Frozen Orbs Need & Greed rolls in Patch 3.3.3 Wryxian on Frozen Orbs in Patch 3.3.3 (Source)
Q u o t e:
This just happened to me: http://i47.tinypic.com/ezj4gn.jpg
Anyway, that hunter went on to say that the orbs can also be traded for frost emblems and other stuff, not only eternals and frost lotuses, and that we should check the latest patch notes. I've looked and can't see anything new, can someone enlighten me? Is that right?
No, you won't be able to exchange Frozen Orbs for Emblems of Frost.
Yeah it just takes one person to press Need after everyone's pressed Greed on the Frozen Orbs and you miss out. But the good news is that in patch 3.3.3 this won't be the case anymore -- the roll for Frozen Orbs will be an automatic Greed roll. Rejoice!
Trading Card Game Forum Live!Eyonix on Trading Card Game Forum Live! (Source)
A forum has been made available for those who wish to discuss the World of Warcraft Trading Game. To begin discussing the TCG with others please follow the link below.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=26146637 Daily BlueGhostcrawler on Mastery for tanks
Q u o t e:
You guys are pretty much forcing tanks to gem for stam by reducing the amount of stam on gear and expecting us to make it up with stam gems. The part that worries me is the boring factor; gems are supposed to be something that gives players options and forcing us to gem for stam by design doesn't really give us an option.
I'm not sure I buy that logic. If tanking gear had thousands and thousands of Stam, tanks would still socket Stamina because it's reliable. If your health is low, then even if your avoidance is 99% that means sometimes you're just going to die and no healer can save you. Now, if healers can generally heal you through damage but then eventually gas out, then avoidance becomes more attractive because it lets healers heal you longer. Does that mean you gem it? Not sure, but at least a trinket with all avoidance might be pretty exciting.
We also think we figured out a budgeting scheme to let tank gear have the same basic Stamina as dps gear. It's not a huge balance concern either way, but it does look weird when dps plate has more.
As for parry vs. dodge, there are just going to be a lot of debates both within our office and on all of the boards about how it should ideally work and the relative value of each. Those conversations are going to go on a long time and not the kind of thing that can easily be summed up in a pithy GC post. (Source)
Ghostcrawler on Question about 1v1 balance
Q u o t e:
They don't run out of mana.
I think this is a case of people jumping into a thread from Bluetrackers.
To reiterate:
1) I said at some point 'All things being equal, a dps should be able to kill a healer.'
2) OP wondered what the context was for that statement.
3) I said the context was probably (because I don't remember) mana: meaning that all things being equal, a healer should eventually run out of mana. In other words, the way to counter a healer is to run them out of mana. It can't just be 'I explode the healer with my awesome damage' because if that was true, it would mean a healer couldn't heal themselves through one attacker and would have little chance keeping themselves or a team member alive vs. 2 attackers.
4) The real take home message is that we don't put a lot of time balancing 1 v 1. The reasons are A) that there is nothing in the game that showcases 1v 1 encounters (you don't get Arena points from duels), and B) 1 v 1 balance doesn't scale well to team balance, which is showcased in Arena and BGs.
Players like to argue 'If it's balanced 1 v 1 then it will be balanced for any number of participants.' But that math doesn't actually work because of team synergy. The definition of synergy is that the total effect is greater than the sum of the component parts, or in other words, 1 + 1 > 2. The second you buff someone you are making both of you more powerful -- the buff is not divided by the number of recipients. Your team is more powerful than just the sum of what each of you can do individually. A 3 v 3 Arena match is fundamentally *not* a trio of 1 v 1 duels happening simultaneously.
Another way to consider it is to look at the damage done by a 10 player raid. Is a 25 player raid roughly 2.5 times that of the 10 player? No, it's probably closer to 3.5 times. It's not a linear scale. Now to be fair some of that is from fewer healers and tanks, but even that helps to support my point that you can't extrapolate upwards from 1 player and expect to have a meaningful encounter. (Source)
Mastery System Q&AQuote from: Blizzard (Source)
The points will work this way
It's possible you will only get the benefit of the tree in which you've spent the most points, or will only get the benefit from say 50 points maximum with the bonus chosen from the tree with the most points in it. We'll have to see when the talent trees are more finalized and we start to figure out build strategies.
Overall, the goal is to spend points as you want, and not feel penalized for spending into another tree or feel like you have to game things by spending more points than you want in your tree. Remember these passive bonuses are designed to give you flexibility, not lock you into anything.
About hybrid builds
Imagine you spend 55 points in Retribution, so you get the maximum passive talent tree bonuses from that tree. Your remaining points you can spend where you want, in Retribution, Protection or Holy. It does discourage some kind of true hybrid build where you go partway down multiple trees, but we aren't really trying to support those, and they aren't very popular today.
