Druid - Balance changes
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
Here is what we're inclined to do about Balance. It isn't a done deal yet because we just talked about it and didn't make the actual changes yet, so it's possible we'll hit a snag (though I don't see why).
- Moonfury and Earth and Moon down to 3 ranks from 5, but keeping the same overall benefit. That buys you 4 extra talent points to get more utility or fun talents.
- We are also going to buff Eclipse's damage a little so that you feel you're paid back for the extra proc-watching (and so I won't feel so lonely when I tell you I think it's fun).
- We're going to leave the Starfire glyph as is for now, since one of the reasons we added it was to buy you back some brain time if you were watching Eclipse too much.
- The treant health is still something on the list to look at too. I suspect it just hasn't scaled well.
As an epilogue, here are our feelings on bloat. The problem with the Balance tree was that druids had to spend nearly all their points just on pure damage. It's hard to justify giving up damage for utility, PvP or fun talents in a raid scenario. Ideally you should be trading those talents off against each other ,not against your damage (or healing or mitigation).
Shaman - Upcoming changes
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
- Tidal Waves -- Riptide now also procs this effect.
- Riptide -- We're going to increase the initial healing component.
- Storm Reach -- now called “Elemental Reach” and includes Lava Burst.
- Improved Fire Nova Totem - 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.
- Thunderstorm -- We will probably boost the mana return to 8% of total mana. That seems more in line with similar effects. We talked a lot about buffing its damage, but decided that may not be a good idea. With its short range, it isn't a great rotational spell for a raiding Elemental shamans, and making you run up to hit a boss and run back is giving up a lot of cast time. Instead we're going to try to keep the damage and knockback more situational (in PvP it will get used a lot) and make the mana return the big PvE raiding focus.
- Maelstrom Weapon -- We have a concern that the proc per minute frequency is too often. According to our numbers, it's balanced for a two-handed weapon and a bit generous for a dual-wielder. However, this would be a nerf to Enhancement dps overall that we'd have to make up elsewhere, and it seems to be a fun change shamans are enjoying. So we're going to let this ride for now. It's something to keep an eye on, but we aren't going to change it yet.
- Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt -- And now for a few words on Elemental damage. One of the things we were trying to do to make Elemental dps more interesting was to have a Lava Burst + Flameshock variant. We also themed some new deep talents to support this play style. The problem is that lightning still seems to do more damage than fire, which in turn makes the new talents feel lame because they benefit fire and not lightning.
Now we think that Lava Burst is doing appropriate damage for its cost and if anything Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are a little too good. (Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.) However, nerfing lightning would make it harder to level as well as making 3.0.2 kind of brutal for Elemental shamans, since Lava Burst is level 75. Hurting lightning would feel like a flat out nerf, and even though you'd partially make up for it at higher level, overall we think this would feel, um, yucky. So no big changes to lightning spells.
We talked a lot about just buffing Lava Burst and a deep fire-based talent or two. This will make Lava Burst too good on paper, but it might work out okay in the game itself. We'll just have to see. We aren't 100% sold on this course of action, so I'll update when we decide for sure.
Once again, these decisions were the consensus of our design team, so please don't give me the credit. In fact, if there are any changes you specifically don't like -- those I had nothing to do with.
------------------------------------------------------------------ If I understand your question correctly, the coefficients on beta are the "real" coefficients. My comment was that we won't nerf those back down to make Lava Burst more attractive.
When I said Lightning Bolt may be too good, I meant that for its mana cost and compared to other spells, it gives you a lot of damage. When you're designing spells, you can't just keep buffing everything all the time or you end up with rampant inflation. If things are too low, you buff them and if they are too high you nerf them. (It's awesome that those two verbs do so much work in game design discussions.)
So when comparing Lava Burst to Lightning Bolt, our initial answer was not to buff Lava Burst. Lightning Bolt was already a little high when you consider all the talents that affect it and more buffs that now exist that didn't in BC (CoE for one). Buffing Lava Burst would just give shamans two spells that provide too much damage per unit mana. But in this case, that is still the route we want to take for the reasons I tried to explain above. Nerfing LB to match Lava Burst would have been fair on paper, but sucky in the game. Balancing everything with a formula and budget can get you a long way but you also need to know when to put them aside. The risk is that Elemental *might* be too good. But we'll take that chance for now.
We think we have Elemental's dps to a pretty good point now. There are some classes that are doing too much dps in your beta build, which may be one of the reason you feel low. But in our tests, Elemental is above the tanks and healers and on par with everyone who isn't broken. (src)
The Dual-spec feature to be talked about at the BlizzCon
Hopefully you will be able to follow the dual-spec feature discussion on our BlizzCon Livestream..
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
The dual-spec feature will shine more light on talent design (more on that at Blizzcon) and we'll have a better idea of what we want to do with trees when that goes live. Some talent trees are nice and lean, and some probably have some points we could trim here and there.
Updated World of Warcraft System Requirements
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
We have updated computer system specifications required to run World of Warcraft in preparation for our next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Please also note the recommended specifications, which, while certainly not required, generally provide a more optimal gaming experience.
PC System Requirements
OS: Windows XP (Service Pack 3), Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)
Processor:
- Minimum: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+
- Recommended: Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2
Memory:
- Minimum: 512 MB RAM (1GB for Vista users)
- Recommended: 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista users)
Video:
- Minimum: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM
Such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or better
- Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM
Such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better
Sound: DirectX-compatible sound card or motherboard sound capability
Mac System Requirements
OS: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer
Processor:
- Minimum: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor
- Recommended: Intel 1.8GHz processor or better
Memory:
- Minimum: 1 GB RAM
- Recommended: 2 GB RAM
Video:
- Minimum: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM
Such as an ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better
- Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM
Such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better
All Platforms
Controls: A keyboard and mouse are required. Input devices other than a mouse and keyboard are not supported.
