The Second Phase: Season 6 Armor Sets Stats, Blue Posts

Druid
Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves
Furious Gladiator's Wyrmhide Legguards
Furious Gladiator's Wyrmhide Gloves

Hunter
Furious Gladiator's Chain Leggings
Furious Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets

Mage
Furious Gladiator's Silk Handguards

Paladin
Furious Gladiator's Ornamented Gloves
Furious Gladiator's Ornamented Legplates
Furious Gladiator's Scaled Legguards

Priest
Furious Gladiator's Mooncloth Leggings

Rogue
Furious Gladiator's Leather Legguards
Furious Gladiator's Leather Gloves

Shaman
Furious Gladiator's Mail Gauntlets
Furious Gladiator's Mail Leggings
Furious Gladiator's Linked Leggings
Furious Gladiator's Ringmail Leggings
Furious Gladiator's Ringmail Gauntlets

Warlock
Furious Gladiator's Felweave Handguards
Furious Gladiator's Felweave Trousers

Warrior
Furious Gladiator's Plate Gauntlets
Furious Gladiator's Plate Legguards

Ulduar Hard Modes
Quote from: Daelo (Source)
Ignis the Furnace Master, Razorscale, Kologarn, and Auriaya do not have hard modes. Algalon does not have a normal mode.

That puts the final number of bosses with hard modes at 10.

Change to Flasks in 3.1.0
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
As many of you have learned, we will be reducing the duration of flask effects so that they only last one hour. However, all recipes that create flasks will create two instead of one for the same material cost. Additionally, we will be increasing stack size from 5 to 20 as we anticipate players will need to carry more flasks at a given time. Vendor value for flasks has also been reduced to keep the auction house deposit low.

Our goal with the change was to allow players greater flexibility when determining how long they plan to raid, as currently we were seeing many players balance time spent raiding around flask duration. We also anticipate that this change will make using flasks in dungeons and battlegrounds a more reasonable decision for players. Though this change will not occur until patch 3.1.0, we wanted to give as much advance notice as possible in case some of you who are stockpiling flasks would prefer to wait to do so until the change is implemented.

We realize players who currently have stockpiled a lot of flasks may feel like they will lose money with this change, since their current flasks will only last for half as long once 3.1.0 goes live. To partially remedy this, we are going to allow players to exchange any current Northrend flasks (Flask of the Frost Wyrm, Flask of Stoneblood, Flask of Endless Rage and Flask of Pure Mojo) for two flasks with the shorter duration. Flasks from older content will not be grandfathered in, and going forward, it will only be possible to make the flasks with a one hour duration.

Arena Tournament Current Standings 3/24/2009
Quote from: Aratil (Source)
The top 10 teams of the 2009 Arena Tournament’s online qualifier as of March 24, 2009 are listed below:

1. well then Death Knight, Paladin, Warlock 117 – 26 2552
2. BARKSDALE CREW Death Knight, Paladin, Warlock 156 – 54 2501
3. monkey attack squad Hunter, Mage, Shaman 215 – 96 2465
4. GET MONEY GET PAYCE Death Knight, Hunter, Paladin 251 – 132 2462
5. Walrus Attack Squad Hunter, Mage, Priest 110 – 35 2457
6. Paradorn’s Team Hunter, Paladin, Warlock 90 – 27 2452
7. NO LIGHTNING GEN BRAH Death Knight, Paladin, Warlock 170 – 67 2442
8. Nekos’ Team Death Knight, Death Knight, Paladin 86 – 39 2410
9. faceroll tunnel vision Paladin, Priest, Shaman 142 – 58 2402
10. Wd’s Team Death Knight, Paladin, Warlock 81 – 33 2401

You can follow the full ladder rankings of the online qualifier on the World of Warcraft Armory at http://www.wowarmory.com/arena-ladder.xml?b=Coliseum%201&ts=3&p=1&sf=rank&sd=a

State of PvP and new Battleground
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)
Arenas became the focal point of PvP because there exists in the rating system an easier way to measure skill. On the contrary, battlegrounds shifted from the focus and the means by which the most competitive PvP rewards could be obtained because there's almost no measurement of skill. Someone could AFK their way to great gear just as easily as someone legitimately playing to win every match.

