Daelo on A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity (Source)Here's the breakdown.You can use:Any item below item level 245.The item level 245 set pieces that drop from 25-player Trial of the Crusader but also appear in the 10-player Tribute Chest.Any gear that drops in 10-player Trial of the Crusader or Trial of the Grand Crusader, including item level 245 Trial of the Grand Crusader drops and item level 258 cloaks from the 10-player Tribute Chest.Any item level 245 items purchased with Badges of Triumph.Any item level 245 Bind on Equip item, including crafted pieces.You cannot use:Any item level 245 item not included above (primarily Bind on Pickup drops from 25-player Trial of the Crusader, but also notably Val'anyr).Any item over item level 245 except for the 10-player Tribute cloak.Any higher item level loot introduced in future patches (25 player Onyxia 245s, Icecrown loot in the future, etc.)
Will Cataclysm raids require 2-3 tanks? We think we can design better encounters that generally take 1-3 tanks in 25-player content and 1-2 in 10-player content. There will probably be exceptions from time to time, such as the occasional caster tank (Maulgar and Razuvious perhaps). It's very easy to get burned out on raiding, and we think having fights that all felt the same would contribute to that. That goes as far as comparing raid tiers. We don't want it to be "Here's the Patchwerk fight. Here's the council fight. Oh, interesting, they switched the lots-of-adds fight to position 3 this time." ToC is fairly small as instances go, so you're not going to get the diversity that you do in larger raids. Heck, the Eye of Eternity is one boss with no trash. There is no way to make that a typical fight with a sample size of one. We want you to approach every fight differently, and that includes shifting people around to different roles. Sometimes you need more healers and sometimes you need less. Sometimes the casters have to handle the adds and sometimes the melee have to be on interrupt duty. Sometimes you need to split the group up. Sometimes your OTs have to go dps since the fight only requires one tank. It only gets to be a problem, in our minds, if the OT is such a liability on single-tank fights that she gets swapped out for another rogue or whatever. That has happened in the past in the history of WoW. It doesn't seem to be happening too much these days. All of the tanking classes can do much higher damage in a tanking spec with dps gear than they used to be able to do, and there is always dual-spec if that isn't enough for you. (The truth is also that very few fights only ever require a single tank.) It's awesome so many players are interested in the tanking role, but no, we're never going to promise that every encounter will require 4 tanks. (Source) Blizzard's "vision" for each class We're sympathetic if players *really* don't understand what their class is supposed to do. Too often in this forum however, players want to see something in writing so they then have a visible target to go after. "You used 'ranged caster' in the warlock description, but in the mage description you just said 'caster.' Therefore, that means mages should be able to stand and fight melee without having to blink away since clearly the're supposed to focus less on ranged combat than are warlocks. Please buff." Players still over focus on the descriptions "master of healing" or "master of armed combat" in old class descriptions to argue how their class should be the best at something even though pausing and considering that design for a moment should suggest why that might not be the best idea for the game. If you really don't know what the vision is for your class, you can probably figure it out reading class forums, the various fansites, the class Q&As, talking to some players in game or just playing and exploring what works and doesn't. Those avenues are going to give you a much broader sense of how to play, what you should focus on, where your strengths and weaknesses are and the overall vision of the class than anything we can try to convey in 3-4 simple sentences. (Source) Bornakk on BWL - Will we ever see a raid like it again? Q u o t e: With the advent of the hardmode system, I have seen the path to progression now goes through Achievements but I was wondering if we will ever see a raid again that requires: A. Attunement - Instead of marching through the front door and killing stuff, we have a series of quests to complete in a compelling storyline. B. Crowd Control - Real CC, like the raid wipes if you break the sheep, etc. Think TK trash before Kael, most of SSC trash, BWL too for that matter. C. More Linear Raids - Like MC, AQ40, BWL, where you feel like you are travelling through the instance and the end of it feels far away. D. Separation of Gear - Raid gear vs Heroic gear. In Vanilla, there was no comparison. Now, this idea is nothing new and there is always the argument of elitism vs casual but the truth is that the reason a lot of people ran BWL back in the day was for the gear, not for the epeenery. E. End Boss who takes several weeks to kill - Rather than the 'world firsts' (and yes I quoted those words) of today, harken back to the days when the end boss was a real bad ass and it tooks weeks not hours to kill him. The real question is: Is this type of raid extinct or can we be surprised with maybe one or