Community Blog Topic Results: Favorite class and spec

Last week, we asked "What is your favorite class and spec?" We got many answers from altoholics who couldn't choose to enthusiastic odes. Here's what everyone had to say, listed in order of popularity.

Hunter

AlternativeChat over at ALT:ernative says

If it's Hunter shaped, I'm going to play it.

She favors the Beast Mastery spec due to its utility in soloing and farming as well as its pet buffs granting access to all DPS and crowd control abilities.

AdmiringAzeroth agrees but plays Survival as primary spec. The commenters favored hunters overall, mostly the beast master spec. I suspect that part of the reason people are so passionate for this class is that the hunter community is so strong and close-knit. As AlternativeChat says

The hunter community is one of the strongest and most entertaining parts of Warcraft: the people who play my class with me are passionate, voracious and dedicated to their chosen path.

Mage

Fire mage was the second most popular class/spec. MusedMoose went as far as to putting his passion to song, sung to the old school Spiderman theme:

Fire mage, fire mage
Burn you back to the iron age
Does that hurt? You'll die soon
Combustion makes you go boom.
Look out! Here comes the fire mage...

Fire mage, fire mage
Friendly neighborhood fire mage
Cut me down, to the ground?
Cauterize means I'll stick around.
Flame on! Here comes the fire mage...

In a heated fight, come at me in a dash
With Inferno Blast, you're a pile of ash!

Fire mage, fire mage
Pyroblast you right off the page
Living Bomb, Flamestrike too,
Was a raid, now a bar-be-que
Look out! Wherever there's a bad guy
It's now a well-done stir-fry
Thanks to the fire mage!

Shaman

The Shaman was well represented, with enhancement being the favorite. Even though the class has had its ups and downs, as snarkygoldfish said, it's still a passionate favorite for many. Also, lightning is cool.

Druid

There was much love for druids, but the most affection was for a spec that doesn't exist anymore: the old feral bear/cat spec, as expressed by dreamweaver7x:

Paired with a Resto offspec (back when we were still Trees, and healed exclusively with HoTs) and three sets of gear in my bags, this was and still is my favorite way to play the game. Too bad this entire class/spec combination and playstyle is gone from the game.

I tend to agree with tlacoatl16's assessment of the Boomkin spec as well. Balance has become somewhat of a boring rotation as opposed to blasty fun it used to be. It definitely isn't as fun as the monk for me by a longshot these days, though it used to be my main.

Paladin

Paladins got much love, particularly the retribution specialization. I agree that ret is the most fun spec for pallies, making me feel uber while leveling. But the most passionate reason for loving the paladin came from get.sam.inbox for protection.

I feel that I can do anything. Before Mists, before active mitigation, I liked it well enough but I didn't mind main speccing Holy. Active mitigation turned a fun side line into my one true spec. I love tanking, I love soloing, I love living when I should die, I love the paladin lore, I love stepping forward to protect my friends. I love the tie in to my favourite movie (The Avengers) with 2 abilities. I love the utility of the class. I love the flavour of the class. I love how everything is useful.

Priest

Shadow and discipline specs got equal amount of love, with the holy spec being conspicuously absent. DanielWallin describes what's good about both specs:

My Shadowpriest have been my main since early vanilla and I've still not grown tired of him. It's something about melting faces that attracts my dark side i guess.

I mainly go disc in guild raids nowadays and I really find the damage mitigation aspect appealing. Just let the raid bathe in shiny Sprit Shell bubbles before incoming heavy raid damage. Love it. But I still prefer those fights when we drop a healer and I can go back to that face melting business.

Warlock

Love for the warlock was spread across all three specs. But etherraichu expresses what he likes about affliction.

But an affliction warlock drops all pretenses. He *could* use fire. He *could* summon demons. Instead, the affliction warlock intentionally delays the effects of their powers, simply to cause as much pain as they can to their enemy.

We are without a doubt, evil. Evil without question, without remorse. And despite all of that...

...You need us, and we know it. <3

Death Knight

DK specs were equally enjoyed as well. Ravyncat at Ravyn's Reliquary wrote a passionate piece about her love for the death knight.

They are fun to play and have interesting Lore. I like that they have two class specific mounts as well. Plus they come with their own badass instant transmog gear so you never have to look sloppy while leveling.

I could also say they make good tanks and soloers – and they do! – but mostly I love running around and bashing the crap out of stuff until it dies. Death Knights do this very well.

Monk

All three specs for the monk were represented amongst the favorites as well. Niwnamahs enthused about the brewmaster.

I LOVE my Brewmaster. So much. And not just because I can throw giant kegs of beer to generate massive amounts of threat, and then breath fire on multiple enemies at once.. The stagger and shuffle mechanics are very unique to tanking, and make my toon feel EXTREMELY powerful, even as a leather-wearer.

Rogue

Rogues received some affection across the specs, but Quandary over at A Gamer at Heart only liked what the subtlety rogue was like in Cataclysm.

If you got your rotation and finishers right, you'd be nothing special. The niche lay in using Shadowdance, Vanish and Preparation to maximise the expose weakness debuff at the right times (eg not before SnD was about to fall off) whilst executing everything else flawlessly. If done really well the damage meters would make you stand out but it was very difficult to do perfectly. It was that level of difficulty that I really liked.

Warrior

By far the least represented class was the warrior with the arms spec getting the most attention. AshCurtis has an explanation as to why the warrior is so low on the favorites list.

... if I am being honest warrior is feeling tired now, as a class. It's lack of utility and ability to look after itself infuriates me.

Refuse to choose!

Altoholism was rampant in the comments. JeffLaBowski at Sportsbard expressed it well.

Well, I have lots of favorite specs but for an altoholic, choosing a class is like going to a buffet and eating a salad. It can't be done!

That used to be how I felt before the monk and in fact I still do spread my time over several characters, but it's mostly spent these days over several monks. I guess it's still possible to be an altoholic and to love a single class -- you just end up with many alts from the same class.

It was entertaining to read all of the passionate descriptions of why everyone loves their chosen role. Tune in soon for the next Community Blog Topic. Tags: classes, community-blog-topic, community-blog-topic-results, favorites, featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, specifications, specs, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

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Community Blog Topic: What is your favorite class and spec?

For most of my WoW career, my main character and first love was a druid. I particularly liked the balance spec even when it wasn't fashionable to do so. I still like my druid, but she is not even close to my favorite character. I've leveled paladins and mages, priests and shamans. I've toyed with hunters and warlocks. But the class that I love the best now is most definitely the monk.

I haven't felt this way towards a class in a game since my bard in Everquest. Well, that's true for fantasy characters. I also adore my operative in Star Wars: The Old Republic. But for World of Warcraft, my true love is the monk. I played with the brewmaster a bit, but while I like the spec, I'm not overly fond of tanking, so it's not quite for me. It's easier to do solo questing and dailies on my windwalker so that is the spec I play the most, but my favorite is the mistweaver. I enjoy the different healing mechanics of the monk and I feel I do a good job with them.