We don't like this though, as arenas really are meant to be an E-sport side game, not the end all, be all of World of Warcraft PvP. We understand it's a niche game that's not for everyone. What we want to do is revamp the battleground system and create some better functionality to measure skill so that players have access to more comparable rewards to those issued via the arenas. We'd also like to provide the means for player to level up via PvP should that be their preference.

We have a new battleground on the way for Wrath of the Lich King as well. It's looking pretty cool so far.

Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Scarab Lord and AQ40 Legendary Mount
These are two separate issues. The Black Qiraji Battle Tank was attainable by only one person and they needed the backing of an entire guild to get it done. We like the idea of keeping some things rare and hard to obtain, so if an entire group works for it and the entire group gets the reward, it works out a lot better. We want there to be varying levels of rarity for certain items. (Source)

PvE and PvP Itemization

We recognize some players like BGs but not Arenas. We recognize some like 5-player dungeons but not raids. That's cool. We just don't yet offer the best epic items except in Arenas and raids.

We think it was too easy to get the best PvE weapons in LK, at least relative to the difficulty of getting PvP weapons. In BC it was probably the other way around, at least for the earlier seasons. The goal was not that everyone rocks their KT weapons in Arena. Part of this was the relative ease of Naxx, and part of it was not making the PvP gear available early enough.

We're still evaluating the best way to offer starter PvP gear. The intro gear we had this time around was a little hard to get and didn't offer enough survivability, so coupled with the ease of Naxx epics, the blue(ish) PvP gear just were not very attractive. If players had all walked into Arenas with say 300 resilience or its equivalent and then worked their way up higher, I think the burst damage problem would have been much less of an issue (particularly if there weren't so many potent PvE weapons around at the same time). Logistically, that could mean that it's easy to get resilience up to 300, or we just change the way the ratings work so that 0 resilience provides as much crit protection as 300 or so does currently.

"Burst damage" is a difficult thing to qualify. As I have said, we absolutely feel like there needs to be a way to kill people in the absence of 30-min long mana-drain or chain-CC fights. However, that doesn't mean that every fight should last 10 seconds because one team blows up someone on the other team immediately. Toning down burst does not mean no burst. There can be something in between immortal healers and glass healers. (Source)

Healing Mechanics
When mana isn't particularly limited in an encounter, then the main way we have to challenge your group is by making you global cooldown limited on an encounter. Basically if you ever fail to cast a spell every cooldown, your target may die because incoming damage is so huge.

While that might feel very challenging, it also works against some of how we want encounters to play. You can't worry about things like mana, movement, healer coordination or overhealing when missing even a single GCD results in a wipe. This does not mean we want healing to be slow and boring. We do want players to make interesting decisions when they are playing, and we fear spamming your most powerful heal every GCD and never stopping isn't really a decision. In fact it feels more like a macro. So we make the risk of that behavior to be that you run out of mana.

(I'm describing a pretty extreme case too, like trying a new boss for the first time when you might be a little undergeared.)

Another way we could have approached the problem would have been to greatly increase the health of every player and then also increased the damage done by the boss. That way you wouldn't be healing a tank for 25 or even 50% on every big heal. When someone got knocked down low, you would have to cast a few heals to get them up again and the focus would be more on who to heal rather than making sure you don't ever miss a heal. (Source)

Arena Tournament Phase 3 Begins
Registration for the 2009 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament is now closed and Phase 3 of the tournament has begun. Participants have been battling it out on the tournament realms for the past two weeks while fine-tuning their team composition and strategies. Phase 3 of the tournament includes a lockdown of the teams that will be jockeying for position to compete in the regional finals. Please remember that participants must remain on their team for the duration of the tournament to ensure prize eligibility, and only games played in the 3v3 bracket count towards this goal.

