield Wall and Last Stand, and cannot be crit by mobs.
Now the mage gets converted to Cataclysm. Let's pick totally wild numbers, like +50% health and +200% armor, which I hope are much too large. The mage now has 30,000 health and 6000 armor. Wow! Still... think he's going to be tanking anything? The tank still mitigates so much damage through armor (what he doesn't avoid) that he'll still shrug off hits that flatten the poor mage tank.
The numbers are really far off at the moment. We have a lot of room to bring them closer together while still leaving them very far apart.
"Terrible" stats I actually disagree with that. The problem we have with current stats is that some are good and some are terrible. To use the Resto druid for example, crit isn't useful because so many hots can't crit and haste isn't useful because so many hots can't be hasted (and talents provide generous cast-time reduction already). To use another example, some mages are very near the crit cap to the point where a trinket that proc'd crit (or even a free crit) would be less attractive that one that proc'd haste. It's not that crit is bad for them. It's just that they have too much.
The problem is that some stats are twice as good as other stats. If crit was slightly better than haste, you'd take crit given the choice, but still wear haste.
Shield mechanics in Cataclysm You'll still be able to line up trinkets and abilities to get really good blocks when you need them. We think this design will let us make blocks more meaningful to the tanking experience since you could actually block 20,000 or more damage on a 60,000 hit. Being able to trivialize lower level mobs is sort of a bizarre perk though (and one not shared by all tank classes) and not something we're really interested in preserving.
[...] Yeah, that is sort of the intent. We don’t like that block allows certain tanks to trivialize older content. Older content is always going to be easy, but it was a little strange that warriors and paladins could literally take no damage with enough block while DKs still took some damage. Stats need to scale and this one wasn’t.
Tanking stats disparities Once upon a time, being a "mana sponge" was a scary thing. Nobody (esp. druids) wanted to be the meat shield that had huge health pools but drained the healers dry. When mana matters, avoidance matters more too. I'm not saying parry will ever trump Stamina, but perhaps Stamina won't trump parry by quite as much as it does today.
Healers and mana management Imagine you have 3 heals: normal, big and fast. The big heal is expensive and the fast heal isn't very efficient.
In your 1st tier, healers use their normal heal. The others are reserved for emergencies. In subsequent tiers, their regen is such that they can afford to branch out more into the expensive big heal and the inefficient fast heal. But while that is happening, the encounters are stepping up too. You'll need the fast heal sometimes because the damage is coming in too fast. You'll need the big heal more because sometimes you have to get someone back from the brink in a single GCD. Fortunately, as you approach the final tier, your mana regen is such that you can handle not casting your base heal as often.
The problem currently is that efficiency is a pretty low concern given that if you don't land a heal right this second, someone may die, and your chance of running out of mana is pretty low in the first place. There is every reason to just use the inefficient flash heal. Likewise, health is too low (relative to damage) so the big heal is just overhealing. And someone can probably flash your target up before you finish that long cast.
Death Knight Scourge Strike and DKs in PvP We don't like melee strikes hitting for straight magical damage. We went through a lot of similar balance issues when Ret hit for so much Holy damage and to a lesser extent with Frost DKs. I agree we have some confusing tooltips, but I don't agree that Scourge Strike is one of them. It's a weapon attack that hits for physical damage. If there are diseases on the target, it adds some Shadow damage too. Doesn't seem that complicated.
[...] We're happy with how much damage DKs can do in PvP. They were too susceptible to dispels, and we have now implemented a fix to help with that.
Class abilities are different. Envenom is not Scourge Strike. Rogues still do a lot of physical damage. Frost Strike still hits for 100% magic damage, but it's a more controlled ability. The DK in PvP hitting for huge Scourge Strikes over and over again is not something we're going to go back to. It may have been fun, but I assert it was fun because it was overpowered not because Shadow damage is somehow more entertaining.
Players using armor pen to hit for physical damage do not hit for magical damage. The closest argument could make is that bleeds act similar to magic damage.
Obliterate is a different ability. Unholy has talents that play off of both Scourge Strike and Shadow damage. If we see Unholy DKs literally going to Obliterate and skipping those relevant talents (which some PvE DKs were doing before), then we would make changes, but they don't seem to be doing that now. We're certainly not going to make Scourge Strike HIT REAL HARD in order to distinguish it, so make sure you're asking for what you really want and not try to sneakily ask for a damage buff.
