Upcoming Class Changes, Mount Speed, Items and Blues

**Azel** · 08/10/2008, 20:17

Upcoming Shaman Changes

<blockquote>Quote from: Koraa (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9879678064&sid=2000">Source</a>) Elemental - Elemental Fury and Call of Thunder are switching places. Call of Thunder will be a 1-point talent, and Elemental Fury will be a 5-point talent. For Elemental Shaman this won't mean much, for Enhancement it means they can have easier access to 100% spell crit damage. - Lava Burst's cast time has been increased to 2.5 seconds, but Lightning Mastery will reduce that cast time by 0.5 sec with 5 points. Thus, the coefficient of Lava Burst has been improved to match it's new cast time. - Lava Bursts base damage numbers have been significantly increased. Enhancement - Mental Quickness and Unleashed Rage have swapped places. - Spectral Transformation renamed "Earthen Power". It causes your Earthbind Totem totem to have a 50/100% dispel all snare effects when it pulses. - Weapon Mastery: Now a 3-point talent (4/7/10%) - Stormstrike - New animation, also now increases all Fire, Frost and Nature damage done by the Shaman instead of just Nature. - New Talent (Tier-8) - Lava Lash: You charge your off-hand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 75% off-hand Weapon damage. Damage is increased by 25% if your off-hand weapon is enchanted with Flametongue. 3 second cooldown. 4% base mana cost. (Also note: Lava Lash does Fire damage, also procs Maelstrom Weapon) - Maelstrom Weapon: Can now be used for Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave. - Feral Spirit - Many bugs with Spirit Wolves fixed, also increased the damage done by the Spirit Wolves Restoration - Ancestral Awakening improved to 10/20/30% </blockquote>
 Upcoming Priest Changes

<blockquote>Quote from: Koraa (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679634528&sid=2000">Source</a>) Holy - We're going to make Holy Concentration scale with spell crit instead of just a flat % - Divine Hymn now does a short duration heal over time effect in addition to it's crowd-control capability, and is now baked into a lot of Holy talents (Holy Reach, Divine Providence etc.) - We improved Blessed Recovery so that it now works like Ignite (Mage), where each crit gets added into the periodic heal over time and refreshes the duration. - Lightwell - You can now see how many charges are left in the Lightwell by clicking on it. Discipline - Grace will now provide 2% healing for the Priest, stacks up 3 times. So 6% increased healing taken from that target who has Grace (but only by you, the Priest). - Twin Disciplines will now work with Mind Flay. Shadow - Shadow Resilience re-designed. Now called Mind Melt - Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Mind Blast spells by 2/4%. - Shadow Power: Now 20/40/60/80/100% critical strike damage bonus, also works with Mind Flay. - Improved Shadowform - The chance to remove all movement impairing effects when you Fade is now restored. - Psychic Horror - Redesigned. Now reduces all damage done by targets when Psychic Scream ends by 15/30%. Lasts 6 sec. - Dispersion - 90% damage reduction is restored. - Misery - Now has 5/10/15% bonus spell power to Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Mind Blast. </blockquote>
 Class Balance in Build 8926