The flexibility comes (hopefully) in having more discretionary points that you can spend on talents you like, rather than sacrificing raw damage, healing or tanking to do so.
So you're getting rid of stats like Defence and ArP because they're a bit too mathy and hard to figure out, and replacing it with something equally confusing? How do you expect new players to figure this out?
It's designed partially with new players in mind. It will be much harder to have a truly terrible talent spec because you won't be able to help but be reasonably good at your chosen role.
The mastery stat itself won't show up until high level, and even when it does, you should have more confidence that it's a stat you want instead of say trying to figure out the percent of your damage that is physical damage to calculate if armor pen is good for you or not.
I admit that adding passive bonuses at all to talent trees complicates the talent feature slightly. We hope to make up for that by there being less paranoia about picking "the wrong" spec. The wrong spec might only be a slight loss instead of a tragic loss. As a point of comparison, dual-spec complicates talents a little, but overall we think it was good for the game.
Would the 'intended role' of disc be preventing damage? It almost feels as though the third disc bonus should be the first, and the third replaced by something similar to the divine aegis effect, where direct damage creates small shields.
To answer your question -- and this applies to all classes. the first two mastery stats are gained by placing points into a given talent tree (and wearing the gear intended for your class, e.g. leather for druids). This will allow us to remove many of the talents that always felt mandatory, especially at the min-max level, and allow room for customization.
Level 80 items won't have mastery stat on them
Sorry we didn't make this more clear -- what this means is -- level 80 items from this expansion will not not include the mastery stat. However, once you enter the new end-game zones, you will slowly begin to find this stat on select gear.
28/28/20 spec. Does mastery on gear affect both highest trees or give no benefit at all?
Mastery on gear gives you one bonus. That bonus is the third passive (the unique one) in the tree in which you've spent the most points. In the examples we gave, those are Absorption, Radiance and Runic Power generation.
How are ferals and Dks as tanks working with mastery system in place? Are they to care about it for threat or do they have separate bonuses.
Ferals will have passive bonuses that say Cat: melee damage done, Bear: damage reduction. For death knights we have a different plan in mind that we're not quite ready to discuss. DKs are undergoing some slight changes so they aren't so GCD constrained and are less limited by rune cooldowns.
How are the non-pure classes going to be balanced against those with a full 76 point passive benefit? Balance, enhancement(not so much), shadow, feral, ele, resto, holy and Ret all have this issue.
Assume you only get the passive bonuses for the tree in which you've spent the most points, and there is a ceiling per tree (which could be something like 51-55 talent points). If you spend more points than that in a tree you still get the benefits of the talent. If you spend points in another tree, you are benefiting from those talents instead. Unless you try to make say a 40 / 36 / 0 build, you shouldn't be losing passive bonuses.
If you turn level 10 and spend 1 point in Discipline, you are now a Disc priest. You receive the Disc talent tree passive bonuses and mastery rating on gear benefits your Disc passive bonus (Absorption). If you reach level 85 and have 70 points in Disc and 6 in Holy, you are still a Disc priest and the same rules apply. If you change your build to 51 Disc / 20 Holy / 5 Shadow, you are still a Disc priest.
Hybrids who use spells not improved by their spec on occasion such as heals or the extra lava burst are feeling that their non-specced spells are going to be extremely weak as compared to now.
They are weak now and the intent is to keep them that way. We aren't trying to nerf them any more than they are today. If we want to make sure Resto shaman can do big Lava Bursts, we'll give them a talent or something to make that happen. We don't want Resto shaman to Lava Burst anywhere on the scale of an Elemental shaman. Again, how they perform today is pretty much the target for where we want to end up.
About the DK rune mechanic
I know it's hard to get a feel for the design when you can't see the complete picture, but talent trees are changing for Cataclysm. As Eyonix referenced above, we are changing the DK rune mechanic a little so that you aren't so GCD constrained. This in turn will give us a chance to rebalance how much runic power Frost gets. Remember that in many cases we are pulling talents out of the trees and giving them to you as passive bonuses. In general if you see a passive talent tree bonus and think to yourself "Hmm, that doesn't sound very good for me," then it's probably because we haven't revealed the changes that lead to that being attractive to you.
By all means mention concerns though. That's one of the reasons we like to announce changes like this early.
Won't having this ceiling pigeonhold "pure" classes into builds where putting points in a tree that go past the ceiling will be sub-optimal as you will be missing out on mastery from your sub trees, i.e. ending up with all builds being 51/24/0 and no builds being 61/14/0 because you just lost 10 points of mastery bonus?
