LK Zones update, Arena Points, Blue posts

[K1boRG]

Wrath of the Lich King - Zones pages update
In case you didn't know (seriously ?), will be released on November 13th. It's now the time to update the content pages to make sure that everything is ready for the release, and I'm starting with zones pages.

• Most of these pages have been cleaned, informations about towns and dungeons should be fairly correct and descriptions were shamelessly stolen from WoWWiki for most of them.
• All zones have been updated with screenshots from the latest beta build. They're all labeled with the name of the subzone and you can find them in the "Screenshots" tab, the older screenshots have been moved to "Early screenshots".

Labeled zone maps should be updated before the release, but there are 2 other things before that on my list. (And taking hundreds of screenshots and labeling them took a bit more time than expected)

There are a few nice updates on the way, hopefully you should start seeing them at the end of the week-end if everything goes as planned.

Also, for those of you who didn't buy yet, you can get it from Amazone.Com.


Arena Point Reminder Updated
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)
We have created this new thread to reflect some updates we have made to the way in which arena points and seasons will be handled as we transition into Wrath of the Lich King.

We wanted to remind everyone that Arena season 4 is coming to a close. During next Tuesday's maintenance on November 11th, all arena teams, as well as ratings, will be wiped and arena charter NPCs disabled. However, arena points will persist until the beginning of the next arena season, or until a player reaches level 71. Thus, Arena points will be rewarded for rated games played this week and players will be able to purchase Arena items that do not require a team or personal rating. Upon the close of Arena season 4, players at level 70 will continue to be able to play skirmish Arena matches against other level 70 opponents even after Wrath of the Lich King launches.

Arena season 5 is currently scheduled to begin on December 16th, and once that happens players who have reached level 80 will be able to compete in rated arena matches where they can gain arena points which can be used to purchase level 80 arena gear, as well as compete for end-of-season rewards. Players who remain at level 70 after Season 5 begins will only have access to play skirmish arena matches against other level 70 players. However, two new skirmish brackets will be made available (71-75, 76-80) for players who wish to hone their arena skills while leveling in Northrend.

Take a picture, get a baby murloc!
Quote from: Vaneras (Source)
If you have finished packing and that you are ready to be part of the official launch of Wrath of the Lich King that will take place in Paris, Rotterdam, Madrid, London, Berlin and Stockholm on the night between November, 12th and 13th, make sure you do not forget to bring your camera!
The Baby Murloc Adoption Committee has decided to reward the players who capture the best pictures during this fabulous evening. The winners of this contest will get the opportunity to look after the famous Gurky. Do not miss the chance to make friends with this rare game mascot…

An online webform will be available soon where you can send your masterpiece to our merciless jury

Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Achievements on the Armory
If it was really easy to flip a switch and make them appear online we'd have done it already, but it does take a good amount of work actually. We do plan to add that at some point in the future as we continue to update and improve The Armory. (Source)

Dispell revamp
We have also talked about systems of dispel priority, whether every dispel uses the same number of charges, whether you should be able to protect buffs with other buffs, whether dispel chance should improve with each failure, or if you should be able to dispel buffs like Fort at all. (Source)

Making healing more like Rogue/DPS Class playstyle ?
Yes, that's the kind of thing we're thinking about. Rogues can't just spam one ability (most of the time) because their system is set up to where they want to use one kind of ability then switch to another kind. Or to use a different example, Frost mages want to get freezes and then Ice Lance (in PvP anyway).

We've done a little bit of that with healing. There are clearcasts or spells you can use on cooldown to make your next heal fast or free or big or whatever. But we think we can do a lot more with it.

Obviously we can't just ask you to start looking for a 3 stack of a buff on every target before healing them. The UI doesn't really support that and combat is just too frenetic to be able to parse it. That's why we think those changes would have to be implemented with a more holistic look at combat and healing in general. (Source)

Changes to healing and influence on raid
I said we would chill the raid damage overall. Some of the fights have enhanced raid damage specifically because the designers know that anything less is just trivial to heal through with current tools.

When you do take raid damage, we absolutely want CoH / WG to be the tools to handle that (for your classes).

If we need to buff the healing of either spell, or nerf Chain Heal, or if a cooldown of 3 or 4 sec makes more sense than 6 sec, we can do all of those things. (Source)

Druid / Priest
Circle of Healing / Wild Growth changes
We always prefer to buff things to nerf them, just because it does feel better for the player. But we have to evaluate the magnitude of the changes involved.

To make CoH / WG work in their current form, we would have to increase raid damage on the group, and increase the healing on your other spells to compete, and increase the magnitude of other types of damage so you want to use those other spells. Increasing single target damage means we might have to adjust tank health (which generally means gear) so that you feel like you have a chance to heal them before the e.g. 30,000 point Hateful Strikes land. It is easier in this case to nerf CoH / WG and lower raid AE damage.

This is the classic metaphor of balancing a chair -- you can try and extend three legs or just cut one down to size.

