Healing and mana management “too easy” for the moment
Mana management for healers in particular, and in large raids in particular, does seem to be really easy. This is interesting because so many players in beta had the feedback that they were having mana difficulties.
You can point at several mechanics that might make mana regen too easy: replenishment, int benefiting spirit regen, spirit offering so many other benefits, the content being relatively easy right now…
We aren’t making any changes to how things work for the moment, but it is something we’re keeping an eye on. Just keep in mind that when encounters can’t challenge healer mana pools, they end up having complex mechanics to learn, or dump huge damage spikes on the tanks in order to be of sufficient difficulty.
Ulduar will also be harder than Naxx. (Source)
Arena balancing and Season 5 launch
Look, this is the first major change WoW has seen since Arenas launched. At the beginning of BC nobody was quite sure what to expect. Classes and gear and even the Arena rules evolved since that time, but we still have seen nothing on the scale of the class and gear changes that occured when Lich King went live. We’ve done our estimates and players have made many predictions and we are all going to know a lot more about the true state of things in a few weeks here. Sure, I’m nervous. The forums and perhaps even the actual game are going to be pretty crazy for a few days. If the past is any indication, there will be at least one or two huge issues that nobody predicted while some of the things we were all worried about will end up being not that big a deal. But you have my word that we will keep making adjustments until things feel fair. (Source)
Healing and resilience effect on game balancing
Dynamics shift dramatically as players acquire more resilience gear. Specs and comps that aren’t viable in straight PvE gear become much more viable when burst damage decreases. We have seen this happen for four seasons now.
We haven’t made an effort to keep the dynamic from shifting, nor do we think it’s a problem that the dynamic shifts. On the contrary, if you didn’t notice any effect from all that gladiator gear you were acquiring, it would be much less motivational as a reward.
Likewise, if you could heal through tons of damage even without a lot of PvP gear, then what would happen with lots of PvP gear? It’s likely the game would devolve into silencing or CC’ing the healer and specs that rely on doing a lot of damage would be shut out as gear improved.
As I have said in a few threads, most players agree that the strength of healing increases as the burst damage endemic to crits decreases. The only question is to what degree. (Source)
Patch notes bug fixes list
The patch notes tend to focus more on design changes. It lists some bugs, but there are a lot more bugs fixed than make the list. (Source)
Guild structure and raid composition
My perception is that guild structure has more variety than many players suspect.
What I mean is that there are very small guilds who focus on 10-player content, but every player is there for every attempt. There are also huge guilds with hundreds of players that can run 2-3 separate 25-player runs. Many guilds have core raiders and then a lot of other people who are content to level or do heroics and maybe fill in for the raid once in awhile. There are guilds that struggle to ever get Resto druids and guilds that have rogues and paladins coming out their ears. Many guilds have long-term players who have changed their main character and maybe even the role they fill multiple times. Many guilds collapse and new, often smaller and sometimes better guilds rise from their ashes.
We do make changes to try to acknowledge the diversity of guilds. Allowing for a complete 10-player progression path was one of them. Giving groups more ways to get the most powerful buffs was another.
The buff / debuff overhaul was a pretty big undertaking. While we are happy with the core design, we do feel there are specs that could offer a little more and that is the kind of thing we will improve over time. We definitely don’t want to get back in the realm though where a spec has such a crazy powerful ability that they are considered mandatory for a raid to succeed.
[...] Are Innervate, Rebirth and Bloodlust great abilities? Absolutely. Am I happy when I get one in my raid? Yes. Do I sit out the warlock, rogue or mage in order to stack Rebirth? Not really. A good raid is one in which Rebirth gets used zero times.
Players also have a tendency to gloss over that “all other things being equal” part. Very few guilds can make the assumption that everyone in the raid has equal skill and gear, and honestly those guilds don’t have invite drama. They know exactly who is coming and why ahead of time.
Should you take a great shaman with Bloodlust over a cruddy rogue? Probably.
Should you take a cruddy shaman with Bloodlust over a great rogue, assuming Bloodlust will make up the dps differnce? Probably a bad move.
Are your shaman and rogue consistently within 5% dps of each other to where the only tie goes to Bloodlust? If so, I would argue you are in some theoretical space and not in the actual game. If your guild is this good then the real answer is it probably doesn’t matter and you are going to resolve the invite with a /random or DKP or who is best friends with the GM or something. (Source)
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