Class Forums Scrapped in Place of Role Discussions

Well, I don’t think I’m alone when I say I didn’t see this coming. As of November 6th Blizzard will completely do away with each of the class discussion forums in place of 3 “role” discussion boards. These 3 boards will include:

• Tanking
• Healing
• Damage Dealing

I’ll be honest, I’m not all that happy about this change. I really have enjoyed the rogue forum community discussions, even as short sighted and rant-like as they could degenerate into…they were exciting never the less. It’s quite sad to see them go.

Here’s the Nethaera official announcement.

With the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King and the many changes the expansion brings to classes and mechanics, we have decided to update our forums to make it easier for players to hold constructive discussions. To that end, we have created three role-based forums — Tanking, Damage Dealing, and Healing. Why?

Common ground for common roles. The new structure provides central places for players of diverse classes and specs to discuss their common roles. Until now, there was no one obvious forum for a holy paladin to discuss Arena healing tactics with a restoration shaman, or for a protection warrior to talk tanking mechanics with a feral druid. This often led to splintered, fractured, and redundant discussions. In addition, the original class forum structure never properly took the impact of talents into account, lumping together a shadow priest and a holy priest (for example) when that didn’t necessarily make sense.

Celebrate diversity! While a tank tanks and a healer heals, the specific ways each class and talent build go about these roles are very distinct — and the addition of new abilities in Wrath of the Lich King will continue to add even more ways to play. The new forum structure will still be a place for a frost mage (for example) to discuss tricks of the trade with other frost mages, while at the same time facilitating an understanding of the unique tools that rogues or other damage-dealers have to perform similar functions.

Help us help you. The new forums will also allow the community team and developers to follow discussions and gather feedback more effectively as the game continues to evolve — which, ultimately, translates to a better World of Warcraft for you.

The current individual class forums will remain active for now, but this may change. You will be able to use the new role forums tomorrow via the links below:

Tanking:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=7287131

Healing:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=7287130

Damage Dealing:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=7287129

Meet Team Zug Gaming!

It’s been a while since my last “meet the team” post, and it’s well over due. So let’s get right to it.

Derek aka “Zuggy”

• Position: Administrator, Author, Editor, Web Designer
• Class Expertise: Rogue, Shaman
• Focus: All

Hello everyone, my name is Derek aka Zuggy, I’m the primary author and administrator here at Zug Gaming. I guess I’ll just hit all the bases really quick here…

• I’ve been playing WoW since open beta in October, 2004
• Raided as a part of a hardcore guild pre-BC, at it’s peak we ranked top 20 globally in boss kills
• During BC raided casually and focused primarily on PvP and arena
• Achieved the rank of gladiator on my rogue during arena seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4
• Ranked as high as top 50 globally in 2v2 during season 3 and achieved a high rating of 2420

I started Zug Gaming with one goal in mind, to help other gamers. I like to think I’ve achieved that goal, at least to some degree, but I know there’s more to be done. Knowing my work on the site can help other players out there is my driving force and the reason I always strive for perfection throughout my site.

But enough about me, let’s get onto the rest of Team Zug Gaming!

Check out Zuggy’s recent articles.

Jonny aka “Shadowscythe”

• Position: Author
• Class Expertise: Rogue
• Focus: Arena strategies

Jonny is truly one of the old guard, he’s seen Zug Gaming through the good times and bad and made numerous contributions to the site. Scythe primarily focuses on arena, PvP, and his experiences as a PvP rogue and casual raider.

Check out S-Scythe’s recent articles.

John aka “Donjo”

• Position: Author
• Class Expertise: Shaman, Mage
• Focus: News,class guides

John is long time friend and guild mate, he transferred to Smolderthorn (my server home) around the time the Burning Crusade launched and joined up with my guild, Gloryhogs. While John’s primary expertise is with his shaman and mage he has numerous level 70s including a rogue, hunter, and druid. His wide ranging class experience gives him a well balanced perspective on arena, PvE and more.

Check out Donjo’s recent articles.

Roope aka “Nalastai”

• Position: Author, PhP Coder
• Class Expertise: Paladin
• Focus: Class guides, PhP development

Roope is a relatively new addition to team Zug Gaming. His first few contributions have been centered around his primary expertise, the paladin class. In addition, he’s started work on a PhP arena point calculator for the site, which should be ready in the next few days.

Check out Nalastai’s recent articles.

Ty aka “Billtripod”

• Position: Author
• Class Expertise: Unkown
• Focus: Casual gaming, class guides

Ty is the newest member of the Zug Gaming team, so let’s give him a big welcome. Ty is a mature and enthusiastic college student and casual gamer. Ty will be contributing a selection of guides and articles, with a primary focus on casual gaming. I’m honored to have him on board and excited to see his first post.