To track the progress of your team and the competition as a whole, please visit the World of Warcraft Armory at http://www.wowarmory.com/arena-ladder.xml?b=Coliseum%201&ts=3 . For more information on the tournament, please visit our Arena Tournament information page at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/tournament/index.xml ; to discuss the tournament with your fellow players, please visit the Arena Tournament Forum. Good luck to all competitors!

Arena Tournament - Team Lockdown
With the new phase, arena team rosters are now locked, meaning that players can no longer be invited to existing arena teams. However, new arena teams can still be created with the restriction that players cannot be added to the team past the ones that sign the arena charter. (Source)

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Anti-Magic Shell changes in latest build
Its just a cap on the mitigation. If an attack did 100% of your health, you would take 50% of your health in damage. Instead of 25% without magic surpression and 0% with it. The bubble would be gone afterward too.

I'm not exactly sure if this really "solves" anything though. Its still guaranteed survival against anything a tank is actually supposed to get hit by. It just stops you from say, eating frost breath from Saph or the 1,000,000 damage rocket strikes from Mimiron with magic suppression. Well, actually I suppose it does make it significantly less effective against plasms blast, so it does make the skill weaker against some of the things tanks actually get hit by.

This is fairly accurate, and yes Mimiron (and similar situations) was the problem here, not QQ from other classes. (Source)

Mage (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Winter's Chill and Improved Scorch changes
I think we are likely to make the following changes:
• Improved Scorch: In addition to the stacking crit debuff, will improve your critical strike chance with Fireball, Scorch or Frostfire Bolt by 1/2/3%.
• Winter's Chill: In addition to the stacking crit debuff, will improve your critical strike chance with Frostbolt (possibly all Frost) by 1/2/3%.
Standard "no promises" caveat applies. (Source)

Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Judgement of the Wise in 3.1
We looked at a lot of Ret parses and picked a Judgements of the Wise number that would make up for the loss of Spiritual Attunement mana. If you don't have mana problems on Live, you shouldn't have them in 3.1. However if you do, you can get the Blood glyph. (Source)

Crusader's Strike
One correction:
• Crusader Strike is now An instant strike that causes 110% weapon damage. In addition, if you strike a player while they are casting, their magical damage and healing will be reduced by 50% for 6 sec.

That is not an official change. It is something we were experimenting with, but not a change we are going to make for 3.1.

The short story is that while we want to make Crusader Strike a more exciting ability, we don't think that this is the way to go about it. The "Overpower debuff" won't really give them anything more interesting in PvE. In PvP it isn't as game-changing for a warrior who already had access to an interrupt and the Mortal Strike debuff. Giving both of those to a paladin could be very game-changing and not the kind of thing we are ready to do without a lot more testing.

Sorry for any confusion. Sometimes in our haste to update the PTR as often as we can, you get a chance to see behind the curtain a little more than we intend. (Source)

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Psychic Horror cooldown
We were worried about the short cooldown in combination with Psychic Horror not sharing the Psychic Scream diminishing returns. We imagined every fight starting with the priest just chain CC-ing someone. It was intended as a defensive tool, to use when you're having trouble with a melee class or hunter. The longer duration should make you think about when you use it instead of just firing it off as part of your rotation.

Having said that, cooldowns are a relatively easy thing to mess with, so we can always tune it up or down depending on how it plays out. (Source)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Totem of Wrath
Totem of Wrath has always been 30 yards. We just fixed a bug in the tooltip. [...] We'll just change the range of both to 40 yards and be done with it. This was just supposed to be a tooltip cleanup, not a nerf to the class in any way. (Source)

Totem-stomping macros
From our POV, there is no defense of totem-stomping macros. If you want to take the time to give your pet a command and a target to kill a totem, great. But to be able to neutralize a core mechanic of the class so easily because you are clever enough to copy a macro off of the Internet is not skill.