In general, I find arguments to be generally weak that say "This class does X so I should be able to as well." If you have specific problems in PvP, mention those. If you think your damage is too low to exert pressure, that's a fine conversation to have. I would try to do it without the "But X ability hits hard, so mine should too" talking points.
Finally, this dead horse feels a little dead to me. You might want to check out some of our (numerous) comments on the intent for Scourge Strike before you hit that Post button again.
Druid Druid tanking in Cataclysm If druids have lower avoidance (assuming you call the new parry and block avoidance), then they'll have higher armor and health to compensate. There is no reason druids must have block and parry to be competitive. They really haven't missed it much in WotLK.
I think the only real risk to druids from a design paradigm perspective is the risk of being a mana sponge. Druids were worried about that coming into this expansion, but as we've seen, it wasn't an issue. With mana mattering more, it could be, but high armor will still help with that.
The comment about leather was just that if leather provides as much health as plate, then the Bear multiplier doesn't need to be as high for druids still to have higher health than other tanks.
Mage Spell ranks removed - What about the food/water? There won't be a way or need to cast the lower level spells. If you're just worried about losing the flavor of croissants vs. strudel, we're keeping that. At some point you'll just start making the better breads.
Eyonix postade idag en stor post ang stat förändringarna i cataclysm precis som dom sa i twitter chatten. Det är en väldigt intressant läsning med mer djupgående förklaringar till hur stats kommer förändras. Ni hittar artikeln här.
Blizzard wrote:
As many of you know from panels at last year’s BlizzCon and posts here on the forums since then, Cataclysm will bring about major changes to familiar character stats such as Intellect, Armor Penetration, Defense, and others, ultimately designed to make the effects of stats more easily understandable and make gear choices more interesting. As these changes will have a significant impact on how stats work and relate to one another, today we wanted to offer you a closer look at exactly what’s in store and explain some of the rationale before Cataclysm arrives.
The most obvious question these changes raise is "Why are stats being changed, and why now?" As the game has matured, we've run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. Attack Power, for example, currently translates to damage, but so does Armor Penetration. Defense provides five different statistical benefits of varying utility. Mana regeneration involves understanding multiple stats and rules and often ends up being irrelevant anyway. In addition, the difference between a "good stat" for a class and a "bad stat" can be extreme. Some casters want Haste but not Crit; hunters want Armor Penetration but not Haste. There are other overarching issues, as well, such as Intellect not being very exciting for casters despite it being a core stat -- and these are just a few examples.
Our ultimate goal is make gear a more interesting (and less confusing) choice by making each stat valuable to more players. While the reasoning behind some of the following changes may be clear, we understand that you may have questions about some of the less obvious alterations, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have here on the forums.
What You’ll See on Gear
Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.
Spirit - Come Cataclysm, this stat should only be found on healing gear. Non-healing casters will have other systems in place to regenerate mana, and we are designing special solutions for Elemental shaman and Balance druids who often share gear with healers (more on this below). Raid buffs that currently boost Spirit (such as Blessing of Kings) will only boost the primary stats of Stamina, Strength, Agility, and Intellect. We are also likely changing the five-second rule and other quirks of the current regen system.
Intellect - Intellect will now grant Spell Power (more on this below). Intellect will also provide less mana than it currently does.
Haste - Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you "do stuff" more often.
Block Rating - Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.
Parry - Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). In other words, Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.
Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It's directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.
Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.
Resilience - This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.
Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating - These will all still appear on gear as well. Aside from situations mentioned elsewhere in this list, in general these will function similarly to how they do now, though the details -- such as how much Hit Rating you might need to effectively combat high-level creatures (more on this below) -- are likely to change.
Being Removed from Items
Attack Power - This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does.
Spell Power - Spell Power is another stat that you'll no longer see present on most items. Instead, as mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.
Armor Penetration - This stat will no longer be present on items. Armor Penetration will still exist in talents and abilities.
Shield Block Value - This stat will no longer be present on items, since the amount blocked is always proportional to the amount of damage done. Talents and other effects might still modify the damage-reduction percentage from 30%, however.
Going Away Completely
MP5 - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Holy paladins and Restoration shaman will be redesigned to benefit from Spirit.
Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.
Spell Ranks - Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.
Weapon Skill - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.
What Else You Should Know
Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.
Reforging - While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don’t want more Hit Rating on your gear or you’d rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won’t be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.
Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow. We'll have more details on this in the future.
Changes to Existing Gear
As with previous expansions, we plan to roll out these changes and modify all existing gear shortly before Cataclysm launches, though it’s still too early to say exactly when. For the most part, the gear you have will still be good for you, though there will be exceptions, such as warriors using leather and mail armor.
If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:
* No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating. * No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating. * You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat. * Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.
If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:
* A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result. * Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather. * Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina.Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit. * No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won’t need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways.
If you are a DPS caster, expect to see:
* A lot more Stamina. * All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina. * No Spirit. You won’t miss Spirit, though, because you won’t need it for DPS or mana regen.
If you are a healer, expect to see:
* A lot more Stamina. * All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina. * Spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.
If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman:
* You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman. * Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won’t have Hit on it. * You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit. * Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you. * Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.
Many lower-level items with nonsensical combinations of stats, such as Agility and Spirit, will be changed. We're also updating quest rewards, trade skills, and loot drops to support better itemization for class builds that weren't widely available or used prior to The Burning Crusade (such as Balance druids).
We're aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven't yet discussed in detail. In the weeks and months ahead, we'll continue to tell you more about these changes, along with all of the new and exciting features we have planned for Cataclysm.
Ber om ursäkt för att det inte varit någon uppdatering om detta i helgen har varit lite upptagen hur som det var en developer chat i fredags på twitter och ni finner den här nedan.
Dom tar upp en del intressanta saker så jag tänkte highlighta lite av det viktiga.
Ny caverns of time instans i cataclysm Blasted lands kommer att få en ordentlig förändring i cataclysm Limited Attempts kommer troligen inte att användas något mer Gnomes och trolls starting zoner kommer att bli extremt förändrade Emblems kommer troligen få en cap så som honor och arena points Cross realm BoA saker kommer "snart" att komma
Detta är bara ett litet utdrag av otroligt mycket mer.
Blizzard wrote:
That's it for this Developer Chat. If any questions were answered twice, keep in mind we had two developers independently working to jump on as many questions as possible.
We'd like to thank both of our developers for coming, and thank you all for joining us!
General Q. Are there any plans for more weekly quests (not raid but general) for the weekend only players? A. I like weekly quests, because they get you to come back to WoW without making you feel like you have to log in every single night. Sometimes Ghostcrawler likes to go to the bar instead.
Q. What happened to the advertised Dance Studio for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion? A. It's still on the list! We always start an expansion with more than we can realistically do and then shuffle things up and down. WoW is one of those games you just never finish, which is overall a fun thing about working on it.
Q. What is the one thing you're the most proud of in regards to how the Wrath of the Lich King expansion went? A. Questing in Northrend took on a whole new meaning. I can’t wait for people to see what we have in store for Cataclysm! A#2. It had a really strong theme with the frozen north and you knew from the beginning that a final showdown with you-know-who was coming at the end. One of the challenges of Cataclysm is not having that really focused theme (cold undead) but Cataclysm still has a great story mind you.
Q. Is there any chance that tabards will eventually get their own tab on the character screen (a la pets/mounts)? A. Tabard storage is something we have been looking into for the last couple weeks. Hopefully we will be able to get this done for Cataclysm. No promises though. Wink
Q. Will you give us more bag/bank slots and make us able to carry more bags at a time if i say please? A. We will have larger bags in Cataclysm for sure. The real question is will you buy them from Haris Pilton?
Q. Are there any plans to implement cross-faction/cross-realm mail(for BoA gear and such)? A. We have cross-faction mail for BoA items now; cross-realm is a work in progress, but we hope to have it done “soon."
Q. Are we ever going to be able to get Frostmourne? A. Not in game, but you can order a real one!
Classes Q. Does Blizzard have any plans to give healers "fun" procs and on-use effects, like DPS have been getting lately? A. Yes. Healer procs are trickier to design though to make sure they aren't wasted. Damage is rarely wasted so it's a bit easier to design.