two raids that really feel like the old days of raiding where there was a sense of accomplishment and challenge? To those 'hard mode' advocates: I have no problem with hard modes, I am just asking if we can see a dungeon that doesn't contain gimmicky hard modes. Based on the points you provided, probably not. A. Attunements tended to cause more frustration than benefit so we have aimed to put the story parts into optional quests and allow players to have easier access to the dungeons. I don't remember when heading to Onyxia anybody being excited to help someone do the attunement again. B. Crowd control could be around, but it also is linked with trash that people tend to complain about when there is a decent amount of it. Several packs in Ulduar have CC-able mobs, do you want to triple the number of trash packs and their difficulty to make the CC more valued? C. I'm not sure I understand this one. There were a number of complaints over the boring linear part of the old dungeons, but we do want the dungeons to feel epic and I think a place like Ulduar accomplished that -- getting to Yogg doesn't feel like a short hop. D. The gear tends to look similar as there is more of it and more people running raids now that they are more accessible. A lot of players only do things when there is a reward so it seems like a lot of people go where the gear goes. E. I don't want to blabber on here, but bugs often had to do with the long kill times back then which we have avoided through better testing methods. Yogg-0 is still no easy feat though and that took quite awhile for even the top guilds in the world to pull off. (Source) Death Knight Reason behind 3.2.2 Gnaw change To spin an infamous old phrase of mine, being kited forever isn't fun. However, casters do need to actually be able to cast sometimes. We don't find the argument that a longer cooldown makes the ability easier to use compelling. We also don't buy that under-represented specs should be allowed to have frustratingly overpowered abilities. I'm not saying Gnaw falls into this category, but there are a couple of posts above slipping into the "So what, as long as we aren't at 10% of Arena representation balance doesn't matter" camp. (Source) Druid When Is Healing Touch Coming Back? You can use Healing Touch with NS or glyphed to heal a 5-player run. Not every spell needs to be your go to button in raids. It would be a bigger deal if you only had 3 spells and weren't using one. (Source) Feral MT "Representation" You're welcome to argue that Ferals aren't fun to play for one reason or another or that they are too valuable in healing roles or having too much fun as Moonkin or cats. Still, I have a strong suspicion that if they conveyed an enormous advantage over other tanks for difficult fights that raids would still find a way to use them. "Well guys, our bear wants to heal tonight, and nobody else can survive the boss, so I guess we're calling the raid." It's possible bears do convey an advantage on some fights. But I'll argue that if that advantage was large or if it manifested itself on most fights that progression-oriented guilds would flock to them. Instead, most of those guilds use warrior tanks, because they always have, and because the warriors do just fine. I'll also add that who is tanking heroic Anub isn't the critical tanking role on that fight, and that we see mostly warriors tanking the adds. (Source) Hunter The most popular spec at level 80 BM is actually more popular than MM among level 80s. BM is also the most popular secondary spec, though maybe it could just be to play Pokemon with Spirit Beasts. (Source) Rogue Assassination - Weapon Swap gimmick There is some theorycrafting that suggests swapping weapons like this will be a net dps increase. It's not a huge dps increase, and the conditions in which the simulation were done were extremely generous. Short story: we're not convinced ROUGES are really going to be doing this. If they end up doing it, we'll probably take some action because we agree it's a clunky mechanic. In the meanwhile, there are some legit and slightly less clunky opportunities to swap weapons and we'd rather not make those collateral damage if we don't have to. (Source) About the Subtlety tree Now, we do want Subtlety to be more attractive. All of the pure dps classes have a spec that isn't as popular as the others. Mages may be the closest because at least Frost has a viable PvP use, but there are also plenty of mages who want to be able to use Frost in end-game PvE too. Subtlety (and Frost for that matter) are specs focused around utility. The problem is that players understandably nearly always choose damage over utility for raiding and often choose utility over damage for PvP, unless the damage is really high or the utility just doesn't cut it for some reason. What we are talking about doing is sharing more of the utility among other specs, or the core class, so that there aren't "utility trees." To do that though, we have to make the way the different specs do damage different enough so that players might choose a play-style preference over highest damage. This is particularly challenging for rogues, who have a history of giving up a preferred spec or play style for one with a sub 1% dps increase. I think we are closest with the Arcane vs. Fire mage specs at the moment. They play a little differently, which goes beyond just