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Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We'd like to take a moment to address the recent reports that suggested that Battle.net® and Diablo® III may have been compromised. Historically, the release of a new game -- such as a World of Warcraft® expansion -- will result in an increase in reports of individual account compromises, and that's exactly what we're seeing now with Diablo III. We know how frustrating it can be to become the victim of account theft, and as always, we're dedicated to doing everything we can to help our players keep their Battle.net accounts safe -- and we appreciate everyone who's doing their part to help protect their accounts as well. You can read about ways to help keep your account secure, along with some of the internal and external measures we have in place to help us achieve our security goals, at our account security website here: www.battle.net/security. We also wanted to reassure you that the Battle.net Authenticator and Battle.net Mobile Authenticator (a free app for iPhone and Android devices) continue to be some of the most effective measures we offer to help players protect themselves against account compromises, and we encourage everyone to take advantage of them. In addition, we also recently introduced a new service called Battle.net SMS Protect, which allows you to use your text-enabled cell phone to unlock a locked Battle.net account, recover your account name, approve a password reset, or remove a lost Authenticator. Optionally, you can set up the Battle.net SMS Protect system to send you a text message whenever unusual activity is detected on your account, keeping you aware of important (and possibly unwanted) changes. For more information on the Authenticator, visit http://us.battle.net/support/en/arti...henticator-faq For more on the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, visit http://us.battle.net/support/en/arti...henticator-faq For more on Battle.net SMS Protect, visit http://us.battle.net/support/en/arti...et-sms-protect We also have other measures built into Battle.net to help protect players. Occasionally, when Battle.net detects unusual login activity that differs from your normal behavior -- such as logging in from an unfamiliar location -- we may prompt you for additional information (such as the answer to one of your security questions) and/or require you to perform a password reset through the Battle.net website. World of Warcraft players might be familiar with this security method already, and Diablo III players may begin to encounter it as well. As always, if you think you've been the victim of an account compromise, head to the "Help! I've Been Hacked!" tool at http://us.battle.net/en/security/help for assistance. We've been taking the situation extremely seriously from the start, and have done everything possible to verify how and in what circumstances these compromises are occurring. Despite the claims and theories being made, we have yet to find any situations in which a person's account was not compromised through traditional means of someone else logging into their account through the use of their password. While the authenticator isn't a 100% guarantee of account security, we have yet to investigate a compromise report in which an authenticator was attached beforehand.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Monk (Forums) Mistweaver Feedback We've dealt with some issues, and we have the AP/SP conversion working internally now. That said, the tooltips will still not work for another build or two (that’s a separate issue). We’ve changed Eminence from working on auto-attacks, since this would encourage monk healers to auto-attack just for those heal procs. Regarding our “vision” for the spec (in terms of PvE), it is currently (and this could change, of course):

• Melee healing MistweaverYou position your statue near the ranged to heal them, and you are in melee. Your rotation is similar to a Windwalker’s, except you spread Renewing Mists out and Uplift during AOE phases. For AOE, you use Spinning Crane Kick and one of the last tier talents. You almost never cast Soothing Mist, Enveloping Mist or hard cast a Surging Mist unless you absolutely have to. If something doesn’t deal damage, you don’t want to cast it.
• Ranged healing MistweaverYou aren’t in melee, you’re at range. You may position your statue near the melee since they're farthest away. You mostly cast Soothing Mist since your statue also casts it with you, and burn through your Chi with Enveloping Mist. While moving you put down Healing Spheres near people you think may become injured (or on top of those who are). If you want to add in some damage, cast Cracking Jade Lightning. Cast Renewing Mist whenever it's up. Roll/Chi Torpedo into injured members and use Spinning Crane Kick to heal them up. Use the Chi you generate through Spinning Crane Kick on Uplift.

Also, depending on the fight, you can switch between both of those modes (using Transcendence to teleport back and forth into melee). There will inevitably be encounters where one is better than the other, and we feel that’s okay. That is going to the life of a Mistweaver Monk. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Windwalker PvP Mobility still feels limited The PvP set bonuses for monks will clear snares and roots when you Roll, use Chi Torpedo, or Flying Serpent Kick. We’ve also changed Roll, Chi Torpedo and Flying Serpent Kick to suppress snares while the monk is moving. Can you provide any specific scenarios in which your mobility feels underwhelming (Versus a Frost Mage? Versus a Rogue? In a team scenario?) Monks are intended to have good mobility, but be a bit less good at locking targets down. Zen Sphere will be toned down soon. We’re still looking for just the right mechanic for Blackout Kick. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

With the release of Diablo 3, we are working hard to make career and hero profiles available to the community. With career and hero profiles, we are excited to also release a set of API resources specific to Diablo 3 for community fansites and developers to consume. I’d like to take this opportunity to give a preview of the progress we’ve made to the community and open up discussions around what data will be available. Please keep in mind that this is an early preview and there will likely be many changes to the D3 API by the time it is released. Also note that we haven’t finalized several key pieces of information including artisan recipes, hero and follower spells and powers and achievements...(Continued)

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Druid (Forums) Balance Druid Concerns If we add Insect Swarm back, it would not be just to have another dot to manage, but to give players some way to interact with solar or lunar power more. There are other ways to do that too, so it may not ultimately be Insect Swarm. The rotation is close to where we want it, but it needs just a little more to play with. At the 5000 foot view, the point of the Eclipse mechanic to begin with was to cast X spells for a time, then switch to Y spells with the Druid having some control over when or why that occurred. We don't think killing critters to get the bar moving or gaming it so that you stayed at one side of the bar forever really delivered on the vision for Eclipse. However, those tactics did give players some control -- a way to game things so that more clever players could extract a bit more performance out of the mechanic. We are concerned that we are too far to the other extreme now, where the game UI tells you whether to use your solar buttons or lunar buttons and you really aren't making any strategic decisions. We want to introduce some relatively simple, elegant mechanic to give you more control over how much lunar or solar power you have. Maybe that's Insect Swarm. Maybe it's something else. Try it out over the next few builds, keeping in mind that it may take a bit before we have something we are satisfied with. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Paladin (Forums) Judgements of the Pure Removed In our most recent tests and instance runs, Holy paladin longevity was much longer than other healers, even without Judgements of the Pure. We need to get Holy to the same level as the other healers. It may be at that point that all healer mana income is too low or that damage in dungeons is too high and well have to adjust accordingly. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Inquisition Glyph This glyph isn't supposed to be a no-brainer for DPS. Hopefully none of the glyphs are. At the risk of sounding more patronizing than I intend, a common mistake I see some players make is to look at maximum possible theoretical DPS and assume that is the DPS they can achieve. We have the numbers we think every class can achieve under ideal situations (meaning no movement or distractions, etc.). The best players in the world can deliver on these numbers while executing very complex boss fights. That's a little mind boggling for us, but it's true. Very few players are capable of such feats however. For the rest of us, our hope is that it works out like this: 1) Expert player who foregoes the Glyph of Inquisition, executes Inquisition uptime perfectly, and delivers 99% of max possible DPS. 2) Intermediate player who sometimes struggles with maintaining Inquisition, takes the glyph, and delivers 75% of max possible DPS. 3) Player who thinks he is more expert than he is, skips the Glyph of Inquisition because that's what all the cool kids do, finds as a result that he struggles with Inquisition uptime, and delivers 60% of Mac possible DPS. Don't take my percentage numbers too seriously, but you get the idea. Many classes have similar glyphs. My advice is to measure your DPS (in an actual encounter or PvP) and see whether you benefit or not. The rotations that works for the best players (of any class) may not work for everyone. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Warlock (Forums) Warlock Mana Problems We think the mana costs for Demonology feel pretty good and of course Destruction's mana works totally differently now. For Affliction, we agree that the mana costs are too high - possibly way too high. As some of the posters above pointed out, there is also a bug with some channeled spells, most notably Malefic Grasp, that charge an extra tick at the end. That isn't helping any. We think Life Tap as a way of restoring mana works and has been a warlock staple for a long time. We just think Affliction locks on beta right now are spending too much of their time having to do it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

BattleTag™ Free Name Change Update During the Diablo III Open Beta Weekend in April, a number of players opted to use their one free BattleTag nickname change in order to try to participate in the beta test. We recognize that in their excitement to try to get into the game, some players did not fully realize how BattleTags would integrate with Diablo III or that the number of free changes was limited, and they ended up choosing nicknames that they weren't happy with. To help address these concerns, we've done a one-time refresh of the free BattleTag name change feature on all Battle.net accounts, so that everyone once again has one free BattleTag name change to use at their discretion. This means that if you already used your original free change, you will now have another opportunity to change your BattleTag nickname. If you did not use your free BattleTag name change or have not yet created a BattleTag, you will still only be able to change your BattleTag once for free. To set or change your BattleTag nickname, log in to Battle.net Account Management, head to the Account > Summary page, and look for the Create or Change option under Account Details. As a reminder, BattleTags aren't unique, so you can pick any name you like as long as it adheres to the BattleTag Naming Policy. For more information, see the BattleTag FAQ and Battle.net website page. Remember, your BattleTag serves as your public identity when playing Diablo III, meaning you'll be identified in groups and in chat by your BattleTag -- choose your BattleTag wisely! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Druid (Forums) Balance Druid Concerns We are in fact experimenting with adding Insect Swarm back to the rotation. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