Connectivity: You must have an active broadband Internet connection to play.
Mouse: Multi-button mouse with scroll wheel recommended.
Hard Drive Space: 15 GB free hard drive space
Ghostcrawler on 'Competitive DPS'
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
We mean unless you are spec'd for healing or tanking, then your dps should be "close" to another class with the same gear and skill.
Or if it helps to understand the point better, our design used to be that the dps of classes that didn't do anything but dps was much higher than the dps of classes that brought great buffs. The latter paid a "hybrid penalty tax" if you will. We can no longer guarantee your buff will be uber or that it won't be overwritten. Therefore, if we had not made any other changes, we figured the result would be just enough classes to bring the buffs, and then stacking the rest of the raid with very high dps classes like rogues. No offense to the rogues, but we didn't want to see every raids with 10 rogues. In short, we are no longer using the "hybrid penalty tax" design philosophy and we want everyone doing dps to dps a lot closer to each other.
There are reasons we use mushy words like "close", "subjective" and "viable."
1) Classes are built differently with different abilities, talents, gear and resources. It is probably naive to assume that we can get e.g. fire mages and balance druids to do the same dps down to the second decimal place.
2) Encounters are built differently. Your personal dps is unlikely to be the same from boss to boss because of the specifics of that encounter. Likewise, another class may do higher dps than you on some encounters. It's hard to come up with "average dps" for a class as much as everyone tries. :)
3) Any dps numbers you do take are a snapshot in time. What I mean is that things chance as new items are introduced to the game and particularly as players experiment and adapt. We're pretty smart guys here at Blizzard Entertainment, but we don't pretend for a moment to be smarter than the entire fan base put together. No matter how many different variables we consider, some clever person is going to come up with a way to do dps that we didn't imagine when we did our tests. The examples I usually use when explaining this are something like the druid who finds that with a certain flask and a certain set bonus and a certain trinket can spam Hurricane all day long and do 6000 dps. That's an exaggeration, but you get the point.
4) Player skill has an enormous impact on damage done, yet is really hard to quantify. It's going to be hard to know if that hunter is beating that warlock's dps because of the class or the player. This is particularly true given how quickly "cookie cutter" specs and rotations spread through the community. Once you find something that works, you may not want to experiment a lot, lest the raid wipes from your mistakes. But somebody will experiment. They always do.
5) In the theater of public opinion, our words sometimes do come back to us out of context. No, it's true. Overstating the design goal, such as saying "We promise your dps will be within 1% of that other guy" would be kind of dumb and would get a lot of people mad when and if it didn't happen. Vagueness may be frustrating, but it tends to be less frustrating than broken promises. :)
Now, somebody pointed out that this makes it very important for us to get everyone's dps close, because the guy with bad dps and redundant buffs isn't going to the raid. That is totally accurate. I will add though that it has never been as much of a priority as it is now so I hope some of the bad examples of the past won't happen again. If a certain class is routinely getting bypassed for raiding, we will definitely take steps to address that. Such steps might include buffing dps or changing the mechanics so that they have a more desirable buff or utility.
Someone else pointed out that we homogenized buffs (to some extent) but did not do so with utility. Not everyone can Mass Dispel or Innervate for example. We don't want all of the classes to have the same abilities and some players are concerned we have pushed classes too close together already. I personally don't foresee raids that stack 15 druids in order to maximize battle rez, but if we see that happening, we'll take steps to correct it.
This is a big change for us and for you. It might take a little time before it all feels right. But rest assured we're doing this because we think it makes the game better. It should put more emphasis on beating the boss and less emphasis on assembling the perfect group. It should put more emphasis on raiding with your friends and less emphasis on sitting out people that deep down you really want to bring in order to recruit for the "must have" class. By making sure nobody is promised a slot, you get a lot more flexibility in who you actually take in the end.
Edit for rouges. :)
Daily Blue
Honor gain post patch 3.0.2
You'll be able to obtain honor normally through Battlegrounds and various forms of Player versus Player. We are not currently planning to "lock" honor gain. (src)
BlizzCon This Week
BlizzCon 2008 begins this Friday, October 10, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA. The show will feature two days of gaming, contests, developer Q&A panels, tournaments, and more, in addition to live entertainment by comedian Patton Oswalt, all-Blizzard metal band Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain, and Video Games Live. Our recruiting team will be there, too, so if you’re interested in a career at Blizzard Entertainment, bring along your resume, demo reel, art portfolio, or business card. See our media alert for more details: http://www.Blizzard.com/us/press/081006.html -- and keep an eye on http://www.BlizzCon.com for live updates throughout the show. (src)
Brewfest - Token Quartermaster might persist after the event ended (next year)
This isn't something we can do on the fly, but perhaps next year. (src)
Priest
Shadow DPS
Yes, Shadow should do the same dps as other specs and classes, provided you have similar gear and skill. Replenishment is considered a buff just like all the other buffs. Its one exception is that having more than one in the raid can stack to some extent. (src)
Warlock
Shadowflame
After discussing Shadowflame a little, we think the problems are the dot and the cone. The dot makes the initial damage feel paltry and the cone makes it hard to use in every situation. I don't have an update yet on what we're going to do about it, but that's where we are at the moment. (src)
Demonic Circle recast part 2
We're fixing hundreds of bugs a week right now (maybe more). It's possible it's already on my list or that someone has fixed it already. (src)