The only reason they still exist are technical limitations, not because we like the design. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Possible changes to Slam
It might be instant Slam. Or, it might be autocrit on Slam or MS. Still fiddling. (Source)

Intimidating Shout
We didn't make a change to Intimidating Shout's effects. We just fixed a bug where the tooltip was showing the wrong number. It was confusing range with area or something like that. But to be clear, if you don't read the tooltip, the ability should work exactly like it does now. (Source)

Berserker Stance bonus changed from AP to Strength
1) We want warriors to wear plate. We balance around warriors wearing plate.
2) Because of the way certain warrior mechanics work, leather is attractive.
3) One of these mechanics is AP being overvalued compared to Strength.
4) This change was to try to shift more value back to Strength.
5) Warriors are balanced around wearing plate. When warriors wear leather and do too much damage, then they end up getting nerfed. But really this is a symptom of #3, not anything players are doing wrong.
6) If you wear plate and don't do enough damage, we'll buff you.
7) We realize this change lets Arms off the hook... for the moment.
8 ) We like both the logic and gameplay of classes being able to wear armor besides "theirs." It's nice if a paladin uses healing cloth that is an upgrade for them and might otherwise be sharded. It's nice if a warrior can use a rogue item if they have nothing better. But honestly, sometimes we are pretty close to just restricting classes to "their" armor and not "their" armor plus all "lesser" armors.
9) I know you might drool over stats on another character. But that's not the way we balance. If we gave you plate with Spirit and Stamina on it, we would change warrior mechanics to make those numbers useful. You may say "If I wear the gear I am supposed to wear, I'll be terrible." We say "If you wear the gear your'e supposed to wear, you'll be balanced." We made a similar change to Feral druids lately, because they stacked AP at the expense of everything else. It was too good a stat and led them to make choices based solely on what gear maximized their AP. Sound familiar?
10) If you think your damage is low, bring that up in these forums. But say "Our damage is low." Don't say "We need leather."

[...] There is a good chance we may change the Improved Berserker Stance effect from 15% Strength to 20% Strength to make up for all the AP that gets thrown around in buffs, enchants and consumables. There are also more rings etc. in Ulduar with Strength, and more leather with Agi instead of AP.

Adding 2 more ranks to Armored to the Teeth is also possible, but that would probably be too big a change for 3.1. We want plate to be the best in slot for warriors, not leather.

Why is there a narrower distribution of stats on plate? We're drawn to leather because the stats have a better spread. Why can't this approach be adopted for plate? What's the concern?
The root issue is that on the leather we tend to add Agi or AP as that additional stat. The problem is that armor with both Strength and AP is a little silly, and plate with Agi isn't that useful for warriors. So we don't actually have another stat to split.

The alternative is to shift some of the Stamina into Strength. That is just a straight buff to warriors though, and we might have to rebalance all of the damage abilities to make up for it. Long-term this is something we might do. Short-term it might push warriors farther away from being balanced. That might be a fun thought if you are of the mindset that Fury dps is low, but it's not going to do anyone any favors if it ended up overshooting the target by a great amount. (Source)

Most of Sunwell's plate gear was perfect for the plate wearer.
That is by design. I suspect the Icecrown gear will look a lot sexier too, because it will be the final round of gear and we can afford to go nuts on it. If your T8 gear looked exactly like your T7 gear but with +10 or whatever to the stats, that would be kind of boring. We pretty much have to do that for PvP, where you all could sit down today and figure out what the S12 gear will probably look like. But we don't want to do that for PvE as far as we can help it. It just makes those loot drops slightly less exciting.

Believe it or not, we don't want every single piece that drops for you to be an unquestionable dps increase. We like the gameplay that goes along with evaluating when you can afford to break set bonus, meta gem stacks, when you have to regem hit because you are upgrading your hit trinket and so on. Don't turn that into me saying you should pass on all your Ulduar gear because your Naxx stuff is better. We don't want that. But we don't want the opposite extreme either, where you automatically covet anything that does drop. Like much of the game, which gear you choose when is supposed to be a choice. (Source)

The Second Phase

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Season 6 Armor Sets Stats, Blue Posts

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