On May 22, your opportunity to register for the World of Warcraft 2012 Arena Pass will come to an end. Don’t miss this chance to experience the next level of Arena combat on a special realm dedicated to competitive PvP. Bonus Level-90 Arena Pass Realm In addition to granting access to the exclusive level-85 Arena Pass realm, players will also gain access to the special level-90 competition when the realm reopens a few weeks after Mists of Pandaria launches. This means that Arena Pass subscribers who have purchased the expansion will be able to access level-90 gear and talents, and be able to take a level-90 monk into the Arena with top level gear. Players who purchase an Arena Pass and participate in the competition can earn an Armored Murloc in-game pet. The top players will also contend for a chance to achieve the “Vanquisher” title for their live characters. If you would like to demonstrate your Arena prowess, are eager for a chance to earn exclusive loot, or just want to reserve a spot in the level-90 Mists of Pandaria Arena Pass realm, the time to register is now!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 3 Beaten in 7 Hours I'm one of those people who likes to explore all of the map, because you never know what might be lurking in that unexplored part, right? I'm in no hurry to rush through because that's not my play style, but I know we're all different. Some people love the bragging rights that come with being super quick through a game. Meh, I prefer to take my time, soak up the atmosphere, listen to the story, and loot every single damn barrel I find. But yeah, as others here have said, completing normal mode is by no means finishing the game... It's just the start. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Diablo 3 Beaten in 6 Hours That's the problem... people are used to playing Skyrim You can beat Skyrim in a few hours if your intent is to rush to the end of the game as fast as possible. You can beat the original Super Mario Bros in 5 minutes. If your intent is to simply race to the end of the game as quickly as possible I'm sure you can complete Normal difficulty in very little time. If your intent is to take your time and enjoy it, stop worrying about what people rushing to the end of the game think. Luckily, unlike other games, regardless of how quickly you want to rush to the end, the near-limitless content provided through randomized events, dungeons, enemies and items (and their random drop chance) mean that you'll be able to play for years to come. Welcome to Diablo III, please enjoy. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Reasoning for the New Vendor Filtering? Some of the vendors have so many items that they literally would not fit in the current UI. There is a max page size that is something reasonable. Now we could expand the number of pages a vendor shows, but honestly that doesn't seem like the best answer just so you could scroll through 22 pages of BoP gear to reach the plate armor that you can actually use. It is intended that BoE or BoA items are always visible regardless of class. It sounds like that just isn't implemented yet. We also need to do some additional polish to make sure the vendor remembers what your current filter settings were, at least for the current vendor or play session or something that will feel intuitive. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Death Knight (Forums) Death Knight Feedback FAQ As promised, here are some responses to some of the more common DK questions we have seen. There are several threads on the topic, and I don't mean to suggest anything by posting here instead of somewhere else. It's also not possible to address every single (often contradictory) point brought up by every player, but hopefully this will give you some idea of where we are coming from. Every DK is going to take talent X. We haven't been convinced yet that that is the case. Please keep providing feedback on talents you like and don't like and we'll consider it. Blood's AE threat is too weak. Blood's AE threat should be comparable to other tanks and we'll make sure that that is the case. Remember that AE tank threat is intended to hold aggro against AE DPS threat. That is to say, if you have a DPS going to town on a single-target, your AE buttons are probably not sufficient to hold threat in those cases (otherwise there would be not distinction between a tank single-target and AE rotation). We don't want to buff Death and Decay for all DKs, but we could for Blood if needed. I don't want to stance dance. You shouldn't have to. Our intent with the Glyph of Shifting Presences is largely to make it easier for a DPS DK to go Blood to "turtle up." We don't want Frost and Unholy DKs to shift a lot between Frost and Unholy Presence. If you feel like the right thing to do is swap frequently between the two, that's not intended and something we'd want to fix. What Presences should Frost and Unholy use then? Dual-wield Frost should use Frost Presence. 2H Frost and all Unholy DKs should use Unholy Presence. Our thinking goes that a DK using a 2H will be flooded with more resources than they can spend unless they are in Unholy. Unholy DKs lack burst AE. There are numbers we worry about and there are numbers we don't. We want all specs to have comparable AE damage (and single target damage too). AE damage in particular is very sensitive to combat length. Different specs do better on short AE cycles than long AE cycles, and we're okay with that. If you aren't AE'ing for very long, then Frost DPS will probably beat Unholy. We're okay with that. We aren't trying to guarantee DPS to be identical in all situations, or else the classes and specs really start to blend together. Overall, Unholy's damage is designed around lots of abilities, including managing diseases, so none of those abilities are going to hit super hard on their own. Why doesn't the Gargoyle scale with mastery? Because it ultimately doesn't need to. We want mastery to affect portions of damage (or healing) and not just be a +10% damage stat that scales perfectly no matter what you do. If the Gargoyle does more damage for DKs with comparatively low mastery, we don't think that's a problem. Now if the Gargoyle damage isn't high enough across the board (especially in PvE -- it's still useful in PvP) then we can buff it. I don't like that Killing Machine devalues crit and that I can waste it on Frost Strike instead of Obliterate. We make abilities guarantee crit when they hit for really hard damage. The alternative is their damage is unpredictable, which can cause balance problems especially in PvP. We think there are plenty of tuning knobs to make sure crit (and haste and mastery) are all relatively valuable for Frost. As far as Obliterate goes, using KM the most efficient way is one of those mechanics we put in to elevate some players or rotations over others. The most interesting rotations (for any class) carry some risk of failure (and by “failure” I mean inefficiency not a total collapse of your DPS). There are times when you may want to Frost Strike on a Killing Machine. If you really want to Obliterate instead, you can hold the attack for a second or two. If you “fail” and “waste” a KM on the occasional Frost Strike, your DPS won't drop that much. Soul Reaper needs to do Shadowfrost damage. We made a couple of talents do Shadowfrost damage because we want them to be of relatively equal value for both Frost and Unholy. That's not necessary of core abilities, because there is no risk of a given player not taking the ability. We're fine with Shadow doing more damage in execute-range, so long as Frost's damage is higher the rest of the time to make up for it. Army of the Dead feels weak. That's entirely possible. It's on a long cooldown so there's no reason it should feel wimpy. There is probably plenty of room to buff it. Runeforging is boring. We agree that this feature has not lived up to its potential. We still have plans to address it, though it's not on our "must fix" list for Mists. The current system works fine and we'd rather not monkey with it unless we have a system that we are certain will be an improvement. We don't want to cause a lot of confusion about which runeforges various DKs are supposed to use. I hate casting Unholy Frenzy on Fury warriors. I'm not quite sure I understand the issues with this concern. Unholy Frenzy is haste (not attack speed, but actual resource-generating haste). There should be plenty of classes who like haste. Even today we see a lot of guilds just use it on their highest DPS player, which often is not the Fury warrior. We'd like to keep the design as a buff you can put on someone else, just because that's what it was back in the Warcraft RTS days. Why is Plague Leech a dps increase compared to the other talents? It isn't intended to be. All of those talents are rune conservation talents. Roiling Blood gives you free Pestilence. Unholy Blight likewise saves you disease runes. Also Unholy Frenzy isn't that useful when it's optimal for the class to stack Haste already, plus Fury gets the large Mastery bonus from it being an Enrage. Hmm, that's not intended. Enrage means an awful lot of warriors for now. It's probably not necessary that Unholy Frenzy needs to be dispelled in PvP anyway so we can just make it not an Enrage. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Quest Rewards Lack Spirit Note that I have about 10K spellpower and a little over 7K mana regen. When I think about it, 10K spellpower is what I had in epic 85 gear with about 6K mana regen. Taking into account the huge mana pool increase at 89 (250K versus my ~132K live at 85), this is quite troubling. I'm looking at the Townlong quest rewards, just because that's what I happen to have in front of me, and it looks like you would get about 1800 Spirit from the ilevel 429 gear in that zone. How much Spirit do you have at the moment? I'm wondering if part of what is going on is that mana pool and spell costs jump instantly when you level, but regen requires you to gear back up to that level. It's the same phenomenon that happens with say crit or haste but it may feel worse with Spirit. Like Tiriel, I cringe when I queue for Mogo'shan. I'm thinking that place is overtuned versus the gear we have. I can only cover so many player mistakes. (Yeah, I know. They need to get out of the fire and all that.) Entirely possible. We ran it the other day, and the final boss did way too much damage from traps. The mechanics have changed a little bit because of that, and of course it's hard for me to remember which version of the dungeon you have without just jumping into beta myself and doing the dungeon. Again, level up dungeons have to be easy because of the simple fact that if you die much at all, you're just going to run the quests instead, given that even the best rewards from a level up dungeon won't last more than a few hours. If dungeons are inefficient, players will just skip them. At max level it's a different story obviously. That is exactly what it should be balanced around, healing in that gear when you have crap regen with crap quest gear. So you should be able to heal brewery in 333 gear that you get in Twilight Highlands because that's the previous step right? Without basically any enchants and anything really going for you. If that's the case, which it is, obviously the dungeons are going to have to take a small step down in their difficulty scale. Exactly. If you can't heal those dungeons yet, then there is a problem on our end. Some of you are acting like the system is fundamentally flawed and can't be fixed. It can be, fairly easily. It would be helpful to hear a few numbers from you guys, such as character level, average ilevel and current Spirit. It doesn't need to be super precise. This is a very good question. Having to swap specs every time you turn in a quest to game your rewards would be very cumbersome. 1) You shouldn't need a lot of Spirit to heal a level up dungeon. A Ret paladin with a lot of Strength gear who swaps Holy should still be a tolerable healer. 2) There are several redundant quest rewards. If you already have the shoulders for your primary spec, take the ones for your off-spec. This is particularly true of Four Winds - Krasarang which are the same level, and Townlong - Dread Wastes, which are the same level. 3) We offer choices in gear (say healer vs. nuker) for many quests, typically end-cappers, blue rewards, weapons and trinkets. In the final zones, there are even more of those since we figure players who level as DPS may start thinking about their end-game healer or tanking gear at that time. 4) If all else fails, there are vendors scattered about with decent green gear. If you have been leveling as Enhance and want to try Resto, you can get a good enough head start by hitting the vendors. Again, the leveling up content where you would want to heal should not feel dangerous at all, especially once you've seen the bosses once. Nobody is arguing that healers need a lot of Spirit to function. It is our intention that you want a lot of Spirit and can get a lot of Spirit. You should not need Spirit in every slot. Feedback is very mixed in this thread, so trying to distill it down to one of the following would be more useful than more posts of "I need Spirit," which doesn't give us much information. What we are trying to ascertain is which of the following is true: 1) You have Spirit on nearly every piece and still can't function. 2) You want more Spirit but can't find any. 3) You don't have Spirit on every piece, so you want more. 4) You want so much Spirit that you never run OOM. Points 1 and 2 are of the most concern to us, but it's still important to distinguish which problem is occurring. Is the problem acquiring Spirit, or is the problem that even with Spirit on many pieces, you run out of mana too frequently? In this case, it's probably also more relevant how many heals you can cast before running out of mana just standing around alone somewhere, because when healing a dungeon, we can't easily extract from your feedback alone whether the encounters cause too much damage or whether the damage is appropriate and it's the HPS or longevity that are low. After reading more of this feedback and looking at the zones, we're concerned that there aren't enough quest rewards with Spirit on them. We are leaning towards offering more, as choices, so that players who feel like their Spirit is low can choose to have more. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) The Black Market AH Only Caters to the 1% Once there is more information about how this all works, we'll provide more insight into it. When we can share more about what we're going for and how it will all work, we will. It's not a deeply shrouded mystery, and you get the general gist, but as it's still in testing to begin with, it's hard to go into details about something that we don't have details for aside from what we think we want to try out. (And we don't plan to share that currently. We prefer to test and see first. ) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Infuriated by the Black Market It's worth noting that since we're in beta, we're still looking into what our philosophies are for what should and what shouldn't be on the Black Market. We're also trying to discern the frequency/rarity of what shows up there as well. Again, I want to reinforce that we are in beta and the most helpful sorts of discussions everyone can have is simply in sharing constructive feedback about what you're experiencing with the new features and what you'd like to see or not see. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Male Pandaren Dance Changed? We're looking into this. Most likely there was some erroneous data pushed. It's being investigated however. When we do another beta push, this should be corrected again. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Inactive Guild Master Replacement The idea of this feature is that in many cases, a guild leader will leave for a time and there's no contingency for someone else to be able to handle the guild if that guild leader chooses not to return (or whatever other issues may occur). Many guild members who experienced missing guild leaders made it clear that they wanted a means by which they could gain control of a guild if the guild leader went missing or was gone for a long while. We've adjusted the length of time until this occurs as well as changed the eligibility for this to get passed along both. You can see the details in the following post: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4488479071 If you're on vacation for a few months, the update gives you 90 days now instead of the original 30 days. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We're aware that some Australian GAME customers have been left out in the cold on what should be the hottest night of the year -- the launch of Diablo III. To help with this situation and get these players into the game as soon as possible, we've put the following process in place. Australian GAME customers with a valid preorder/prepurchase receipt dated before May 15, 2012 can do the following: 1. Purchase the digital version of Diablo III from http://www.diablo3.com now or anytime before May 21, 2012. 2. Download and start playing when the servers go live! 3. Submit your GAME Australia preorder/prepurchase receipt to us before June 30, 2012. 4. Receive a credit from Blizzard, for the amount you paid in advance to GAME Australia for Diablo III. This credit will be applied to the payment method used for the digital purchase. We'll post further details here on how to submit your GAME Australia receipt to our customer service team as soon as possible. Stay tuned, and we look forward to seeing you in the Burning Hells!