Final Thoughts…

First and foremost I just want to say thanks…thanks to team Zug Gaming for all their contributions, thanks to the active forum members for helping to further build our community, and thanks to all my fans and readers for your support.

Without your help Zug Gaming wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is today. If you’re interested in joining team Zug Gaming as an author or other supportive role please feel free to drop me an email at support [at] zuggaming [dot] com, or simply click the contact link in the menu bar above.

Zug Gaming – State of the Site

Hey guys, so it’s been a pretty big couple of months here at Zug Gaming, especially with the expansion looming closer and closer every day. With the expansion so close I’ll be moving virtually all of my efforts on the site into content which will be better suited for the level 80 game and the Wrath of the Lich King.

Here’s a quick breakdown of a few things on my to-do list in the upcoming weeks and months:

• Instance / Dungeon guides for all 5 / 10 / 25 man instances in WotLK, including as many videos as possible
• Arena guides and strategies for as many comps and make ups as possible; many of the guides currently on the site will be updated to reflect new strategies for these teams
• Much more complete talent spec guides, including arena, raiding, world pvp, leveling, farming, etc.
• Updated macro guides for all classes, including focus macros
• These are just a few of the major points I’ve planned for the expansion, I’m sure there will be numerous additional guides I haven’t even thought of yet.

Note on Frequency of Content Postings:

As many of you know, I’ve been running this site for nearly a year and a half now, with 95+ percent of all content being produced solely by myself. I do my best to continue to create new strategies and update existing guides as often as possible. However, increasing collegiate obligations may hinder my ability to update the site as often as I would like.

Join the Team!

Zug Gaming is always looking for well spoken and intelligent gamers to join the team. As a part of the Zug Gaming team you’ll have the opportunity to have your voice heard by thousands of gamers every day! There is no subject matter I’m not looking for…

• Arena Guides
• Opinion / Rant column
• Video Reviews
• Talent Spec Break downs
• Class Guides
• Profession Guides
• Instance Strategies
• and much more!

If you’re interested in helping Zug Gaming continue to grow please don’t hesitate to contact me via email at support (at) zuggaming (dot) com, or just click the contact button above.

WotLK Pre-Launch Event Begins!

The new Wrath of the Lich King pre-launch event has begun on all US servers. Zombies are spawning throughout the world and are infecting the citizens of Azeroth!

Currently we are in Phase 1 of the zombie invasion.  You can become infected by getting attacked by another person who is a zombie, zombie NPCs that spawn, or conspicuous crates.  Once you are infected you will gain 5 zombie abilities and become a member of a special zombie faction.  You can now attack members of either horde or alliance and you become friendly to all other zombies.  You will lose the zombie effect if you die or if you get cured.

Here is what is known so far:

• Caution, NPCs can become infected too, and they will transform into a ghoul of the same level.  This is especially dangerous for areas with elite guards in the cities.
  
• While as a ghoul, there is a constant DoT effect killing you; you must attack other players or NPCs to proc the “Bite” spell, which will heal you.  If you die to an NPC while a ghoul, you will lose durability.
• While infected, even going near an Argent Healer will cause them to cure you.
• From all accounts thus far, you become a zombie of your level, so low level players will have lower health and overall stats as a zombie than level 70 players.

Here is an official mini-FAQ posted by Bornakk:

FAQ

Q: How do I become a zombie?
A: Disease-infected crates are scattered throughout the cities of Azeroth, spreading a sickness that transforms its sufferers into zombies. And of course, when zombies attack, their victims can be afflicted by the disease as well.

Q: How do you stop being a zombie?
A: The disease can be cured by other players who can cast ‘Cure Disease’ or by special healer NPCs in the cities. Once the disease has run its course and a character has become a zombie, the only cure is death.

Q: Can I become a zombie again?
A: Yes.

Q: As a zombie, what are some things I can/cannot do?
A: You can no longer cast the spells/abilities that you had as a normal character, and formerly friendly NPCs now consider you an enemy. You can, however, cast new, unique zombie spells.

Q: Anything else I should know while being a zombie?
A: As a zombie, you are part of a special faction that is friendly with all zombies and can converse with them, regardless of whether they were part of the Horde or Alliance in their mortal existences.

Stay tuned to Zuggaming.com to see how the event unfolds.  As details surface, we will keep you updated!

Late Night Blue Posts – WotLK Class Changes and Boss Armor

Upcoming Frost Changes

We have concerns about how bursty dps has become in PvP. On the other hand, we’re pretty happy with mage dps in PvE so we want to take care not to hurt it.