Death Knight Q. Two-handed (2H) frost death knights was a really fun playstyle that died when dual-wielding (DW) was introduced. Are there any plans to make using two-handed weapons more appealing? A. We can't make every death knight tree PvP, PvE and tanking viable and also offer both 2H and DW options for all three of those. We are currently designing Frost as a DW-only tree.
Druid Q. Is there any ETA on tree / moonkin form graphical update? A. Moonkin is hard because Moonkin players are so in love with that form. It's tough to change it at all. We currently hope to do a new tree form for Cataclysm, but no promises.
Q. Has there been any thought of changing Eclipse to charges so that Moonkin dps doesn't suffer so much from moving? A. Yes. Expect a major overhaul in Cataclysm that keeps the same basic idea (alternating from Arcane to Nature) but in a way that is more core to the class. Like everything though, there is the risk that we may decide this idea sucks once we see it in action.
Hunter Q. The Hunter class has many odd and situational abilities such as Mongoose Bite and Aspect of the Beast - are there any plans for changes to these types of abilities? A. Mongoose Bite is most likely a goner. Let us weep. We think Aspect of the Beast could have some cool uses for Beastmaster hunters.
Q. Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small. A. Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of "active" pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.
Paladin Q. Is there any info you can share on future plans for holy paladins? A. I hear they need more healing spells.
Priest Q. Will there be any upcoming changes to shadow priest anytime soon? A. We're pretty happy with them currently in Icecrown and PvP. Long term they have some things we want to address, such as having long ramp-up time even on easy mobs when leveling or handling large groups. They also get really punished from school lockout.
Warlock Q. Are there any updates on the changes for Warlock soul shard mechanics? A. We've implemented much of what we've discussed at Blizzcon: shards are a UI element instead of an item. You use them frequently, but for great effect. They are all for damage. Summoning and pets just cost mana. I think you'll finally like shards.
Raids & Dungeons Q. Is the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter a deliberate move towards making WoW more “fun & interesting” for healers? Will we see more encounters like this? A. We want to make healing more fun, yes. Part of that is letting healers use their whole repetoire instead of just their best spells. Part of it is trying to get healers to look at the battlefield a little more and unit frames a little less, that of course means a little more time in between spamming heals so you can do stuff like that.
Q. What have you learned from this expansion’s emblem system? A. Having that many different kind of emblems is overwhelming. In hindsight, we wish we had done maybe 2 emblems: the current tier and the previous tier (Frost and Triumph at the moment). They also felt a tad too grindy when 3.3 first came out before all of the sources of emblems were available.
Q. With Illidan you removed attunement to give players more accessibility to the instance, so why have you limited pre-Ulduar geared players from using the Dungeon Finder to enter the new 5-player dungeons that were released in patch 3.3? A. We feel like players using Dungeon Finder need some reasonable guarantee that the other players they get grouped with are going to be able to pull their weight. We don't yet have a robust system for tracking that other than gear. Gear obviously has its problems though, so we'll be looking at smarter ways to do it in the future.
A#2. Gear requirements are a way for us to help players have an experience that is more in line with their skill level. We would much rather you not be able to get into the instance than to have you get in there with a group and find out that you can’t even tank the first boss. Gear requirements are not locked in stone either -- we are updating these as we see fit.
Q. You talk a lot about changing how we heal tanks, but will aggro ever come back as a challenging part of the game? A. Not sure. This is something we discuss a lot. I even had a meeting on it this week! On the one hand, some tanks really felt like the way to distinguish themselves was to generate maximum threat per second. On the other hand, threat is a pretty invisibile part of the game (it's limited to the UI at best), and I know when I tank that I always feel pretty emasculated when someone actually pulls off of me. It's challenging, but is it really fun? This is the kind of thing we'd love to get more feedback on.
Please include your feedback on large banners to be shown in the background during the Olympics. Failing that, the forums would work too.
Q. How do you feel about the limited attempts mechanic that has been use in Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel? A. We're not crazy about how they worked out. They were designed in essence to save players from themselves. In the past, some people would make 400+ attempts on new bosses. That's not healthy and at some point you're not measuring skill but tenacity. Yet, that's not what happened. Guilds just made alts to get around the limitations, and things like disconnects and accidents make losing an attempt really frustrating. We like gating because if nothing else it lets the community focus on more than just the final boss in the zone. If we do limited attempts again it would probably be limited to optional bosses like Algalon.