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Low Population Server Issues We do realize that this system does not address all of the issues affecting low population and faction imbalanced realms, but we do feel that it will improve things quite a bit. This is a brand new technology being developed for World of Warcraft, with the purpose of bringing life back to the more barren parts of the world, so this is only the start. What needs to be understood with the cross-realm zones technology is that it opens more doors to future systems that could help with those other matters as well. There is still no solution how can guilds on our realm find new people for PvE or PvP. What a shame... This system will actually assist you in finding players to PvP and PvE with, not to join your guild, but they can join you through the cross-server groups and raids features. While leveling up you will once again have more players in the world to interact with. With friendly players, you will be able to interact with them and maybe end up on each other’s friends’ lists, and grouping up again later for either PvP or PvE. With more players of the opposite faction running about, you will also have more world PvP too This technology and the systems surrounding it are still in development and as such your feedback on them is greatly appreciated. We hope to have more innovative technologies and systems coming in the future that will keep improving the World of Warcraft experience for everyone! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Healer Leveling Feedback 1) Spirit doesn't mean "this is for healers" the same way Strength means "this is for plate-wearers." We assume healers will have some pieces with Spirit and some without, depending on their regen needs. If a boss drops cloth with haste and mastery, and you say "there is no healer gear on this boss" we are going to respectfully disagree. That was my point. 2) On the other hand, if you just can't find any Spirit gear anywhere, that would be a problem. 3) It's likewise a problem if say mail, leather or plate-wearers can find Spirit much easier than cloth. That shouldn't be the case, but bugs happen so we'll take a look at it. 4) All healers should have about the same longevity, but that includes all of their sources of mana and the cost of their spells. This isn't an easy thing to compare just by looking at e.g. Meditation. 5) You should have plenty of mana to heal level up dungeons and even heroics. You might need to reforge or be on the look out for a few more Spirit pieces, but overall you shouldn't feel that every pull and boss fight is a nail-biting mana battle. (Mana will matter a lot more for raiding and challenge modes.) We want level 90 in blues to feel a little easier than level 85 in blues, so please let us know if that's not the case. 6) It's possible there are bad points in progression before level 90, because we haven't looked at that as much yet. If you have just hit say level 88 and haven't gotten any new level 88 gear yet and run a dungeon, it's possible mana return is lower than intended. Feedback on that is also useful. Do keep in mind that at this stage you might run into a boss that is horribly overtuned or just bugged. Just because you can't keep a tank alive doesn't necessarily mean that your mana needs to be massively buffed. It could mean we need to adjust the encounter. That said, the intent is not that you sit around idle much of the time, waiting for mana or too scared to waste a heal that isn't 100% critical. Beta is going to be buggy and unpolished- very buggy and unpolished. It may not be a very enjoyable experience. It's not for everyone, and if you don't enjoy content in a half-implemented state, you might have a better experience waiting until the final product, which we will try our hardest to be as bug-free and polished as possible. If you enjoy offering feedback before things are set in stone (insofar as they ever are in this game) and you don't mind seeing the inner workings of the sausage factory that is game development, then beta may be more fun for you. P.S. I like to think I am less smug than snarky. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Death Knight (Forums) Death Knights and Number of Class Changes I'm not losing too much sleep, but for Warlocks they've had a huge set of changes and information and it's clear that they haven't been forgotten. It's not even hyperbole that Blizzard isn't listening to us, look at the notes. Look at the changes. Warlocks know they're being taken care of. We don't. This is a tough issue for us to solve as far as forum discussions go, because we think some classes need larger changes than others. There will be some DK changes, but overall we don't think they have the spec identity problems that the warlock changes were largely intended to address. It may not seem fair to classes or specs that aren't undergoing as many changes, but we try very hard not to monkey around with things just for the sake of changing systems that we think work. I'd agree that every class needs a little bit of newness in an expansion, but there is a lot of that from the talents and glyphs. That said, I will try to carve off some time to address some DK concerns. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Hunter (Forums) Silkworm and Porcupine Pets Just read a forum on petopia that said the silkworms and porcupines that are part of the "boar" family weren't meant to be tameable pets, but they forgot to change that part when they got rid of the boar placeholder models. Please don't take away my porcupine. We decided these animals shouldn't be boars anymore, but they will be tameable. Silkworms can be worms. Porcupines can be their own family. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Warrior (Forums) Warrior Feedback For Arms, we're trying a new Taste for Blood right now, where the Overpower procs buff your next Slam instead of Overpower. The effect lasts longer than the buff in your build, and can stack up several times, but the general intent is you Slam when Overpower stops proc'ing. The decision point can come about whether to Slam or CS or MS if those are all available, and how much Rage you can afford to bleed off to Heroic Strikes and still have enough left for the big Slam. This is a pretty new change, so it's entirely possible we'll change it again before you see it. I just din't want anyone spending too much effort modeling the Overpower buffs Overpower design. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

In the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta, we’re introducing a new technology that will enable players to meet up and group with other players in under populated areas of the world such as low level zones or areas that other players may have outleveled or moved on from. This technology will allow players to form a group with other players from within a select pool of realms in order to quest just like they normally would while still allowing the social structures of their home realms to remain intact. F.A.Q. Q. Why cross-realm zones? For many years now, the significant majority of the player population online at any given time has consisted mostly of characters at or near the level cap. This has resulted in an environment where characters that are leveling up experience a world that has fewer other players to interact with than what the world was designed for. Cross-realm zones give us the capability to ensure that level-up zones retain a population size that feels more like the high level areas of the game, leading to a more fun play experience for characters of all levels. Q. How do cross-realm zones work? When you’re in a zone that is set as a ‘cross-realm zone’ you’ll notice that in addition to the players you’d ordinarily see from your realm, you’ll also see (and be able to play with) players from other realms. This will happen seamlessly, and players will be able to group and quest as they normally would with players from their own realm. Q. How will this work on boats or zeppelins? Usually transitions will occur on area boundaries (think moving from Darkshore to Ashenvale). Q. Can I form groups with the people I meet in the zone? Yes! You can group and talk to others within the cross-server zone normally though trading will be restricted much as it is within raids, dungeons, or battlegrounds. Q. Will my cross-realm group be disbanded if we move on to an adjacent zone together, like from Goldshire to Westfall or from Thousand Needles to Feralas? Much like how cross-realm groups currently work, your party won’t be disbanded when you move through different zones, though if you’re not in the same home realm, you won’t be able to see each other if you’re in separate zone instances. Q. Will I be able to group with my friends? Yes, you will be able to group with your Real ID friends, provided they are within the same faction. The functionality works the same as it does for cross-realm dungeons, raids, or Battlegrounds. Q. What level range do my friends and I have to be within in order to group? There is no restriction on level ranges. You’ll be able to group with anyone you would normally be able to. Q. Can I go into main capital cities while grouped with others? Capital cities and areas with regularly high populations will not be set as cross-server areas/zones so you will not be able to enter into the same instance of a city as someone who is from a different realm. Q. Will I be able to trade with others I meet? Trading restrictions are in place much the same as they are in cross-realm dungeons, raids, and battlegrounds. Q. How is group loot handled? Group looting will function the same as it would with any group you would create through normal play. Q. Who will I be playing with? You’ll be able to interact with players from within a select pool of realms which will make it possible to run into a player in Redridge that you already ran into within Westfall. Q. What areas will be shared? This can vary from realm to realm and relies on how densely populated (or underpopulated) an area is. Capital cities and areas with regularly high populations will not be eligible for area sharing. Q. What about resources or gathering nodes, will those be shared too? Resources and nodes will be available to all parties within the shared area the same as always. We will be keeping a close eye on the impact of area sharing and should an area become too populated, we are capable of adjusting how many realms are able to connect to a shared area. Q. Does this mean that Auction Houses will be merged? No, when any player access an Auction House, they will be only able to access their home realm’s Auction House.