For example, we discussed shifting some of Arcane’s damage between Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage, but that actually does hurt one of Arcane’s PvE advantages over Fire — namely to be able to move around while doing some instant spells.

In the case of Frost, however, we have become concerned that it’s too easy to blow opponents up too quickly. Two of the culprits here are instant, uninterruptible Fireballs and Deep Freeze.

We are changing Brain Freeze to only proc off of Frost spells that can chill. Specifically, this limits the tactic of trying to fish for procs with Ice Lance. Ice Lance gets used a lot more in PvP, so we don’t think this will hurt Frost as much in PvE.

Secondly, Cold as Ice no longer reduces the cooldown on Deep Freeze. Deep Freeze is an (ahem) cool spell and we don’t want to nerf it too much, but you must admit that the poor frozen shmuck can endure a lot of damage while he is locked up.

Upcoming Warlock DPS Changes

We have finished a fairly comprehensive look at the dps of various classes and specs and are concerned that warlock dps isn’t quite where it should be. It’s not abysmal by any means, but we think it should be a little higher.

To give warlocks a little extra nudge in PvP, we increased Soul Link up to 20% from 15%. You may already have this change.

In PvE, overall, we just think a lot of classes benefitted from getting the warlock buffs a little more than the locks benefited from getting everyone else’s buffs. So we decided to just buff lock damage across the board (which will also help in PvP somewhat). Rather than change damage and coefficients of a lot of different ranks of spells, we just inflated talents that we were almost certain you’d already have. Shadow Mastery, Demonic Tactics and Emberstorm were all increased by 1% per rank for 5% total.

Let us know how that feels. The changes should go live before Nov 13.

Recent Fury Changes

As I posted recently in the hunter forums, we increased the armor on level 83 raid bosses by 10%. This will be a nerf to warrior dps.

In the case of Arms and Protection, we don’t think any adjustment is necessary at this time. Arms is doing very competitive dps, while Fury has fallen behind. We experimented with lowering the proc chance of Sudden Death, from where Arms gets a lot of its damage, but weren’t happy with the result and ultimately decided to buff Fury instead.

First, we increased the percentage of AP that contributes to Bloodthirst from 45% to 50%.

Second, we reduced the hit penalty on special attacks on Titan’s Grip from -12% to -5%.

As I have said before, we have been somewhat reluctant to give Titan’s Grip such a huge buff. It is now likely more powerful than several other talents in the tree and risks being the 51-point talent to which all other classes compare their 51-point talent. Nevertheless, we feel it was the right change to make.

When a Fury warrior missed a Slam or Bloodthirst on a boss, they ended up building up a lot of extra rage that couldn’t be spent fast enough. I understand some players suggested an additional attack for Fury, and that is something we may still consider when we see players hit 80 and start experimenting more with the build. But it would be a very big change that involved touching talent trees and glyphs, as well as a lot of time necessary to iterate on the right values. The Titan’s Grip change by contrast was a simple one, and judging by the number of players who have asked for it throughout beta, one that will be welcomed by the community.

Upcoming Hunter Changes

As I have suggested a few times, we are concerned that hunters of all 3 specs are doing damage that is clearly superior to other classes. While we’re trying to achieve closer parity among specs of all classes with regard to dps, and we want to particularly make sure that hunters, rogues, mages and locks are not left behind, we do think the hunters are too far ahead, particularly at 80, in good gear, when raid-buffed.

However, we have also tried to give hunters a substantial survivability boost in PvP and we don’t want to do anything that hurts them too much in PvP.

So here are changes you will most likely see soon:

1) Ranged attacks no longer benefit from the haste effects of Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons. This is a nerf to hunter white damage.

2) We are also improving the armor on level 83 raid bosses by 10%. This will be a nerf to the dps of any class that does physical damage. For classes that would slide behind with such a change, we’ll take steps to adjust them — though it probably isn’t as many as you think. The raid buff stacking overhaul was very beneficial to melee (and hunters). Sunder / Expose Armor alone can be a 20%+ dps increase, which is why we decided to attack the problem from this angle.

3) Now the armor change won’t affect PvP at all and the haste buff change will only have a marginal affect in BGs and only in Arena teams that include certain comps. However, in order to make sure we didn’t nerf hunters too much, we made two changes to Disengage. First, its cooldown dropped to 25 sec (from 30) which can be talented to 16. Second, it no longer requires a target, but does require you to be in combat. Now if someone closes to melee, you can leap back without having to select them first. We require you to be in combat though so we don’t see a lot of hunters bouncing around IF / Org or using it like Blink to goofily speed up travel.

