Daily Blue Posts - Arena, SOTA, Class Changes

Last days worth of important blue posts, most of which speak specifically on changes for the next major content patch on the PTR, 3.0.8. Make sure to check out the complete patch 3.0.8 notes here.

PvP Related Blue Posts

Arena Burst Damage Balancing

We definitely hear you that you think Arena burst damage is too high and it’s too difficult to heal. You don’t need to keep shouting.

Gear Rewards for Arena

It’s certainly not a system for everyone. I personally don’t favor the arenas either, so I make the choice not to spend much time with them. I think the issue most people have is that the arenas provide the only source for the best PvP gear in the game. We are working on an improved system by which we can measure skill and contribution in battlegrounds so that more competitive rewards can be obtained via means other than the arena.

Strand of the Ancients Balancing

Actually SOTA originally did start with the factions randomly attacking or defending. But there were issues with it; it wasn’t quite as cut and clear as it seems in theory. It turned out it worked out a lot better if Horde were always starting in defense. So the way it is now was a somewhat temporary fix to that issue. If it’s really not working out so well, of course we’ll be looking into reinstating the random start.

Potential Vehicle Changes

We are talking about making PvP vehicles susceptible to all player damage spells. They would still be immune to roots and other forms of CC, but could be poisoned, cursed, etc. It’s wacky, but the way the classes have been designed it isn’t worth the balance issues just for flavor in this case.

PvE Related Blue Posts

Dungeon Difficulty

The content you’ve mentioned is all content that is meant to be an introduction to raiding in Lich King. It’s not meant to preclude people and set a false standard. That being said, we feel that the difficulty of the content is in line with the rewards. While you may find it to be a bit less difficult than you woud like, I assure you a great many others do not.

Class Specific Blue Posts

Druids

Feral Druid Tanking

You’re not making a terribly fair comparison here. Warriors can block etc., true, but Ferals have Barkskin, Survival Instinct, Demo Roar and Enraged Regen as defensive abilities. You have Swipe and Berserk (and the nice Maul glyph) for area threat generation (and I still see bears pulling with Hurricane too).

I do think it is a fair concern that you can spam nothing but Swipe, but to fix that for other tanks we put a cooldown on their AE ability to force them to hit something else. I’m not sure we want to do that for druids.

While you may think of yourself primarily as a bear, we still think of you as a druid. Druids have a lot of abilities. I have played a bear (a lot) and I know it’s already hard to fit all of your buttons on the default Blizzard action bars, even just considering the bear ones. Now I’m not going to suggest you Innervate or use Rebirth or Regrowth while tanking, but at the same time, even bear MTs do sometimes use those abilities. They still count as abilities. When you pick a tanking druid, you are still a druid. We don’t want any class to have 300 spells just because they can use them in very different scenarios. Make sense?

Armor Trinket Changes

There will probably always be a best in slot item. The difference is that Offering was insanely better than the alternatives, to the point at which you either sucked without it or were OP with it. Greatness is a nice trinket, but can you do your job without it? Absolutely. We’re talking about degree of best in slot here.

Feral Gear Itemization

I agree with that overall, and it is something we’re working on. By the same token however it is very easy to take your argument and say “There will always be a best in slot item. I will always want that item. Therefore choice is always an illusion.

Druid Forms Note

We are working on an update to druid forms. It is long overdue. But we want to do it right, which means it takes time. The Ravenlord and Epic Flight Form models are the level of quality we are shooting for. We’d even love to add some customization, but we can’t promise that.

Hunters

Major Hunter Issues

I would agree that some of them fall into the quality of life or minor annoyance category. While those are still good things for us to look at (and sometimes great things since they can often be fixed pretty easily) it leads to a long list, which you even called a manifesto. An outside reader might conclude every aspect of the hunter class is broken (which is not true) or that hunters need all of those changes to be Arena viable or fun. I’m not asking you to cull out the minor suggestions, but you do want to make sure we see the ones you really, really want us to see.

On combining Viper and Cheetah, I would be concerned that you are accepting a penalty (decreased damage) that isn’t really a penalty. When you want to run away, you want to run away. Think of the PvE implications of removing the daze. Even think of the PvP ones. When you want to fight, you fight, and when you want to escape, you escape. Now consider a Cheetah where you take extra damage if you run – now that is an actual decision. You might get away, but you also might get clobbered. (This isn’t a change we are making - I’m just trying to show you how we think. Hitting a situational button should generally be a decision, not something you would always do in a given situation.)

We’re not interested in giving hunters stealth of any sort at this time. Even the Shadowmeld-like functionality is supposed to be handled by Feign Death.

