Ulduar, Blue posts

**Azel** · 02/01/2009, 14:30

Ulduar blue posts The year is starting well with two blue posts about Ulduar, the upcoming raid dungeon added in patch 3.1. It seems that we'll have a lot of encounters here... and tons of items! If you didn't see it earlier (really?) make sure you check the <a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=32357.0" target="_blank">Tier 8 and Ulduar Weapons preview!</a>. <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from Blizzard staff</div><div class="blizzquote">Itemization, haste and armor penetration rating Couple of things: 1) If your gear didn't have haste, it would probably have armor pen instead. If you are imagining your gear having Str or Stam instead of the haste, you are probably picturing Ulduar or season 6 gear. <img src="http://www.mmo-champion.com/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif" alt="Smiley" border="0" /> 2) We aren't offering the best itemized gear now because we want to have something left for you to work up to. We don't want the next tier of gear to look exactly like this one, but with +2 more of each stat. 3) We do think haste and armor pen might be a little low in what you get per rating point (at least for melee). That is something we're looking at. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14132373550-haste-and-me.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Ulduar PTR testing Ulduar will be on PTR in the future, but we're going to have tight controls in place on what can be tested at any given time. Ulduar will also not be up permanently like Naxxramas was in the WotLK Beta. If we have something to test, we'll make the zone and encounter available. If we don't, we'll disable the zone. That being said, there's going to be a LOT of encounters to test in both 10 and 25 player modes. There will also be a whole lot of "hard modes" and achievements to test. We're shooting for most all of the encounters to have "hard modes" that allow raids to increase the challenge and reward level if they're up to it. We're pretty pleased with how Sartharion and his drakes worked, and we're going to expand on that idea extensively in Ulduar and future raids. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/13908770558-blizz-do-not-make-ulduar-available-on-ptr.html" target="_blank">Source</a>)</div></div></div> Blue posts <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from Blizzard staff</div><div class="blizzquote">Dungeon (Naxxramas) - Totems dying in Grobbulus fight Not intended, fixed in a future patch. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/13909410060-totems-dieing-in-grobbulus-fight.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Dungeon (Stratholme) - Ramstein not spawning Don't let any Abominations get to the back gate and you'll be fine. I changed this to be more robust in a future patch. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/13909428957-stratholme--how-does-i-spawn-ramstein.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Dungeon - Death Knight spell effects and creature spells We've definitely noted the issues with some of the Death Knight ground effects blocking players from being able to see really important ground effects that creatures cast in encounters. We're going to see what we can do to help with this from the art side of things. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/13908949698-next-dk-to-use-deathndecay-in-raids.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) PvP Gear - Resilience and Armor Penetration on Cloth We changed the way we itemized PvP gear between seasons 4 and 5. The largest change is that resilience uses up much more of an item's budget, where previously it was almost bonus. We also stopped adding bonus armor (extra armor beyond what a cloth, leather, mail or plate would have at a certain item level) because it was causing some weird issues for certain characters, like Feral druids. The next few seasons should follow this new design, though of course we might decide to change that design for some pressing reason. Since we figured very few players would keep their level 70 gear over level 80 gear, we figured it was a fine time to change things across the board. We do think it is odd that armor penetration in general is more valuable against characters with the least armor, and that is something we might change in the future. PvP Gear - Burst damage We also are trying to prevent that from happening so much this time around. Later tiers of PvP gear have more survivability but don't inflate offensive stats nearly as much. This isn't as true of the weapons of course. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/13908986777-where-is-this-consensus-on-cc-being-op.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) The issue is really the static armor penetrations like Expose Armor and Sunder which would seem to be what GC is referencing in his post. Simple solution would be to just convert those to straight percentages as well and then the issue will also be resolved and balanced. So what percentage of armor should those abilities remove? Easiest thing would be just to balance them around how much armor they remove from a raid boss. Yes, well put. It would take a lot of rebalancing to convert Sunder and Expose over to a percentage, but it would solve some problems too. At a higher level, I don't think the answer to letting clothies survive longer is to make cloth more like mail. Either clothies are fragile or they're not. If they're fragile, then they need tools to be able to survive when the bad man with the axe or daggers comes a calling. If tons of armor is just something all players need, then we're spending a lot of extra dev time to itemize four tiers of armor (cloth, leather, mail and plate). I exaggerate, but I think you get the point. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/13908730115-gc-was-this-intentional.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) PvP talk on official forums We considered having a separate PvP forum, but honeslty we're pretty happy keeping them altogether. It is too easy for players to adopt the attitude of "Who cares, I don't PvP / PvE." But when you are talking about class or spec balance, we are going to care, so you might as well too. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that there is a lot of PvP talk right now with the new Arena season. I am sure sometimes people get clobbered (whether fairly or not) then come in here to immediately blast out a post to express their frustration. (These are usually not good posts.) I know it can make it a challenge to filter out the threads that don't interest you, but in the long run, many ability or mechanic changes have implications for both PvP and PvE so we'd rather not have to have the same discussions in multiple places. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/13908989724-split-the-forums-again.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) CoH / Wild Growth nerf I see this logic often, but it doesn't make sense to me. It reads to me like this "If we have an ability that is overpowered in certain situations, don't put us in those situations." That doesn't make the ability not overpowered. It just means we have to tiptoe around it's OP-ness. Wrath of the Lich King has dozens of instance bosses. It's challenging making those all feel different, and denying the encounter designers the ability to cause area damage takes a big tool away from them. In an old-fashioned raid like Molten Core, we could get away with doing damage mostly to the tank. But players have gotten a lot better at WoW since then, and many of them have seen a lot of encounters since then. I don't think Naxx or Ulduar would be very exciting if every boss, or even almost every boss, played like Patchwerk or Golemagg. Part of the challenge of taking a lot of damage at once is supposed to be triage (who needs healing the most) and coordination (I'll heal the tank, while you heal group 2, and that other guy heals the melee, but let's not stomp all over the hots). If the equation is very simple (If area damage, then use this one spell) then there isn't much of a challenge. We don't think Chain Heal is at that level right now (largely because of cast time and fall-off), or we would have nerfed it. We do think shamans were stacked at the end of BC, but that had a lot to do with Bloodlust / Heroism and totems affecting a limited number of targets (esp. Windfury). But in fairness to the other healers, if we get to a point where shamans are stacked again, we are prepared to do something about it. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/13908950575-worried-about-gcs-post-on-chain-heal.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) PvE and classes survavibility We certainly factor in plate as a benefit shared by warriors, paladins and death knights. But cloth wearers often have tools or spells to make up for their lack of armor. While we think mages and warlocks deserve a slight dps edge to make up for the fact that they are incapable of ever doing anything but dps (and those two happen to wear cloth) that is more of a mage and lock issue, not a cloth issue. (We put hunters and rogues in the same bucket as mages and locks.) We don't for example try to keep Fury warrior damage lower than Shadow priest damage. I'm not sure you could even argue that plate provides that much of a benefit in PvE. But really the bigger issue is that the content is designed so that any reasonable mix of classes can beat it, provided your group also has reasonable skill and gear. You shouldn't be taking so much damage that the healers can't heal through it. The survivability of the dps players generally shouldn't be an issue. The survivability of the tank might be an issue, and if you are all undergeared or doing the encounters wrong, then you might notice high casualty rates. But the corpses should be wearing cloth and plate. You should never find yourself in a situation where you say "Well, if we just had more plate and mail wearers, we'd be dealing with loot drama by now." [...] Ironically, and I thin...</div></div></div>

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