I love everything about the monk: the fun glyphs, the animations, and of course the skills. I also love how easy she is to play. I struggle a bit on mediocre gear doing the Tiller dailies on my other characters, but my monk with the same gear breezes right through them. It's hard playing my other characters, even though I have two other 90s and a mage in her 80s.

The monk is for me.

What is your favorite class/spec and why? Has it changed over your time playing WoW? Do you actually play your favorite class or are you playing another for the good of your guild or grouping with friends? Blog about your answer and post a link in the comments. Or, if you don't have a WoW-related blog, respond below. We'll highlight the responses next week. Tags: community-blog-topic, featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

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Around Azeroth: Heads of the class

Look, Officer, I really don't see what the big deal is. Noise complaint, you say? Well, I inherited this place from my undead grandmother, and for my first crop, I planted the seeds that were in the storage shed. The package said turnips on it. How was I supposed to know it would come up humans? It should have had picture of humans on it. Now grab a shovel and help me pound them down. We'll soon stop those noise complaints. (Thanks to submitter Nounours of GrandGalacticInquisitor on Llane [US-A] for the screenshot!)
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm. Tags: around azeroth, around-azeroth, AroundAzeroth, featured, screen-shots, screenshots, world-of-warcraft-pictures, world-of-warcraft-screenshots, wow-screen-shots, wow-screenshot, wow-screenshots, wow-ss

Filed under: Around Azeroth

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Class help

Hey, So I main a mage, and use to main a hunter. I have a priest at 90 but rarely use it.

Lately I have been able to do enough DPS on easy bosses (first boss in ToES and Garalong style fights where they are kinda pathwork) Lately I notice that if I have to move a lot to avoid mechanics (Tsulong, Horridon and such) that my dps drops by almost half or more and I start to get frantic and forget how to mage.

So 2 things, 1 is there any top end mages willing to help someone who has learning disabilities learn how to mage?

2. If I am struggling with range caster dps, do you think melee dps or tank dps would suit me better?  I am building a druid and could build a paladin (this is to have access to all 4 class styles, Range / melee dps, heals, tank)

If so, what are some "easily" manageable melee dps / tank classes ?  I am about to make the character now with my buddy.

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World of Warcraft: Class Changes Review Blogs

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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tank/heals starting a ranged dps class

I have always been used to playing mele classes and taking heavy damage.  I have a mage but solo can be a bit dicey sometimes because squishies just can't take a hit.

Honestly I love the abilites of my warlock and having a pet to tank and deal with stuff is very nice.  A hunter would work well too with a good tanking pet for solo.  They will also be some of the faster ones to level as you will be able to take on things that are much harder hitting with less downtime than a mage will likely be.

All the DPS classes are viable once you get to max level its just a question of which one you want to level up.

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raiding and pvp class:)

xulingaming, on 25 March 2013 - 11:23 PM, said:

i really apologize my english verbal i hope u can andurstand

Hehe ya kind of tough.

From what I can tell you're asking if rogues and mages do well in PvE raiding? I've never heard a mage complain about being a mage so I'd assume that they are pretty fun. They are also the top class in simulations.  If you went the mage route I have a feeling you'd be pretty happy. You might have to work harder as a rogue to do as well as mage, but that could be that "reward" you're looking for. Its tough to compare the two since they are completely different playstyles being melee vs. ranged.

You mentioned you have a 90 druid? You might check out playing feral druid as well. They do pretty well in PvE for melee classes. About the same as rogues.

In short: Mages are very good for PvE raiding. Rogues are fine, but not as good. Both would be rewarding.

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World of Warcraft: Class Changes Review Blogs

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Class help

Hey, So I main a mage, and use to main a hunter. I have a priest at 90 but rarely use it.

Lately I have been able to do enough DPS on easy bosses (first boss in ToES and Garalong style fights where they are kinda pathwork) Lately I notice that if I have to move a lot to avoid mechanics (Tsulong, Horridon and such) that my dps drops by almost half or more and I start to get frantic and forget how to mage.

So 2 things, 1 is there any top end mages willing to help someone who has learning disabilities learn how to mage?

2. If I am struggling with range caster dps, do you think melee dps or tank dps would suit me better?  I am building a druid and could build a paladin (this is to have access to all 4 class styles, Range / melee dps, heals, tank)

If so, what are some "easily" manageable melee dps / tank classes ?  I am about to make the character now with my buddy.

View the original article here

Patch 5.2 Class Reviews – Part 4

This is the last part of our series discussing the class changes that are being implemented in patch 5.2. Stay up to date on all the incoming class changes by reviewing the 5.2 patch notes and reading the other parts of the series (also, you can skip straight to class changes if you’ve already read this introduction):

Part 1 – Death Knight, Druid, and Hunter

Part 2 - Mage, Paladin, and Priest

Part 3 - Rogue, Shaman, and Warlock

We don’t alter classes lightly, and every change comes only after a great deal of player feedback, developer thought and careful analysis. We also know that while class changes can help keep things fresh, they can also mean that there’s a need to re-learn things about your character that you thought you already knew. We want to make this process clearer, more understandable, and easier to adapt to as we move into patch 5.2, so I’ll be working with World of Warcraft Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street to write a short blog series that will provide an overview of the important changes coming to each class.

Many of the 5.2 patch notes fall into two main categories: balance tuning and talent adjustments. Unless we called out a specific reason otherwise, you can assume that the various +10% or -10% adjustments you’ll see in the patch notes were made to keep all of the specs where we want them in 5.2. In some cases these are changes to reflect the different environment in 5.2 with new gear and set bonuses. In other cases, we are correcting issues we found in patch 5.1.

In terms of talent adjustments, while we’re still happy overall with the Mists of Pandaria talent overhaul, we do recognize that there were some talents that weren’t tuned as well as they could be or just weren’t attractive. That’s not to say that all talents should be all things to all players all the time; some talents are situationally quite attractive, and we’re happy with those. On the other hand, others just never see much use and we would rather provide players real options for each talent tier.

Note: The purpose of these blogs is mostly to provide an overview of the design intentions behind our 5.2 changes, rather than to detail the thought process behind every individual note. You can refer to the patch notes for specific changes and numbers.

There were a few main goals to accomplish with Warriors:

As with all the classes, we wanted to make the less popular talents more attractive.Despite a few nerfs, we felt that Arms was still too dominant in PvP and needed additional changes.Because we changed Taste for Blood for Arms, this meant we also had to tweak that spec’s PvE rotation a little. We took the opportunity to improve the values of Haste and Mastery for Arms.We wanted to remove Deadly Calm, because it was just adding to action bar bloat without adding much to gameplay.

Warrior talent diversity wasn’t too bad overall. It’s true that some talents have proven to be quite situational, but we still see them being used in those situations. We made some small buffs to Bladestorm, including preventing it from being countered by relatively short-cooldown disarms. We also buffed Storm Bolt outright and made Enraged Regeneration a little cheaper. Second Wind has garnered a lot of attention from the community, and it gets a lot of the blame for Warriors being so hard to kill in PvP. We’re still not entirely sure if Second Wind or Defensive Stance was more of the culprit there (more on this below). We tried some initial nerfs to Second Wind, but we were ultimately happier keeping the talent intact. It’s very popular in both PvE and PvP and if it continues to overshadow the other two talents, we’ll figure out what the best move is then.

