It's time for some blue posts, a bunch of Druid changes were announced and Ghostcrawler clarified a few tier 8 set bonuses (yes, priests). Additionally, Blizzard launched their new Battle.net service in the United States, this isn't available yet in Europe but we'll probably see it here in a couple of days.
Mimiron's Flying Mount
A few mounts were added to the game in Patch 3.1, the most popular one is probably the Mimiron's Head. This 310% speed flying mount will most likely drop from Mimiron in Ulduar ... See the video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAX1mWLWXHo
Introducing the new Battle.net Account
Blizzard just released the new version of their Battle.net Service. If the list of features sound familiar, it's probably because most of them were introduced with the Blizzard Store a few months ago. Hopefully the change means we'll see new features soon, hints of a Battle.net integration have been in the WoW files for quite some time now.
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)
We’re pleased to introduce the Battle.net account -- a brand-new way for players to manage their Blizzard Entertainment games, make online Blizzard store purchases, log in to World of Warcraft, and more using just one set of login information.
World of Warcraft players now have the option to create a Battle.net account, merge a World of Warcraft account (or multiple accounts) with it, and begin logging in to the game, the Armory, and the forums using their new Battle.net account login information.
Merge your World of Warcraft account now - http://us.battle.net/account/creation/landing.xml
Some of the benefits of the Battle.net account include:
• Fewer passwords to remember. One single login lets you access World of Warcraft, the online Blizzard store, and more -- including upcoming games such as StarCraft II and Diablo III.
• Opt in to upcoming Blizzard Entertainment beta tests. Put yourself in the running to be invited to test upcoming games.
• Easy access to your classic games. Store your CD keys for classic Blizzard Entertainment titles, and then download the games whenever you wish.
• And more to come… We’re planning to add more features in the future, including tools to help friends communicate between games and bring players closer together.
At this time, signing up is completely optional -- but if you’re interested in taking advantage of the benefits of the Battle.net account today, check out the FAQ for more information, or create an account now.
FAQ- http://us.battle.net/faq/index.html
Create an account- http://us.battle.net/account/creation/landing.xml
PTR - Focused Argent Testing
The Argent Tournament is at the north of Icecrown, this is a new quest hub created to introduce the upcoming Coliseum raid instance in Patch 3.2.
Quote from: Kisirani (Source)
We're looking for some volunteers to put in some focused testing time on the new Argent Tournament content in northern Icecrown. We're aware some of you have been diligently doing the content already throughout our many changes, and we're very thankful for that; you've helped in hammering out quite a few issues. We're interested to hear what you have to say about the current gameplay and balance. Be advised that things have changed if you started testing this early on.
Moving forward, the valiant and champion NPCs are getting another balance pass, and the Ironforge and Undercity combatants in particular are getting retuned for an upcoming build.
A short FAQ:
What's changed from previous builds?
Since the early PTR, we've changed the early aspirant training to be more comprehensive, significantly rebalanced the valiants and champions, made the mounts more accessible, and fixed a myriad of issues.
How do I get to the Tournament?
If you've never been, you can speak with Jean Pierre Poulain on Krasus' Landing in Dalaran to get a free flight. If you've visited before, there is a flight point out there. It's in the far northeast of Icecrown, just north of Sindragosa's Fall.
What sort of feedback are you looking for?
Whatever feedback you have to share. Bugs, balancing issues, clarity of purpose, overall feel, portions you particularly like or dislike, quests you find too difficult or easy, how the fights feel against NPCs or other players... let us know your thoughts on the Tournament.
[US] Potential Connection Issues
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
If you are currently experiencing connection issues with World of Warcraft, our Technical Support Team is currently gathering data to help resolve the issue. Please visit this link and provide the requested information as we continue to investigate this: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15864296319&sid=1
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
We revamped Noblegarden.Not to a huge extent, but trust me when I say the days of combing the entirety of
Looking at the achievements and drawing conclusions based on how rare and random the rewards were in Noblegardens past is extremely inaccurate. (
Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Upcoming Balance Changes
Typhoon -- what we are most likely to do is add a daze effect of some kind. This is what the mage spell Blast Wave does. The daze (it's like a 50% snare) can add a little bit more time to do something before the targets get back on you, such as cast a Cyclone. We might mess with the knockback distance a little, but Typhoon is built differently from many spells, so there may be a limit in what we can do here.
2P Ulduar set bonus -- we increased the Eclipse boost to 15%, which should actually grant a dps increase.
We know many druids still don't like the inherent RNG that Eclipse offers. However, we like mechanics that encourage players to dynamically (meaning if they pay attention) swap which spell they are using. Balance has often had a real tunnel-vision problem of just using the same spell over and over. Even mages do that less these days with all the other procs and cooldowns they can blow at certain times. Eclipse did have some problems, particularly with the Wrath part of the talent not actually doing enough, but we believe those are in a better shape now. (Source)
Upcoming Restoration Changes
The Tree of Life talent currently grants bonus healing to group members and reduces the cost of your hots in tree form. We would like to change the talent to say "Reduces the mana cost of all your hots and also lets you go into tree form, which grants bonus healing."