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Account-Wide Reputation We don’t want to make reputation account-wide. We think that removes too much of the gameplay of having an alt. Harkening back to the blog, the goal is for players to feel free to play their alts. If you have a cool mount on character A, then that might be an issue. Being exalted on character A so that enchants are easier to buy doesn’t seem like the same issue. (What I mean is, it’s a short step from there to saying character A has better gear so you aren’t going to play B). We can understand where the desire to have reputations function in this way stems from, however. For this reason faction rep is going to work a little differently in Mists of Pandaria and, we think, will feel better for players with multiple characters. For all intents and purposes, assume that the game doesn't really understand the concept of a WoW license. The account-level achievement system will all be based on the Battle.net account and not each individual WoW license attached to it. Will this affect reputations associated with mounts? The best answer right now is we're not sure. We're still discussing some of these details and honestly haven't drawn final conclusions as of yet. So just keep that in mind as you read on. For Ramkahen, you'll probably just need to buy the mount once by gaining the necessary reputation on one character, in order to unlock it for all characters on your Battle.net account. The challenge comes with the city mounts. If I have a dwarf today, I have to get Exalted Darnassus to buy a nightsaber. But if the nightsabers become account level, then I should probably just make a night elf rather than grind exalted on the dwarf. If that doesn't feel right, we could "fix it" by making the city mounts non-account level. Or we could let them be account level, but make you require the appropriate reputation to use them. If we did THAT, then it might make sense for all faction mounts to require a rep. But again, the simple answer is we’re not sure yet. I left out your question about reputation-based titles because we don't have an answer as of yet. I guess you could say that also falls within the "we're not sure" category at this stage.(Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Account-Wide Achievements Let’s consider Loremaster of Kalimdor.

• Character A completes Ashenvale Quests for a toast and 10 points.
• If Character B then completes Ashenvale Quests, they will get the toast, but not 10 more points. (It is NOT a new achievement for the account.)
• If Character B then completes Felwood Quests, he gets a toast and 10 points. (It is a new achievement for the account.)
• If Character A never completes Felwood Quests, he will not get a toast, but the achievement will show that the account has the achievement. (It is NOT a new achievement for the account.)
• Loremaster of Kalimdor is a meta achievement, so it is account only. If we assume that Character A complete half of the Kalimdor quest achievements and Character B completes the other half, then Loremaster of Kalimdor will give a toast for whichever character is logged on at the time. The account will get 10 points.
• Any new characters will continue to get toasts (but not points) for doing Felwood Quests or whatever, but . No character on that account will ever see a toast for Loremaster of Kalimdor again.

This sounds more confusing than it is. In the Achiement UI, you will see normal achievements (which are now shared) and account-only achievements, which use a different color and symbol to indicate that you can only get them once. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Mage (Forums) Wizardry Missing I looked through my spellbook for this guy and a premade and neither have the 5% int bonus, but my priest and lock still have theirs. Just a bug. It will be back. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Priest (Forums) Priest Feedback Heals cast during Spirit Shell should benefit from Grace. Mastery affects the bubbles. We built Divine Aegis into the effect by making the bubbles scale with your crit chance. It sounds like your PoH Spirit Shells are low, but you are often operating a few builds behind us. Shields are generally smaller than equivalent heals, since there is much less risk of overhealing and the absorbs always go away first. That's just a general tuning philosophy and not a die-hard rule. Shields have disadvantages too (such as at some point you need to get targets back up to a safe health level). Again, don't focus on the numbers. It's fine to bring up the numbers if they seem off, but don't let simple balance adjustments get in the way of evaluating whether or not you think the mechanic is fun. I know that is hard sometimes with healing, since efficiency and throughput dictate so many decisions. The beginning of MoP Beta: "We want Discipline to feel different, so we're removing several of the heals you have become accustomed to using over the years and replacing them with absorb mechanics." Currently in the MoP Beta: "We don't want Discipline feeling TOO different so here's all your old heals back. Oh, and Spirit Shell is now a semi-useful-in-certain-situations cooldown. Enjoy." We usually start out more bold and refine things as we go along, which often means going to a known fallback position. That direction makes more sense than starting off cautiously and getting more reckless as we get closer to ship. ...what does "making the bubbles scale with your crit chance" mean? If your chance to crit is 20%, your bubbles are 20% stronger. If your chance to crit is 100%, you get double bubbles. For Divine Aegis, the heals are 30% times your crit chance, except for PoH which is just +30%. Logically, I understand this, but in practice... it's a bit more difficult since sometimes the numbers DO define the fun, or at least what some people think of as fun. Yep, we get that. When understanding the target numbers is key to understanding how you'd use the spell, we try to get things in the ballpark. On the other hand, it's not a good use of development time to balance a mechanic if we ultimately (and sometimes quickly) remove it. We could have spent many more hours balancing the previous version of Spirit Shell, which we ended up scrapping. Everyone in this business very quickly gets used to "wasted" design time like that, but it's better for the project as a whole if we spend our polish time once everything has stabilized a bit more. If the numbers go up to something reasonable, then it becomes intensely fun again because it gives a choice. Is there about to be a ton of aoe coming in? Pre-shield. Is there only some aoe coming in? PoH. If I chcoose wrong.. if I pre-shield and it is a little damage.. I wasted absorbs. If I choose not to shield and it is a lot of damage, then I tax myself (and the other healer) trying to get everyone back up. Having options and needing to know when each particular option is the right thing to do is what is fun for me. That's the intent. Also, because it's not a very long cooldown, you're not overly punished for making the wrong call. It will be back soon enough. That said, GC, can we get more clarity to the dev team's vision of the mechanic-- specifically how it's meant to stack on itself and refresh? We're not sure yet. Stacking sometimes leads to behavior where you feel like you have to spam something over and over to the max stack. We wouldn't want Spirit Shell to only be used on a tank for instance. That may not happen, but the mechanic is still in it's toddler stages, so we need to evaluate it some more. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Rogue (Forums) Rogue feedback/explanation As I stated this thread is NOT meant to rant on about things I find wrong. I am merely asking for an explanation as to WHY some of these changes have happened. Usually when they make this types of changes I can get a sense as to what caused it/the reasoning behind them even if I think they are wrong. Totally fair and reasonable. I'll handle some of these. Please be understanding that I am one guy and I have a day job. It's not realistic for me spend equal amounts of time on every class thread every day. We read all of these posts though, because reading is much faster than responding. 1) Sang Vein change to exclude hemo: Currently this SUB ONLY buff excluded hemo….which is SUB's REPLACEMENT for SS. I find it very odd that a spec specific buff would exclude the only spec specific bleed it has. Honor Among Thieves generates a lot of combo points, so we think having multiple finishers is appropriate, so we want Rupture to be used in the rotation. Sang Vein being used only on Hemo, while convenient, meant Rupture could be skipped over easily. We understand that this has PvP ramifications and we're prepared to buff if necessary, which in this case I think is likely. Note that it is much harder for us to predict PvP damage compared to PvE damage, so it requires a lot more testing and player feedback. (Also note that most classes do have a significant gap between PvE and PvP damage, and that's fine.) We agree that Rupture would feel better as a button to push if it rewarded you with better damage. That's something we're looking at. 2) Hemo DoT buffed: Now don’t get me wrong, I welcome any damage buff….but buffing a DoT (on a skill you recently excluded from SV no less)? We buffed all of Hemo, not just the DoT. This is partial compensation for the above change, but as I said above, probably not enough compensation for PvP yet. Hemo is like Mangle -- it's the button you're supposed to use in PvE when you can't get behind the target. It's a dps loss, but not a huge one. It's a minor DPS increase in PvE to use both Backstab and Hemo at the same time, but we'd prefer that to be a niche strategy. Venomous Wounds not procing on both Garrote and Rupt when both are up. This was all part of a suite of changes to discourage the use of Vanish (and Prep) as DPS cooldowns. We generally want utility / survival cooldowns to get used for that. It sort of sucks when you are asked to give up your survivability button in order to max DPS. (Yes Shadow Focus still gives a slight DPS increase for using Vanish, but we can live with that.) Para/Leeching poison mutually exclusive. It will probably be unlikely for very optimized players to take both poisons. We think they are appropriate in each of their talent tiers though and you have other choices to take in both cases. This seems like it’s on the level of someone who chooses an AE talent for a single target fight. Versatility: This talent..well has some issues I think. We don’t want cps on the rogue. That’s not the design. The rogue builds up attacks against a target. We understand though that sometimes the build up can be overly restrictive, which is why we have cooldowns like Redirect, and we understand some players love rogues but just can’t stand the cp target switching limitation. Versatility is for them. The level 90 tier for rogues is supposed to feel like it breaks the rules (you know, within reason). Shuriken gives a ranged attack to a melee class. Versatility overcomes the rule that cps are on the target. Anticipation overcomes the rule that there are 5 cps. HaT not proccing unless in combat: First it was not proccing in stealth, then you change it to not proccing out of combat at all. Again I ask…why? What was the purpose here? First, we don't like players to have to live with burden of building up something before a fight starts. It may be a DPS increase, but it's not a fun one. More specifically though, we didn't want Anticipation and HaT to build up 10 cps before the fight even begins. Obviously, I hope, that just couldn't fly. And what of Find Weakness? And Find Weakness's synergy with Preparation? Those alone, at least for Subtlety, introduces the concept of a mandatory talent. It's fair to say that Prep is going to be more of a dps increase for Sub than the other two specs. Still, there are also fights (in PvE) where the other two talents are just as useful. We're still considering ways to solve that issue though without nerfing the cool aspects of Prep. To speak nothing of the Shadow Walk glyph in PvP, which will be another forced requirement, since all Rogues will be working under the competitive expectation of squaring off like that. We understand the concern, but we're not convinced -- yet -- that it will be a problem. Shadow Walk is up such a brief period of time, and you're giving up a whole glyph slot for that brief theoretical "double stealth" encounter against another rogue. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Rogue Feedback It's a wording change, because the dodge chance now applies to shots as well as melee attacks. If anything, it's a buff, now you have 50% against range attacks. This is correct. I will say that I am totally in favor of complete hyposcrisy from one day to the next (the thread title), just so you can quote me on it from now on. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Warlock (Forums) Glyph of Fel Regeneration We were a little worried about whether we could balance the glyph for both Destro and Demo with models that supported both mana and fel energy. Can you elaborate on what you liked about it? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Glyph of Lifetap Stealth Nerf "Stealth nerf" typically refers to changes we deploy on live without telling anyone. To be honest, we don't really do these any longer because players quickly figure them out anyway. Since we barely document any of the thousands of changes going into each beta build, I'm not sure the term applies here. Regardless, the intent of the glyph was never to let you opt out of the cost of Life Tap. It was intended to let you stay at full health and defer the cost. If you used 4 Life Taps without the glyph, it would cost 4x the health cost. It stands to reason that if you used 4 Life Taps with the glyph that paying 1x the health cost would make the glyph very good. It was just a bug fix to do what the glyph always claimed it did. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Warrior (Forums) Warrior Feedback For Arms, I want Rend back. And Taste for Blood using Rend. And both of those scaling from Haste. As a PvPer I don't want rend back. That move was a waste of a GCD and i'm glad its gone. Right. That's the problem with Rend. We removed it because so many players didn't like it. Some players might like it's return, but for others, we'd be moving backwards. The same is true of cast-time Slam. Plenty of warriors are happy to see it gone. Enrage would matter more if RB didn't cost rage, but generated it. The ability would be different from BT in that it would still have a cd and still hit hard. Now enrage would grant increased rage gen AND an ability that increased rage/did lots of damage. Frenzied Berserker achieved. The risk there is you become *even more* dependent on Enrage. Now not only does it provide more autoattack rage, and is your mastery and Raging Blow enabler, but you get extra rage from using Raging Blow. If you can let Bloodthirst have a decent base bonus to crit it would help with giving us a decent amount of up time on enrage and the use of raging blow for lower levels. We had that in for a short time, but thought that the newer implementation (where an Enrage becomes increasing more likely) made things smoother overall. Even a high crit chance can still not crit. Not generating rage in Defensive Stance hurts DPS warriors as well. That doesn't have to be the case. Defensive Stance has always been a last resort for DPS warriors because it lowers your DPS. It's just a matter of degree. In other words, we're not trying to make Defensive Stance something Arms and Fury want to spend much time in. I'm not sure if Ultimatum is gone, or if Devastate procs SnB and Ultimatum. At the moment Ultimatum is from Shield Slam, because Devasate lighting up two buttons was too much. Before I forget: a parried Rend is an annoyance. Under the new Taste for Blood, a parried Mortal strike means you're SoL for six seconds. Taste for Blood is applied from using Mortal Strike, not landing a Mortal Strike. This may be a recent change. On the other hand, there's a lot of damage that won't be affected by this, assuming that it puts a debuff on the target. For instance, the damage from Grasping Tendrils on spine wouldn't be affected. Most of the adds on Zon'ozz would be out of range. If you messed up Alysrazor, it wouldn't reduce Lava Spew. It's only 20% damage reduction. If you're concerned about missing some adds on Zon'ozz, use Rallying Cry or Shield Wall or have a healer blow a cooldown or all three. It's not critical that all tank cooldowns work the same way, as long as nobody is at a terrible disadvantage. Applying the right cooldown to the right situation is one of the marks of a skilled tank. They both have a 10 rage generating attack on a 6 sec CD, which sets the timeframe everything falls in. Yeah, I agree the 6 sec cooldown makes them feel similar. I don't think we'd be excited about a 3 sec Bloodthirst again, but a 4.5 might be worth trying. Fury currently needs obscene levels of Crit, Hit, and of course Expertise just to function normally. This leaves no room for Haste or Mastery. We have far less choice in our gear due to this problem. You are defining "normally" differently than we do. Fury isn't balanced around 100% uptime of Raging Blow. Swinging two weapons is a huge dps increase that is offset partially by missing more, which means having to dedicate more stats to hit and expertise. I don't see the fundamental flaw there as long as Fury's damage is about the same as Arms. You may not like the randomness personally, but we do give you ways to mitigate it (including just playing Arms). If you try to fix this by increasing Enrage up-time, where does it stop? 70%? 80%? 90%? 100%? If we become capable of 100% up-time, what's the point of Enrage as it currently is? Off the top of my head, Enrage uptime of 40% in starting gear and 80% in endgame gear is probably a good target. Once something approaches 100%, then whenever you don't get it, it feels like a penalty rather than it feeling like a bonus when you do. Does anyone actually notice when Flurry is up? Anyone? It's completely random, and with how low Haste is in terms of stats we're capable of valuing, we'll never have any discernible control over it through gearing. The intent of Flurry is to break up the steady swings of autoattacks, particulary to make Rage income less predictable (which then in turn asks you to manage that situation by deciding when to Wild Strike and / or Heroic Strike). If the effect is too subtle to notice or Fury has enough mechanics going on without it, then we could consider removing it. It has just always been one of those iconic Fury mechanics. (Iconic is in the eye of the beholder of course, because we did kill Rend.) Later in the thread, there were some suggestions to make Flurry a more meaningful proc that you react to. I'm not sure Fury needs more procs though since it already has Raging Blow and Bloodsurge. Something like Deadly Clam (see below) breaks up the rotation in a more predictable way. Bring back Deadly Calm in some way for both Fury and Arms. The class designers have discussed Deadly Calm quite a bit. It's an interesting ability and it changes the rotation in a way Recklessness does not. The problem is that with Recklessness and a cooldown on the level 90 tier (especially Avatar), that's a lot of burst buttons for warriors to use. We could prevent them from being stacked, but that often doesn't feel good. We could give Deadly Calm to Arms and Recklessness to Fury, but I don't think that would go over well. Strength needs to provide Crit. I've already went over why your argument against this fails - Intellect and Agility are already pretty much the same thing (SP = AP, both provide Crit). Regardless, it's just not fun to not Crit. I did address this. We just disagree. If you like crit, stack crit. If you like a lot of passive crit, play a rogue. Apologies if that sounds cut and dried, but I'm not sure where else to take that discussion. I'm going to go ahead and strongly disagree with Fury's design being so attached to this idea of being "random" or "uncontrolled" (which is the synonym you're using for random). As I've said frequently, a little RNG is fine, but you have to know when it's too much. Randomness is also in the eye of the beholder. We like to have a pretty high amount of randomness in class rotations because handling that randomness presents an opportunity for reactive players to perform better than those who try to play their class with a 1,2,3 cadence. You seem to have a different vision in mind for Fury than we do. I'm not sure how to resolve that. And no, it's not going to be a poll. We did find a bug just now where the combat tables were not exporting correctly. Among other things, this means that warriors, paladins and DKs were lacking 5% of base crit. I was trying to figure out why the crit numbers being reported were so low. (They still may not be as high as you'd like with the +5%, but they should be where we want them.) Here are some upcoming changes to Arms and Fury:

• Bloodthirst has a 4.5 sec cooldown and generates 5 rage to distance the Fury rotation more from Arms. Bloodthirst’s crit mechanic was redesigned so that you can see the crit chance of your next BT and predict the crit / Enrage a little more.
• Colossus Smash is free. We hope this lets warriors time their rage pooling a bit more instead of spending so much rage on CS that there is nothing left to benefit from CS. Since Arms uses CS more, this will throw more kinks (the good kind) in their rotation than Fury.
• Deadly Calm reinstated as a 60 sec cooldown. It allows the next 3 Heroic Strike or Cleaves to cost 10 less rage, so again you’ll want to time this a bit depending on current rage mechanics. Ten less rage should be the sweet spot to encourage HS use, but it may need to be 20. We don't want it to be free, because then you would just hit Deadly Calm on cooldown rather than timing it.
• Enrage now also increases the rage generated by MS, BT, SS and Revenge. This should make the rage income more noticeable when it’s up.
• Overpower now does more damage with subsequent procs. It was already a high priority button, but this will give warriors an opportunity to time the bigger hits with Colossus Smash or Deadly Calm..

As always, let us know how these feel in beta. These are very much experiments (as are many of our beta changes) so we may decide not all of these changes are good or necessary. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The World of Warcraft Annual Pass promotion ended May 1, and we recently sent out the remaining Mists of Pandaria beta invitations. Check your games list in Battle.net Account Management for the Mists of Pandaria beta. You can download and install it from there. Again, thank you for your enthusiasm and feedback. To provide feedback for the Mists of Pandaria beta, we invite you to please post in the Beta Feedback forum.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Cataclysm PvP gear and PvP Power You will have less resilience on your gear coming into beta. However, you will also have some base resilience and that base should offset the PvP power that everyone is getting. The net result should be that you take about the same damage you do today in a PvP setting, but will take less damage from someone not wearing PvP gear. Currently on your beta build, I believe the ratio of power to resilience is off. You should have more resilience and less power than you do. It is entirely possible that some new talents or spell changes will result in too much burst damage in isolated cases, but when giving feedback, it's useful for us if you distinguish between those and survivability in PvP in general. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Druid (Forums) Druid Level 90 Talents We're not yet happy with the druid level 90 row. We still like the theme of it playing into the druid's hybrid nature and we want to reassure you (which I think most of you already know) that druids won't do lower damage or healing compared to other classes just because some other class has an unambiguous throughput increasing talent at level 90. Classes are balanced around their whole package. Nonetheless, we want the bottom row of talents to be exciting. In the next (hopefully) build, you'll see a few changes.

• Disentanglement -- no longer a talent. Shapeshifting for all druids just breaks roots.
• Dream of Cenarius -- increases damage spells by 70% (up from 30%).
• Heart of the Wild -- now also grants 6% passive Agility and Intellect.
• Nature's Vigil -- replaces Disentanglement. Increases all damage and healing done by 30% for 30 sec, with a 3 min cooldown. While active, all healing spells also damage a nearby target for 50% of healing done, and all damage spells and abilities also heal a nearby friendly target for 50% of the damage done.

