Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Tanking - Health issues
As I have said in similar topics, we are much more interested in solutions that let warriors and paladins feel like they are more useful on progression encounters than we are homogenizing classes even more than they already are. In other words, bumping warrior stamina and giving them more cooldowns just feels like the easy way out. If that's literally all we can do, then I am a little sad, because at some point the class distinctions are just going to come down to art.
[...] Imagine that Malygos and the Obsidian Sanctum dragons breathed for physical damage. Or imagine that in Ulduar, there are no large bursts of magic damage. I am not saying that is the case, but if it were, would things feel more even? What if there are Ulduar bosses who hit very quickly but not for very large numbers?
Again, the goal is still that if your guild picked a warrior for your MT that you can still complete even the hard mode encounters if your guild is good enough, and you won't constantly be wishing you had a druid or DK MT instead. However I have also acknowledged that some classes are just going to be easier on some encounters because of their mechanics, and only by complete homogenization will that be alleviated. The degree of difference is very important as is the diversity of the encounters. (Source)
Delay between patches
I think that is totally fair. If we could get changes turned around faster, we would. We have been hotfixing more often, though we can't change everything via server patches like that. Patch 3.09 was an attempt to do a quick client patch with few changes that would require less QA testing. We hope to do more of them, perhaps even getting to very frequent and regular updates. However, WoW is a really large piece of software and any change affects a lot of people, both here working and customers. Balance problems may seem bad, but crashing servers or knocking people offline are far worse. As I have said, WoW is a supertanker, and those things don't turn on a dime. (Source)
Arena balance and loss %
Arenas definitely put class balance under a microscope, though I also predict tougher fights in Ulduar may do the same for PvE.
There are a couple of problems with Arenas that I would describe as round peg - square hole. In other words, some players are expecting something different out of Arena than they are getting. Part of this was because when Season 1 went live, it was a relatively easy way for players to get epics, especially compared to the raiding content at the time. Players assumed that they were "supposed to" participate in Arenas to gear-up. This wasn't necessarily the intention, but it was certainly a logical conclusion given the ease of getting the gear.
Related, you are going to lose a lot of Arena matches. Players are used to beating every PvE encounter they go up against, often trivially in the case of soloing quests. If the matchmaking system is working properly, you are going to lose about as many matches as you win. I think many players profoundly underestimate the psychological effect of losing so often. They get frustrated, and they often blame us for their inability to beat other players, forgeting that they may be playing better players, or that they should lose 50% of their matches against players of equal skill.
I am not saying class balance in Arena is perfectly balanced -- it's not. But I am saying that even if and when we achieve perfect balance (should such a thing even be possible), you are still going to lose a lot of matches. (Source)
Quick leveling and "lack" of content
Even as quick as leveling has become, it is still a commitment to get a character to max level and fully geared. We feel like we owe it to players who make that commitment to be competitive without bad numbers alone holding them back (within reason of course). If your class is gimped, your only choice is to reroll. While that may be a good cure for boredom, it's also a pretty heavy price for us to ask you to pay.
We aren't constantly tweaking the numbers just to keep you on your toes. Believe me, if we ever thought we had truly nailed a class, we would call it done and stop messing with buffs and nerfs (at least until the level cap is increased). But we are very critical of our own designs, so we like to keep tinkering with all the classes.
Although WoW is a gigantic game, some players are just going to voraciously devour whatever content we can throw at them. There are certainly a lot of different ways to play the game that you can experiment with if you do get bored. I would suggest things like trade skills, achievements or completing all of the quests you might have skipped. Collect some offspec gear and try a different role (in PvP or PvE). Rerolling can also be a lot of fun. If you're just burned out, it's also not the worst thing in the world to try out some other games -- the past couple of years has been great for them. Just check back in with WoW every now and then. (Source)
PvP Gear rewards in battlegrounds
There needs to be a way to get good gear through BGs. Unfortunately, we don't yet have a way to measure skill in BGs that is very reliable. Therefore, BG progression tends to feel pretty grindy and adding better rewards would probably only exacerbate that.
It is definitely a goal to let players who like PvP but not Arenas still feel like they can advance (which includes improving their gear). It's just a big task that is requiring a lot of work. (Source)
Developement process and decision making
1) The developers are still in charge of the game. There aren't actually any suits at Blizzard, and the highest level managers don't micromanage our design decisions. They offer their feedback and provide strategic-level (as in the future of Blizzard) direction, which is exactly what they should be doing. They are also all friends of mine -- Blizzard is a happy place to work. 