Boss Armor Change

As I have posted a couple of times recently, we decided to raise the armor of level 83 raid bosses by 10% to correct for some dps difference between casters and melee + hunters. I wanted to address the issue head on with the rogues.

We have done a lot of testing recently, and concluded that even with this change, Assassination rogues are likely the top dps spec in the game against single bosses that don’t move around a lot (like Patchwerk). This isn’t a bad place for them to be. They pay a small price both for being melee (where more damage tends to occur) and for lacking the ability to respec into a non-damage build. We don’t think they will be as far above hybrids as they have been before — as I’ve posted before, it’s very important that hybrid classes do higher dps now that their buffs do not stack.

Combat builds, especially swords, is competitive but probably behind Assassination. This is something we’d like to address, especially if it turns out to be a major difference between the specs. Additional armor does hurt Combat, but also remember it’s just raid bosses and not other players (or trash or heroic bosses).

Subtelty, sadly, is just much harder to test since so much of their damage relies on other players. Our preliminary evidence is that they generate plenty of combo points from Honor Among Thieves, but this might mean their personal dps when not in a group suffers. This is something we’re still testing.

I will add that some players have wondered if Honor Among Thieves is bugged since the cp can occur more often than 1 sec. In this case, the tooltip is just unclear. When Jimmy the Shaman crits, he cannnot “send you” a combo point more often than 1 per sec. But if you have lots of players critting all the time, you can build them up quickly. So Honor is (here it comes) working as intended.

Arena Season 4 Titles – Likely Calculated Wrong

Today was the big day for arena season 4 rewards, nether drakes and titles were sent out to players who qualified. However, there has been much discussion in the last few hours on the official blizzard forums regarding the title calculation.

Many players are reporting that they were within the cut offs for various titles (myself included) and were not awarded the appropriate rank. So far blizzard has yet to confirm these assertions, and only said they are investigating further.

Based in the frequency of such reports and the fact that this miscalculation has occurred…well, every single arena season, I would imagine these reports are geniunie and a recalculation of titles and nether drakes will be conducted later this week.

WotLK Rogue Developer Q & A

Just a brief foreword. I know I normally put all of my commentary at the top, but I think I’m going to try a new point to point analysis breakdown. Blizzard text, like always, will be in blue, and my commentary and analysis points will be in green.

Like what you plan to do with sub?
We recently made some changes to boost it, such as moving Dual-Wield Spec to tier 1 combat.

Sub is a very interesting spec right now. It still feels quite a bit weaker than combat or mutilate, but it’s got a lot of potential I think, especially if used in the correct environement. I’m very interested to see how the build preforms at 80 with all the new abilities and a full 71 talent points.

Why is hemo so bad?
It has a great debuff that boosts raid damage. It’s not intended to be Sinister Strike.

Hemo is not bad, this is a common misconception many rogue players have. With a 51 point sub build you’re looking at a 30 energy move vs. sinister strike which is a 40 energy move. The damage to energy ratio is appropriate, especially considering the debuff.

Why is Shadow Dance dagger only?
We agree with the above comment that it can do a lot of different things. You may just be focusing too much on it as a +dps cooldown.

I agree 100% with the blue poster here, this is another common misconception of shadow dance. Players focus so much on the spam ambush aspect of it they forget how powerful an extra garrote or premed cheap shot can be during a fight. I’ve been playing the build (with swords) since 3.0.2 went live and I’m loving this talent for this aspect. I’ll have a more complete write up on the build later this week.

Whether you feel rogue mobility is fine?
Rogues have a lot going for them in the way of stuns, damage avoidance and “get out of jail” cards. When you get up on other classes, they do have a tendency to die. We’re not sure we want rogues to also be zipping around the battlefield like warriors.

Yes…(sarcastic), we shouldn’t be “zipping around the battlefield like warriors.” 15 second intercept is broken beyond all belief, particularly for arena. Any scrub can successfully play a warrior with mobility like that. I’d trade mobility for lockdown any day.

What is happening with Lightning Reflexes?
We mentioned this as a possible change (or perhaps we even promised it — I don’t recall) but it didn’t materialize because we found other knobs to turn in combat that felt better during playtesting. Because LR is a passive talent, the side benefits would also end up being passive.

Nothing to say here, who cares about LR, I haven’t picked up this talent in years.

What is the deal with the Glyph of Sprint?
If I understand the qustion, I think it’s just a tooltip bug. The glyph was made before the base cooldown of Sprint was lowered from 5 minutes to 3 minutes (2 min talented). If that’s not the issue, can you elaborate a little more?

