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Class Changes, Issues, and Discussions for Wrath of the Lich King Beta on Sep. 24
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Death Knight
PvP changes
Death knights have a lot of options at the moment, which is cool, but makes it really hard for another player to catch a break and burn a death knight down. So we’re going to try some changes. I won’t sugar-coat it — these are nerfs.
- The ghoul is doing too much damage. He is receiving 100% of death knight strength, which is much higher than most pets.
- Chains of Ice is going back to be being dispellable. It is probably the best snare in the game at the moment, for a class that already has Death Grip.
- The same is true of both Strangulate and Mind Freeze. Strangulate’s cooldown is going to go up. Mind Freeze remains the quick interrupt.
- We’re increasing the cooldown on Anti-Magic Shell. We don’t think this will hurt DKs in PvE much, and it still leaves you with Icebound Fortitude to use often.
As always, if we overdid it, if DKs are now too weak in PvP, we’ll adjust. But we were at the point where we weren’t getting a lot of good numbers because some fights were just over too quickly. (src)
Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade
Updated model coming in the next build. Let’s stop the hate. (src)
Death and Decay / Blood Boil’s new graphics
The previous version (the dark smoky one) made it hard to see what was going on. We started to hear “DK, don’t use that spell!” on boss fights. Not good. The NPC spell swap was a temporary fix to see if it resolved the problem. There is a new Death and Decay and Desecrate art that should be in next build… or possibly the one after that depending on when they take data. Both do a better job of showing you the outer limit of the effect, which is generally the most important thing to know (for DK and victim). (src)
Death Coil changes
Death Coil’s coefficient was increased. We more recently changed the base points, say from 390 to 440 at rank 5. You probably don’t have this last change yet. If you used a Death Coil every rotation, that’s a lot of extra damage. (src)
Desecrate bug
Desecrate’s damage not working is actually a code bug so it’s a little hard to fix. We’ve obviously known for some time that it’s a problem but it’s not a trivial one to fix. We’ll get it eventually. (src)
Is Frigid Death Plate working currently ?
With a 100% chance to fire, the buff is always up. It would just be a permanent icon every time you entered combat. Think of it as a passive buff if that helps. (src)
Rune Strike / Frost Strike / Death Coil balancing
I personally don’t find the comparisons to the old Kill Command very apt. Kill Command was an almost trivial cost so it always made sense to use it whenever it was up. Rune Strike on the other hand uses 15% of your total runic power, or more than 30% of a Death Coil.
We found that the real problem, IMO, was Death Coil and Frost Strike weren’t hitting hard enough relative to other DK abilities, so they didn’t feel like they were worth the button push, and subsequently, building up runic power didn’t feel like a big deal. Both Death Coil and Frost Strike received serious buffs. (src)
Ghoul DPS is too high
The ghoul does too much damage. He gets, IIRC, 100% of the master’s Strength, which is very generous when most pets scale at 30% or so of the master. (src)
We’re not removing the Ghoul. We did structure Unholy’s talents in such a way that you can completely skip over the Ghoul if you don’t like pets. This is a different tact than we took with Demonology or Beast Mastery. You can get fine dps out of Unhloly through AE spells or focus on Scourge Strike. (src)
Scourge Strike nerf
We lowered the percent weapon damage on Scourge Strike because it was the only ability that ended up scaling too well. Several other abilities didn’t scale well enough and we made adjustments accordingly. But even after those changes, at some gear level Scourge Strike would have outpaced other DK abilities, forcing everyone to go Unholy. Bypassing armor is just a huge benefit. We dropped the weapon damage down to 60% but then buffed the flat points. I suspect the bugs you’re reporting are more due to the crit / hit problems. However, even though Scourge Strike does Shadow damage, it should still be able to be blocked, dodged or parried. Those are properties of melee attacks. Scourge Strike is not a “spell” even though it does magical damage. It crits for 200% for example. (src)
Upcoming bug fixes on beta
- “Wandering Plague is still getting resisted all the time.” Think we finally fixed this. Whew.
- “Desecration still does not grant +5% damage. ” This is reported fixed but I can’t verify yet.