Coming out of Cataclysm, we felt like we had reduced Warrior mobility too much in the name of balance, and in the process had removed what was always an iconic feature of the Warrior class. While we felt it necessary to adjust Warrior burst, survivability and control, we didn’t want to totally crush their mobility. To address burst, we re-designed Taste for Blood. Initially, we didn’t think that Taste for Blood would have significant PvP implications because it was so hard and unpredictable to build up stacks. Nevertheless, when it did happen, it felt like it couldn’t be countered. It was also so random that it wasn't the most compelling mechanic in the Arms PvE arsenal, so it didn’t feel like it was worth preserving. Instead, we redesigned Taste for Blood to no longer buff Heroic Strike. That alone was a useful burst damage adjustment, since Heroic Strike is off the global cooldown which allowed it to be stacked with other attacks, such as Overpower. We also removed Glyph of Death from Above damage buff to Heroic Leap, because it felt gratuitous; it’s still a good Glyph.

The second main PvP adjustment was to Warrior stun talents: Shockwave and Warbringer. The Warbringer stun now shares diminishing returns with non-proc stuns, but we attempted to compensate by giving it a snare as well. Meanwhile, Shockwave has a longer base cooldown, but will have a shorter cooldown if it hits multiple targets. We feel this rewards tactical and positional gameplay while still preserving an on-demand stun if it’s needed.

The third PvP nerf was to make it less attractive to sit in Defensive Stance all the time in PvP. Defensive Stance should be there when you’re getting trained, but its overly generous 25% damage reduction coupled with Arms not requiring Rage for so many attacks made Battle Stance un-competitive. We reduced the damage reduction for non-tanks and now ask Arms to use more Rage in their rotation to give Battle Stance a clearer role.

The change to Taste for Blood does have some PvE ramifications, but it also helps make the rotation less random overall. (Warriors who love unpredictable procs can try out Fury, which is intended to be more random.) We changed Sudden Death to activate from Mastery procs as well as auto attacks, and we improved the value of Haste for all warriors (though admittedly, this does not contribute to Protection’s active mitigation).

Finally, we concluded that Deadly Calm wasn’t providing compelling gameplay. Deadly Calm was an interesting button in Cataclysm, particularly when paired with set bonuses, but it didn’t mesh well with more active Rage management in Mists of Pandaria. Warriors already have a lot of damage cooldowns, and Deadly Calm was often macroed—even by skilled Warriors. Speaking of cooldowns, we also reduced both the effect and cooldown of Recklessness to give Warriors more frequent access to a damage cooldown while further reducing PvP burst.

It was time for Monks to get their first post-expansion revision. These were the goals:

As with all the classes, we made adjustments to make under-used talents more compelling.Correct PvP under-tuning, particularly with Windwalkers.Bring Windwalkers up to par in both PvE and PvP.Offer Mistweavers a unique healer play style.

We saved the Monk changes for last. While a lot will be different for Monks in 5.2, this kind of evolution is to be expected after an entirely new class is introduced and put through its paces in a live environment. Still, while there are a lot of tweaks, there’s not much in the way of major overhauls and you won’t have to re-learn how to play your Monk.

We altered the way the whole level 30 set of talents works. Rather than being limited by resources, they’ll now fit into rotations on a cooldown basis. Previously, Chi Wave, Zen Sphere, and Chi Burst were too situational or simply used as fillers when no other abilities were available. Now that they are free but limited by cooldown, Monks can use them frequently as part of their core rotations without having to worry about other attacks dropping from the rotation.

We felt like Windwalkers didn’t have a signature ability to differentiate them from the other Monk specs, nor did they have a good tool to use when a cleave would be optimal, so we gave them Storm, Earth, and Fire (based on the Pandaren ability from Warcraft III).  We also changed the Windwalker Mastery from Combo Breaker to Bottled Fury, which increases the damage bonus provided by Tigereye Brew. This accomplishes the dual purpose of freeing up some global cooldowns (allowing Windwalkers to be more resource limited, and less GCD limited) and to provide some on-demand burst. The old Mastery, Combo Breaker, has become a passive ability granted early on in the leveling process. While we were concerned with burst damage at the beginning of the last season, we don’t want Windwalkers to have completely anemic burst either.

We didn’t want to recreate the balance problem we had when we introduced Death Knights during Wrath of the Lich King, but we ended up being too conservative. The result is that Monks haven’t been as well represented in PvP as we’d like. While we toned down the control of several other classes, we felt like we needed to give Monks some substantial buffs to make them more viable in PvP. To increase survivability, we added a new level 30 ability to Brewmasters and Windwalkers: Nimble Brew. Nimble Brew clears roots, stuns, and fear effects, reduces the duration of future such effects for a few seconds, and can be activated while stunned. We also created the powerful new Ring of Peace talent, and baked the old Deadly Reach talent it replaces directly into Paralysis.

Early on, we said that Mistweavers would have the option to be melee healers, dealing damage and healing their allies at the same time. We haven’t quite delivered on that, but in patch 5.2 we’re making an effort to allow “fist-weaving” to be a more viable play style. The actual healing provided by Fistweaving was okay, but Fistweaving damage was so low that it wasn’t worth it for Mistweavers to move to melee to try it out. With the 5.2 buffs, it should be. These changes prompted a few others to make sure that casting heals like a traditional healer and causing melee damage to heal were separate rotations, without allowing Monks to cherry pick the best moves from each, which caused balance problems in testing. The goal is for Fistweaving to be similar to Atonement healing for Discipline Priests. The Monk will sacrifice some DPS and healing compared to a dedicated healer or damage dealer, but it will be possible to contribute a good amount of each, which is sometimes quite valuable.

Brewmasters are seeing the fewest changes, and they’ve proven to be very capable tanks, though they do require a fair amount of skill to play. The level 30 talent changes will help spice up their rotation.

View the original article here

Patch 5.2 Class Reviews – Part 3

This is part 3 of the ongoing series discussing the class changes that are being implemented in patch 5.2. Stay up to date on all the incoming class changes by reviewing the 5.2 patch notes and reading the other parts of the series (also, you can skip straight to class changes if you’ve already read this introduction):

Part 1 – Death Knight, Druid, and Hunter

Part 2 - Mage, Paladin, and Priest

We don’t alter classes lightly, and every change comes only after a great deal of player feedback, developer thought and careful analysis. We also know that while class changes can help keep things fresh, they can also mean that there’s a need to re-learn things about your character that you thought you already knew. We want to make this process clearer, more understandable, and easier to adapt to as we move into patch 5.2, so I’ll be working with World of Warcraft Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street to write a short blog series that will provide an overview of the important changes coming to each class.