The dev is wrong, the glyph is bugged, but it’s an irrelevant question as they are changing the glyph of sprint anyway to increase speed at which you sprint and reduce the duration, effectively making it worthless.

Why is there a major glyph of feint?
Basically, rogues have relatively few abilities, and we were desperate for something that wouldn’t have serious PvP balance ramifications. I agree this might be a good candidate for a minor glyph. Remember that we are going to be adding a lot more glyphs over time. You shouldn’t view this as one of your very few useful glyphs is less useful, because you’ll eventually have a lot of choices.

Yet again, another pointless glyph.

Why is Fan of Knives so weak with daggers, and even weak with swords?
It’s designed to give you a button to hit when you want to AE. It’s not supposed to turn you into an AE class, if that makes sense.

See my notes here on fan of knives changes.

Are you happy with Hunger For Blood being horrible for PvP, and like the old Rampage for PvE?
No, not completely. We understand that CC + a short duration limit how often you can benefit from it. Obviously, we think removing MS and Hamstring was a little too good, just because those are generally hard debuffs to get out of.

Nothing really to say here yet, I haven’t personally played the build on live. I’ve heard these complaints before and they appear to be justified, but I’d like to get some experience with the build before I start talking about it’s flaws or successes.

How exactly are expose, mind numbing and wound major raid utility, when they so obviously are not?
Couple of things here, and forgive me for being a little brief.

First, I am reading between the lines a little here that it would be really nice to have a unique buff or debuff. Everyone asks for that, but it defeats the whole point.

Second, Expose is one of the strongest debuffs in the game. The dps increase can be 30% or more. So I suspect what you’re really getting at is that “we’ll always have a warrior with us doing that debuff.” The whole point of the revamp is we can’t assume you have anyone but we still want you to be able to get the buff. Mind Numbing is a cast speed debuff that is only offered by one other class (that doesn’t even exist in the game at the moment). Granted, it doesn’t offer the benefit of Expose. Wounding Poison offers the strongest debuff in the game for PvP, and also offers some dps to not over-penalize rogues who are balanced around poison damage.

Third, ultimately we still want raids to want rogues because they bring good dps. We just don’t want it to feel that only the rogues (hunters, mages and locks) are doing the group’s dps.

This massive block of text sounds more like a complete cop out for…”just kidding, we aren’t giving rogues real raid utility, see you in the next expansion!”.

Will there be a mutilate/HFB/cold blood/Assassination oriented glyph made before release?
Probably. We do want to add more glyphs over time, just like new gems started to show up in BC.

Rhetorical, why do players waste the dev’s times with questions like these? Side note: is it ironic that I would respond rhetorically to a rhetorical statement?

Overkill – why is it the pre-req to mutilate?
It’s always a hard call to decide what prereqs to what. We do like talent prereqs, and it seems like a good talent regardless. Are you wanting to skip it?

Quite ironic that mutilate rogues would be crying. Assassination is decked top to bottom with kick ass talents, most which would be 5/5 stars…so the 4/5 star talents just seem like filler now.

2. It has been stated that there is a plan to still have some poison immune mob/bosses in WotLK, what can a mutilate rogue do during these situations. Mages were helped with frostfire to combat the fire immune/frost immune mobs, but the poison requirement on mutilate still exist and when dealing with poison immune mobs, we’re(for the lack of a better term) seriously screwed in our dps. I still don’t understand why our signature move(for assassination) still has this requirement when it still cost 60 energy.
Poisons are what the rogues are balanced around, so we need to be pretty careful about that now. I can’t promise there won’t be any poison immune bosses — resistance and immunity are things we can change on a boss to make the fight play out pretty differently from the previous boss. But there won’t be a lot of them.

This is a valid issue, but one which I think blizzard understands and is fully capable of balancing encounters and talent specs around. I don’t expect mutilate rogues will have many issues dealing with poison immune encounters.

WotLK Rogue Changes – Patch 3.0.3

Nothing too game breaking for this round of rogue changes, though it’s certainly nice to get some clarification. Specifically regarding fan of knives, which has been somewhat of mystery for some time now. I like the idea of giving rogues more AoE potential, it could certainly create some new and exciting changes in both PvE and PvP. We’ll have to see exactly where blizzard puts the damage at in a couple of days when these changes go live on the PTR.

When will Shadow Dance fixed?
I think I said before that changing the bar won’t happen soon. It will be after Nov 13 and Lich King ships. The change to the cooldown on the openers should be in now on beta and very soon on live.