Q. Are there any plans to allow cross-realm raiding? A. If we can solve the problems with it, we might give it a try. One of the problems is getting the group back together, especially on the longer instances. Loot drama and stuff like that is always a problem. There is also the ongoing concern about the concept of your realm having less of a sense of community.
Q. Do you consider Algalon a successful raid encounter, and will we see more hardmode-only bosses in the future? A. We were actually really happy with the way that Algalon played out. We designed him with a very specific sort of raider in mind and those that got a chance to fight him really enjoyed the fight. Encounters like Algalon will not be in every raid zone, but we would like to do something like this again for sure.
Q. Will we be seeing more Caverns of Time in Cataclysm? War of the Ancients, maybe? A. We will definitely see another trip to the Caverns of Time during Cataclsym. You are going to have to ask Chromie for more details though. =)
Q. What happened to the zone-wide buff in Icecrown Citadel? Did you trash that idea or is it coming in the near future before Cataclysm? A. This is still in the works, we just are not ready for it quite yet. The buff will scale up over time as well. This is also answered in more detail in BlizzCast episode 13: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/ ... ml?rhtml=y
Q. What did Yogg-Saron have to do with the Lich King? It seemed like a strange tangent to make in the middle of the expansion? A. Did you do the quests in Icecrown? Quick answer: the existence of an Old God in Icecrown had a lot to do with the ability for mortals to become corrupted.
Q. Will the dungeon finder get upgraded to possibly track or detect players who abuse the kick system and/or ninjaing? A. We are toying around with this idea. It's hard to let you use it when needed without letting others abuse it.
Q. Why have we not seen World Bosses in this expansion? A. They just have problems. It's always a race to get to them, which tends to favor larger groups who are online often, and it's hard to discourage or even prevent players outside the raid from helping or screwing things up.
A#2. World bosses are something that we have been talking about more as of late. We really like the concept, but there are certain design problems we would like to address before we bring them back. Stay tuned.
Q. With the advent of Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Heroic Deadmines, is there any likelihood of other older instances made Heroic? A. Yes. We are hoping to do more than just these two, but it just comes down to time. We are focusing on getting the new Cataclysm dungeons done first and then we can look into doing more old-world Heroics.
Q. If you could go back and redo or remove some feature that were added with WoTLK, what would it be and why? A. I think the emblem system could be less clunky. Limited Attempts didn't really work out. We always had some tension about what 10 player heroic should really be. I'm only talking new features here. There were plenty of other things I'd change about this expansion in hindsight. We're pretty critical of our own design.
Cataclysm Q. Will existing races have their starting areas reworked to provide a more "epic" experience similar to the Goblin/Worgen starts? A. Not quite at the Goblin / Worgen level, but we are looking at all the original start zones, especially for two races who feel a little disenfranchised at the moment.
A#2. We have big plans in store for both the trolls and the gnomes in regards to their starting experience but you probably already know that. Wink
We are also planning to spice up the starting zones for all of the other races as well. You can expect gameplay changes to the actual zones, as well as improved quest flows and all new items to match.
Q. The 3.3.3 PTR included some unreleased 'event' details (no spoilers). Should we expect to see that event in the lifetime of 3.3.3? A. Something leaked in the patch? That never happens! The plan is for these events to go live sometime before Cataclysm ships. We don’t have an exact time yet, but we would like players to have a good month or two to play through these events to help build the back story for what is going to happen in Cataclysm.
Q. Regarding Cataclysm, can you reveal any of the 'major changes' in Blasted Lands and how this will affect the lore? A. I love the fact that one of our first questions is in regards to the Blasted Lands! We have big plans in store for this zone in Cataclysm. We will be revamping the entire flow of the zone so you can expect an entirely new experience here. Some of the big changes include an opening to the coastline for a new play area, as well as a large new worgen area in The Tainted Scar.
Q. In Cataclysm, do you plan on releasing two raid instances at a time (like Serpentshrine Cavern/Tempest Keep), or are we only getting one at a time (i.e. Naxxramas followed by Ulduar)? A. We like the idea of having more smaller raids rather than one large one. In other words, we will have more than one at Cataclysm launch.
Q. When will we get new info and updates on Cataclysm? A. We have an article on the stat changes that should be going up really soon. You'll see more over time as we get closer to launching this next expansion.
