Class Forums Will Remain

In typical Blizzard fashion the devs have decided to pull a complete 180 after announcing that the class forums will be removed in place in “role forums”. The role forums are still going into effect, but the class forums will remain as they are.

We have decided that the class forums will stay along with the new role-based forums.

To be clear, the primary purpose of the class forums will be for players to present information to other players. The developers will not have a large presence there except to moderate. If you want to discuss class balance, this is the place.

If you want to discuss optimal dps rotations, try and decide on a talent spec, or ask someone what gear you should be using at level 70, class forums work great for that.

If you start a long thread in the class forums about how your class is the weakest on in the game or how you can’t beat mages in PvP, those threads will probably get locked or deleted. Those discussions belong here where you will have to contend with other players who just might disagree (as well as the blues).

Source: Blizzard

Mage WotLK Talents & Developer Q & A

Another massive Q and A post from Ghostcrawler. She has done a great job already working with many of classes and now she’s finally making it to the mage class, particularly the information regarding the new spell frostfire bolt.

Initially I really didn’t understand the purpose of such a spell, guessing that most mages would opt for a standard fire, frost or arcane build, which still may be the case. That said, these changes and their implications do make it a much more lucrative spell and spec for mages to work with. Potentially bringing it on par with the 3 primary builds.

One of the biggest issues for mages during the Burning Crusade was the complete and utter lack of mana longevity. While it doesn’t appear blizzard has a definite fix implemented yet GC did mention they are very aware of this problem and taking steps to correct it. With renewed mana longevity in addition to the many other changes coming in WotLK should really make for a much more balanced and dynamic class in the expansion.

Torment of the Weak Explained

Some talents are just harder to implement than they appear. What we think we can do with Torment of the Weak is instead let a certain number of spells (say the ones you want to use a lot) get the damage bonus. That keeps the basic idea intact in a way that we know will work.

Frostfire Bolt Creation

We created Frostfire Bolt for 3 reasons:

1. An interesting new spell that would cause a lot of exploration into which talents, gear and rotations benefited the best
2. A solution for those fights in which a Frost mage shows up to a Frost-immune fight
   
3. the keystone for a new Frost + Fire “elemental” build. If you want to go respec every fight, you can still do that. But with Frostfire, you should be able to do a lot more damage than if you hadn’t respec’d at all.

WotLK Mage Q & A with Ghostcrawler

Will mages continue to have mana issues as much as they do currently, or is something planned to help?

Yes, we are working on mage mana issues. They seem to run out too fast.

Will mages be expected to be dominant AoE DPS? Or is AoE DPS also being flattened across the board?

Great AE damage isn’t a good niche in a game with so many single-target fights. Your AE will be good, but so will that of warlocks and moonkin. We won’t keep your single target dps down in order to justify high AE dps.

Will Frost be able to dps as strongly if not more strongly than Arc/Fire in PvE? Or is that still the PvP spec?

We would like to see similar dps from all 3 trees. However, if you go for a heavy PvP build (in any tree), you will probably sacrifice some dps to get there.

Will Arcane Blast be modified so it can be used as a main nuke? Or is that ship sunk?

We want Arcane Blast to be used a lot. It’s not Pyro.

Scaling plagued mages throughout BC, will this be closely examined so it doesn’t repeat in WOTLK?

Yes. We aren’t happy with what happened to mages in BT and Sunwell.

Will Evocation ever be updated? Lowered Cooldown? Made like Innervate instead of channeled?

I don’t know the answer to that yet. I think Evo is fine if mages don’t run out of mana in 5 seconds. Evo could be part of that solution or not.

Will Frostfire bolt be given a purpose, now that double dipping is gone. Is it simply an “immunity” fight fallback?

No, we want it to be the kind of spell you can use all the time. But we want to get Frost, Fire and Arcane feeling good first.

Will ignite ever be fixed (ignite “munching”)?

We are aware of the problem (of course). It’s just not easy to fix.

Will the Water Elemental get more survivability? More resist? More +hit? More scaling?

All pets should inherit the hit of the master now.

Will mages have purpose other than dps in raids so that so called “hybrid” classes won’t fill in the mage spots after the single obligatory Winters Chill/Food/Scorch mage has been invited?

Just be better / do more dps than those other classes and you’ll earn a spot. We’re not going to give you a reason other than that that someone HAS to take you.

Is the numbers pass starting soon? We’re worried that you may be running short (5 weeks) on time to properly see data regarding the dps passes.

We’ve been in the middle of it for weeks. Don’t worry about the time. We don’t. If we looked at the ship date as a deadline, then we’d get sloppy and do dumb things. The truth is that in an MMO, game balance is a process not a destination. Even after the patch goes live, we’ll have opporunities to make changes before you can head to Northrend. With all the changes we’ve made, there are going to have to be some quick patches to fix things we missed. And overall we’d like to address balance problems that do erupt in a more timely fashion - consider, before we could always say “Eh, they’ll still take the X for his Y buff even if his dps is low.” We can’t say that anymore. Now we just have to get stuff fixed.