Balance Fan of Knives
We’d love to get rogue AE higher if we can do it where Fan is only used for AE and not as a general part of the single-target rotation. Also note that comparing anyone to a Ret paladin recently, and especially at 70, isn’t going to be a great comparison. Elemental isn’t designed to have an advantage over mage single-target dps, but rogues should have an advantage over warrior single-target dps.

Combat Potency and Fan of Knives Synergy
So it turns out the Combat Potency change to nerf Shiv also keeps Fan of Knives from generating Energy. Making the cooldown zero might do weird things to PvP when a rogue stands there and throws out knives to attempt break stealth. But we can probably lower it to 10 sec or so. That’s Thunderclap / Whirlwind range.

Hemorrhage vs. Sinister Strike
But the charges are the entire point. Hemo is supposed to be a debuff, not an alternative to Sinister Strike. It in fact yields better damage per energy than Sinister Strike untalented and it’s only the talents that prop up the latter ability. Adding more Hemo talents just gives you another high dps, spammable attack.

It is true that the rogue personally may not benefit a lot from Hemo when the charges get used up correctly. I think the attitude that that is “bad” just stems from the “winning the damage meters” mentality, not whether the ability helps you beat the boss. I’m not saying that looking at damage meters makes you shallow. I understand a nearsighted raid leader may not take you if your personal dps is low, but we’re also not sure what to do about that until we can come up with some kind of “raid contribution” measurement that includes your buffs and debuffs.

Patch 3.0.3 News and Changes Compiled

PTR 3.0.3 News Compiled

• New / Updated Glyphs
  
• Class Changes
• Retribution Paladin Nerfs
• Hunter Aspect / Pet Changes

Recent Blue Posts

• Ghostcrawler on Dots, Glyphs, Balance and More

Dual Spec Information

As a few people have pointed out, hardcore raiding guilds already respec in between bosses. All it takes is a little bit of patience, gold and maybe a warlock. The new feature just takes some of the busy work out of it by remembering say what spell you had on button 2 or button 3.

What the new feature really is supposed to do is let you change your mind. Oh, I was going to PvP tonight but now my buddies want to do Naxx 10 instead. I can flip on the fly instead of having to run back to Org or IF to respec and get summoned.

Very skilled or “into it” dps players absolutely can maximize their trash or boss dps through their spec. In fact, you hear a lot that certain talents aren’t good for bosses because they do things like improve your down time, AE or survivability. But all of those things can be great for fast clears. Players also sometimes say (silly) things like how they only care about how they perform on a boss. But if you want to do something like the LK equivalent of a ZA fast clear for the bear mount, you need to be fast across the board, not just on the 4 bosses. Players wipe on trash too.

We’re not going to make crazy fights where we expect the entire raid to respec into something weird. That was even asked at Blizzcon and the guy in charge of all of the boss design said simply “No” in reply. If we can’t assume you have a warrior or druid tanking, then we can’t assume you have a mage with an obscure talent build or 12 healers or something else abnormal.

Having to run to town to respec all the time between two common specs was a burden, just like pots and drums were a burden. Very few players enjoyed having to farm consumables for their raid night. (Though to be fair, some did). Players may have enjoyed the advantage those consumables might have given them, but of course they forget that the encounters were designed around the expectation that the group was chain potting and doing drum rotations. The encounters should be of similar difficulty, with the major change being that you don’t have to farm (as much).

Likewise, I understand that some players like having to commit to a talent spec at least for the night. Those players may feel that this is a “catering to the casuals” decision, but it’s one we think is right for the game. The different needs, for example, of PvE and PvP combat were putting a lot of constraints on the design of talent trees. Every talent needed to be very useful in both modes, which also tended to make them overbudget. That’s not the only reason for the feature, but it’s still a good one.

We won’t let you change specs within an Arena or BG, nor will we let you do it in combat of any kind. When the feature is fleshed out more, we’ll let you know more details.

Living Bomb Change

We still like Living Bomb. We realize not everyone does, and that’s cool. Not every spell or ability in the game is going to appeal to everyone and players are constantly re-designing spells into something they’d rather see.

However, we do think the mana cost on Living Bomb is too high, and we’ll be lowering it to something more like Arcane Explosion.

Restoration Shaman Mana Longevity

Teams stacking all dps do seem like they might be too dominant at the moment. We’re going to keep an eye on it for a little longer, but it is something we’re concerned about. One of the things I like about Arena is that healing strategy and tactics are a really big deal (vs. say BGs where it’s more about just killing stuff).

Enhancement Shaman DPS Changes

Right now, Enhancement dps is very high. If we changed say UR, we’d have to also nerf Enhancement dps to make up for the extra talent points you’d get to spend. It is something we want to take a look at, but there are also classes and specs right now whose dps is too low that need more attention.