We don't always take the easier way out, but sometimes that is the more responsible thing to do. We'd rather spend a little bit of time tweaking current encounters and more time working on future encounters than the reverse. We'd rather fix other problems with healing than spend our time rebalancing a whole lot of healing spells.

Plus, since this change will happen after the game is already Live, we do owe it to the customer to attempt to minimze bugs when possible, and in this case that means changing as little as possible. (You can take this argument too far of course and argue we should never change anything. It's a balance, as with most aspects of game design.)

Remember, our ultimate goal is to make the game more fun, not slap you around. I get so many kudos and warm fuzzies when I announce a big buff to a class that I would always prefer to be greeted with that than all the bad feelings that surround a nerf. Nerfing is never fun. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Feral AP changes
I've made no secret that we think the FAP solution is a little awkward and kind of sticks out with all of the other shared gear solutions.

We think we could probably get the druid AP to scale off weapon damage. It wouldn't take too much effort to make a staff that might be appealing to both a druid and a hunter. This would also allow druids to pick up the odd two-handed mace. Those probably wouldn't have the ideal stats for a druid, but a purple dps plate mace might be better than a green Agi staff for a bear or cat.

If we did this, the net result would be that druid dps would stay the same. They would just have more loot options, and maybe hunters would too. (Source)

Starfall
We are still evaluating whether we like the change to the way Starfall works or not. I will say that Starfall was not designed as the Flare for druids.

Starfall is a new kind of spell. There really isn't anything else like it in the game, so comparisons to other kinds of spells may fall short. It's big. It works more like a buff than a channel. It moves with the caster. It targets enemies in the area, but then also does splash damage. It can't be dispelled, but the caster can be CC'd. It's just a new kind of spell.

And even if it was a lot more like Blizzard, that doesn't mean it has to have all the same properties. There is no rule that says AE spells break stealth or that stuns can cancel an unchanelled spell. (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Volley giving excessive durability hits to ranged weapons
Yes, this is a bug. (Source)

[IMG]http://static.************.com/mmoc/images/icons/24x24/paladin.jpg[/IMG] Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Righteous Defense
Recently I said we were going to add a glyph to reduce the targets down to one. We're not sure that's the best solution now. We may just add a normal taunt, and let Righteous Defense still be there for taunting larger groups, especially since paladins lack something in the Mocking Blow or Challenging Shout niches.

We don't want to give all classes exactly the same abilities, but taunts may just be one of those things that it's not safe to have variable. We haven't settled on a final decision yet, which is why I haven't said anything so far. I'll let you know when we decide. (Source)

Priest (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Circle of Healing too good at the moment
Because the spells are getting used excessively in situations above and beyond the "here comes a lot of AE damage" events. Players laughed off my trash example before, but if we didn't want trash in the game, believe me, we'd just give you a portal with a boss behind it. You shouldn't be able to autopilot through trash by just CoH healing. It shouldn't look like the best answer when you deal with a boss that has lieutenants or "council" style fights with multiple bosses.

Ideally, you would always be thinking of CoH as an alternative to something like Greater Heal. You're Greater or Flash Healing a few targets, then realize that there are several people wounded in the raid, some dangerously so. Boom -- that's when you use Circle of Healing. But then you go back to other spells, not just mash CoH until that battle ends.

Don't get me wrong -- it's design is a tricky thing to balance and we have been in places before where CoH was too weak. We just think it's too good at the moment. (Source)

Use of Arcane Blast mechanics on CoH (Each cast within a short period of time use more mana)
We'll consider it. I wouldn't necessarily say the design of having Arcane Blast get more expensive with each cast has been a rousing success though. I think the growing expense just feels bad sometimes.

Mana costs are a tricky thing to mess with. It would be cool, in theory, to have players stop and say "Well, I can cast this spell, but it's really expensive so it has to be worth it." We've had a little bit of success with that but typically those spells are either ignored or players use them and hate them.

Another problem with the stacking design is it might make you more compelled to stack priests, since four priests stacking one CoH is a lot more mana efficient than one trying to cast four in a row. (Source)

Developer Q&A
1. I was under the impression that Holy was supposed to be the versatile healer, not the best at aoe, HoT, or direct healing, but capable of all. If you put the 6 sec CD on CoH wouldn't we be on par with Disc Priest casting PoH thus bumping us out of raids?
You are correct that Holy is supposed to be the versatile healer. CoH is preventing that because Holy priests are using it for a gigantic percentage of their healing. A priest who used only that spell and a priest who used their whole arsenal probably would not have a significantly different effect on group survival. That's a problem.

2. If this nerf takes place people won't spec into it and holy we'll get another lolwell or lolnova.
I doubt that would be the case. If it's worth casting 10 times, it's worth casting once. Some may opt for other talents as well, but I think plenty will stick with CoH.

3. It seems to me that since we can't downrank now spamming CoH would oom any healer too fast so how can this even be an issue?
Making spells very expensive generally isn't received well. Players tend to blame their gear for not providing enough regen in order for them to "Spam CoH in order to remain competitive." We still do it sometimes, but it always requires a lot of explanation in order for players to understand how all their tools are intended to work.