<blockquote>Quote from: Ghostcrawler (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679754227&sid=2000">Source</a>) Sorry we could not get this out ahead of time to give you a head's up. We have posted in many of the class forums already explaining why you saw so many changes to abilities and numbers this time around. The designers sat down and ran through every spell and talent in the game. We were looking for the following: -- Mechanics that we didn't think we'd be able to get working right. They might feel off or buggy. For some of these, it was time to change them and move on. -- Talents that were confusing, trying to do too many things or just weird for some reason. -- Talents or abilites that gave too much of one class' special abilities to another class. This is a tough one. Sometimes an ability feels so useful that we need to spread the love. Other times we fear the classes are just blending too much together if everyone does the same thing. -- Looking for talents or abilities that were under or over budget. Let me explain that last part in a little more detail. We balance most of the game to a budget. We have an idea for example that a talent point should be worth around a 1% dps increase. For a variety of reasons, it doesn't always work out that way and there are plenty of examples of talents that violate that goal -- it's not a hard and fast rule. But there were many talents that were doing too much for their cost. Talents that offer so much for their points quickly become mandatory. They may be fun in that you get a lot for your money, but they work against the design goal of being able to build a customized talent tree for your character. They also make spec parity or class balance a lot harder when there are these inflated numbers scattered throughout the talent trees. Some talents were under-budget and were buffed, but to be fair, most were over-budget, which is just the human nature of designers when we're trying to come up with something cool and exciting. What this patch was NOT was a comprehensive numbers pass. We didn't nerf you because your healing, dps or mitigation was too good compared to other classes. We really don't have enough data yet to make those conclusions (especially in PvP), but we're getting more and over every day, both internally and from helpful beta testers. What can you do? Get out there and try out the build. There are probably some cases where we nerfed an ability too far. These changes are not set in stone. The game isn't done. Please try and be clear and concise in your feedback because that makes it a lot easier for the designers and community managers to quickly read your posts. If you lost an ability that you felt you desperately needed or were really excited about, that's useful feedback. We love all of the classes, and ultimately the best outcome from our point of view is for everyone to be excited to start leveling when Lich King goes live. That means giving you mechanics you're excited about, but it also means not getting destroyed or totally outdone by other classes with talents or spells that are too good. Hopefully the next patch or two will have more numbers changes to get everyone closer to parity. But I don't need to remind you that this is a big, complex game, and it's going to take some time. </blockquote>
 PvE-to-PvP Paid Character Transfers Now Open In case you were on another planet yesterday.

<blockquote>Quote from: Bornakk (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679894519&sid=1">Source</a>) Providing a smooth and enjoyable experience for all players is always a priority for us, and we are continually re-evaluating our policies and programs to do so. As the state of the game has matured substantially since the inception of Paid Character Transfers, we will now be allowing PvE-to-PvP transfers on a full-time basis to provide players with more mobility and freedom to easily play with their friends. Keep in mind that all of the other standard cooldowns and restrictions will continue to apply; we’re just opening the option to transfer characters on Normal realms to Player-vs.-Player realms. Please review the <a href="http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20558&rhtml=true?rhtml=y"><f ont size="small">Paid Character Transfer FAQ</a> if you have any questions on how this service works. You can use this service at any time by visiting your <a href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account">Account Management page</a> and selecting the “Paid Character Transfer” button.</blockquote>
 Important change to mount speed improvements

<blockquote>Quote from: Ghostcrawler (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679754295&sid=2000">Source</a>) Any items or enchants that affect mounted speed will no longer affect any character over level 70. This includes the Riding Crop, Mithril Spurs, Riding Glove Enchant, Carrot on a Stick, Skybreaker Whip and all similar effects. Talents or spells that affect mounted speed will continue to do. In part, we thought it had become a hassle for players to have to equip (or macro) riding trinkets. We have new plans for how to improve mounted speed that we will unveil eventually. </blockquote>
 About the new Heirloom items