Titans Grip, 12% Miss Rate

It should be fixed before Lich King itself goes live. That depends a little on what other issues crop up over the next few days that need more urgent attention. But the plan is to get all of those changes out soon.

Warlock Demonologist Changes

The Felguard magic damage reduction now extends to Holy. I believe this was hotfixed yesterday.

Typically we don’t change Holy resistance (which this is not), but it’s consistent with other damage reduction abilities (which this is) to reduce all magic damage. This should help warlocks stand up to paladins in particular in PvP.

PTR Patch 3.0.3 Class Changes

Death Knight

Frost

• Deathchill – Buff only lasts 30 seconds.
• Improved Icy Talons – Now increases melee and ranged attack speed instead of just melee speed.
• Rune Strike – Cost increased to 20 Runic Power.
• Tundra Stalker – Now increases your expertise by 1/2/3/4/5. Down from 2/4/6/8/10. No longer affects Icy Touch.
• Improved Icy Touch – Frost Fever reduces melee and ranged attack speed by an additional 1%. Down from 2%. Last 2 ranks listed as 0% reduction.
• Frigid Dreadplate – Now just reduces the chance melee attacks will hit you by 1/2/3%.
• Black Ice – Tooltip updated to reflect only affecting Frost damage.
• Chains of Ice – Now the target regains 10% of their movement each second for 10 sec. Changed from the target regains 5% of their movement each second. Lasts for 20 sec.

Unholy

• Death Coil – Rank 2 values reduced to 208 Shadow damage to an enemy target or healing 312.0 damage from 272 Shadow damage to an enemy target or healing 408.0 damage.
• Summon Gargoyle – Cost increased to 50 Runic Power. Now persists for 10 sec plus 1 sec per 8 runic power up to 60 sec. Changed from 1 sec per 8 runic power up to 60 sec.
• Corpse Explosion – Now has a 30 yard range.
• Unholy Blight – No longer makes targets considered diseased. All ranks had a slight damage increase.
• Crypt Fever – Now increases disease damage taken by the target by 10/20/30%. Changed from increases the damage of other diseases on the target by 20/40/60%.

Druid

Balance

• Eclipse – Now on proc, increases damage done by Wrath by 20%. Up from 10%. Critical strike chance with Starfire increased by 30%. Up from 15%.
• Earth and Moon – Increases spell damage taken by 4/9/13% for 12 sec. Also increases your spell damage by 1/2/3%. Changed from Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow damage and 5 ranks.
• Moonfury – Changed to 3 ranks, 3/6/10%.

Feral

• Predatory Instincts – No longer affects Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.
• Growl – Cooldown reduced to 8 seconds. Down from 10.

Restoration

• Improved Tree of Life – Now increases your armor contribution from items while in Tree of Life Form by 33%. Changed from overall armor increase.

Hunters

Marksmanship

• Improved Barrage – Now affects Aimed Shot.
• Barrage – Now affects Aimed Shot.

Beast Mastery

• Ferocious Inspiration – Now raid wide.
• Aspect of the Viper – Melee attacks now also generate mana. In addition, you gain 4% of maximum mana every 3 sec added to the description.
• Animal Handler – Increases your pet’s expertise by 5/10. Changed from 2% chance to hit.

Survival

• Disengage – Down to 5% base mana from 14%.

Pets

• Fire Breath – Now has a 20 yard range.
• Stampede – Damage ranges increased, max rank is 182 to 246 damage up from 91 to 123.
• Thunderstomp – Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Spore Cloud – Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Lightning Breath – Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Monstrous Bite – Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Poison Spit – Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Tendon Rip – Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Savage Rend – Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Sting – Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Snatch – Focus cost reduced to 20 from 40.
• Ravage – Damage ranges increased, max rank is 106 to 150 damage up from 89 to 125.
• Lava Breath – Damage ranges increased, max rank is 128 to 172 damage up from 64 to 86. Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25
• Rake – Damage ranges decreased, max rank is 24 to 34 damage down from 59 to 83. Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25
• Acid Spit – Damage ranges increased, max rank is 124 to 176 damage up from 62 to 88. Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Froststorm Breath – Damage ranges increased, max rank is 128 to 172 damage up from 64 to 86. Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Swipe – Damage ranges increased, max rank is 90 to 126 damage up from 60 to 84. Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Gore – Damage ranges added, max rank is 122 to 164 damage. Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.
• Scorpid Poison – Rank 6 damage reduced to 18 to 40 from 34 to 80. Focus cost reduced to 20 from 25.