Let us know how they feel once you get a chance to try them. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Paladin (Forums) Protection Paladin Feedback I can't imagine that blizz intends for paladins to have to get a swing timer addon to effectively micromanage a 3 second buff. I'm waiting patiently for a 'fix'. Bosses hardly ever attack slower than 1.5 second these days and there is no longer a boss swing timer debuff. We find that when bosses attack slower, they have to hit really hard to do the same DPS, which means tanks risk being two-shot. A Shield of the Righteous should be able to get two hits. Even if that were not the case, the penalty is mostly on healer mana. Because Shield of the Righteous can't be up all the time, it can't be the case that a paladin will die without it. The challenge with the current SotR design is that Prot paladins generate Holy Power pretty quickly, which means any 3 Holy Power ability will be used often. We don't want SotR to have 100% coverage, or it starts to feel more like Inquisition or the Hammer of the Righteous debuff and not like a short cooldown. We could slow down Holy Power generation, but we're reluctant to do that, because it feels good coming in quickly and coming from abilities like Judgment. Having Bastion of Glory buff Word of Glory so much is a way to encourage paladins to spend some of their Holy Power on Word of Glory once in awhile so that it all isn't funneling into a persistent Shield of the Righteous shield. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Priest (Forums) Rapture Feedback While I'm not a big fan of Rapture in the beta environment, I think this is the wrong way to look at it, that if it provides less mana than PW:S, it's not "regen." Assuming PW:S is a spell worth casting on its own merits (and it should be, when MoP is live, or else I think even Blizzard designers will agree they failed), then you'd be casting PW:S anyway and it's part of the total mana-out over the course of the fight. Rapture simply increases the mana-in over the course of the fight, making it regen. Now, if PW:S isn't worth casting on its own merits and is ONLY used for Rapture, then it's perfectly fair to point out that Rapture doesn't even refund PW:S's cost. But, again, if that ends up being the case, it will mean discipline is truly broken and devs will surely fix it. I don't think anyone believes PW:S shouldn't be a valuable spell just from its effect in mitigating damage. Yes, this is how we see it. Rapture isn't trying to be Telluric Currents. You shouldn't spam PW:Shield when you need mana. Rapture is intended to offset the cost of PW:Shield when the latter is used intelligently. I said "regen" in the more generic sense of mana returns. I understand the posters saying that it's not increasing your mana over time because you are still casting PW:Shield. Rapture is a mana increase on live mostly because we scale too well with Int (as a regen stat) and the gear item levels went crazy just like at the end of Wrath. It was not the original plan for the spell, otherwise it would have functioned as a mana-increase at the very start of the expansion. PW:S is quite probably the most powerful spell in our toolbox, and without a prohibitively high mana cost, it will wind up being spammed to the exclusion of other spells. The Rapture mechanic serves to moderate the mana cost of the spell when tank healing while not interfering with the mechanics that prevent us from just spamming PW:S 24/7. Supposedly we'll have other tools for raid healing, though I personally find these tools lacking. As far as our overall mana regen goes, we've got 25% passive regen, rapture procs and shadow fiend. I think that'll be enough regen for single tank healing, but not enough at all for raid healing or multi-tank healing. I'm concerned that Mind Bender is going to wind up being a mandatory choice for Disc at this point. Yes, I agree with all of this as well. The challenge of designing Disc has always been trying to balance the fun of PW:Shield with the power of PW:Shield. We don't want any talent to be mandatory for Disc (or any spec). If Disc has mana problems in AE situations, or if Holy regens too much compared to Disc during periods of not casting, then that is something we can address. Our goal is to make mana-management with a fresh level 90 a little easier than it was at 85. It was close at 85, but just a little too punitive. Once you hit 90, let us know how dungeons feel. I will note that we are considering retiring Judgment of the Pure. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Warrior (Forums) Warrior Feedback Since I'm not sure yet when you'll get the next beta build, here are a few upcoming warrior (mostly Protection) changes to try out:

• Shield Slam -- now generates 20 rage. Sword and Board generates 30.
• Unwavering Sentinel -- now grants passive rage generation like the old Anger Management effect. The intent is to make rage generation smoother when a tank is kiting or otherwise doesn't have high boss contact.
• Demoralizing Shout -- a new (old) Protection spec ability, now in the form of a short-term, free cooldown, much like Barkskin. Reduces the damage done by 20% by targets against the warrior for 10 sec. 60 sec cooldown.
• Shield Barrier -- cost reduced to 20 rage, but consumes up to 60 rage for up to triple the effect. (Total absorb adjusted accordingly).
• Glyph of Thunder Clap -- Not super useful. Redesigned to Glyph of Unending Rage, which increases total rage cap to 120, allowing interested warriors to be able to bank more Rage.
• The sum total of these changes may provide too much rage. We'll have to see. We still want to mess with Berserker Stance and possibly Enrage rage generation as well to make sure warrior rage isn't too static and predictable. We want there to be some Heroic Strike use.

One of the reasons we don't always announce changes before they happen is that things can move pretty fast in beta. Even though I mentioned some Protection changes above, they are already out of date. Overall, the goal is to mix up Protection's rotation a little more. Prot warriors are used to lots of buttons, and we don't want too much waiting around. (For Arms and Fury, we can just flood them with rage, but with Protection the risk is that we hit 100% uptime of Shield Block, which turns it from being a short cooldown to a managed buff like Thunder Clap.) We also want to make sure tanks who execute their attacks with more skill are rewarded with better mitigation. To make this compelling, we think it needs to tie into Rage generation.

• As part of this, we're going to try Defensive Stance no longer generating Rage from auto attacks at all. Instead we'll have nearly all Rage come from special attacks while in Defensive.
• In addition to Shield Slam, we'll try Revenge and Devastate generating some Rage. Devastate will do so by once again being the ability that procs Sword and Board. For Revenge, we agree that the more rotational version has lost some of its old excitement. Revenge will generate Rage outright. It will no longer proc from blocks but will also have no cooldown so you will sometimes get multiple Revenges in a row.
• We're going to try Shield Block using the charge system that we've tried for a few abilities, such as the monk Roll. This one may feel too different, but we'll see. What it means is you can use Shield Block twice in a row, but then pay a 15 sec cooldown. (The first use will start its cooldown as soon as its used.) This mechanic should let you chain together two Shield Blocks but not keep it up 100% of the time.We think this rotation feels better and more traditionally Prot, but let us know how it feels to you.

I'd find it a bit more comforting if I ever saw actual passion coming from Blizzard regarding Warriors. But I don't see that, haven't seen that. Does anyone really see the passion there? If these people enjoy their jobs, really enjoy working on the game, really believe in their design - then you'd think they could set aside an hour or two to address our concerns about enjoyability. But two hours times eleven classes turns into a huge time commitment pretty quickly (and that's on top of reading all of the posts in the first place). Believe me -- you want the design team spending time designing the game, not debating players on forums. We are all very passionate about our designs, but we're also professional game designers who know better than to get too attached to any particular implementation. Stuff changes. Ideas that seem great might not pan out. We've all seen ideas we were really excited about being greeted with indifference by the community. That's just part of the job. Passion also can come across as being defensive ("they're stuck on their pet feature!") or impartial ("he likes priests better!") when read on forums. I know I participated in it, but really these discussions would be more useful if we kept to class feedback. I have found as a rule of thumb that any time the discussion strays from the design to the designers, then it is probably off course. You definitely caught me scratching my head when you said you were moving tanks to 'active mitigation', kept all the passive mitigation skills for prot paladins, and nerfed the only active mitigation skill we had. No, you are correct. The way paladins were playing with lots of Word of Glory was closer to the new design. We said at the time however that we didn't think it would work for tank balance to let paladins convert resources into mitigation while warriors could not. I think we even said at the time that we'd like for all of the tanks to play more like that, but it required a whole sale design. That happens a lot in this gig, where class A is working the way we'd consider ideal, while class B, C, D and so on do not. The "pure" design is to keep A working the right way, but the right decision is usually to change the single outlier until we have time to fix everyone. I'm curious how exactly this is going to work. Does it just consume as much rage as it can (Up to 60) and give you a decent sized absorb based on that? I do like the change though, it makes the move much more interesting. Right. Assume that spending 20 Rage will give you an absorb equal to 30% of your attack power. If you have 40 Rage, the bubble is 60% and 60 Rage, it's 90%. If you have 100 Rage, you still get the 90% bubble and have 40 Rage left over. Like Aed said, unless Heroic Strike gives some form of defensive benefit somehow, warrior tanks are basically never going to use it. You guys learnt that lesson with the pre-nerf WoG back in 4.0, remember? As a few players pointed out, I meant Heroic Strike use for Arms and Fury. Prot will use Heroic Strike when not tanking at the moment, when soloing, when running easy content, or when Ultimatum procs. Tanks have never chosen spending resources on damage when they could spend them on survival. Although I wish that auto attacks would still generate rage, I understand that we shouldn't be swimming in rage because that makes us imbalanced. I like the idea of our special abilities generating rage much more. It actually feels like I am "actively" working torwards taking less damage. There may be a way to get some Rage from autoattacks. We were just concerned that so much Rage was from autoattacks that buttons like Shield Slam weren't contributing much so warriors were ending up feeling passive when what we were going for was active. GS since you posting can we get atleast an idea of plans with Arms and Fury? currently they play way to similar and when I say that I mean they play exactly alike only difference is you don't have something procing to turn Slam into 3 stack 10 rage, and Overpower is proc'd from using your rage generating ability but they still play to alike, I'd just like some info as to what might be the plans with them? thanks If you say they play similarly because they both have an attack that generates 10 Rage and both have an attack that costs 30 Rage, then that's true. However the similarities sort of end there. Arms has a second attack, Overpower, that is reliable, though it can sometimes chain proc. Colossus Smash sometimes has a lower cooldown. Arms' AE is based around Sweeping Strikes and Blood and Thunder. Arms' Rage income is slower from autoattacks and come in chunkier because of slow weapon swings. Fury can sometimes use Raging Blow but not predictably. Rather than a proc concerning Colossus Smash, Fury gets to use Wild Strike three times in a row. Fury cares about being Enraged more than Arms for a couple of reasons (RB and mastery). Fury's AE is based around Meat Cleaver procs and using Raging Blow. Wielding two weapons ensures more consistent rage income, even when using two-handers. Fury will probably always have more Heroic Strike use. Overall, Fury's rotation is probably less predictable, which is fitting for their kit of crazed berserking. I'm just trying to get a feel for what you're looking for. Should Bloodthirst deliver 20 Rage? Should Bloodthirst just be a cooldown? Should Arms have a different cooldown than Recklessness? Should Fury not have Deep Wounds? I thought we were supposed to be commenting on how it feels now, not coming up with our own fixes. I feel like most of you have been on the forums long enough to know the difference, but here goes: Example One: "I think Mortal Strike would feel better with a 9 sec cooldown." Example Two: "I find myself with not enough Rage as Fury." Example Three: "I find the rotation confusing. I'm not sure which button to push." Example Four: "Rend was a fun button. I miss it." Example Five: "I came up with a new warrior ability. It's called Staple. Staple requires 40 Rage and roots a target. You then get 100% crit chance against the Stapled target. I imagine it would have an icon that looks like a big staple. The glyph of Staple would staple the target to the warrior so you would drag them around with you." Five is fun, but less useful to us overall. If it's fun for you, go for it. Maybe it will spur some interesting discussion as players try to explore what design problems (if any) you're trying to address with your brainstorming. The risk is that you grow attached to the idea of Staple and essentially refuse to like any warrior change unless you see Staple implemented. Ultimately, it's just a less efficient way to have a discussion than figuring out what the root problem is you are trying to solve anyway. But I understand sometimes it isn't easy to get your finger on the pulse of what is bothering you. I've been doing game design a long time, and it still vexes me sometimes. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Rogue (Forums) / Warrior (Forums) Rogue and Warrior Ranged Weapons What I said here still stands true, however, there's a bug currently in beta preventing rogues and warriors from equipping ranged weapons. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