Developers at Blizzard are empowered. While you sure as heck need to be able to justify your decisions, you don't get overruled a lot.
2) The WoW team develops as a team. Our team is probably larger than you suspect, but not many people on it post regularly. Many of them do read the forums however. Our design process is remarkably collaborative. None of the decisions made on WoW are mine alone. No decision made on WoW is the decision of one person. Everything about Blizzard is "we." (Source)
Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Death Knights PvP mechanics
When we designed the DK class, we wanted to give them some PvP utility that felt different. Specifically, we didn't want to give them Mortal Strike, and we didn't want to give them lots of stuns, because both of those have been done to death.
Removing hots we thought was an interesting mechanic. It is more situational than MS (since it affects different healers differently), and with Mind Freeze and Strangulate, we had given DKs a chance to cancel non-instant heals already. And yes, at the time, Resto druids were very dominant as PvP healers, so we didn't feel too bad about offering another way to counter them.
During the beta, many of the participants were worried that DKs weren't going to be functional in PvP. Even with Death Grip there were many dire predictions of kitability, which is partially why DKs ended up with so many diverse snare mechanics (though they have fewer now than they did in beta).
In the actual season though, it turned out the tanking-oriented survivability cooldowns ended up to be far more useful in PvP: Icebound Fortitude, Anti-Magic Shell, Bone Shield, etc. Of course Death Grip is still quite potent, and there are snares, interrupts, and even reasonable self-healing available. Simultaneously, many of the changes to both the Resto and Feral tree (Feral Charge for instance) as well as healing changes themselves made Resto duids less dominant than in previous seasons.
As a reult, we're just not sure DKs need hot removal, and consequently, that would allow us to justify bringing up the damage of Plague Strike to where players weren't so loathe to hit the button, which might also make "diseaseless rotations" less attractive. (Source)
Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Lifebloom in PvP
Our opinion is that Lifebloom might be a little inefficent in PvP even ignoring the DK dispels. However rolling Lifeblooms on 2-3 tanks is one of the most efficient heals in a PvE setting, almost brokenly so. So it isn't as simple as just lowering the mana cost. (Source)
Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Nerfing mana regeneration
Our intention is not to nerf Ret mana generation. Our intention is to nerf Holy mana generation. In our tests, mana generation for Holy healers was quite variable depending on whether the paladin is taking damage or not. Since we don't want fights that do raid damage to always be easier than fights that don't do raid damage, Spiritual Attunement is something we are looking at.
This is not the actual solution that we are going to do, but if it make you feel better, imagine that SA becomes a talent in both deep Protection and deep Retribution so that non-healing paladins are not mana starved.
We're also not trying to cripple Holy paladins. But they are very dominant in Arenas at the moment (which is partially a function of what is happening to other classes), and they have very few mana problems even on challenging PvE content (like Ulduar). We do need to look at them. (Source)
Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
No Abolish Poison for priests
As a few players have suggested, we think the solution here is just to make sure that hunters and rogues aren't so good versus priests simply because of the lack of poison removal. We don't think that needs to be giving Abolish Poison or the like to priests. (Source)
Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Earth and Fire Elemental
The Earth Elemental isn't supposed to be a tank like paladins can be a tank. They are there as an oh snap button, such as in a situation where the tank goes down, or can't control all the adds or something. Understandably, it is going to be more useful in 5-player dungeons than in larger raids.
The Fire Elemental hasn't kept up with the rest of the shaman arsenal, and probably needs a buff. (Source)
Windfury vs. Flametongue
The designers are very aware of the WF vs. FT discussion. We are still talking about the issue and exploring different ways we can shift numbers back and forth. This is something I very much want to discuss with my team some more and it would be irresponsible for me to comment on our direction or solutions until that time. (Source)
Warrior (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Arms tree in Patch 3.1
Right now, we are working a lot on the Arms tree for 3.1, so suggestions and feedback on that play style are timely and useful. While Arms dps is too low at the moment, we are more interested in adjustments to signature abilities (say Mortal Strike, Overpower, Sudden Death, Taste for Blood and things like that) than we are just inflating passive damage, especially passive white damage. (Source)
Patch 3.1 - Test Realm Forums now open
This is looking good, the US Test Realm Forums are now available! You won't hear me say that patch 3.1 is tonight yet, but it's definitely looking good.
Anyway, PTR servers will be available very soon.