4. If we lose CoH (My personal favorite spell) what puts us on par with other healers. It seems to me this would decimate the holy tree.
Holy priests are designed around versatility. A Holy priest can be assigned to a tank, or to a melee group, or to general raid healing. While it's possible for a spec in that niche to become the jack of all trades, master of none, we think Holy priests have actually been strongly desired healers throughout most of the history of WoW.

You have fast single-target heals, slower ones, hots, group heals, shields and smart heals. Currently we believe a lot of those other heals look like poo because, to quote myself from another thread, Circle of Healing looks like the solution to every encounter challenge. (Source)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
"Late" shaman raid utility balancing
It was bad that shamans were being stacked to the exclusion of other healers. There were a number of reasons that happened, and many of the changes we've made in LK were to address those problems. You can't realistically stack Bloodlust anymore, and you don't need to work a shaman into every group for their totems.

It's hard for me to explain why it wasn't addressed before, because honestly I wasn't the one making the call. I am reluctant to bring that up because it sounds like I'm passing the buck, and I'm sure they had good reasons for doing what they did. Maybe it was just that nerfing Bloodlust as raids were learning to fight Kil'jaeden would have felt like a slap in the face at that moment, even if ultimately it would have gotten more classes into those raids. Some of the problems were so systemic to the old buff system that it might not have been an easy fix. (Source)

Chain Heal
You don't need Resto shamans to raid. If Chain Heal ends up being the only spell that gets used to heal, or the spell that pushes Holy priests and Resto druids out of a raid, then we'll nerf it. We don't think those cases are likely, but we always try to leave the possibility open. I've already said we'll adjust the content with the assumption that CoH and WG aren't going to be as huge a percent of total healing. (Source)

Chain Heal #2

We're not crazy about removing the smart healing portion of WG (or CoH). That forces the raid to have to pay a lot more attention to who goes into what party and almost mandates the healers to keep their raid frames organized by party rather than class, role or whatever other system they want to use. While we're not at 100% yet, we would like to get the concept of party out of the concept of raid.

As far as reducing the raid-wide AE damage, we would do that as part of the change. However, having to deal with a lot of damage at once is definitely a way to challenge groups and offer diversity in boss fights. As long as AE damage exists, the AE heals are going to look very attractive. Furthermore, we have started to see discussions about using CoH and WG even for single target healing. I'm not sure yet whether that is actually effective in the long run, but the fact that those ideas aren't immediately shot down suggests that the instant component of WG and CoH is so powerful that they may get used even when there aren't Naj'entus-style AE blasts.

"I've seen good druids and pallies sitting on the sidelines simply because they can't match the healing output of shamans spamming CH rank 4."
That is certainly a concern of ours as well, however enough has changed that we think it's a lot less likely. Those shamans were brought for Bloodlust / Heroism as much as Chain Heal. Circle of Healing and Wild Growth are now more powerful since they find the most wounded targets.

We're just not seeing Chain Heal doing the numbers of WG / CoH right now. It will definitely go up a little if those other two come down. All of this ignores the fact that we want Shamans to be the big AE healers. It's the role for them, while for the priest and druid, it's just a tool. Currently those relationships are flipped.

Overall, not as many Resto druids are using WG as Holy priests are CoH, but a lot of them are, and the ones that are seem to be rewarded for it. I'm not sure you can make a strong argument right now that only bad druids spam WG, because they seem to accomplish a lot of healing by doing so. (Source)

Windshock / Totems
Wind Shock does no damage because it's off the GCD. It's designed as an interrupt so it's definitely going to be harder to if it's on the GCD. Besides, you have Earth Shock that can already fill that role.

We don't want totems to be simple buffs like auras. There is no point in having totems then and really much of the distinction of the shaman class is just gone. They are not the kind of thing we are likely to move off the GCD since they can have powerful effects, including damage. We would like to make them a little easier to use however, especially when you want to move about a little. (Source)

Storm, Earth and Fire
We think Storm, Earth and Fire is a good candidate for getting in some of the extra dps or scaling in to Elemental that I have mentioned a couple of times. (Source)

Restoration shamans
As I have posted in several threads, the issue is not in our minds "Resto shamans need to be buffed." The issues in our minds are:

• Priests and druids, who have a lot of healing spells, aren't using many of them.
• Priests and druids are able to trivialize raid encounters because they heal so much.

A side-effect of those issues is that Holy paladins and Resto shamans wonder what their role in the game is. But we think that's a consequence of the real problem. (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (9095))
Warlock issues
Burst damage was over the top at 70 in 3.0.2 and 3.0.3. We need to see what it's like at 80 because all classes get a lot more defensive stats on their PvP gear.

Dispels are something we want to look at overall. If we think that any kind of new system is going to take a long time to get into place, we'll look at individual talents.

I agree about the VW. It's a start, but it has a long way to go to feel like a viable PvP pet yet. (Source)

[iaretehfunny?]

poor resto shamans :*-(