the type of magic damage they do. While Fire might still do the highest damage overall, Arcane is close enough and plays different enough that even competitive players don't feel stupid for playing that spec. There are a lot more Arcane mages out there than I think a lot of players assume. That is harder with rogues. "I'm the sneaky one" doesn't translate into sustained raid dps. Assassination feels like it emphasizes poisons more and Combat feels like it emphasizes weapons more, so we're a little closer there. Subtelty needs a stronger yet damage-oriented niche. HaT, sadly, is not a niche. HaT has scaling problems. It's appropriate for a 5-player group, but gets too in larger groups with all of their raid buffs. We don't want HaT to be the one talent that pushes players into Subtlety. ...Let's consider two talents. First, Ice Barrier. Great spell and pretty fun. Would you give up raid dps to have this talent? It depends. If the fight is so deadly that you're going to die without it, well alive mages can out dps the dead ones. But how often will that situation arise? Would you get this talent for pvp? Yes. Second, Camouflage. Great for leveling. Useful for 5-player runs if you're sapping a lot. But is that talent a dps increase, even in PvP? It's pretty hard to quantify, but I bet most ROUGES would say no. Okay, so then let's compensate those two trees for the fact that they have "isn't a dps increase" talents. Now Frost and Subtlety can do the damage of Fire and Combat, but also have better survivability, crowd control or other utility. Why be Fire or Combat again? A better design is probably just that trees aren't designed around "I trade dps for other stuff." That older design may have worked when few players raided, but it's something important to a lot of our players now. It's fine to have talents like this mixed in all the trees, as long as they don't make up the tree. Incidentally, the mastery pitch for Cataclym also helps with stuff like that. Frost can get Ice Barrier and ROGES can get Camo while still getting some dps boost for the investment. (Source)
Q u o t e: With the advent of the hardmode system, I have seen the path to progression now goes through Achievements but I was wondering if we will ever see a raid again that requires: A. Attunement - Instead of marching through the front door and killing stuff, we have a series of quests to complete in a compelling storyline. B. Crowd Control - Real CC, like the raid wipes if you break the sheep, etc. Think TK trash before Kael, most of SSC trash, BWL too for that matter. C. More Linear Raids - Like MC, AQ40, BWL, where you feel like you are travelling through the instance and the end of it feels far away. D. Separation of Gear - Raid gear vs Heroic gear. In Vanilla, there was no comparison. Now, this idea is nothing new and there is always the argument of elitism vs casual but the truth is that the reason a lot of people ran BWL back in the day was for the gear, not for the epeenery. E. End Boss who takes several weeks to kill - Rather than the 'world firsts' (and yes I quoted those words) of today, harken back to the days when the end boss was a real bad ass and it tooks weeks not hours to kill him. The real question is: Is this type of raid extinct or can we be surprised with maybe one or two raids that really feel like the old days of raiding where there was a sense of accomplishment and challenge? To those 'hard mode' advocates: I have no problem with hard modes, I am just asking if we can see a dungeon that doesn't contain gimmicky hard modes.
Based on the points you provided, probably not. A. Attunements tended to cause more frustration than benefit so we have aimed to put the story parts into optional quests and allow players to have easier access to the dungeons. I don't remember when heading to Onyxia anybody being excited to help someone do the attunement again. B. Crowd control could be around, but it also is linked with trash that people tend to complain about when there is a decent amount of it. Several packs in Ulduar have CC-able mobs, do you want to triple the number of trash packs and their difficulty to make the CC more valued? C. I'm not sure I understand this one. There were a number of complaints over the boring linear part of the old dungeons, but we do want the dungeons to feel epic and I think a place like Ulduar accomplished that -- getting to Yogg doesn't feel like a short hop. D. The gear tends to look similar as there is more of it and more people running raids now that they are more accessible. A lot of players only do things when there is a reward so it seems like a lot of people go where the gear goes. E. I don't want to blabber on here, but bugs often had to do with the long kill times back then which we have avoided through better testing methods. Yogg-0 is still no easy feat though and that took quite awhile for even the top guilds in the world to pull off. (Source) Death Knight Reason behind 3.2.2 Gnaw change To spin an infamous old phrase of mine, being kited forever isn't fun. However, casters do need to actually be able to cast sometimes. We don't find the argument that a longer cooldown makes the ability easier to use compelling. We also don't buy that under-represented specs should be allowed to have frustratingly overpowered abilities. I'm not saying Gnaw falls into this category, but there are a couple of