Q. With the new gear stats system in cataclysm, will you go back and redo all the old gear, or will it only affect new gear? A. Yes, we redid all the old gear.
Q. Should players be concerned about what gear they pickup in this expansion, because of the gear overhaul that is coming? A. I wouldn't stress over it. You'll probably replace that gear pretty quickly. Since we have 5 levels, we don't really want players getting all the way to 85 without having upgraded at all.
Q. Will any of the new race/class combos be available before Cataclysm is released? A. No.
Q. With the Lich King defeated, in Cataclysm, will the Plaguelands be green and beautiful again? A. Western Plaguelands will finally be free of the plague in Cataclysm. It’s hard for the Scourge to survive without their beloved Lich King. I guess this means we need to rename the zone?
Q. Why did the Night Elves bring the Worgen into the Alliance, and were described as "old allies"? A. The men and women of Gilneas were the "old allies."
Q. I'd like to see a new Isle of Quel'Danas-like daily quest hub in Cataclsym. One place, no travelling quick gold daily (: please? A. We are planning to do exactly this for Tol Barad. When the battle is not taking place, players will be able to use the island as a daily quest hub. This will of course be very fun on PVP servers. =)
Q. Will we get some info about the other zones revamped in Cataclysm, like Stranglethorn Vale or Tanaris? A. Yes, we are hoping to do a few specific web features on a few of the old world zones and exactly what is changing with them. Stranglethorn Vale is seeing a large amount of changes so it is a great candidate for this.
A#2. A. Some Tanaris goblins wisely invested in desert real estate and reaped the benefits when it became beach-front property.
Q. Why we have never seen a female worgen model? I Want to see a beautiful one from you. ^^ A. The female model looks great! Hopefully we will get some screenshots of her up soon.
Q. Due to Silverpine's (and thus the worgen's) proximity to Undercity, will we be seeing the Forsaken move? A. The Undercity will still be home to the Forsaken. In fact, since Azeroth is now flyable, we went back and rebuilt the entire surface area of Lordaeron. We should get some screenshots of this up. It looks amazing!
Q. They improved how water looks... seems only logical they'll let us near the shores more often because of that =) A. We are opening up as many places as we can to the water in Cataclysm. A few examples would be Blasted Lands, Stonetalon and Shimmering Flats. Heck, Shimmering Flats is a lake now!
Q. Will there be any type of water mount, like, submarines? A. We actually have two brand new subs that we made for Cataclysm. These submarines will be used as transports. We have one for gnomes and one for goblins. The subs are huge too! Both are about the size of the Gunships from Icecrown. Wink
Player vs. Player Q. There's no cap on Emblems, but there is on honor. Any plans to remove or raise the honor cap? A. To be honest, we're more likely to cap emblems. We like the gameplay where you're motivated to periodically check in with WoW. We don't like feeling like you have to log in every single day without fail (cough Frost emblems) and we don't like the grind your face off in order to maximize return (old BG Honor).
Q. Could you add a resilience enchant for professions like enchanting, inscription, etc.? Right now only Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing can get this PvP benefit. A. Yeah, we'd like to do more of this. Enchanting makes sense.
Q. What have you learned from the inclusion of Wintergrasp in Wrath of the Lich King? A. We learned a lot from Wintergrasp. I think our biggest takeaway is that we do not want to create such a technical strain on the servers like that ever again. We are pretty happy with the way that the gameplay worked out overall and are looking to grow and improve upon it with Tol Barad in Cataclysm. Tol Barad is going to have similarities to Wintergrasp, but the gameplay will be very different. We are still working out the details, but one thing I can say is that we want to reduce the overall amount of vehicle combat and get players back into the action using their own actions bars in pvp combat.
Q. Getting to exalted status with the factions in the Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin battlegrounds can be really long and difficult to obtain, are there any plans to change this? A. For these factions specifically, we think it's a badge of honor for players who complete them. It's not like there's a huge benefit for them.
Miscellaneous Q. Where is my moose? Did you see that Ghostcrawler? A. That was so epic. I was sure the screenshot was shopped until we saw the actual video. I guess we're going to have to do a moose now...
Q. Will Ghostcrawler duel me for a large cash prize? A. You are not ready.
