Patch 3.3 - PTR Build 10952
A new build has been deployed on test realms, this build is a release candidate for live servers and as I said yesterday the patch should hit the live servers on December 8th/9th. Of course, this information isn't official and it could change if something bad happens. (That's why Blizzard never gives any ETA)


Nothing really new in this build, only changes from the official notes going live and a few tweaks.

Quote from Blizzard staff
Achievements

Icecrown Citadel

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
  • Eclipse now increases damage done by Wrath by 40% (up from 30%) and the critical chance of Starfire by 40% (up from 30%)

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
  • Item - Warrior T10 Melee 2P Bonus - When your Deep Wounds ability deals damage you have a 3% chance to gain 16% attack power for 10 sec. (Down from 20% attack power)





Another part of Patch 3.3 available on Background Downloader
Another part of the patch is now available on the background downloader, make sure you run it to get ready for next week.



Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Cataclysm, Mastery, Passive Talents
We're not going to be able to get all damage out of the trees. For example, Improved Frostbolt, a talent that makes Frostbolt cast faster is essentially a passive damage increase, but it does it in a more interesting way than a talent like Arctic Winds, which grants +Frost damage to keep it from being a PvP only talent.

I don't know that Improved Overpower will make the cut, since you pretty much always want to Overpower when you can so it isn't that interesting a talent. Taste for Blood is an interesting talent even though it's pretty much just more damage at the end of the day. Trauma is not particularly interesting, but it's an important group buff which makes it marginally more interesting that a talent that just passively improves your own damage. Something like Deep Wounds is tough. It's pretty passive but it's also pretty iconic for the Arms tree. If crit chances are lower in Cataclysm, and they will be, then it's not the no-brainer it is today, but I still can't imagine an Arms build without it.

Ultimately, what we want to do is just give players a lot more flexibility in how they talent. Some of the trees currently have a "cookie cutter" spec that says something like "Spend the last 3 points wherever you want." We want to get that feel in all the trees, and hopefully with more like 5-8 points spent wherever you want. We also want to make sure you aren't able / forced to skip over the utility talents just to get the +damage, healing or survival talents. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Death Knight Tanking
My comments above somehow got twisted into "We want DKs to be OTs and not MTs." My actual post was that warriors are the most common MTs in progression-oriented guilds and my suspicion is that DKs are the most common OTs, though I acknowledged that I did not have the data to back that second part up.

Now you can't have it two ways here. You can't say "DKs are so terrible that they can only OT," while at the same time saying "Guilds use warrior MTs even though they're terrible because they are either ignorant (unlikely) or stubborn (possible)." I think a more credible conclusion is that tank balance isn't in such a dreadful state that it really affects what tanks groups use. They use the tanks they have or that their players like to play.

Example: I asked a designer here whose guild is on heroic Anub 25 what tanks they use. They haven't beaten it yet, but they're close and they'll probably get it before 3.3. They use a DK MT and a warrior OT. I asked him why. It turned out their old warrior MT and paladin OT moved on and they used who they had left. They didn't feel the need to recruit or reroll to get say a paladin MT and druid OT. Now this is a sample size of one so it's hardly a trend. At the same time, I speak to a fair number of players and I think this kind of situation is typical. The relative strengths or weaknesses of the various classes and specs -- including dps and healers here, with a couple of exceptions like Subtlety rogues -- are not a huge factor in who gets brought to a raid. This seems to be true both of those groups that get server first kills and those guilds that come later but still defeat the toughest fights in the game before they are old content. That argues that the differences aren't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.

[...] I think this is a legit concern. While we don't want to give every tank class identical abilities, I do think DKs suffer from lacking something to fill the Shield Slam niche -- an on-demand high threat ability, great for smacking an add that has just arrived, but that can't be spammed to the exclusion of all else. Rune Strike isn't dependable enough and it is spammed anyway. However, it's pretty easy to conceive (and much harder to implement of course) of a Rune Strike that works more like Shield Slam, but with plenty of threat capable from other attacks. I think DK AE threat is fine, occasionally bordering on overpowered if you can get full use of DnD and Pestilence. (Source)




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