- “Death and Decay is being affected by Crypt Fever. ” Fixed.
- “Shadow of Death still buggy, not always triggering on death ” Need to figure this out. It could be that the data gets messed up when existing DKs get the new data without talents being wiped.
- “Necrosis” I know it’s annoying, but not all abilities will work right on target dummies. Try and specify when you notice a bug if it was on these, a mob or another player.
- “Death Pact bugged” Still looking into this.
- “Death Runes not working right when you have > 1″ Still looking into this.
- “Rime not working.” We are trying to make this talent work better, but it’s going to take some code. Known issue for now.
Edit – Scourge Strike doing correct damage again. Strikes consume Cinderglacier. Rime works now as intended. They tell me Desecrate works now. We’ll see. Hopefully you will see these changes next build. (src)
Druid
New druid form arts
It’s not going to be in for Lich King. Sorry. Doing an entire animal texture takes a lot more art than a hair change. But we all agree it’s high time for new druid form art. It’s a high priority after Lich King. You absolutely deserve new skins and we want to do it right, and we want to do it soon. I don’t want to promise any more specifics than that until we see what problems arise when LK ships and what we need to fix. In our opinions, Raven Lord and epic flight form set the bar. (src)
Mangle (Cat)
Are you going to use cat Mangle a little less now? Probably. But it’s hardly the only talent with situational use. I’m not sure that warrants a redesign of the talent. I’m not even sure you can assume someone with Trauma will be around all the time. I do think changing Mutilate has opened a door that is difficult to close on positional requirements. But I’m not sure we have enough evidence yet that cat PvP damage is low at all, or is low because of Shred’s requirements. Mutilate was a slightly different situation since it was competing against other rogue builds. Mangle and Shred are abilities every cat is going to have. Now if it makes you much worse than rogues in PvE or PvP, that is something we’ll look at. (src)
Balance Tree
While I’m sure every class would say this, it’s probably no surprise to you that Balance damage was low. Way too low.
We are addressing most of it through base spell damage changes to Wrath, Insect Swarm and especially Starfire. Hopefully that will give you some more talent choices because some of the damage talents will feel more optional (or as optional as more damage ever feels), instead of the bare minimum you need to be close to other casters.
We also fixed a few bugs with Star Fall and Typhoon. Not sure those changes will boost dps much, but playing your class should be less annoying. (src)
Swipe target limit
We are still working on Thunder Clap and Swipe. We think paladins can AE tank fine and DKs are probably close. Warriors and druids are still limited by the target limit of their abilities. Removing the target limit may be the answer, but we want to explore the issue first. (src)
Restoration Tree
We don’t want to hurt Regrowth, because it is nice to finally see it being used a lot. My fear is that the glyph is making it a lot better than Nourish.
Ideally, and I don’t know if we can get them all to this stage, glyphs should be an option that changes the way you play your character, not just free talent points. In some cases, they are going to feel like buffs. It would be cool, for example, if the Regrowth glyphs let some Resto druids focus more on Regrowth while others used different spells. The Regrowth glyph is just so good, on top of the Regrowth talent, that it may be a non-decision to use which also ends up making Nourish useless.
Ideally you should want to use Regrowth and Nourish on some occasions. Flourish, Rejuv, Swiftmen and Lifebloom already have pretty decent niches. If glyphing for Regrowth makes you lean towards that spell, awesome. I just think the case at the moment is every druid will have that glyph and use Regrowth as a generic heal-all spell.
We’re not going to touch the Regrowth talent or other synergistic talents, at least not to solve this problem.
Will a Resto Druid be able to handle all aspects of healing like a Holy Priest such as Prot Warrior is going to be able to handle all aspects of tanking like a Prot Pallie?
No, that isn’t the goal. The reason is largely because encounters are designed such that you already want to take more healers on a raid than you have available specs. What I mean is that almost every 25 player will have Holy paladins, Holy priests, Resto shamans and Resto druids. And maybe a Disc priest too. Even a 10 man will have 2-3 healers, and most likely they will be different classes. That’s a different situation than the tank is in. There are very many raid encounters that require one tank while almost none that require one healer. By and large, I think we’ve done a decent job in giving healers niches, but that strategy hasn’t worked for tanks (and won’t really work for dps either).