Mage

Arcane

• Arcane Blast – Down to 8% base mana from 9%.
• Arcane Missiles – Higher ranks down to 31% base mana from 34%. Lowest ranks down to 37% base mana from 41%.
• Arcane Explosion – Higher ranks down to 22% base mana from 25%. Lowest ranks down to 27% base mana from 30%.

Fire

• Frostfire Bolt – Down to 14% base mana from 16%.
• Living Bomb – Down to 25% base mana from 31%.
• Fireball – Higher ranks down to 19% base mana from 21%. Lowest ranks down to 23% mana from 25%.

Frost

• Frostbolt – Higher ranks down to 13% base mana from 15%. Lowest ranks down to 16% mana from 8%.

Paladin

Holy

• Enlightened Judgements – Now increases the range of your Judgement spells by 15/30 yards. Up from 10/25.
• Infusion of Light – Now reduces the cast time of your next Flash of Light by .75/1.5 sec.
• Judgement of Light – Wording changed to “attacks and spells” from “attacks”.
• Judgements of the Pure – Now increases your casting and melee haste by 3/6/9/12/15%. Up from 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Judgement of Wisdom – Now has a chance to restore 2% of the attacker’s maximum mana.

Protection

• Shield of Righteousness – Rank 2, level 80 added. Slam the target with your shield, causing Holy damage equal to your block value plus 400. This spell causes a high amount of threat.
• Hammer of the Righteous – Now causes 4 times your main hand damage. Up from 3.
• Shield of the Templar – Now also reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3%.

Retribution

• Sanctified Retribution – Damage caused by targets affected by Retribution Aura is increased by 3%. Up from 2%.

Priest

Holy

• Divine Providence – Now also reduces the cooldown of your Prayer of Mending by 6/12/18/24/30%.

Shadow

• Devouring Plague – Max rank does 1088 damage, down from 1216.
• Improved Vampiric Embrace – Now increases the healing received from Vampiric Embrace by 33/67%. Up from 5/10%.
• Vampiric Embrace – Changed to allow you to be healed for 15% and other party members to be healed for 3% of any Shadow spell damage you deal.
• Shadowform – Now also allows for your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch abilities deal increased percentage damage equal to your spell critical strike chance.

Rogue

Combat

• Combat Potency – Changed to autoattacks from attacks.

Subtlety

• Shadow Dance – Removed from description, Those abilities each gain a cooldown of 2.0 sec. Lasts 10 sec.

Shaman

Elemental

• Lava Burst – Max rank now does 1192 to 1518 Fire damage, up from 1082 to 1378 Fire damage.
• Thunderstorm – Now returns 8% mana, up from 5%.
• Storm Reach – Now increases the range of Lava Burst as well.
• Improved Fire Nova Totem – Now increases the damage done by your Fire Nova Totem by 10/20%, and your Fire Nova totem has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets damaged by your Fire Nova Totem for 2 sec.
• Totem of Wrath – Now increases spell power by X instead of damage done by spells and effects by X.

Enhancement

• Static Shock – Now procs off any damage, instead of melee attacks and abilities.

Restoration

• Tidal Waves – Now affects Riptide.
• Riptide – Max rank healing increased to 1604 to 1736 and another 1002 over 15 sec from 1015 to 1099 and another 477 over 15 sec.

Warlock

Affliction

• Everlasting Affliction – Changed to gain an additional 5% of your bonus spell damage. Down from gaining 1/2/3/4/5% of your bonus spell damage effects each time they inflict damage.
• Haunt – Cooldown lowered to 8 seconds from 10.

Demonology

• Inferno – The following removed from description. Once control is lost, the Infernal must be Enslaved to maintain control. Can only be used outdoors.

Destruction

• Shadowflame – Rank 2 went to 615 to 671 Shadow damage and an additional 644 Fire damage from 363 to 397 Shadow damage and an additional 212 Fire damage. Rank 1 buffed as well.
• Improved Shadow Bolt – Now increases overall damage. Changed from damage against the target.

Warrior

Arms

• Improved Rend – Now increases the bleed damage done by your Rend ability by 10/20%. Down from 25/50%.
• Sudden Death – Proc chance reduced to 3/6/9%. Down from 10/20/30%.
• Rend – All ranks saw a slight damage reduction. If used while your target is above 75% health, Rend does 35% more damage. Additional damage now scales better [1.0 * MWB + mwb / 2.0 + AP / 14.0 * MWS] up from [0.29999998 * MWB + mwb / 2.0 + AP / 14.0 * MWS].

Fury

• Bloodthirst – Cooldown reduced to 5 seconds, down from 6.
• Titan’s Grip – Chance to miss decreased to 12% from 15%.

Protection

• Shield Bash – Now dazes the target.

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