Many of the 5.2 patch notes fall into two main categories: balance tuning and talent adjustments. Unless we called out a specific reason otherwise, you can assume that the various +10% or -10% adjustments you’ll see in the patch notes were made to keep all of the specs where we want them in 5.2. In some cases these are changes to reflect the different environment in 5.2 with new gear and set bonuses. In other cases, we are correcting issues we found in patch 5.1.

In terms of talent adjustments, while we’re still happy overall with the Mists of Pandaria talent overhaul, we do recognize that there were some talents that weren’t tuned as well as they could be or just weren’t attractive. That’s not to say that all talents should be all things to all players all the time; some talents are situationally quite attractive, and we’re happy with those. On the other hand, others just never see much use and we would rather provide players real options for each talent tier.

Note: The purpose of these blogs is mostly to provide an overview of the design intentions behind our 5.2 changes, rather than to detail the thought process behind every individual note. You can refer to the patch notes for specific changes and numbers.

We had a lot of work to do on the Rogue talent tree, probably the most of any class.

Rogues, historically a PvP mainstay, felt underpowered and weren’t well-represented in high-end PvP. We wanted to change that.In PvE, we wanted to tone down the cleave capabilities of Combat so it didn’t feel like a mandatory spec for some fights.We wanted to give Rogues a little more PvE utility instead of feeling quite so selfish.

While we tweaked several talents to make them more attractive, there were large-scale changes to two tiers. In an attempt to balance a perennial problem we’d had balancing Rogues in PvP, we initially asked them to choose between Preparation and Shadowstep. Forcing Rogues to choose between the two worked . . . so well that Rogues felt ineffective in PvP. While we tried to make it a trade-off between the defensive capabilities of Prep and the movement capabilities of Burst of Speed or Shadowstep, as with the Mage tree, we eventually came to the conclusion that only movement could compete with movement. We gave Prep to all Rogues, buffed Burst of Speed, and created a new talent, Cloak and Dagger to be part of the movement tier. Cloak and Dagger causes a Rogue to teleport to their target whenever they use an opener. Combined with dropping out of combat to re-stealth, Shadow Dance, and the Subterfuge talent, we expect that it can be used to accomplish some pretty interesting things.

Similarly, while Anticipation proved very popular in the level 90 tier, Versatility did not, and in fact, Anticipation felt like it provided the benefits of Versatility, only better. We retired Versatility and added a new talent, Marked for Death, which will mark a target and instantly generate 5 combo points on that target. When the target dies, the cooldown will reset.

In addition to giving Rogues Preparation baseline, we also wanted to increase Rogue burst in PvP. That may sound backwards given that we are often trying to reduce the burst of classes in PvP, but we think Rogues had the opposite problem, where their large component of passive damage from white attacks and poisons coupled with the low damage per hit of using a pair of small weapons meant that Rogues had significant issues closing the deal and taking an enemy down during a burst window. Our solution here was to allow Rogues to store up more energy in PvP through a new set bonus. This means a Rogue will have to work for their burst, but it will be there if they plan for it.

Blade Flurry has been an iconic spell for Combat for some time, and while we initially discussed just giving it to all Rogues, we thought Combat lost too much under that design. Ultimately, we like that Combat is good at cleaving. The problem was it was so good that it felt mandatory for many Rogues to switch to Combat for some fights. Ideally, a Rogue who prefers Assassination or Subtlety should be able to stick with that spec, knowing they might fall a little behind on cleave situations, but can make up for it in other situations. We changed the way that Blade Flurry works, so that it will strike more targets for less damage. Combat will still be the best choice for AoE fights, but not so much so that it will be at an overwhelming advantage. We’ll be increasing Combat single-target damage via an increase to Vitality to compensate. Overall, we hope that most players will feel comfortable sticking with the spec they are most comfortable playing without feeling compelled to swap between fights. Subtlety will see increased single-target damage via an increase to the effects of Sanguinary Vein.

PvE utility is very subjective. Some players equate it with a raid-wide damage reduction cooldown, while for others, the utility has to be something unique that nobody else can provide. We add that caveat just because we don’t think the community will ever agree on who brings “enough” or “the best” utility. The change we made for Rogues was simple: Smoke Bomb now provides damage reduction, so in a similar fashion to abilities like Rallying Cry, a Rogue can help survive against, oh say, just for example, the damage a huge freakin’ dinosaur can dish out.

We had a few goals with Shaman:

As with the other classes, we wanted to make unattractive talents more appealing. Shaman had a similar problem to Druids, where certain choices were perceived as good for e.g. Elemental but not Restoration.We wanted to buff Elemental dispel vulnerability and overall survivability in PvP.We wanted to give Enhancement a very slight boost for PvP.We also wanted to improve Elemental’s target switching and multi-target damage in PvE.We adjusted some Glyphs, some because they were too good, others because they felt mandatory.

We made several adjustments to talents to broaden their appeal. For example, Ancestral Swiftness now provides 10% melee haste in order for Enhancement Shaman to take it more seriously as an option, while staying at 5% spell haste since Restoration Shaman already liked the talent.

For PvP, we gave Shamanistic Rage to Elementals to provide a defensive cooldown they could use when focused. We also changed the interaction between Flame Shock and Lava Burst. Lava Burst still does more damage when Flame Shock is present, but it will now do more damage than it did previously, even when Flame Shock isn’t on the target. Therefore, if Flame Shock is dispelled, Elemental does less damage but doesn’t feel completely crippled.

This same change helped with Elemental’s target switching in PvE, since they didn’t have to wait for Flame Shock to come off cooldown every time they wanted to do something like burst down a new add. We also felt that Elemental never had a great chance to shine in 5.0 raiding. Their damage was on target for most fights, but other specs with whom they were tied would do great in some situations, such as multi-dot fights. We decided that “chains” are one of a Shaman’s core mechanics, so we wanted to make sure Chain Lightning delivered when the player was in a situation where they could use it. Chain Lightning damage no longer decreases when hitting subsequent targets, and actually increases when converted to Lava Beam.

We wanted to buff Enhancement for PvP in two ways. First, we increased the mana generation of Mental Quickness, since Enhancement suffered from mana problems when they didn’t have high uptime on the target, a common occurrence in PvP. We also lowered the cooldown on Spirit Walk to further increase their up time as well as giving them more frequent escape tools.

Finally, on the Glyph front, Purge is an extremely powerful tool in PvP, especially when Glyphed, so we added a 6 second cooldown on the ability if the Glyph is applied. It’s still powerful and useful, but less spammable. On the other hand, the Glyph of Flame Shock felt mandatory, so its effects have been made baseline.

Our main goals for Warlocks:

As with all classes, we wanted to tweak talents to make underused talents more appealing.Fix Blood Fear.Put the pet back in Warlock.Roll mandatory-feeling Glyphs into the relevant specs.

We feel Warlocks are, generally speaking, in a pretty good place right now. Obviously they received many changes in 5.0 and we’re still iterating on a few of those new mechanics to get them to feel quite right. Warlock talents weren’t in a bad place overall. We made a few tweaks such as Burning Rush also offering snare “resistance”, and Kil’jaeden’s Cunning no longer having an active / passive mechanic.