posts above slipping into the "So what, as long as we aren't at 10% of Arena representation balance doesn't matter" camp. (Source) Druid When Is Healing Touch Coming Back? You can use Healing Touch with NS or glyphed to heal a 5-player run. Not every spell needs to be your go to button in raids. It would be a bigger deal if you only had 3 spells and weren't using one. (Source) Feral MT "Representation" You're welcome to argue that Ferals aren't fun to play for one reason or another or that they are too valuable in healing roles or having too much fun as Moonkin or cats. Still, I have a strong suspicion that if they conveyed an enormous advantage over other tanks for difficult fights that raids would still find a way to use them. "Well guys, our bear wants to heal tonight, and nobody else can survive the boss, so I guess we're calling the raid." It's possible bears do convey an advantage on some fights. But I'll argue that if that advantage was large or if it manifested itself on most fights that progression-oriented guilds would flock to them. Instead, most of those guilds use warrior tanks, because they always have, and because the warriors do just fine. I'll also add that who is tanking heroic Anub isn't the critical tanking role on that fight, and that we see mostly warriors tanking the adds. (Source) Hunter The most popular spec at level 80 BM is actually more popular than MM among level 80s. BM is also the most popular secondary spec, though maybe it could just be to play Pokemon with Spirit Beasts. (Source) Rogue Assassination - Weapon Swap gimmick There is some theorycrafting that suggests swapping weapons like this will be a net dps increase. It's not a huge dps increase, and the conditions in which the simulation were done were extremely generous.
Short story: we're not convinced ROUGES are really going to be doing this. If they end up doing it, we'll probably take some action because we agree it's a clunky mechanic. In the meanwhile, there are some legit and slightly less clunky opportunities to swap weapons and we'd rather not make those collateral damage if we don't have to. (Source) About the Subtlety tree Now, we do want Subtlety to be more attractive. All of the pure dps classes have a spec that isn't as popular as the others. Mages may be the closest because at least Frost has a viable PvP use, but there are also plenty of mages who want to be able to use Frost in end-game PvE too.
Subtlety (and Frost for that matter) are specs focused around utility. The problem is that players understandably nearly always choose damage over utility for raiding and often choose utility over damage for PvP, unless the damage is really high or the utility just doesn't cut it for some reason.
What we are talking about doing is sharing more of the utility among other specs, or the core class, so that there aren't "utility trees." To do that though, we have to make the way the different specs do damage different enough so that players might choose a play-style preference over highest damage. This is particularly challenging for rogues, who have a history of giving up a preferred spec or play style for one with a sub 1% dps increase.
I think we are closest with the Arcane vs. Fire mage specs at the moment. They play a little differently, which goes beyond just the type of magic damage they do. While Fire might still do the highest damage overall, Arcane is close enough and plays different enough that even competitive players don't feel stupid for playing that spec. There are a lot more Arcane mages out there than I think a lot of players assume.
That is harder with rogues. "I'm the sneaky one" doesn't translate into sustained raid dps. Assassination feels like it emphasizes poisons more and Combat feels like it emphasizes weapons more, so we're a little closer there. Subtelty needs a stronger yet damage-oriented niche.
HaT, sadly, is not a niche. HaT has scaling problems. It's appropriate for a 5-player group, but gets too in larger groups with all of their raid buffs. We don't want HaT to be the one talent that pushes players into Subtlety. ...Let's consider two talents. First, Ice Barrier. Great spell and pretty fun. Would you give up raid dps to have this talent? It depends. If the fight is so deadly that you're going to die without it, well alive mages can out dps the dead ones. But how often will that situation arise? Would you get this talent for pvp? Yes. Second, Camouflage. Great for leveling. Useful for 5-player runs if you're sapping a lot. But is that talent a dps increase, even in PvP? It's pretty hard to quantify, but I bet most ROUGES would say no.
Okay, so then let's compensate those two trees for the fact that they have "isn't a dps increase" talents. Now Frost and Subtlety can do the damage of Fire and Combat, but also have better survivability, crowd control or other utility. Why be Fire or Combat again?
A better design is probably just that trees aren't designed around "I trade dps for other stuff." That older design may have worked when few players raided, but it's something important to a lot of our players now. It's fine to have talents like this mixed in all the trees, as long as they don't make up the tree.
Incidentally, the mastery pitch for Cataclym also helps with stuff like that. Frost can get Ice Barrier and ROGES can get Camo while still getting some dps boost for the investment. (Source)