A Lack of Cloth Healing Gear in Dungeons Our item designers spend a lot of effort making sure there is gear for everyone, so if you haven't seen a specific piece you might have just gotten unlucky. Note however that healer cloth is any cloth without hit on it. If you are expecting Spirit on every single piece, you might be disappointed. If you did manage to get Spirit on every single piece, you might find that your regeneration is higher than you really need for level up content. We know we can't make the level up dungeons super challenging, or players will just skip them and quest instead (given that even the most awesome level up dungeon gear won't last very long, so it's not possible to offer high reward for high risk). As you are nearing level 90, and start gearing for end game content, stats for healers and survival stats for tanks start to become more important and you should find more of them. Also, don't neglect the vendors. Their gear isn't best in slot by any stretch, but can be useful to fill any holes if you missed a piece or have just been unlucky. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Hunter (Forums) Hunter Feedback A few points on hunters, gathered from several threads: We don't want for dots just to ignore crowd control. It's a test of skill for players to decide when to dot and when to CC. However, that's not a fair requirement for attacks that you can't prevent, such as Piercing Shots and MM mastery. Those probably do need to pause or do no damage to CC'd targets. We're still tweaking focus regen. It does feel a little slow right now. Stampede needs to appear at the target or you lose too much of the brief duration with the pets moving to the target. It also needs to have a long cooldown and short duration, because it's an awful lot of DPS to have so many pets out. The alternative would be that the extra pets do a lot less damage each, but we didn't feel like that really delivered on the fantasy of "opening the stable." We want traps to be good CC. Traps are one of the signature hunter mechanics, and we'd rather make them good than just let players ignore them and do all their CC with shots. Improving CC in this way will also give hunters better synergy with other classes in PvP, rather than the hunter's viability being determined by how awesome their burst damage is. We're still looking at expertise, dodge and running a lot of PvP tests right now. We do think it's a bit disingenuous to argue that melee are always behind their targets in PvP. Just ask any Backstabbing rogue or Shredding druid. Overall, we're still comfortable with the idea of ranged attacks able to be dodged. It's a little weird to argue any of this stuff based on "reality" but heroes so awesome that they could dodge arrows or bullets certainly exist in literature and cinema. If you can leap through the air towards your foe (or backwards in the case of a hunter), shield block a giant, or cast a fireball, then being able to dodge a shot shouldn't be the thing that breaks the suspension of disbelief. (As an aside, when I was working on historical RTS games, I read that there was some evidence that Native Americans had some skill in dodging arrows, which may have been one of the things that led to their adopting firearms, given that firearms at the time were pretty inferior to arrows or javelins in most other ways. That still doesn't settle whether dodging arrows in a fantasy game with paladins and mages is reasonable or not.) If it's an undue burden for PvP, then that's another thing (though we think the jury is still out on that), but arguing it's not realistic is a bit... er... dodgy. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Priest (Forums) Rapture Must Retire We don't think Rapture is "fundamentally flawed." We also added it back because so many Disc priests asked for it. It's challenging for us to present a design when some players want something and some don't want it. Discipline would struggle if the spec was designed around flawless Rapture use, but it's not. Meditation is still there and in fact a Disc priest with flawless Rapture use would have more mana return than other healers. A priest who totally ignored PW:Shield would have lower mana return, but why are you playing Disc if you ignore PW:Shield? For many Disc priests who say benefit from Rapture every 20+ sec instead of the minimum 12, their sustainability should be comparable to other healers. Keep in mind what I said in the other thread about considering the entire package; the only real measurement of sustainability is how long the various healers can cast in average (low HPS) and scary (high HPS) situations without going OOM. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Discipline Feedback In the (hopefully) next build you receive, Discipline again has Greater Heal, Strength of Soul, and Power Word: Shield with no cooldown. We are also trying something really different with Spirit Shell. Let us know how it feels. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Warrior (Forums) Warrior Feedback Here are some warrior comments from various threads. I know there is at least one very long thread, but in my experience players are less likely to read huge threads. I mean no disrespect to any other posters by posting here. 1) We want rage to be a mechanic. We don't want rage to be something warriors ignore because they can just hit all of their buttons whenever they want. That tends to lead towards the class being cooldown controlled. It's fine for some classes to work that way (Enhance shaman are pretty close), but that's not our vision for warriors. 2) We think the rate of rage income in Battle Stance is currently about right, but we knew that warriors could totally ignore Heroic Strike and Cleave, so we've been tweaking things like Enrage providing more rage, so that being rage capped is more of a risk (allowing smarter warriors to bleed off that rage with HS). 3) The Berserker Stance redesign is still pretty new and something we're adjusting. If we are successful, then warriors will use Battle Stance much of the time, but would consider Berserker for PvP or boss fights with an excessive amount of raid damage. We aren't looking for warriors to constantly stance dance, nor do we want them to be in Berserker all of the time. 4) Your entire class doesn't need to revolve around having X amount of crit. We will balance warrior damage around whatever stats are available at various character and gear levels. We like the fact that warriors will have more Enrage uptime as they acquire more crit. Mechanics like that are the kind of thing that make gearing up more fun, because it can actually impact your rotation a bit rather than hitting the same buttons the same way as you did when you were level 86. Warriors (especially Fury) need some amount of crit and Enrage uptime to function, but giving them too high a crit rate early on leads to devaluing the stat in later tiers of gear. (This goes for a lot of stats on a lot of classes.) 5) We run DPS tests all the time both at level 85 with starter gear and level 90 with end-game gear. The numbers are in a pretty good place, though we'll continue to adjust them as we make class changes and refine rotations. I offer that because saying "My DPS is terrible," doesn't really give us much information. What is your DPS? Who are you comparing it to? 6) Target dummies are great for learning your rotation. They are terrible for trying to predict how your rotation will feel in scenarios, dungeons, raids or PvP, and that is one of the reasons we went so long before adding them. Please try to get a feel for how your class plays in a group setting before coming to conclusions about whether you have enough buttons to hit or are waiting around too long. (Again, this is not a warrior-only consideration.) 7) I probably sound like a broken record here ("What's a "record," GC?"), but we don't want warriors or any class to be able to just pick DPS talents and forsake all others. If you are a DPS dude choosing a damage talent instead of a tanking talent, then you probably don't really have much in the way of a choice. If you focus on relatively easy content where you never need a survival button, never need to help out an ally, and never need crowd control, then I can understand why the talent choices may not be as interesting to you. On the other hand, try some of those 2-3 pulls in Townlong or run a scenario without a tank before you cement those opinions. 8) For tanks, the goal of active mitigation is to let you translate your resource (rage in this case) into survival. If you use Shield Block or Shield Barrier frequently, you'll be a better tank. If you spam them whenever possible, you'll do fine for scenarios and Raid Finder. To do more challenging content, you're going to want to use them at the right time, which may mean delaying them a few seconds for when a big hit is coming. Shield Block isn't designed to keep you alive all by itself -- fortunately you have plenty of emergency cooldowns. We also don't want players just learning the class or running easier content to crumple just because they failed to keep Shield Block up as much as possible. Many factors go into making you an effective tank -- watch a video of some of the world's best tanks if you don't believe me. Spamming Shield Block isn't going to cut it. Using Shield Block intelligently will help some. 9) I know it's fun to brainstorm new abilities. Just understand that such feedback is much less useful to the designers than commenting on how existing things feel. The frustration of missing a Mortal Strike in PvP and having that shut down your entire rotation (just to use an example) is great feedback and the kind of thing we can easily address. "Hey, I came up with a new ability or resource, what do you guys think?" is cool and all, but less likely to lead to an action item for our team. 10) Please don't expect or demand regular posts like this. The team has a lot to before we're ready to ship this expansion. We will read and take seriously all of your feedback, but we just can't afford to spend hours making forum posts. Just because I made a warrior post today and not a warlock post doesn't mean your feedback is being ignored or that we don't love you. I don't use mathematics, which seems to be the devs' lingua franca; but I can work with spatial/systemic concepts instead, so that's how I communicate. It’s not necessary to use numbers if you want to give feedback on how a rotation feels. (Though the community in general would benefit from finding more adjectives than “clunky.”) It is necessary to use numbers if you want to claim your DPS or survivability aren’t competitive, because otherwise you’re just guessing. We put literally freak, freaking HOURS into trying to help him and his team out for no benefit with only the intent of making their awful, low depth designs work better and he disregards it? Forget that, I'm going to play Tera. At least THEIR idea of AM is actually engaging. You're going to get disappointed a lot if you're hoping to see developers incorporate your ideas. That’s just no a realistic goal with a player base the size of ours. The reason I took the time to try and address some of the feedback in this thread is to make sure players understand our design intent. The players out there who are trying to turn “active mitigation” into “I have a ton of cooldowns that don’t cost resources” are working at cross purposes with the class designers. It’s not an invalid design by any stretch, but we also feel it’s essentially the design we had in Cataclysm where tanks would spend all of their resources on threat that was all just overkill. Spending resources on defense gets more to the heart of tanking and we think will be more enjoyable in the long run. In the short run it may feel different and weird. The players posting on this forum do not represent the majority of the warrior population and are practically meaningless to you ('the vocal minority'). The players who post are ALWAYS a minority. By far, most of our players don't post. Some of the most skilled and informed players out there don't post. Does the posting community represent the feelings of the majority? It’s hard to know for sure. That’s why we pay more attention to intelligent argument than we do to any kind of invocation of how "most players" feel. We do read all of the feedback though. We’re not always going to act on all of it. That’s just the reality of game design. We don’t want WoW to be designed by committee, and you probably don’t want us to either. There are still other issues not addressed regarding our rotation... Execute is a great button, but it’s not available much of the time. Slam and Wild Strike are better than Heroic Strike. You should always go to them first. If you have so much rage than even several Slams in a row will leave you with excess rage, then you break out the Heroic Strikes as well, since you can Heroic Strike AND Slam in the same GCD. You’ll have to make the call about buttons like Overpower depending on the situation. Overpower won’t help you with rage management if it’s time to Slam, but on the other hand, Overpower is free, and the ultimate goal is to do deliver as much damage as possible. Managing rage isn’t the goal itself; it’s just a strategy to deliver the damage. The Protection warrior was fun, required rage management and had active mitigation. There is no active mitigation on live. You can define active mitigation your own way if you’d like, but using our definition, active mitigation is mitigation costing resources. On live, all mitigation is cooldown-driven for warriors, druids and paladins. Resources are for gaining threat (which isn't that hard to generate) or delivering DPS (which usually isn’t very valuable for tanks except on very tightly tuned fights). Alright, you don't want suggestions on how to fix the many, many problems? Suggestions are fine and often useful. We are seeing some players brainstorming new abilities or resource systems, which aren’t as valuable to us, and can actually be a little risky to the process when players can get overly attached to their own ideas and end up disappointed or bitter when we don't use them. Perhaps it would help to increase the rage cap to 200, so Shield Block would only be a third of our red bar, and warriors can pool enough rage for 2 or 3 Shield Blocks. Or make the first Shield Block less expensive, and later ones more expensive (like Arcane Blast). I don’t think we’d increase rage to 200, but we could get the same effect by making Shield Block cheaper. The reason we haven’t yet is we were concerned it might lead to feeling like you can realistically have 100% Shield Block coverage. Once you can afford to push Shield Block constantly, then it feels like it’s a maintenance buff (more like Thunder Clap) and not a button with any kind of timing component. It might be worth trying just flooding Protection with rage to see how it feels. Likewise, we could see how much rage it takes before Arms and Fury are using Heroic Strike constantly instead of situationally. Also remember that warriors will get more rage with better gear -- we still want that to occur because it feels fun, so long as it doesn't become a big scaling problem (meaning warriors are weak with bad gear and unstoppable with good gear, which has often been a problem in WoW). Can warriors get an offensive benefit to strength, much like agi and int gives to the other classes? Defensive benefits do literally nothing for me, considering how negligible they are. It's been a long standing issue of mine that warriors get Parry, while Agi users get crit, and int users get crit and spell power bonuses. We balance around the stats you have. If warriors received crit from Strength, then we’d have to lower the damage of your abilities as a consequence. We don’t like Strength providing crit, because then it just feels like Agility. There are potential scaling risks if Agi users do more damage as they get more Agi than Strength users do as they get more Strength. With warriors though we usually have the opposite problem because they do so much more damage as they get better weapons (as well as more rage from better gear as well). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Spell Reflect - Why Was It Nerfed? Spell Reflect is one of those mechanics that always feels weak to the warrior and overpowered to everyone else. We ran a bunch of internal BGs and Arenas and it was pretty universal that the casters were constantly having everything reflected if there was a warrior in the area. We're still tweaking the Mass Spell Reflect talent. We want it to feel awesome, and we think that is a good way for warriors who want to be great at reflection to be able to make that commitment. Our current thought is that Mass Spell Reflect is a new ability (meaning that you'd have both spell reflects) and doesn't require a shield. We like that seeing the warrior strap on a shield signals to the caster that reflection is a risk -- the alternative is that sometimes your spells just bounce back at you, seemingly at random. That logic works for the core Spell Reflect, but already doesn't work with Mass, because you don't see the shield for the warrior's allies. Decoupling the two spells also lets us individually tweak their durations and cooldowns. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