In PvP we saw that Blood Fear, intended to be used defensively, was increasingly seeing use as an offensive ability. We also felt that it was a bit too effective. To adjust it some, as well as return it to its more defensive roots, the old talent has been removed, and its new replacement, Blood Horror, applies a buff to the Warlock that will fear enemies that strike her in melee.

Warlocks are meant to be a pet class, but a lot of locks were choosing Grimoire of Sacrifice. We understand that players have a tendency toward the most powerful and efficient play style, and that managing a pet takes a little effort. Pets are a big part of what it means to be a Warlock though, so while we don’t mind offering GoSac so that there’s some play style diversity, we wanted to de-emphasize petless play. Now sacrificing your fel friend, while still an option, won’t be quite as much of a damage bump as it was in the past. In addition, too many locks felt like they had to use the imp in PvE, especially in smaller groups, in order to benefit from Blood Pact. We just added the Stamina bonus to Dark Intent to let the player choose whether an imp or another demon made more sense depending on their preference and the situation.

Both Glyph of Embers and Glyph of Soul Shards really felt like they should be baseline, and had become essential to their respective specs. We made the original Glyph effects baseline, and added new Glyph effects that should be helpful, without feeling like they’re absolutely required. We also changed the Glyph of Unstable Affliction so players didn’t feel like they had to choose between the silence and the damage backlash.

View the original article here

Patch 5.2 Class Reviews – Part 1

In addition to significant PvP changes, a new Raid, a new quest hub, and a mysterious island full of dinosaurs, numerous class changes are coming in patch 5.2: Throne of Thunder. Stay up to date on all the incoming class changes by reviewing the 5.2 patch notes and reading the other parts of the series (also, you can skip straight to class changes if you’ve already read this introduction):

Part 2 - Mage, Paladin, and Priest

Part 3 - Rogue, Shaman, and Warlock

Part 4 - Warrior and Monk

We don’t alter classes lightly, and every change comes only after a great deal of player feedback, developer thought, and careful analysis. We also know that while class changes can help keep things fresh, they can also mean that there’s a need to re-learn things about your character that you thought you already knew. We want to make this process clearer, more understandable, and easier to adapt to as we move into patch 5.2, so I’ll be working with World of Warcraft Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street to write a short blog series that will provide an overview of the important changes coming to each class.

Many of the 5.2 patch notes fall into two main categories: balance tuning and talent adjustments. Unless we called out a specific reason otherwise, you can assume that the various +10% or -10% adjustments you’ll see in the patch notes were made to keep all of the specs where we want them in 5.2. In some cases these are changes to reflect the different environment in 5.2 with new gear and set bonuses. In other cases, we are correcting issues we found in patch 5.1.

In terms of talent adjustments, while we’re still happy overall with the Mists of Pandaria talent overhaul, we do recognize that there were some talents that weren’t tuned as well as they could be or just weren’t attractive. That’s not to say that all talents should be all things to all players all the time; some talents are situationally quite attractive, and we’re happy with those. On the other hand, others just never see much use and we would rather provide players real options for each talent tier.

Note: The purpose of these blogs is mostly to provide an overview of the design intentions behind our 5.2 changes, rather than to detail the thought process behind every individual note. You can refer to the patch notes for specific changes and numbers.

We had three main goals:

Make some less attractive talents more compelling.Improve quality of life for Unholy Death Knights.Give a small PvP buff.

We didn’t feel like Death Knights needed many changes overall, and we try not to change classes for change’s sake, especially midway through an expansion, so you’ll see fewer changes here than for some other classes.

To address some issues with less attractive talents, you’ll see buffs to Death Siphon (more damage dealt) and Conversion (less Runic Power over time).

Unholy’s quality of life changes were mostly to solve the problem of “orphaned” runes. A Death Knight would, for example, Blood Boil twice and then Scourge Strike, leaving two Frost Runes, which weren’t sufficient to use Festering Strike. Now Icy Touch activates Reaping, which will allow those Frost Runes to convert to Death Runes. We also made Plague Strike apply Frost Fever to reduce the need to use Icy Touches. We also made Summon Gargoyle no longer cost Runic Power and changed the damage done to both Shadow and Nature to synergize better with Unholy’s Mastery, Dreadblade.

While we think Death Knights are in a good place in PvP overall, we did agree with the feedback that Strangulate has a very long cooldown for what it does, so we lowered its cooldown and also lowered Asphyxiate to match. Finally, it is worth pointing out that the tier 14 2-piece ended up being overbudget to the extent that we were concerned DKs would keep using it in the 5.2 raid. We nerfed the set bonus and buffed Death Knights to compensate. Blood is in a good place overall, but we did buff Blood Parasite dramatically, because it was just undertuned.

We wanted to:

Make some unattractive talents more compelling.Slightly reduce Feral’s effectiveness in PvP.Improve Restoration slightly in PvP and PvE.Give a bump to non-Restoration Druid healing in PvP.

We had a problem where some Druid talents were only attractive to certain specs. Changes such as the buff to Cenarion Ward and Force of Nature were to help with this problem, while other talents, such as Mass Entanglement were just undertuned for all specs.

We addressed Feral in PvP by adding a cooldown to Cyclone. Now Feral won’t gain such frequent use of free Cyclones through Predatory Swiftness, but can still benefit from the proc for heals. We initially tried a few different mechanics to prevent Cat Form from stacking speed benefits to a ridiculous level, but that left Druids feeling like they were being penalized for taking the Feline Swiftness talent (which many of them didn’t take, even in PvP). We ended up with Feline Swiftness not stacking with the PvP set bonus. We’re keeping a close eye on Feral’s damage output in PvP, but we didn’t make any changes for 5.2.

Restoration’s buffs include an across-the-board buff to healing, as well as mana savings on Rejuvenation. We think that some of Restoration’s performance issues were actually caused by Discipline Priests being so dominant (since absorb shields are better at “sniping” heals than even Heal over Time effects), but we still wanted to make sure that Druids were competitive healers, so we increased their healing by 10% through the Naturalist Passive. Rejuvenation is an iconic Restoration spell. While we don’t want druids to do nothing but spam Rejuv, we don’t feel like it was getting enough use overall. We redesigned Wild Mushroom to benefit from the overhealing that can occur with Heal over Time spells. Now, the new mushrooms allow a Druid to “bank” overhealing, and then unleash it when the Mushrooms bloom.

Balance and Feral should also see a boost to PvP healing effectiveness because we’re allowing 25% of PvP Power’s benefit to increase their healing output (versus 50% for Restoration druids).

Hunters overall are in a good place in PvE and PvP. We wanted to:

Make unattractive talents more compelling. (Notice a theme?)Improve Marksmanship’s viability.

Like Death Knights, Hunters were also in a good place overall and we didn’t think they needed many changes. These notes are relatively short as a result.

In terms of talents, we felt like Silencing Shot was too powerful so we increased its cooldown slightly, while removing the Focus costs of the competing talents: Binding Shot and Wyvern Sting. We also recognized the community’s frustrations with using Powershot so we rebuilt it so it would reliably hit even moving targets.