More WotLK Rogue Changes

If you’re having a hard time keeping up with the flood of changes pouring in, well I can’t blame you…there seems to be some sort of game breaking change every 12-24 hours. Make sure you check out my full WotLK News Wrap Up to get caught up on all these changes.

Take a look below at the newest changes to the rogue class.

Overall I’m very happy with these changes. One of my biggest concerns with the last round of rogue changes was changing cloak of shadows from 1 minute to 2, but they’ve split the difference at 90 seconds now (with elusiveness taking it down by 30 seconds with 2 points). I think this is a fair change to both rogues and casters alike.

Additionally the disarm trap range is awesome, and well over due. The whole disarming trap mechanic has been a joke since it was introduced, but this change should really help add a new level of hunter vs. rogue intrigue.

The rest of the changes, which are mostly talent combines and tree position movements, look pretty solid. It should give the rogue class many additional options as far as hybrid specs are concerned. Ideally I’d love to see changes like this with other classes, as it further helps to escape the endless cycle of cookie cutter perfection that WoW talent builds have been sucked into.

General

• Cloak of Shadows cooldown changed to 1.5 min.
• Disarm Trap range increased to 20 yds, cast time reduced to 1 sec, now requires stealth.
• (NEW – Level 75) Tricks of the Trade: The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage caused by the target is increased by 15% during this time. 30 sec cooldown. (Surprise! Yes, this is the new group/raid utility ability. We haven’t put any stacking protection on it yet but we’ll need one type of solution or other to prevent the need for 5 rogue Trick rotations. Note also that you cannot use this ability on yourself.)

Assassination

• Vigor moved to Tier 3.
• Relentless Strikes moved to Subtlety Tier 1, made 5 ranks for 4/8/12/16/20% chance.
• Murder moved to Tier 6, now increases damage by 2/4%.
• (NEW – Tier 7) Overkill: Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy.
• Focused Attacks and Turn the Tables have swapped locations.
• Master Poisoner moved to Tier 9, no longer increases chance to hit with poison attacks, now increases the critical hit chance of all attacks made against any target you have poisoned by 1/2/3% and reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 17/34/50%. (This does not stack with the Paladin talent Heart of the Crusader.)
• Hunger for Blood duration increased to 30 seconds.

Combat

• Precision now also increases chance to hit with poison attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%.
• Nerves of Steel will now reduce damage taken while stunned or feared by 15/30% rather than reducing duration.
• Improved Sprint moved to Tier 4.
• Blade Twisting now slows movement speed by 70%.
• Mace Specialization now ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
• Throwing Specialization now also has a chance to interrupt target when Fan of Knives is used.
• Unfair Advantage: Whenever you dodge an attack you strike back for 50/100% of your main hand weapon’s damage.
• Stay of Execution removed, replaced with Blood Poisoning.
• (NEW – Tier 9) Blood Poisoning: All physical damage caused to enemies you have poisoned is increased by 1/2%.
• Prey on the Weak now increases critical strike damage of all attacks.
• Killing Spree is the new name for Murder Spree and should be working much better very soon.

Subtlety

• Shadowstep will no longer be usable while rooted.
• Elusiveness moved to Tier 3, now reduces cooldown of Cloak of Shadows by 15/30 sec.
• Premeditation cooldown reduced to 20 sec.
• Preparation no longer refreshes the cooldown to Premeditation.
• Master of Deception reduced to 3 ranks.
• Opportunity reduces to 2 ranks for 10/20%.
• Camouflage reduced to 3 ranks for 5/10/15% speed and 2/4/6 sec off the cooldown of Stealth.
• Initiative moved to Tier 4, increased to 33/66/100% chance.
• Improved Ambush moved to Tier 4, reduced to 2 ranks for 25/50%.
• Serrated Blades moved to Tier 3.
• Wrongfully Accused replaced with Filthy Tricks.
• (NEW – Tier 9) Filthy Tricks: Reduces the cooldown of your Tricks of the Trade and Distract abilities by 5/10 sec.
• Slaughter from the Shadows now also reduces the energy cost of your Hemorrhage ability by 1/2/3/4/5.
• Shadow Dance redesigned, now allows the use of Sap, Garrote, Ambush, Cheap Shot, Premeditation, Pickpocket and Disarm Trap regardless of being stealthed. Those abilities all gain a cooldown of 2 sec. Lasts 10 sec.

Death Knight Blue Post Updates

Some interesting death knight news straight from the Blizzard forums. Both of these tid bits are courtesy of Blizzard staff member Ghostcrawler. These posts clear up a good bit of information regarding both death knight rotations and death knight tanking.

Death Knight Rotations

We’re almost ready to show the updated death knight talent tree. It was quite an overhaul but we’re pretty excited about it. In case the talent trees go out before a new data push, I wanted to explain what we’re trying to do here.