<blockquote>Quote from: Tigole & Verimonde (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679633896&pageNo=1&sid=2000#1 8">src</a>) You guys have discovered our <a href="http://www.worldofraids.com/#scalingitems">Heirloom items</a>. These (as you know) are Bound to account, which means you can mail them to any character on the same realm. They also scale with level. So you can mail these to a level one character and it will have appropriate stats (although slightly uber) for about 10 levels and then the item scales in power again, all the way up to how you're seeing it now. We're also going to add some Bind on Account non-scaling items for higher level alts. in the future. Let me elaborate on how these work for everyone. 1) Heirloom items Bind to Account. This means you can mail them between other characters on your account of the same faction. 2) Heirloom items' stats scale to the level of the person wearing them. 3) Heirlooms' power is equivalent to a blue item of the characters level. 4) Heirloom armor pieces will transform based on the type of the gear the character is capable of wearing. That is to say Heirlooms that are Plate on a level 80 character will be mail when equipped by a level 1-39 character who can wear plate. Items that are Mail on a level 80 character, such as Herod's Shoulders, will be equippable by people who can wear Mail armor at level 40. We wanted to add something to the game for people interested in trying new classes or who just generally love playing alts, and what's more fun than using an Arcanite Reaper on your level 1 Warrior ;) We are intending to expand where we use the "Account Bound" flag over time but for now Heirlooms are the only items that work this way. We also intend to expand the types of ways that Heirlooms can be attained but for now they are only purchasable via Emblems of Heroism (the new BoJ) and Stone Keeper's Shards, which are attained by killing any dungeon boss in Northrend while your faction controls Wintergrasp. As for enchanting these items, they can only be the recipient of anything that you could put on a level one item. Originally we wanted these to be transferable to any character on any account you own. Unfortunately we were unable to make this happen for Lich King. Ideally I would like to see these transferable to any same server same faction character on any account a player owns. If this becomes possible in the future it is certainly something we will look into. I own five accounts myself so I'm right there with you all. Heirlooms do not cross any boundaries except those that you would expect them to. Plate items become mail pre-40, pail items become leather pre-40. A cloth Heirloom is still a cloth item. Currently the only Heirloom types available are weapons, shoulders, and trinkets, in time we will expand on this. As far as how they are attained, your point is definitely something that we are aware of and after the system has had more time to solidify itself in game we will consider expanding the number of ways that they can be attained. </blockquote>
 WotLK Beta - Blue Posts
Icecrown It's partially implemented. Work is still ongoing but we felt like it was stable enough to at least get some feedback. Because it is not completely finished, you'll want to adventure there at your own risk. Quests will have some bugs or be unfinished and it's likely that creatures are either under-tuned or over-tuned. Also, rewards might be few and far between. We'd love to hear feedback on the zone in the Quest Forum. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679634205&pageNo=1&sid=2000#2 ">src</a>) Dalaran Feedback Q/A If I want to go to dragonblight via my flying mount, I have to take off from krasus landing and go AROUND dalaran to avoid the debuff before I make my way south. it would be nice if we could fly over it, but not around/through it. We are working on a solution for this. No promises, but it's on the list. We also know about all the small areas that are dismounting you guys in the wrong spots. We will get these cleared up. The intention is for people to be able to fly into the city from anywhere and get the dismount debuff so they have time to land. You can leave the city on your flying mount from either Krassus Landing or the exit pipe in the sewers. I assume getting stuck in the well will be fixed? The well should be fixed in the next push. Jumping in the well will teleport you to one of 5 random spots in the sewer. It's a magical well, what else did you expect... I've seen quite a number of times where Horde will walk up and just start killing the alliance Innkeeper. This has been fixed. NPC's should not be able to be attacked anymore. I think a huge concern will be the fact that there is only one conventional exit to Dalaran without taking a flight; and the exit is not a sanctuary. On a PvP server, nothing is to stop a crew of people from ganking everyone that uses the crystal to port out. We will be spawning guards down in Crystalsong to deal with this. I like the city but cant stand looking around in different shops and seeing the same old stuff. All GREY ITEMS or lvl 20 arrows(example)... I mean keep that stuff for org or ironforge, I dont see lvl 20 coming to dalaran to get arrows or some other lowbie grey item. Throw some nice items in there so i get excited to look around in the shops. The current plan is to have the correct vendors in the city selling the items you would expect. For instance, The Hunters Reach will sell standard ranged weapons but it