We reduced the cast time of Aimed Shot partially as a quality of life change for Marksmanship, and partially to buff the spec’s damage output. We also increased Chimera Shot’s self-healing to give Marksmanship Hunters a small distinct niche compared to Survival and Beast Mastery.

Nearly every Hunter felt like they had to take the Glyph of Marked for Death, so we made the glyph’s effects baseline, removed the glyph, and replaced it with the new Glyph of Liberation that provides a moderate heal when Disengage is used.

View the original article here

Patch 5.2 Class Reviews – Part 2

This is part two of our series discussing the class changes we’re implementing in patch 5.2. Stay up to date on all the incoming class changes by reviewing the 5.2 patch notes and reading the other parts of the series (Also, you can skip straight to class changes if you’ve already read this introduction):

Part 1 – Death Knight, Druid, and Hunter

We don’t alter classes lightly, and every change comes only after a great deal of player feedback, developer thought, and careful analysis. We also know that while class changes can help keep things fresh, they can also mean that there’s a need to re-learn things about your character that you thought you already knew. We want to make this process clearer, more understandable, and easier to adapt to as we move into patch 5.2, so I’ll be working with World of Warcraft Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street to write a short blog series that will provide an overview of the important changes coming to each class.

Many of the 5.2 patch notes fall into two main categories: balance tuning and talent adjustments. Unless we called out a specific reason otherwise, you can assume that the various +10% or -10% adjustments you’ll see in the patch notes were made to keep all of the specs where we want them in 5.2. In some cases these are changes to reflect the different environment in 5.2 with new gear and set bonuses. In other cases, we are correcting issues we found in patch 5.1.

In terms of talent adjustments, while we’re still happy overall with the Mists of Pandaria talent overhaul, we do recognize that there were some talents that weren’t tuned as well as they could be or just weren’t attractive. That’s not to say that all talents should be all things to all players all the time; some talents are situationally quite attractive, and we’re happy with those. On the other hand, others just never see much use and we would rather provide players real options for each talent tier.

Note: The purpose of these blogs is mostly to provide an overview of the design intentions behind our 5.2 changes, rather than to detail the thought process behind every individual note. You can refer to the patch notes for specific changes and numbers.

We set out to accomplish a few goals with Mages:

Despite various adjustments along the way, Frost Mages are still too powerful in PvP and not quite competitive in PvE.Our changes to Arcane in patch 5.1 overshot the mark and also needed some changes.While we wanted to make some less attractive talents more attractive, we also weren’t satisfied with the Mage talent tree.

There are a few changes to Frost in PvP. First, the PvP set bonus only lowers the cooldown of Counterspell when it is successfully used as an interrupt, not as a silence. As we’ve said before, we think silences are too dominant in PvP, but we don’t think patch 5.2 is the right time to remove them all because we can’t also remove all of the instant heals in PvP. We like the Counterspell change because it rewards skilled play. We also made a change to the way Ring of Frost works with Presence of Mind. Rather than making the Ring of Frost instantly apply, the PoM only makes the cast time instant—the Ring still needs to arm for two seconds before freezing the unfortunates standing on it. Most significantly, we redesigned the Glyph of Fireblast to no longer allow it to detonate Frost Bomb on demand; instead it will require some timing on the part of the player. We’re boosting Frost’s PvE performance via Frostbolt, which requires a spell cast (which means the Mage must stand still and risks Frost lock), and also has a stacking debuff to really maximize damage.

We had two problems we wanted to solve with Arcane. The first was that Scorch was never intended to be rotational for Arcane to avoid having to dump stacks of Arcane Charges. Arcane is intended to build up charges but then dump them when the mana drain gets too high, but Scorch allowed Arcane Mages to avoid that cycle, which inflated their damage as a consequence. However, we also wanted to tweak a previous change where we increased Arcane Charges up to a max stack of 6. Dumping a stack of 6 is painful because it takes a long time to build it back up again, so in 5.2 we are lowering the stack size to 4.

Scorch was a big design problem for us for other reasons. It feels really good to have something to cast while moving, even if it’s a DPS loss overall. Many mages were taking Scorch for reasons beyond the Arcane Charge stacking issue above. At the same time, the talent tree also suffered a problem where Blazing Speed couldn’t compete with Temporal Shield or Ice Barrier. We had hoped to position Blazing Speed as a defensive ability, but really it’s a mobility talent, and we think it makes more sense alongside Presence of Mind and Ice Floes, which also offer mobility in one way or another. Instead of replacing Blazing Speed with Scorch, we just gave Scorch to Fire mages, which also helps differentiate the specs a bit more. Instead, now Mages have a new talent, Flameglow, which is a passive defensive option that absorbs some damage from each hit, and fits in thematically alongside Temporal Shield and Ice Barrier.

Paladins are pretty solid overall. Still, we had a few issues to address:

We wanted to make less attractive talents more attractive.Holy was too dominant in PvP.Retribution wasn’t performing as well in PvP.

We focused a lot on addressing the performance of Holy Paladins in PvP for Mists of Pandaria, and it worked . . . a little too well. They have some offensive utility now and a variety of strong heals. To bring them back into line, we’re making two changes: Blinding Light will now have a cast time, but only for Holy. We also changed a PvP gear bonus to affect Flash of Light instead of Word of Glory. Shifting more PvP healing to a cast-time spell opens up the risk of interrupts and also requires the Paladin to stand still on occasion. Addressing representation through balance adjustments is always tricky – healers are always in demand for 3v3 Arena teams, so it’s unlikely that we’ll see Retribution Paladins become as common as Holy Paladins. However, we did want to give Retribution a little more oomph. The main change here is to lower the cooldown on Avenging Wrath to two minutes for Retribution only. Since this is an ability raiding Paladins have today through a set bonus, we just made it a core change. We also made Retribution’s Flash of Light stronger and allow them to benefit more from PvP Power’s conversion to healing. It makes sense that even DPS Paladins have good healing potential, so long as Retribution continues to primarily fill the role of a damage-dealer and can’t fully step into the role of a dedicated healer in PvP. Smaller Retribution buffs include letting them benefit from Glyph of Blessed Life and Templar’s Verdict to a greater extent, and adding a snare to Hammer of Light.

Protection received few changes; we like how they are doing overall. One small change was to make Grand Crusader benefit from dodges and parries as well, so that Paladins would benefit more from stats that were going to appear on their tanking gear anyway.

Priests received several changes to address a few problems:

We wanted to make less attractive talents more attractive.Discipline performed too well in PvE, but under-performed in PvP.Shadow was too good in PvP, but solid in PvE, so we didn’t want the nerfs to spill over much.

We nerfed Phantasm and Psyfiend, both talents that all Shadow Priests took (and to be fair, many other priests as well) and reduced their healing (though remember we also offset that nerf somewhat with the change to PvP Power to benefit their healing somewhat). We didn’t want to hurt Mass Dispel or other utility that Shadow provides, especially in PvE. We also reduced Shadow burst a little through the Glyph of Mind Spike.