Now, where we have needed to give healers more tools is in the 5-player case, and possibly PvP. The same tools are useful in unusual encounters, say a Loatheb where you can’t heal often, or a Void Reaver, where the paladin has to run around. A Holy paladin who is great at flashing heals on a MT can’t do that in heroic Nexus and expect to keep everyone alive. A druid can’t just keep rolling Lifeblooms up and keep everyone alive. Wild Growth is great in those situations. It’s probably not going to compete with Chain Heal, but it doesn’t really have to. It just gives you another tool in your box. (src)
Hunter
Pets to become stronger
Yeah, the pet stat layout has totally not kept up with the times. It needs an overhaul and we hope to work on it as soon as LK ships. Aside from players just knowing what their pet’s stats are, it will help people improve their pets, as well as help us realize where the problem areas are. (src)
Philosophy behind the changes to AoTV
AotV is like any mana back mechanic, you sacrifice damage or power while regenerating mana. A mage has to stand a channel Evocation, a Warlock has to use global cooldowns and health to use Lifetap, a Paladin has reduced healing while using Divine Plea, etc. That’s not to say you also have talents such as Efficiency, Rapid Recuperation, Invigoration etc. to also give you passive mana regeneration without having to use Aspect of the Viper.
We always intended Aspect of the Viper to be used as an Aspect you go to when you needed mana. Previously Hunters were just using Aspect of the Viper nearly all the time, because the passive regeneration was better than the added damage of hawk.
We want Hunters to care about their regeneration, we want them to like mp5 on their gear. You should want to be efficient in your DPS so you don’t *have* to go to Aspect of the Viper. Just like how a Mage tries to be efficient so he doesn’t *have* to use Evocation. (src)
AoTV changes
Frankly, Hunter’s DPS right now is balanced with Aspect of the Viper in mind. If we, say, reduced the amount of time you were in it drastically or the damage penalty we’d have to do something equivalent of reducing Hunter’s total DPS by at least 10-30%. While you guys might not notice it with the pre-mades, the Hunter class is currently king of DPS.
What I do buy is that when you’re soloing, between pulls or not able to attack, you aren’t gaining the regeneration. What we could do is make the regeneration passive and not require you to attack, but basically just regenerate mana. (It would still have the damage penalty though)
The mana is not based upon your damage. It is a general rule now to not make your mana scale with damage or healing etc., because mana doesn’t scale as fast as those stats. What it does is regenerate a % of your base mana relative to your weapon speed (nullifying the need to have a fast or slow weapon to game the aspect).
What we’re going to do is balance the passive regen to be around the same as if you were attacking the target. (src)
Mage
Arcane Blast nerf
That (buffing one spec and declaring it the PvE raiding spec) is certainly the easier way to balance classes, but we are gluttons for punishment and are trying to make the various different ways to play a mage viable in a raid setting.
Arcane Blast ended up being so good that we were concerned you could remove all your other buttons, and that every mage would go spec deep Arcane. Rather than just nerfing it, we are trying mechanics that let pushing the button be awesome, but pushing it twice in a row be less awesome. For what it’s worth, I would be very surprised if the 300% penalty was our final implementation of this spell. (src)
Interaction of Frostbite + Fingers of Frost
It is intended that with both Frostbite and Fingers of Frost fully talented, Fingers never triggers independently. It is not intended that the Fingers procs get consumed too early when that happens. (src)
Paladin
Divine Plea
I believe the only change we are making right now (aside from some general bug fixing) is a change to Divine Plea. Divine Plea will have a longer duration but the same total percent mana returned per cooldown. (src)
Shield of Righteousness
Shield of Righteousness was going to scale way too well as a multiplier on block value. We already saw cases where it was 40% or more of paladin dps with very few hits. I’m not sure if you got the entire change in with the hotfix, but it’s now 100% of block with a flat component and two ranks. See how it feels in the next beta build. (src)
Hammer of the Righteous
We’re going to buff Hammer of the Righteous. That should even out with the Shield of Righteousness nerf, plus give you a little more reason to hand that +spell power blade back to the warlock. (src)
Holy Paladins
Yes, we would like to fix Judgments of the Pure. I still maintain that except for the mechanics introduced in the later BC content, paladins would have still been “the best healers” (whatever that means). I can say that because I know that’s partially why those mechanics were introduced.