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)
Well, my point in the last couple of post I've made is to say that I can't give a straight answer, not because I've been instructed not to, but because we don't have a definite ETA right now. The process to get them running is under way, and we're shooting to get them up asap.
PTR 3.1.0 Character Copy now available
As for the character copy, the queue is still slammed full. Nobody can copy over now if you didn’t already which sucks. Whatever, they’ll open up again when the PTR is ready for play. The wait time is growing longer as well not because somehow people are still copying but because the time keeps ticking and the report is estimating more of a wait as a result. Or something like that.
Ulduar PTR Testing Information
This is starting to look good ... PTR Tonight?
Quote from: Daelo (Source)
Ok, we're getting close to the point where we will need testing of Ulduar boss encounters on PTR, so let's talk about Ulduar testing!
We're going to be performing testing differently than in the past. We're looking for much more targeted feedback, and we don't want to just have the zone freely open and allow extended, unsupervised testing to take place. So, when the PTR servers come up with 3.1.0, by default Ulduar will be turned completely off. We'll instead enable Ulduar and specific bosses during times where the encounter team can observe testing.
Shortly after 3.1.0 PTR is up and running, I'll post a schedule that will indicate when we will open specific bosses to testing. We'll have testing opportunities for both EU and NA region PTRs in their respective prime time playing hours. There might also be a boss or two we do leave up for extended testing, and some bosses will only be tested in either the EU or NA. Some encounters won't be up on the PTR at all! There's 14 boss encounters in Ulduar, there will be lots to test. The schedule will be quite flexible, check in the Dungeons & Raids forum and on the PTR forum for updates.
The first set of boss encounters to get testing will include:
- Freya
- Thorim
- Hodir
- The Iron Council
Both 10 player and 25 player versions of the encounters will be open to testing, and we expect players to have nearly full Naxxramas gear. While Jillian McWeaksauce might make appearances on the PTR to provide testing consumables, please try to bring your own.
I hope to see raid groups of many different skill levels on the 3.1.0 PTR servers when they become available!
Additional info on first boss
The first boss has you enter 1 of 3 different vehicles (Chopper, Demolisher, and Siege Engine) to fight your way through an immense Iron army to the Flame Leviathan and defeat him. After that, there's very little use of vehicles by players. We'll have the fight up on the PTR at a later date, but this fight isn't in the first wave of boss encounters to be tested. (Source)
Actually, the effectiveness of the vehicles in the Flame Leviathan fight changes depending on the quality of the gear. So someone in full Naxxramas epics (or Ulduar epics!) will have an easier time than someone in greens. (Source)
Ulduar PTR Testing
We'll be monitoring the EU PTRs and the EU forums for feedback quite a bit, actually. For us as encounter designers, EU testing is awesome because we can watch testing in your evenings during our normal business hours. There will also be some EU only bosses for PTR testing, along with some NA only bosses. (Source)
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Patch 3.1 ETA
We're working to get 3.1 up soon. It won't have all of the class changes in it initially though. (Source)
Dual Specialization
Dual spec is a big, new feature for us. It will probably change the game in ways nobody (ourselves included) can predict. As such, we want to be careful. However we also want to be able to generate a lot of feedback on it. That is one reason we announced the feature with as much detail as we could. You can also expect to see it on the PTR for a reasonable amount of time.
We might very well change our minds on the max level and / or Inscription part of the feature. Your feedback on all of that has been appreciated. (And folks on EU and other forums, don't feel like your voice is not heard just because I tend to post on the USA forums.)
I didn't mean to suggest that we won't ever make early announcements again because some mean players hurt our feelings. (I'm old and crusty and my feelings are almost impossible for you guys to hurt.) But the things we say do get quoted a lot, and often out of context; the blue lines get reproduced, but not usually the questions or posts that led to our responses. Kotaku picked up the announcement of un-nerfing BM hunters on what must have been a very slow news day.
We certainly understand that forum posters are by far the minority of players and often those with a bone to pick. As always, we appreciate the constructive feedback and extend our gratitude to players who can offer comment without freaking out. (Source)
Ulduar Tanking - Bring the Player, not the class
We're not going to promise that every tank has equal difficulty with every fight in the game, particularly those that are designed to be extra challenging. We'll get as close as we can, but at some point unless we give the exact same abilities to every class, some abilities or emphasized stats are just going to work better in some cases than others.
On the other hand, we will avoid very gimmicky fights where you are "supposed to" swap out to a particular class to tank. You won't see a boss in Ulduar that wipes the raid unless Infected Wounds and only Infected Wounds is kept up on him. (Even Razuvious 25 is probably closer than we want to get in the future).