Discipline required more work. In raiding particularly, Discipline priests were using an effective but boring “rotation” of casting almost nothing but Prayer of Healing (with a guaranteed Divine Aegis) while using Spirit Shell on cooldown. Doing so allowed them to prevent more damage than anyone else was capable of healing. Our first change was to make Spirit Shell no longer benefit from mastery. When Spirit Shell absorbs for 50% more than it would have healed for, it just becomes a button to use on cooldown, while we’d rather it was used as a situational ability that’s triggered when absorbs make the most sense. We also wanted to see Discipline using spells other than Prayer of Healing.

As with Restoration Druids, we don’t want Disc to be casting nothing but Power Word: Shield, but we do want Power Word: Shield to be a major button in their arsenal, which wasn’t the case in 5.1. To accomplish this, we reduced the cost of Power Word: Shield and now allow it to crit, but we also redesigned Divine Aegis so that Prayer of Heal spamming would no longer be the right answer for every situation. Divine Aegis now requires a critical on Prayer of Healing to activate, but when it procs it applies a bubble instead of doubling the heal (essentially Discipline’s crits are 100% heal and 100% bubble instead of a 200% heal). We also changed their mastery to affect both heals and absorption so that their mastery wasn’t only beneficial after a crit. In addition, we buffed Penance, which is an iconic spell for Discipline and a fun one to use. To address Discipline’s PvP issues, in addition to these changes (of which the Power Word: Shield and Penance buffs will have the greatest effect), we redesigned their set bonus to make Flash Heal cheaper, and made a few spells un-dispellable. That’s normally a last resort for us, but we felt it was appropriate in this case.

Holy Priests received few modifications, though they will benefit from some of the talent changes. We think Holy is in a good place in PvE relative to other healers but was just so overshadowed by Discipline that they weren’t as common. That may change as the specs fill different niches.

View the original article here

New spec for each class?

Hello everyone, I would like to give a quick thank you to Icy Veins as the website is wonderful and very helpful.

In each expansion Blizzard likes to introduce a new race and sometimes a new class. While the new additions are fun and change up the game a little, I was wondering what if in the next expansion, each class got a completely new spec? As much fun as playing a totally new class can be i can't help but wonder at just how much fun it would be to play my favorite classes in a completely new way. It would be a new direction for blizzard to head in but i think something like this could make a lot of players happier and possibly draw more in.

I'm curious as to what others think about this idea and if you think its a good idea i would like to know what new spec would u want for your favorite classes.

Some possible specs I would like to see one day:

Mage- A kind of Dark Energy spec where you manipulate the physics of the battlefield, possible aoe could be creating a black hole in an area that hurts creatures and slows them more the closer they are to the center.

Paladin- A sort of holy rdps caster spec. Smite your enemies from afar.

Hunter- Maybe a melee spec, fighting side by side with your pet would be pretty cool.

Priest- An anti shadow rdps spec, dpsing with the power of holy instead of shadow.

Warrior- A 2h tank spec would be kinda cool, sorta like a blood dk

Rogue- Maybe a rdps spec, make throwing weapons their ideal choice

While the possibilities are endless, its not easy and takes a lot of creativity to come up with 11 specs (basically the same as 4 new classes). What do you guys think? What have you always wished you favorite class could do?

(Just to clarify I have not been able to find any information about Blizzard considering this or any similar idea, pretty much me just day dreaming with too much time on my hands, lol)

View the original article here

Class / Game Changes

Hello, everyone!

Today, I'd like to post about a few changes I feel need made in-game, but couldn't pick where to post... So off-topic seemed fitting. Obviously, I'm only one person, so my opinion isn't the end-all be-all. Everyone is encouraged to chime in! Now, let's begin.

I think I'll start with Holy Paladins. My main being as such, I've tinkered with his healing quite a lot, and I must say... Holy Radiance is worthless! The mana cost to healing output is atrocious. It only heals for (roughly) 30K, and then splashes 15K to six targets within 10 yards, granting one HP and the Daybreak proc. But, right there is the problem. The range of the splash! If it were 30-40 yards, like that of other AoE heals, suddenly it's absolutely a viable heal. No buff to throughput necessary. Thoughts?

Next is something incredibly obvious. The secondary (green) stats on our gear can be (and should be) reforged to more desirable ones. The thing about that is, Blizzard is obviously putting less desirable stats on our gear, in order to force this mechanic into use. No more win and wear. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but I think we should be able to reforge 100% of the stat, instead of 50%. Charge me more gold to do so, I wouldn't mind, but this change would really give us more control of our play-styles, therefore making many happy. It would also allow for more flexibility and experimentation. Am I right? *braces for impact*

Although there are plenty of things worth a look at, I'll end this post talking about Druids. Blizzard, I have one question... Why on Earth did you take tree form away?! Yeah, we can buy or make the glyph, but why not leave the boost to healing? This also makes the incarnation Tree of Life feel pointless. You're not a tree already, so why turn into one? I even have a way to fix things, if they're honestly happy with Resto Druid performance as of now.

1) Make the Tree of Life have a 10% increase (-5) to healing, no other changes. Then make the regular tree form have a 5% increase to healing. That's it. Suddenly the underwhelming Resto performance get's a minor boost, and the incarnation has a logical outcome. Now, the answer to the people who want to look normal? Make a minor glyph that allows you to be seen as your standard form, or maybe even astral, like the boomkin minor glyph?

BAM! There you have a few of the things that have been eating at me for a while. Oh! One more, one more! Druid travel form should scale with your (ground) riding skill. That one's a duh!

Okay go! Please offer your opinions. Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Take care!

- Zokura / Xiongmushi

View the original article here

Ghostcrawler discusses PTR class and set bonus issues

Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street posted today on the US forums, pre-empting questions about class balance and tier 15 set bonuses. Ghostcrawler describes the purpose of the thread as follows: GhostcrawlerWhenever a PTR build goes up, we get a flurry of simple questions that we want to address, but that don't feel patch note worthy. We are going to be posting the answers to some of these in this thread.
We're going to leave the thread unlocked. Feel free to leave feedback here, but be aware that this is just a running list of explanations and don't expect a lot of back and forth discussion.Likewise, you don't need to ask your question here. We'll try and cover anything we see in our forums, other forums, Twitter, etc.The focus of this thread is on class mechanics and set bonuses. We aren't going to cover e.g. achievements, raid encounters, pet battles, account issues, or GC's favorite cover bands. Likewise, these are simple answers, not "What is your vision for my class?"
Ghostcrawler then goes into some of the finer points about Tier 15 set bonuses.