will also sell high end Honor and Badge gear as well. We are going to try and do this as much as possible around the city. General lack of lore and personality. Rhonin and Veressa should have something to say. There should be more "characters" within the city, having conversations with one another ("FRUIT VENDOR! Your days are numbered!"). This is coming for sure. Don't worry, we have a ton of stuff planned to make Dalaran feel bustling and alive. As an example, we are planning to have an NPC walk around the city each night starting at 6pm to light all of the lamps using a magic spell. Things like this are awesome but we just can't work on that stuff until the basics of the city are locked down and working as expected. Everything you mentioned was for performance reasons. Many players have had difficulty navigating the city as a result of the inability to move around without lagging severely from both network lag and FPS issues. We have made an extended effort to make sure that Dalaran performs just as well or better than Shattrath did in Burning Crusade. We have had programmers reviewing the city every step of the way to insure that it does not cause any gamebreaking lag or framerate issues. If you do find either of these things happening to you, please report it ASAP. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679633307&sid=2000&pageNo=12# 228">src</a>) Battlemaster Achievement Arena Master will be it's own achievement with title. Battlemaster will now only include the Battleground Achievements and will have its own title. We'd still like to add a World PvP meta-achievement with some type of reward. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679399990&pageNo=1&sid=2000#1 1">src</a>) Death Knight Death Knight DPS comparaison We are in the process of comparing dps in a variety of situations, focusing first on PvE and then on PvP (because in this case, the tests for PvP are a lot more complicated). If we find out then that the DK damage is much lower than some other classes, as many of you suspect it is, then we'll adjust. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679803686&pageNo=2&sid=2000#3 5">src</a>) Druid Eclipse icon to show which buff is up? We'll be doing this. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679744509&pageNo=1&sid=2000#1 ">src</a>) Barskin in Feral It's not Bearwall, but Barskin in Feral might help. We can buff the avoidance and mitigation if it's too low. What we're talking about right now is Barkskin in all forms and increasing the threat of Feral Faerie Fire so it isn't so terrible at pulling. We'll have to keep an eye on AE tanking. Swipe is easy to buff, but it's also easy to buff it too much so that you only Swipe, even vs. 1 target. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679404123&pageNo=1&sid=2000#8 ">src</a>) Balance Talent Feedback There have been some good Balance threads already, but here is a chance to consolidate a lot of them into one area. For purposes of this thread, let's avoid discussions of things like dps relative to other classes or mana concerns. All Balance talents are open to discussion. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9879057813&sid=2000">src</a>) Hunter Cunning Pets We originally implemented the Cunning pets with lower stats because we imagined their CC would be too good. But the cooldowns are reasonably long and the durations short enough that this may not be an issue. We'll consider improving them to make up for the deficiency. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679912482&pageNo=1&sid=2000#8 ">src</a>) Kill Shot It will not cause the knockback effect any longer. It's now balanced to be around 2X the damage of steady shot. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679403756&pageNo=2&sid=2000#2 8">src</a>) Midirection Cooldown reduced to 30 seconds. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679804534&pageNo=1&sid=2000#5 ">src</a>) Pet taunt & cooldown sharing We removed the pet Taunt from sharing a cooldown with Growl and Cower. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9236465047&pageNo=1&sid=2000#8 ">src</a>) Aspect of the Viper Our intent was not really to reduce it's power, but make it equally powerful for the guy in green gear vs the guy in epics. We'll do some more tuning on it. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679754397&pageNo=1&sid=2000#1 6">src</a>) Pet talent feedback We need to finalize the pet talents pretty soon, so I wanted to created a thread that focused on their discussion. There are already some good posts on the topic, but they are mixed in with threads on various aspects of hunters. Focus on specific talents, and on how the trees are put together. Please don't use this particular thread to discuss more global pet issues (like feeding, leveling or PvP burstability) or pet stats in general. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679804544&sid=2000">src</a>) Shaman Adding totem pusles to combat log? We'll look into the combat log idea. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679743270&pageNo=1&sid=2000#1 1">src</a>) Warlock Drain Soul Drain Soul at level 71 will also do 4X damage against targets at or below 20% health. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679894204&pageNo=1&sid=2000#9 ">src</a>) Corruption Will be instant in the build after this one. (<a href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679634414&pageNo=1&sid=2000#7 ">src</a>) 
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