It's hard to set stuff like this in stone until we explore what kinds of builds will be popular, but assume that you don't get anything for the sub spec (except for the actual talents, which are presumably still valuable or you wouldn't be sub-speccing). Community Interviews: EnigmaZarhym on Community Interviews: Enigma (Source)
We've updated World of Warcraft's five-year anniversary site to include a frank interview with Fraya, the leader of the Enigma guild on the Deathwing realm. In the interview, we speak with Fraya about his most memorable moments over five years of playing, Enigma's experience in high-end raiding, and where the guild expects to find itself in Cataclysm and beyond. Check out the anniversary page for our full discussion.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wowanniversary/interview/
While there, be sure to read our interviews with members from the guild Shadowclan, and with forum MVP Palehoof if you have not already!
Eyonix on Mastery System Preview (Source)
Last week, we gave you an early look at the changes we're making to the stat system in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and explained how these changes will ultimately provide players with more interesting gear choices and make stats easier to understand. Today we'd like to go into more detail about a brand-new feature that's an integral part of this overhaul: the Mastery system, a set of new game mechanics designed to allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. With this system, we want to accomplish three things: give players more freedom in how they allocate talent points, simplify some of the 'kitchen sinky' talents that try to do too much at once, and add a new stat to high-level gear that makes you better at your chosen role.
Here's how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you'll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree -- meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear.
One of our primary goals with Mastery is to give players more flexibility to choose fun or utility-oriented talents rather than make them feel obligated to pick up 'mandatory' but uninteresting talents, such as passive damage or healing. (For examples of the kinds of powerful but boring talents we're talking about, take a look at the talent tier just above the 51-point talent in many of the existing trees.) In a sense, Mastery makes it so every talent in (just for example) a rogue tree essentially has an invisible additional bullet point that says '…and increases your damage by X%.' This way, if you choose a talent like Elusiveness (which reduces your chance to be detected while stealthed) or Fleet Footed (which affects movement), you won't feel like you're giving up damage in exchange for utility.
There will still be talents that boost damage, of course, but those talents will also affect the way you play. For example, you can still expect to see talents like Improved Frostbolt, which reduces the cast time of the Frostbolt spell; it increases DPS, but it also affects the mage's rotation. Piercing Ice, however, is just '6% more damage' and is the kind of talent we're trying to eliminate by implementing the Mastery system.
As we get closer to Cataclysm's release, we'll go into more detail about the changes coming for each class, including individual talent-tree adjustments and how Mastery will affect them. In the meantime, here are a few examples to demonstrate the three kinds of passive bonuses we described above. Please keep in mind that we're still working on this system, and the handful of examples we're providing here are, of course, subject to change.
Holy Priest
For each talent point spent in the Holy tree, the priest also gets:
- Healing - Improves your healing by X%.
- Meditation - Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent from the Discipline tree, which many Holy priests consider to be a 'must-have.' Regeneration will also probably be determined by whether you are in or out of combat, and not the 'five-second rule.
- Radiance - Adds a heal-over-time effect to direct heals, such as Flash Heal. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.
Discipline Priest
For each talent point spent in the Discipline tree, the priest also gets:
- Healing - Improves your healing by X%.
- Meditation - Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent.
- Absorption - Improves the amount of damage absorbed by spells such as Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.
Frost Death Knight
For each talent point spent in the Frost tree, the death knight also gets:
- Damage - Improves your melee and spell damage by X%.
- Haste - Improves your melee Haste by Y%. This might allow us to remove some of the Haste in the Icy Talons line of talents.
- Runic Power - Improves the rate of runic power generated by abilities. While all death knights want runic power, Frost death knights would generally have more runic power than Blood or Unholy death knights (who would receive a different benefit from their respective trees). An Unholy death knight who sub-specs into Frost would still be able to benefit from this bonus, though because they're investing fewer talent points, they'd benefit to a smaller degree. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.
A couple other things to note: Currently, we're not planning to retrofit the Mastery stat onto current level-80 gear when we roll out the stat-system changes prior to Cataclysm's release. However, Mastery will begin appearing on select quest and dungeon items. You will also gain a small amount of Mastery by wearing gear of your intended armor type (such as plate for paladins). For players with dual specs, when you change between your two chosen specs, the Mastery bonuses and the benefit you receive from the Mastery stat on gear will adjust automatically based on your new spec.
We'll have more details to share about these and other changes we're making in Cataclysm in the future, and we'll do our best to answer your questions about the Mastery system here on the forums. For information on many of the stat changes being made in Cataclysm, please check out our earlier update at - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425636414&sid=1
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