Post highlights are as follows: The Mage 2T15 bonus does favor taking Invocation, as people quickly pointed out, and we're considering revising it.We're still iterating on this design for Wild Mushrooms. Currently, they each absorb 25% overheal, up to a max of 33% of the Druid's max health (total of 75% / 100% with 3 Mushrooms out). This max size isn't working in build 16446, but we hope to hotfix that soon. WoW Insider's team is sad that the giant mushrooms aren't here to stay!We are still iterating on Blade Flurry. We feel like the implementation of Blade Flurry on live forces rogues to go Combat on any cleave fights, while leaving Combat too far behind on any single target fights. It's fine if the rogue specs have niches, but the niches shouldn't be so rigid that you don't feel like you have any choice in spec.Shadow Priests have raised concerns about both of their T15 bonuses being tied to Shadowy Apparitions. Know that we have improved Shadowy Apparitions. Previously, there was a cap of 4 out at once. In build 16446, that's raised to 5 if you have 2T15. However in the next build, we just raised the cap to 10, which you should basically never hit. And more importantly, we significantly improved their AI. Please try them out. If they give you problems, please be as specific as possible about those situations.See the full post below! It seems like these simple notes may allay a lot of PTR testing players' concerns, and it's really useful to see the inside information on what Blizzard's development team are working on, and to have requests for specific feedback on class-by-blass abilities and set bonuses. GhostcrawlerDruid
• We're still iterating on this design for Wild Mushrooms. Currently, they each absorb 25% overheal, up to a max of 33% of the Druid's max health (total of 75% / 100% with 3 Mushrooms out). This max size isn't working in build 16446, but we hope to hotfix that soon. Upon blooming, their accumulated healing is split over the targets they heal. Several parts of this aren't yet working in build 16446, leading them to be massively overpowered (which we also hope to hotfix soon). Feedback, especially in future builds, is appreciated.

Mage
• The Mage 2T15 bonus does favor taking Invocation, as people quickly pointed out, and we're considering revising it.
• The Arcane Mage 4T15 bonus is a multiplier on all of the effects of Arcane Charges. Damage, mana cost, and number of additional targets hit.
• The Fire Mage 4T15 bonus is before Critical Mass. Net increase to your Pyroblast's crit rate will be +6.5%.
• This build included a new version of Blazing Speed. We changed it from the previous build because we thought that it was too strong. This is definitely something we're still iterating on for 5.2. The new version replaces Blink, but goes farther than Blink (and distance is variable instead of fixed), does not cost a GCD, and provides brief stun and root immunity, and is on a different spell school. Feedback from playing with it is very helpful. We realize that there is somewhat of a conflict here with the PvP Glove bonus, and will resolve that if needed.
• Another talent we're iterating on is Invocation; it's quite possible that the current version is overpowered, but we'd like people to try it out, and give us feedback about how you use it, especially as Arcane.

Hunter
• The Hunter 2T15 bonus is a chance to summon a Thunderhawk. That Thunderhawk will assist you, and will always cast 5x Lightning Bolts for 16k to 24k Nature damage. Its damage will scale with BM mastery, and will not scale with Survival mastery. However, the proc chances (which are Real PPM) vary by spec: 0.7/min for BM, 1/min for MM, 1.2/min for Surv.
• The Hunter 4T15 bonus is affected by Survival's mastery, cannot trigger Wild Quiver, and procs at a rate of 3 RealPPM.

Monk
• Storm, Earth, and Fire is a new ability for Windwalkers. It's intended to be fill the role of attacking 2 or 3 targets. It's a rather complex ability, technically, and you're seeing a very early version of it that still has some significant bugs (which we're hoping to hotfix soon). To give you an idea of the design intent here, the spirits should mirror your damaging attacks against targets other than the one they're on (so that it's not a single target DPS gain). The spirits auto attack on their own. It should reduce your and your spirits damage while they're out, but the exact tuning for that is still being iterated on. They're currently -40% for 1 (total of 120% of normal against 2 targets), and -55% for 2 (total of 135% against 3 targets). Non-damaging attacks (such as Spear Hand Strike) should not be mirrored, but damaging attacks (such as Fists of Fury) should. Feedback very appreciated.

Rogue
• We are still iterating on Blade Flurry. We feel like the implementation of Blade Flurry on live forces rogues to go Combat on any cleave fights, while leaving Combat too far behind on any single target fights. It's fine if the rogue specs have niches, but the niches shouldn't be so rigid that you don't feel like you have any choice in spec. Blade Flurry will be how Combat does 2-5 target AoE damage. In the next PTR build, it deals 40% of normal damage to up to 4 additional targets, for a 20% energy regen reduction.
• The Rogue 2T15 bonus does apply to all finishers with a duration, including Slice and Dice, Kidney Shot, Recuperate, Envenom, and Rupture. In build 16446, the Kidney Shot increase was broken, but is fixed for the next build.

Priest
• Shadow Priests have raised concerns about both of their T15 bonuses being tied to Shadowy Apparitions. Know that we have improved Shadowy Apparitions. Previously, there was a cap of 4 out at once. In build 16446, that's raised to 5 if you have 2T15. However in the next build, we just raised the cap to 10, which you should basically never hit. And more importantly, we significantly improved their AI. Please try them out. If they give you problems, please be as specific as possible about those situations.

Shaman
• The Elemental Shaman 2T15 bonus triggers from Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning hits (including Overloads). A Chain Lightning that hits 5 targets has 5 separate chances to trigger the Lightning Strike. If it Overloads, then 10 chances. There is no ICD, so it can proc multiple times from a single Chain Lightning. However, in the next build (or perhaps a hotfix), the damage from the Lightning Strike will be split between affected targets. There is a very high potential impact from this set bonus, so we're keeping our eye on this, and may have to nerf it. But we're trying it this way, since it is the most fun version.

Warlock
• Fel Armor has a significant typo in its tooltip; we added the 10% damage reduction and took away the armor. The health and healing received are still increases, not decreases.
• The new Glyph of Unstable Affliction reduces the cast time, but does not affect the GCD. Thus, it is not a DPS gain in a purely Patchwerk situation, but makes it harder to be interrupted, and allows you to start moving again slightly faster.
• The Affliction Warlock 4T15 bonus increases the damage of Malefic Grasp itself, and the extra ticks triggered by it. Same with Drain Soul.

Warrior
• The DPS Warrior 2T15 bonus has a RealPPM rate of 1.6 for Arms and 0.6 for Fury. It triggers all of the effects of enraging, including generating a Raging Blow charge, and 10 rage.

Death Knight
• The DPS Death Knight 2T15 bonus has a RealPPM rate of 1.0. The Zandalari spirit it summons has damage and attacks similar to the normal DK Ghoul, benefits from Unholy's mastery, does not replace your current ghoul, and you can have multiple of them up at once.
• While the DPS Death Knight 4T15 bonus (increased Army duration) is on target, performance-wise, in most fights, it's always challenging to have a set bonus improve a 10min cooldown. We're considering some additional changes to this, such as also lowering the channel time and / or rune cost. We understand this is a challenging set bonus to design, so we're going to have to iterate on it a bit.

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: breaking, featured, ghostcrawler, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-class-changes, patch-5.2-dk-changes, patch-5.2-druid-changes, patch-5.2-hunter-changes, patch-5.2-mage-changes, patch-5.2-monk-changes, patch-5.2-priest-changes, patch-5.2-ptr, patch-5.2-ptr-changes, patch-5.2-rogue-changes, patch-5.2-shaman-changes, patch-5.2-warlock-changes, patch-5.2-warriror-changes

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

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