We’re also pretty unlikely to remove the minimum range on hunter ranged attacks. Casters don’t have them, but casters are also very unlikely to stand there and keep casting when you close to melee with them. We don’t want to see hunters ever ignore or shrug off melee who are attacking them. Attacking them back is a different story, as long as we could guarantee the hunter felt like they had to attack their attacker and not just keep shooting whoever they were shooting.

Shamans

Elemental Damage

1. Yes, it is too low on live.

2. I can’t speak towards the PTR specifically. It takes awhile to create a build, so they are often a few days (or longer) behind our changes. I can say that in our internal testing all of the changes together gave Elemental something like a 10 to 12% dps increase for Naxx 25 geared characters in full raid buffs. Elemental dps should be very close to Balance druid dps, which we used as the standard we wanted to reach.

We discussed several of the concerns that have come up over the last few days and ran some additional tests, but we are still satisfied with the numbers produced by the new changes.

Spirit Walk

Spirit Walk is supposed to break roots and snares on the wolves and the shaman. I know we’ve had a bug on that. I’ll need to do some research to know if it’s fixed.

Warlocks

Major Issues and Changes

Bevelton, the reason you’re not seeing changes yet is for exactly the reason you suggest. We don’t want to tweak a few numbers here and there. We are taking a comprehensive look at all three trees of warlocks and then we plan to unleash all of the changes at once. The downside of this approach is that the work takes longer to complete.

I know there are a dozen threads swearing that THE PROBLEMS ARE OBVIOUS and THE SOLUTIONS ARE OBVIOUS and DEMAND CHANGE NOW!1!!. What should be obvious is that we don’t think the situation is that cut and dried. I did post fairly recently (within a month or two perhaps) on what we thought the major warlock issues were. Players seem to have a hard time finding it or perhaps they are just impatient.

We don’t consdier things like tweaking glyphs and changing Ritual of Summoning as major changes to the class. We don’t expect to see a huge difference in how you play the game. They are just small quality of life issues. The Felhunter glyph was just a bad glyph — a trivial amount of dps. It was a relatively easy thing to fix.

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.

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.

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.

3.0.2 Patch Notes - Changes, Info, and News

Important Links

• Official 3.0.2 Patch Notes
• Updated Talent Calculator
• New Honor Items

New Arena Maps

• Orgrimmar Arena

orgarenapreview.wmv

• Dalaran Arena

dalaranarena.wmv

Major Features

• Free talent respec for everyone
• Dalaran no longer resides in Hillsbrad, it has been moved to Northrend.
• Barber shops have been introduced to all capital cities.
• Achievement system has been implemented.
• Hit, critical strike, and haste rating now modify both melee and casters.
• Orgrimmar and Dalaran arenas have been introduced (see above)
• Spell pushback has been changed.
  • When casting a spell:
    • The first and second hit will add .5 secs each to the cast time.
    • All hits after the second will have no effect.
  • When channeling a spell:
    • The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
    • All hits after the second will have no effect.
• Spell Power has been implemented. Read this guide for a full break down on how this works, spellpower changes explained.
• Inscription has been implemented and you can train it up to 375

PvE and Raid Changes

To coincide with the upcoming new talents and mechanic changes for classes in the next patch, we are making some adjustments in existing raid content to provide a smooth transition when the upcoming patch is released. The creatures and bosses in raid dungeons that were introduced in The Burning Crusade will have their health reduced (by 30%), and most will have their standard melee damage output reduced as well, but their spell and ability damage are not being changed. These changes are being made in all raid dungeons from Karazhan to Sunwell Plateau as well as the outdoor encounters of Doom Lord Kazzak and Doomwalker. On top of this Illidan is also doing his part and will stop casting Shear on players. (source)

Arena Season 4 Notes

We’re currently planning to end the fourth Arena season on October 14, 2008, and as always — this date could easily change. This Arena Season is only ending in respect to the ladder, meaning we’ll be taking a snapshot of the season’s ladder and then go through our normal process to determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards. This process should take approximately one week. It’s very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for the arena-specific title and/or Armored Nether Drake to refrain from transferring their character to another realm between the date outlined above, and when the end-of-season rewards are physically awarded.

Upon the end of this Arena Season, teams and ratings will not be wiped, and will carry forward allowing players to earn points each week and purchase gear until the launch of the expansion (November 13, 2008). (source)

Blizzcon WoW Class Panel - Part 2

Make to check out the blizzcon wow class panel part 1 as well.

The dual-spec system will interface with the UI.

• Action bars will flip when you switch your spec so you don’t have to re-do all your keys.
• It will likely also tie into Glyphs so you don’t have to re-do Glyphs whenever you switch specs.

Q: Ghostcrawler, do you plan to be as active on the live forums after Beta is over?
A: That is his plan. He’ll have to see how crazy things get.