We revamped the DK to have a standard rotation that used all the runes intelligently. Then we tweaked a lot of other abilities to be able to swap out one for another with similar rune costs. Some talented abilities can be used situationally for this purpose, while others just flat out replace one of the core abilities. I don’t want to give the impression that “standard rotation” means the DK loses all its depth (or that the game forces you to use this rotation at all). On the contrary it feels like you are making an intelligent decision about what to do next instead of just randomly pounding abilities when they light up.

1) Icy Touch — 1 Frost — Pull a mob and get a Frost Fever disease on it.
2) Plague Strike — 1 Unholy — Get a Blood Plague disease on the enemy.
3) Blood Strike — 1 Blood — Do extra damage for getting both diseases up.
4) Blood Strike — 1 Blood — Do extra damage for getting both diseases up.
5) Obliterate — 1 Frost, 1 Unholy — Your diseases are going to expire soon, so time for a big hit.
6) Death Coil — Runic Power — You probably have enough Runic Power by now.

Those are the basics, but you can swap out those moves as you see fit. If you’re wounded, instead of Obliterate for Step 5, you can Death Strike instead for the same cost. Or you can Chains of Ice. Or Howling Blast. If you are deep Blood, you can Heart Strike instead of Blood Strike for bigger damage and an all new debuff. If you are deep Frost, you can use Blood of the North to earn 2 Death Runes and then get 2 Obliterates next time around. Or you can Frost Strike instead of Death Coil, especially if the target is really wounded and you also have Merciless Combat.

We are trying to fix the Unholy Rune demand in a few ways:

– Degeneration is now an upgrade to Plague Strike. It was such a situational ability (but a very good one in that situation) that we thought it was a good opportunity to merge it with something else. The risk is that serious PvP players will feel like it’s mandatory to only go Unholy. If this happens, we’ll try something else, like making it core again. The runeforge idea is also intriguing.
– We’re going to try Chains of Ice as 1 Frost. Certainly not too many people seem to be complaining that the DK has too much CC. :)
– Raise Dead doesn’t cost any runes. The cost was irrelevant outside of combat and hard to work into a rotation once in awhile.
– Empower Rune Weapon activates all your runes and provides some runic power. Its cooldown is probably long enough to handle this.
– This isn’t a recent change, but remember that with Annihilation more available you can sometimes save a Plague Strike when you Annihilate. Likewise, with the Icy Touch change, you can still get a disease out without spending an Unholy.

It probably feels like we are focusing predominantly on the DK’s PvE options for now, which is probably true. But PvP will start to get a lot more testing as some of the new features (arenas, Wintergrasp) come online.

Death Knight Tanking Changes

When you see the new talent trees, there will be several significant tanking changes that I wanted to explain. Don’t worry — they’re all good.

1) Forceful Deflection is gone. Why? It is now a core ability all death knights get!
2) The top of each tree has a really desirable tanking talent. We figure it’s not painful to spend points in tier 1 of any tree. You can, and probably should, get all of these.
3) Near the bottom of each tree is another really desirable tanking talent. You will still be able to grab this talent and sub-spec into other trees, but you won’t be able to get the gold medal in more than one tree.
4) These talents are more predictable and more under your control. For example, we changed Unbreakable Armor to have a 30 / 60 / 100% chance of boosting your armor by 25% whenever both Frost runes are inactive. To balance this, there is a 90 sec internal cooldown (which we will show in a debuff aura). So you can choose when you want the armor buff. Hold that second Frost Rune until just before the enrage or whenever. Stack it with Icebound Fortitude or Anti-Magic Shell (or both) for truly amazing mitigation.
5) I am not trying to imply there are only 2 tanking talents per tree. The point is that there are some talents we can assume all DK tanks will have, and some others that will be more variable (but ideally equal in utility).
6) No, Blade Barrier is not the ultimate tanking talent in Blood. :)
7) With the disease changes, getting diseases on multiple enemies is much easier than before. We’re also positioning Pestilence to be better at multi-target tanking. A much improved Death and Decay will be nice for pulling, but it’s not Consecrate.
Forceful Deflection is bonus Parry Rating equal to 25% of your Strength. There is one “rank” and you start with it at level 55.

The concern about saving your Runes for the bonus mitigation is totally valid and we’re just going to have to try it out. We didn’t want the bonus to be up for a very short period of time, and we didn’t want the bonus to be trivial but up nearly all the time. We think it’s okay to have to surrender a little bit of dps (in the form of saving a rune you might have used for Obliterate) in order to boost your survivability periodically — to some extent that is what tanking is all about. You also have core abilities like IBF that you can use if you get caught with the ability on cooldown.

Part of the DK tanking style is that you have high enough dps to generate sufficient threat. Still we recognize that you can get into a situation where say the ret paladin is catching up to your threat level too fast and you need to do [something] to really pour on the threat. If we find that a few DK abilities need to generate extra threat, we can go that route.