Today's blue posts

Today's blue posts include news about another upcoming per pay service coming to WoW, news about the second part of the Anub'arak hotfixes and some warrior and tanking issues.

In-faction Race Change service

Nethaera on How about Race Changes?? (Source)
Q u o t e:
I had hoped this feature would be included in the faction change. *sigh*

Does anyone know if same faction Race changes will ever be available? Example Gnome Mage _>> Human Mage??
From the sticky announcement for Faction changes we said the following:

Based on further community feedback, we have also decided to offer a race change service in the future. Players who choose to switch races will be able to change their race within their same faction and class. Additional details will be released at a future date.

So race change is coming at a future point in time. We don't have any further information for you at this point in time, however.

Anub'arak softreset hotfix

Daelo on Anubarak - Floor reappears after a soft reset (Source)

Ok, we just deployed a hotfix that will repair all broken saved raids of the Crusader's Coliseum that did not have Barrett Ramsey properly spawn. Without Barrett Ramsey, raids are unable to start the event that grants access to the final boss. You will have to soft reset the instance again if you already have your broken instance open, but Barrett should be back after that.

Other

Ghostcrawler on Bosses won't hit for 40k.
I still stand by the statement. Most of your examples seem to be Gormok's Impale which has a lot more going on (dots, tank transitions) than just hitting a single tank really hard. Those encounters drop really high level gear. If you're tanking him with item level 226 (because you've only been in the instance 5 weeks and maybe your tanks haven't gotten a lot of drops) then you've got some deficit to make up. The good news is that because of the way loot works in that instance, you can choose to gear your tanks really quickly if you so desire.

Yes, you will still need to work to keep your tanks up. That's just part of hard mode. But my suspicion is still that the community won't jump to tank class choice as the explanation for why a certain fight is easier or harder for them. Or, more realistically, they still will, but... alas. (Source)

Ghostcrawler on Why not abandon high tank damage?
If we just chilled out tank damage, then healing would be a lot easier. While I know it's popular in this forum to claim that we only want to make life hard for the healers, I think in reality many of you would get bored or risk losing your spot when the raid didn't need as many healers.

A better answer, in our opinion, is to increase tank health and have bosses hit hard but not as often. The end result would hopefully be that it took several big heals to bring a tank back up rather than a single Holy Light crit. Currently overhealing isn't particularly scary because mana is cheap and the risk of the tank (or anyone dying) on a given GCD is very real.

If you currently put say 3 healers on the tank that isn't because it requires that much healing per second to keep the tank alive. Instead, it's because with 3 healers hopefully someone will be always casting and can land a heal after big hit one but before big hit two, which would kill the tank. If a few hots or shields get stomped on along the way, oh well.

Ideally, you put 3 healers on the tank because it takes 3 big heals to get the tank back up. If you don't coordinate well or use a big heal when a medium heal would do, then you'd risk too much overhealing and ultimately running out of mana. You'd need to heal smart as well as just healing fast and big, which is what the current design really encourages.

I predict health pools of all players will go way up in Cataclysm relative to player damage and healing. Everything (meaning PvP too) would be slowed down just a little so that making the right choice would sometimes trump making the fast choice.

I'll also add that many players think 10-player raid healing is currently more fun than in 25s because you are often splitting duties with just one other person -- 'You heal the tank. I'll heal the raid.' In 25s you get more of that whack-a-mole feeling where you're competing just as much with other players to heal someone first and nothing feels very organized or efficient. (Source)

Ghostcrawler on Two minute buffs need changed!
With the paladin buffs, resources are never an issue. You generally don't have to worry about renewing the buff when it falls off because you'll have enough mana unless you're near the end of the fight or something has gone wrong. For that reason it felt like just a hassle to have to renew them and we ultimately increased the durations.

With warrior shouts, the intent is that the resources do matter. You might not have enough rage at any given moment and part of the skill required in playing a warrior is making sure you have enough resources to both shout and do your other damage.