Q: Thanks for the new Hunter Pet system. Any new info on the Hunter 45-point survival talent?
A: They want Trap Mastery to be useful. It could be a lot sexier than it is now. It’s not a change they can make right away.

Q: Any feedback on the current state of Elemental Shaman?
A: Class balance is so reactive. Each class type reacts to changes of other classes differently. Elemental Shamans, like Hunters, fight the GCD quite a bit, and Devs have tried to give them some help in that regard. Changing totems to the physical school may help. They have to wait and see how it all plays out.

Q: Hunters. How do you maintain a balance between Arena and Raid DPS?
A: Hunters have always been top sustained Raid DPS. That has continued in Wrath. They are keeping an eye on the PvP balance of it.

Q: Rogue Combat tree. Daggers and poisons were fixed, but will Combat Raid utility be improved?
A: The buff/debuff system has been entirely overhauled, ands that effects poisons and other Rogue abilities. Devs definitely want to get Combat up equal to other DPS specs. There have eben a lot of recent big changes to Combat in particular.

Q: DKs starting at level 55 is great. Will any other classes ever start at higher levels? (Lots of applause.)
A: They currently have no plans to change other classes. They did things like Refer a Friend bonuses to help leveling, but they want players to experience low level content. However, they know old content is not of the same quality as the new stuff.

Q: Devs have said they want more Raid utility for Discipline priests, but that’s not obvious in beta. Penance is good but using Greater Heal, you still have mana issues.
A: That’s good feedback. People always ask for more mana in feedback and it’s hard for devs to know when they really need it. They want to play up distinctive healing styles, but large, slow heals will never go away.

Q: Shadow Priests and Warlocks. Will DoTs ever tag a mob for kill credit?
A: That is on the list of things to do, for sure. It’s just a question of when.

Q: Amplify Curses was completely changed to a haste increase for curses. How is this useful and will it be changed?
A: When the talent was designed, it was meant for for PvP and Arenas where you have to reapply curses more often than in PvE.

Q: Endgame 10-man raiding is great, but it also means if you lose a player or two it can be difficult since less people are in the party. Could another class perhaps get a Battle Rez?
A: What class did you have in mind? (Audience jeering and yelling out suggestions.) Death Knights have a self Battle Rez!

Q: Death Knight tanking. Devs have said that Rune Strike was redesigned to help give back threat that is lost to parries and dodges. With recent change to Rune cooldowns when parries and dodges happen, will all that extra threat still be necessary?
A: In an ideal world, you would get more threat from overall damage than one single ability. They are monitoring it.

Q: Will there be resistance-based fights in Wrath?
A: Devs always have trouble deciding. Resistance fights bring a lot of flavor, but is it worth it? (Corwd shouts “No!”) A lot of mobs and bosses get affected by diseases and poisons now, and that’s something they need to keep an eye on.

Q: Class homogenization issues, especially Paladins. Pally tanking skills keep being given to other classes.
A: It’s a big concern for Devs to make sure all classes have the tools they need without having them all be the same. Do Paladins have to have a single-target taunt? Do all classes have to have a Battle Rez, or is it good for just Druids? They don’t want Paladins to be the only tanks people take. They are still trying to balance this.

Q: Tanks in PvP. Any ideas for “defender” type abilities in PvP?
A: Protection Warriors have a lot more PvP utility. Devs do not know if they will ever add in something like a PvP taunt, but they would love to make tanking specs more PvP viable whenever they can. The respec thing is a band-aid for this as well, but they want to do more to help those specs.

Q: Will Elemental Shamans ever get a Talent that boost spell power with spirit like other casters have?
A: If they need it. Devs are to the point where spirit is no longer the mana regen stat, it’s more of a boost for spell power. They don’t feel everyone needs a Talent like this, but if it’s needed, it will be added.

Q: Do you forsee Battle stance being more viable in PvP?
A: Devs are keeping an eye on Battle Stance skills. Devs think Stance dancing isn’t that hard. They may make more changes to Stances in the future.

Q: Why is Stoneclaw the protective totem for PvP when it prevents the use of other Earth PvP totems? Any plans for a flat totem health increase?
A: We will double it! (Laughter.) No, we felt Stoneclaw was the right totem to use. It felt right. Players should have to make a choice between the snare, the fear warding, and the totem strengthening.

Q: There is a Glyph that lets Excorcism have a spell interupt. Will this spell be usable on non-Undead targets to make it more useful in PvP?
A: It’s an idea! Maybe.

Q: Shadow Priest’s Dispersion is lackluster. Any chance for some buffs?
A: Probably not. The Devs are happy with the way it is. It’s a partial shield that does not root you. Yeah it’s not terribly useful for high-end PvE, but it is beneficial in other way and 51-Point talents are often very situational.