- Number of heals — aside from the old stand-bys, we tried to work Holy Shock, Sacred Shield and BAcon of Light into your arsenal.
- Mobility — Holy Shock helps a lot in this department too.
- Beacon of Light — If you poke around a little bit, you might find that a lot of paladins do like this spell. It requires some babysitting — no doubt about that. But we also figured with your relatively small number of healing spells, you could afford (perhaps even welcome) the distraction.
- Mana Regen — Divine Plea is what you use when you run out of mana. It’s not there to make mana go away — it’s supposed to have situational use. If there was never a decision to use Divine Plea, then we would have just doubled your mana pool. Losing healing effectiveness is supposed to be that decision. Now if you just don’t have enough mana to do your job, that’s a different problem.
If you’re worried about another healing class just outperfoming you to the extent you get parked, then that is a totally valid concern because I agree that it did happen in Sunwell. But as you well know, it’s hard to heal a training dummy or whatever and figure out if you’re an effective healer. The only decent test for it, aside from some theorycraft, is going out in groups. As we get numbers back if we see that Holy is falling down, we’ll fix it.
[...] We’ll take a look at Judgments of the Pure and Enlightened Judgments, since those come up a lot in the feedback threads. We already had plans to make Sacred Shield scale its damage absorption. We’ve gotten some bugs fixed with Bacon, so check that out next build (or so).
Then go out and heal and see what happens. We’ll keep a close watch on the numbers and make sure you aren’t getting pwned by other healers and see if there are still encounters that render you curb-worthy. I don’t think there are, but I might be wrong.
Priest
Holy Priest changes
- Improved Holy Concentration — We’d like to keep this based off spell crit. Its possible we’re too conservative with the numbers. As for other crit talents, Surge of Light now also procs an instant flash heal. (We’re looking into fixing the Surge of Light/Improved Holy Concentration bug with them eating each others charges btw)
- Desperate Prayer — We had to give it a mana cost to balance the spell with its new cooldown (It went from 10 minutes -> 2 minutes).
- Divine Providence — 10% healing for any healing spell that heals more than one target is pretty good. Granted its not very complicated or flashy, but I don’t think that makes the talent bad. I mean we could tack on something like “Your healing spells are increased by 10% when your mana is above 50%” but that would really just be tacked on in an effort to make it feel different and interesting.
- Test of Faith — Compare it to Holy Specialization(5% crit), its 6% crit and 6% healing for 3 points vs 5% crit for 5. 50% happens more often than you’d think, and extra healing and crit chance is most important when a target is at 50% or under.
- Guardian Spirit — I agree with this, we boosted the heal from 10% to 50%. (src)
Imp. Power Word Shield switched with Imp. Inner Fire
Finally, something I can work with! I’ll do this tomorrow morning (src)
Shadowpriests in WotLK
We test single target DPS with blue, epic and green gear. In all trials the Shadow Priest was doing more than expected DPS, I believe it was around ~2500 in epics. This was solo in a 5-minute trial (without raid buffs). In a raid setting, your DPS would probably be significantly higher. In a nutshell, we feel we’ve made a lot of progress in our goal of bumping the Shadow Priest DPS numbers/scaling to where we want it to be. Unfortunately players won’t really be able to see these numbers on their characters because you are using low tier PvP gear. (Referring to the pre-mades we have on Murmur)
Shadow Priests raid buffs are Misery and Replenishment. We removed a lot of +% spell damage modifiers throughout all classes. Those that do exist are exclusive with similar debuffs. This is all part of our goal to simplify the requirements of a raid group building/composition. In return, we significantly scaled Shadow Priests damage up.