MoP Pet Battle System is Complete Overkill? And for what? Vanity? Just pure vanity? For fun. We're adding something new to the game we think a large number of players will enjoy given its accessibility. You could've worked on character models. You could've worked on more battlegrounds, dungeons, raids, and arenas. By and large you're not talking at all about the same developers/artists/programmers. The development team isn't just a pool of people, all with the exact same skill sets. That's too big an assumption on your part with regard to what could've been created in the absence of pet battles, not to mention whether or not the payoff would actually be better if development resources were dedicated to other projects. Pet collectors will be the only WoW players mutually interested in this. We'll see. That's a bold claim. Now that you've added it, it's going to be continually updated, continually wasting hours, and continually voiding the biggest issues with this game. You're entitled to your opinion and we're listening, but you don't decide for the general WoW population what are the biggest issues with the game, nor are you attuned to our production schedule and how resources are distributed to various projects within the design department. Bold claims AND big assumptions. It would be great if you polled us with a simple question like this: "Should we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this silly vanity idea?" before taking the initiative to do it. Please do that next time, I guarantee my soul the results will shock you. We absolutely want to make the best game possible and want people to love it. The means to that end, however, isn't design by democracy. Aside from finding and fixing bugs, there's a reason why we have beta tests. We can't just write a list of feature descriptions down on paper, put them up for a vote, and expect to obtain the best actionable development ideas (yes, even if we framed the questions to be just a little more fair than your example). We create. You play. You provide feedback. We iterate. P.S. You're going off of bits and pieces of information datamined from the beta. The system isn't even live yet and we have a lot more information coming to explain how we want it to work. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Why the lack of Patch Notes? We tend to iterate pretty quickly during beta. It's a luxury we don't have when we're making patches to the live game. We can use beta to try some crazy ideas and then quickly back them out again if we don't like the way they are going. Closely related, because we want to iterate on beta quickly, we don't all sit down together and agree on when is the best time to make a beta push. Usually we try to stabilize things for a little bit to make the build, but even then, you're going to see a lot of things that are half-implemented, not quite working yet, or in the process of being backed out because someone realized it was a bad idea. We understand our betas can be a confusing, bewildering and sometimes frustrating experience. They aren't for everyone. Betas are emphatically not demos. Unless you're really good at looking past all the baling wire and duct tape, it can be hard to get an impression of how the final product will be. Also keep in mind that it's not just the designers who are testing things out, and sadly testing out new code is even less glamorous than testing out new features. On the topic of account level mounts, we are still evolving our design philosophy, so it's a great thing upon which to offer feedback. We have heard from some players who are thrilled that they don't need to play their "mounty" character to the exclusion of their other characters. We have heard from others who feel like their accomplishments are watered down since they got so many mounts "for free." We're not sure which mounts will be account-level or not. It's weird to have paladin, warlock and DK mounts shared across classes, so there's a good bet those still be character only. What about the others? Let us know what you think. That philosophy goes for a lot of features. We're all busy working on the game, so we don't have a ton of bandwidth to continually explain our design intent on all of the various features in the beta (keeping in mind that our intent often changes). We'll try to hit some major philosophical points when we can, but if you need a lot of blue explanation or direction for how to beta test in order to get anything out of it, then I can understand why it might be a frustrating experience. My advice is just to play and let us know how things feel. If we haven't changed a feature in awhile, it could mean that we're happy with how it is, but it could also mean we're just working on other features at the moment. We'll read all of your feedback, but we probably won't have a lot of opportunities to respond. Rest assured that what you say is really important to us and to the development process. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Why is Wow's in-game music so terrible? This topic title makes me sad. We put a lot of effort into our music. If you actually go through it and listen you'll find a much broader breadth of styles than you might notice in the game. There are a few photos available via that link as well that provide just a glimpse of the recording and mixing processes. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) PvP and bringing the "War" back in World of Warcraft We like specifics. We like hearing about your own personal experiences. We like hearing what you like personally (or dislike). We like hearing your feedback. That's more valuable than attacking someone else for their play style or opinions. Why do PVP players have to be subject to restrictions on pvp realms due to the wants and desires of people who play on pve realms? The reason (in part) those restrictions have been there is more about development and the additional difficulties that occur in trying to separate the two types of realms too much. You end up (essentially) developing two separate games. That's not what we want to do. If the rule sets diverged too much, that's what we would have ended up with. That's not to say that if we don't have the opportunity or a means to make that less painful on the development team, we won't do it (within reason.) I'd love to say that all PvPers want the same thing from PvP, but that's not true either. I could talk to ten different people and be told 10 different goals and desires. Some love world PvP. Others won't take part in it unless they know there is some reward for being the victor. Some won't take part if the odds are stacked against them. Others will take part for exactly that reason. They want to prove they can overcome those odds. To do an analogy (albeit perhaps a weak one), it's like ice cream. All ice cream has similar properties and you'd think that everyone that likes ice cream likes all ice cream. But we know that's not true. People like various kinds of ice cream and dislike various types. So, how do you serve a flavor everyone likes to some degree? That's an oversimplification, but it stands to reason that you have to find something relatively neutral that has the potential to appeal to as many people as possible. You can add in some additional toppings to spice it up as an option for those that want more out of their ice cream. This is why I'll probably unsubscribe when MoP comes. I hate PVP, I hate being endlessly ganked and graveyard camped and I have better things to do with my time. So, enjoy your design philosophy, because I'm outa here. Whether you choose to continue to play or purchase Mists of Pandaria is up to you. I'd suggest waiting until you see/hear about the plans first before making any decisions. As I've tried to emphasize, we are working toward making sure we ameliorate your fears as someone who isn't interested in PvP. I think though, that you're putting the cart before the horse in this case and assuming the worst, much the same as those who are on the PvP side of the fence. We haven't even fully discussed the details of the design philosophy with you as of yet for you to dislike it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Mogu'shan Palace Corpse Run There's an NPC in Dawnblossom (he's the Mogu who looks horribly out of place) that will teleport you to Mogu'shan Palace even if you are a ghost. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Priest (Forums) Holy Concentration: what's the plan? It's not the number of mechanics that is important (so long as everyone has sufficient flexibility). What is most important is what is the overall mana per time regen that the various healers have, taking into account all of their various mana regen systems (and including factors such as paladins casting several mana-free spells). If you think one healer is struggling for mana compared to another, let us know. One mechanic we are still adjusting a lot is Rapture, because we want to make sure that the worst-case mana regen scenario for Disc still isn't all that bad. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)