It doesn't help matters that there is only one super challenging encounter in the game now, so "the best tank" tends to get judged by that alone. It would feel different if there were 3 hard fights and different tanks were superior for each of them. (I said "superior" not "impossible without".)
It's awesome that so many players have adopted the "bring the player, not the class" mantra. I think we managed to get that message across. Do remember however that its original context was that after you have the major buffs and debuffs covered that you will have room to bring who you want and generally a lot more flexibility on which classes you need to bring. It doesn't mean that you can put together any kind of contrived raid comp and then point the finger at us when your 12 prot warrior group wipes in Ulduar. But that also doesn't mean we are reneging on our promise that you can MT with any of four classes. Just remember things are going to feel the least equitable on the hardest fights. (Source)
Talent design and popularity
I don't think Blizzard would agree with that. If nobody ever takes the talent, then yes, there is probably something wrong with it. But I don't know that we would ever want to see say an Arms warrior build that didn't take Mortal Strike. We don't want to make attractive alternatives to Mortal Strike. We pretty much want you to take Mortal Strike. The same is true of Titan's Grip for Fury and Toughness for Protection.
You can come up with examples for classes too. Omen of Clarity is near mandatory for all druids. Ruin is something every PvE warlock wants.
I can understand how logically someone would approach the task of talent design with the goal of making every talent choice optional and equal. But talent tree design turns out to be more complicated than that one simple rule. To consider just a few factors:
- The cost of a talent often has as much to do with its prereqs or talents in above tiers than in the talent cost itself.
- The value of a talent has a lot to do with the other talents you choose.
- We spend a lot of time playing games about what a spec gives up in order to get a particular talent.
- Bigger numbers (damage or healing) tend to trump utility abilities for PvE and the opposite is true for PvP.
- The exact same talent may be just fine for one class but overpowered for another.
- Above all, ask yourself what else you would spend those points on. We don't want to see just a ton of 0 / 0 / 71 specs. We haven't really given Holy or Shadow much reason to sub-spec into each other. Maybe sub-specing into Disc isn't so bad if there is something really juicy there for you. (Source)
Healing Design - Goals and Mana Regeneration
1) I was trying to argue (perhaps too politely) that the notion that healing was fun when smart people could take healing breaks to allow for out of five-second-rule regen was a little bit of rosy nostalgia. The way expert raiders handled that was by healer rotations or stopcasting macros, and I don't seriously think a lot of people long for the return of those. (No doubt some do.) Sunwell and similar content were tuned to where you couldn't realistically stop casting for regen anyway. If you are stopping now, it's because Naxxramas is easy. On challenging content, all 4 classes already spammed heals pretty consistently. That meant the out of FSR breaks came mostly from clearcasting procs or encounter mechanics that forced you to pause. When that happened, mana felt limitless. As I've said, we would rather shift back a little (A LITTLE) from GCD-constrained healing to mana-constrained healing.
2) It sounds like some of you are saying that even on challenging content without replenishment and without leaving the FSR your mana is infinite. I am a slightly skeptical of such claims, but we'll see what happens in Ulduar. We think you will run out of mana sometimes, particular on very hard fights or if you aren't playing at your best, even with replenishment. Similarly, we feel like the paladins are noticing the Divine Plea change in PvE. If you aren't, then perhaps you are an amazing healer, or perhaps Naxx isn't challenging you much. Now, if it turns out regen is still just too good, then replenishment would definitely be our next target. But we don't think we're far off. This isn't a "to the ground" scenario.
3) This change won't change the relative values of Int and Spirit. Int was already a good regen stat (in part because it provides other bonuses). However, you are rarely ever choosing between a +100 Int chest and a +100 Spirit chest (though you might be with gems). More to the point though, the regen formula is SQRT of Int * Spirit * a constant. We are just lowering the constant. If Spirit was good for you before, it will still be good for you. If the only reason it was good for you before was because you took a lot of out of FSR breaks, well 1) again I am skeptical, and 2) yes, under that specific situation you will notice a nerf to your regen.
Overall, our goal is not to make healing more difficult across the board (though we do want mana to matter more). Our goal is to make healing more interesting. (Source)
And nobody's stood around taking healing rotation breaks since early MC, and no one here is arguing for a return to that.
I agree with that first part, Odes, but I think some people are arguing that the rotation breaks are what OOFSR healing was all about. We aren’t really pushing for a return to that.