In other words, you would not need to be ToL to get the cheaper hots (in PvE or PvP) so long as you had the ToL talent. In PvP, you could still use tree form when you wanted to be more tanky but your efficiency would not be so bad when in caster form. (Source)
Mage (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Glyph of Living Bomb
We suspect the glyph (and fire mages) would probably be overpowered if those crits on periodic damage powered Hot Streak etc. That would be a pretty big dps boost. The glyph is just supposed to let Living Bomb do more damage. (Source)
Developer Q&A (Source)
Why is the molten armor spirit change a nerf to pvp, solo, and anyone not in full 25man epics / raid buffs?
Realistically, most mages are never going to notice a change to crit while soloing unless it was a really large number. Soloing is generally not difficult and you are generally going to defeat everything you fight within a few GCDs. For PvP it is a nerf to those mages using Molten Armor, but very few mages use Molten Armor in PvP. If we like what the Molten Armor change does, then we might consider doing something similar to other mage armors down the road.
Why is spirit still significantly less valuable for us than warlocks? Why is it still better to use non spirit items except for in the few cases where the spirit item's ilevel was higher to begin with?
Apples to oranges. Agility is significantly less valuable to mages than it is to rogues. Yes, I realize you don't share gear with them, but if your concern is that warlocks will end up doing more damage as a result of that Spirit on their gear, we understand the concern and we think we have it under control.
Why was scorch singled out as too powerful when it is obvious there are other raid buffs just as powerful?
For starters, because characters already had very high crit numbers in the first tier of content. We aren't really trying to make all buffs equal at this stage. Sunder, for example, is still a huge damage multiplier for classes that do physical damage. But buffs that feel like they do swing the pendulum too far are good things to discuss on these forums.
Why do mages still have an archaic evocation tool that is risky and can virtually kill our dps like no other class has to deal with?
Why can we be screwed over through rng because of this?We understand the problem with Evocate in PvE. We aren't likely to turn it into Innervate, but we would like to come up with a solution that keeps you from getting boned when you happen to take a big blast of AE damage. I will also point out that there is a skill difference here too. Good mages know when the best time is to use Evocate (say KT just did a big blast so you know it isn't happening again). Less-skilled mages hit it the second they need it without paying attention to their surroundings.
Why do improved scorch and winter's chill still have no personal benefit? Why is it still a dps loss and the cost of a major glyph to make use of scorch? What is the point now that warlocks will apply the debuff with their main nuke?
Selfish benefits are something we would like to add to all talents. For those we haven't done yet, it is usually because we would have to nerf the tree somewhere else to make up for the inflated damage. One of the questions we often ask ourselves is whether a class would already take that talent just because it's such a good talent for them. For example, if Battle Shout was a talent, almost every warrior would still take it even if they knew 100% that another player could provide the buff in a group. Why? Because it still grants them so much damage when solo, in BGs, etc.
Why is frost still horribly lackluster in pve? Why is frostbolt still spammed and the ice lance glyph does nothing to fix this?
I suspect I don't need to explain this to mages, but we can't make Ice Lance any better without making Frost even more dealy in PvP. We talked about making the glyph better, and we still might, but the problem is most PvE Frost mages take the glyphs of Frostbolt, Molten Armor and Water Elemental already, *and* inflating the glyph to something like 8x damage would make Frost mages the most insane leveling spec in the world.
Ideally, yes, we would love to get Frost into PvE and Fire into PvP in a bigger way. In the grand scheme of things though, mages have Arcane, Fire and Frostfire specs doing very competitive dps with each other in PvE and Frost and possibly Arcane as viable in PvP. That's definitely an improvement over where the class has been historically, so while it is something we want to work on, it doesn't feel like a crisis.
Why has it been some five ptr builds with absolutely zero attention to our concerns? I promise GC, we aren't just complaining for the sake of it, and we're not all looking for massive damage buffs. Some of us would like to see our legitimate concerns at the very least commented upon.
Just understand that your concerns and our concerns are not always in perfect agreement. We like to get feedback from the community, but ultimately we don't sit down and say "How can we address all these problems that the community wants us to fix?" We have to do what we think is right for the game. Sometimes you are going to applaud those changes and sometimes you might not "approve" of the change.
I try and comment on what I can, but my time on the forums is limited. I tend to comment on things that are fresh in my mind from discussions the designers are having. If I answer 5 shaman posts and no mage posts in a given week, that is probably because we are working a lot on shamans at the moment. It really just makes the forums controversial when you argue about parity in responses or when yor why you "deserve" to have questions answered. Hence, I ask you not to do that.
Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
4-Pieces T8 Bonus
The way we want 4piece t8 for Prot paladins to work is that the Shield of Righteousness also benefits from that extra SBV. We can try to make the tooltip a little cleaner. (Source)
Divine Plea
We'll discuss changing Divine Plea to just Flash of Light, Holy Light and Holy Shock. (Source)
Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Tier 8 Set Bonuses (Source)
• 4P shadow is like 240 haste rating.
• 4P healing is like 250 spell power.
Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Thunderstorm
Thunderstorm seems a good deal more popular (meaning actually used) than Typhoon. Shamans also had several PvP buffs this patch while balance druids lost their main talented PvP ability, the Celestial Focus stun. It's tricky to compare abilities. Sometimes it makes sense to change similar spells in all the same way, but the risk of doing that too much is that every spell feels the same. (Source)
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