I can appreciate that that design might not be particularly compelling, but I'm not sure the solution is to just let shouts last forever. I think Horn of Winter might actually be a stronger design in that sense. Imagine (I am arm waving for a moment) that Battle Shout and Commanding Shout didn't cost any rage and in fact gave you rage, but were on a cooldown. Then using the shouts might become a more interesting choice -- you'd want to use them at moments when you're rage-starved and generally not when you have a full bar. However, you'd also want to keep them going because of their buff so you couldn't neglect to use them too often either. A challenge of playing the class / a test of your skill would be to shout at the right moment to keep the buff up but also make sure you earn the rage when you most needed it. (Source)

Ghostcrawler on Two minute buffs need changed!
Q u o t e:
GC, that's patently false? Warrior tanking by design (I hope it's not accident) requires close to 'infinite' rage to have decent threat output. If we're ever short rage to the point we can't refresh shouts, then we have much bigger problems. Pretty sure you had said something to this effect when you talked about how we 'had' to heroic strike every swing in order to be viable.
Infinite rage is not our intent for the warrior, when dps or tanking. Rage is one of the core mechanics for the warrior along with stances. You already don't get much out of stances as a tank. If you also don't have to pay attention to resources then you're not really going to get the experience playing the class that we intend.

When I say stuff like that, the inevitable result is 'OMG GC sez they're going to nerf our rage.' That's not what I mean. Warrior tanks have been balanced around their current condition of having (near) infinite rage and we'd have to make additional changes if we get to the point where you need to pay more attention to it.

As an example, back when threat was a lot bigger issue in fights (think Voidreaver or Vael), then smart warriors would advocate spending some of their itemization on threat stats. I think it might have been Satrina who advocated using a dps weapon to tank since you can put survivability in every other slot. If warrior tanks generated more of their rage by doing damage than taking damage, then a lot of stuff might get fixed: dps stats would be more valued (without going back to threat-limiting fights), you wouldn't be rage-starved when avoiding or OT'ing, and tanking could be a little bit more about using the right ability at the right time and not just when it's on cooldown.

DKs don't have infinite resources at any given point in time, and while it has caused some design challenges, I think it makes for a more interesting experience overall. We can debate about whether Prot paladins have mana issues, but they still have to do something to get mana back. (As an aside, Ret paladins generally don't have mana issues, but that has also led to a system that is very cooldown-driven and one where we've had a hard time nailing both fun and balance at the same time.)

In any case, if rage mattered a little more to Prot warriors then Commanding Shout for rage would be a more interesting mechanic. Again, this is not an announced change -- just a little brainstorming to in turn encourage additional discussion in this thread. (Source)

Ghostcrawler on Elitist Jerks Close Thread on Unholy DK
Q u o t e:
I think this deserves some clarification:

1. GC made a post a couple of weeks ago saying that the Shadowfrost build / rotation is 'unintended' and will be 'fixed'

2. In this thread we're currently in, GC says that Obliterate replacing Scourge Strike will probably be fixed as well, just not as highly prioritized as Shadowfrost or whatever other issues they might be working on.

Shadowfrost is considered a more dire problem because (as I explained above), it violates the basic principles of DK DPS.

Technically, Unholy-Obliterate does not, or at least, only violates half the principles. The basic rotation principle remains intact, even if the flavor-strikes-should-replace-basic-strikes rotation is broken. Shadowfrost breaks both.

===

As far as ignoring FU strikes, it both has and has not happened, as there are actually two Unholy builds going around:

1. The first is the Shadowfrost build. This completely ignores FU strikes, using neither Obliterate nor Scourge Strike. Instead, it uses Glyphed Icy Touch for maximum RP production while spamming heavily talented Death Coils.

2. The second is the Unholy-Obliterate. This one does not ignore FU strikes, as it still uses Obliterate. It just ignores Scourge Strike specifically.
Yeah, I think that is a good summary. Thanks, Prinsesa. I would add that PvP Unholy DKs will also still use Scourge Strike, because it wins over Obliterate when the target is not sundered. Your target better be sundered in PvE but often is not in PvP.

It's also fine if some players can be moderately successful with Shadowfrost (which I am defining here as a DK that largely ignores melee attacks). We just don't want a return to the world where that was the only way to play a DK.

The bottom line is still that we understand Unholy DKs want to use Scourge Strike and we want that too. In the meantime, using Obliterate gives you a pretty similar experience to using Scourge Strike. Going 51 Frost or using nothing but Icy Touch does not (and again it's subjective). (Source)