Healing rotations and "spammy" gameplay
We don’t want that either. Most of my posts have been trying to say “We don’t want the healing game to be a spammy one.” (Again, some players are arguing they do want that, which is their prerogative). However, we are also backing off of the thing that prevents the spams to be the FSR game. I think a better solution is interesting spells. Swiftmend is a really interesting spell. So are Lifebloom, Penance and Beacon of Light. Prayer of Mending is a very effective spell, but I don’t think it’s a particularly fun one to cast. I do think Holy priests could use some work in the fun department, which has been a pretty consistent thread for the last several weeks on these forums, and something we are working on.
I also think some paladins do like the way paladin healing plays out. I’m not saying we want to adopt that model in every case, but we shouldn’t dismiss it either. (Similarly, I am not dismissing players who thought the FSR rule was fun, and in fact we aren’t removing it, just reducing its impact). (Source)
Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Death Knight 3.1 Changes
The DK talent trees are changing quite a bit. We only listed a few of the changes. More equality among the three trees in PvP and PvE are high on the list. (Source)
Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Mana Regeneration changes in 3.1 and effects on Innervate
I don't think it will suddenly make druids regem from Spirit to Int. We'll see.
If you mean these changes will nerf Innervate, yes, it will. On live Innervate can be 120% of your bar, say 25,000 mana. Historically it was more like 75% of your bar, and it should be closer to that with these changes. (Source)
Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Hunters in PvP
Aside from the random stun of TNT and a couple of the bugs mentioned, we don't think hunters are grossly imbalanced in PvP at the moment. Explosive Shot might be a bit too high, but we aren't nerfing it for the moment. We'll see how things feel once some of the changes to other classes are in place. (Source)
Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Totem Stomping Macros
We don't like totem stomping macros. Destroying a totem should be a choice and require at least a modicum of player attention. That is one of the main differences between totems and other types of spells and we don't want everyone to just opt out of that difference.
Preventing them isn't always easy to do, but we do try and stay on top of it. We did stop it for a short time, but players found a way around it. And, no, just naming the totems after the player won't solve the problem or we would have done it long ago. (Source)
Warrior (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Patch 3.1 Stances changes
We made those announcements to get a little bit of discussion going and give players some insight into the kind of changes we are looking into for the next patch. It's not a comprehensive list of patch notes and isn't even likely to match what you see on the PTR when it first goes up. It is something new we wanted to try.
I am not sure we will end up changing the way rage works with stance changes at this stage because I'm not sure we can solve the problems it causes without creating new ones. I could see a system where you always keep a minimum of rage and never lose more than a maximum of rage, but at that point the feature may be so convoluted that you have to ask why have rage change at all?
But I do want to thank those of you who engaged in the discussion exploring the pros and cons without just freaking out. (Source)
100 rage -> 50 rage; 90 rage -> 45 rage; 80 rage -> 40 rage; 70 rage -> 35 rage; 60 rage -> 30 rage; 50 rage -> 25 rage; 40 rage -> 20 rage (will always keep 20 rage upon changing stances if >= 20)
I understand that may get you what you want out of stance dancing, but it’s just not the kind of change we would be likely to do. Even if the tooltip was as simple as “divides your rage in half up to a minimum of 20,” that still requires a lot more quick calculation than just knowing “If I change stances, I will be at 10 rage.” We could probably make it work, but frankly, we’d rather just leave it as it is. We still want the foundation of the class to be changing stances to use specific abilities, but at the cost of most of your rage. I do think we can make stances more interesting though, and I've said that is something we are working on.
Heroic Leap removal
Quick positional movement of any kind is not a strength of most client – server based games. I will point out that it is typically the Charge glyph that causes most of the complaining because it adds just a little bit more distance. (Source)
Change heroic leap (I miss you!) to work like kitty leap ie. TARGETED, HOW FRIGGING HARD WOULD IT HAVE BEEN!
It would have been easy. We predicted that the response from the warrior community would be “Oh great, I get yet another charge with different art. Thanks Blizzard.” Kitty leap is valuable to druids because they had no other fast movement short of changing forms. Warriors already have 3 abilities to do that in different circumstances. Heroic Leap was interesting because it didn't require a target. Unfortunately, it also caused jumping through the world, cheating through walls, or getting stuck, none of which were worth whatever cool factor the talent would have brought. We might have the technology to do it in the future though. Pulling Heroic Leap doesn't mean we hate warriors or don't know what we want to do with them. It was just overly ambitious for the time. (Source)