If you have a Moonkin or Shadow Priest present in your raid group regularly, your raid can nix 3% hit off their itemization budget. As for the talent not being always useful for the Priest (say, everyone is already hit capped) it now provides a selfish boost to the Priest (15% coefficient scaling on three spells).
Shadow Word: Death was initially created as a finisher spell. While the glyph may not be amazing in a raid setting, it’s quite useful soloing to finish off mobs or in PvP where you want to finish off foes.There’s something for everyone in the new glyphs, it’s very difficult to please every flavor of Priest (PvE Holy, PvP Holy, PvE Shadow, etc.). The nice thing about glyphs is that we can add new ones whenever we want, so expect new ones throughout the patch cycles.
Without Dispersion, Shadow Priests would not be PvP viable. Our goals were to 1] Lower the Shadow Priests raid utility but increase their personal DPS, 2] Give the Shadow Priest more PvP mobility and survivability, and 3] Give them a new niche/gameplay (AOE damage with Mind Sear). I think we accomplished all of those goals. Its quite possible we may of not went far enough (or even too far), but we’ll find that out soon enough and do changes where necessary.
While Dispersion might not drastically increase your raid damage, not all talents are designed as such. We experimented with giving it some added DPS to it, but we had to take it off because the Shadow Priest was exceeding our bench mark for DPS. It was also strange gameplay (what if you got hit while it was channeling? You’d feel really bad. Also its supposed to be your defense mechanism in PvP, but yet now you want to use it for DPS?) (src)
Shaman
Riptide changes
We improved the base heal by 33% (Not sure if you have that build or not). It also now procs Tidal Waves, and we’ve changed Tidal Waves to two charges now (up from 1). Also, Improved Water Shield will affect Riptide.
Riptide unlinked from Imp. Chain Heal
Done. (src)
Warrior
Thunder Clap threat generation
The threat on beta was reduced because the damage was increased.
Give me some time to a full analysis of the numbers though and I’ll post them here. It could be you aren’t factoring in something, or it could be we have a math problem somewhere.
As I said in another post, we are still figuring out how the damage, targets, threat and cooldown of Thunder Clap. One of the problems with the numbers before the most recent nerf is that at high gear levels (beyond Naxx I mean), Thunder Clap would do more damage and threat than many other core warrior abilities. It would go from being situational to being in your main rotation (aside from the debuff which you obviously want to renew). (src)
Thunder Clap target limit
We are still working on Thunder Clap and Swipe. We think paladins can AE tank fine and DKs are probably close. Warriors and druids are still limited by the target limit of their abilities. Removing the target limit may be the answer, but we want to explore the issue first. (src)
Compensation to devastate nerf
It will probably be in Revenge or Shield Slam, but we’re still working on the exact implementation. (src)
That suggestion helps fix the issue of dps warriors trying to use Devastate, but I think Devastate has now become too much of Prot’s damage as well. Devastate worked well in BC because it was generally inferior to Shield Slam and Revenge, but you still got to use it plenty of times. But the Sword and Board change together with Devastate’s higher damage means that Revenge seems to fallen by the wayside for a lot of Prot tanks. (src)
Revenge
It would be nice to buff Revenge since it seems to have lost some of its BC luster, but if indeed the problem is dps, especially when not tanking, then Revenge won’t do as much. (src)
Damage Shield being parried
This is a bug. It should always do damage. (src)
Titan’s Grip balancing
Titan’s Grip needs a counter-balance because two-handed weapons are more powerful than one-handed weapons. Period. Nobody would argue this I imagine or else you wouldn’t be interested in the talent in the first place.
So the only thing that is really in contention is whether the increased dps is higher than we typically offer in one talent point. We think it is. We tried it as a 5 point talent, but that felt awkward because it was one of those where the first talent point expenditure is worth so much more than the additional talent points.
Once the dps numbers are balanced, if we see a lot of Fury warriors skip over Titan’s Grip, then we’ll know our estimates were off and we’ll lower the penalty. I don’t predict that will happen, but I make bad predictions sometimes like everyone else. (src)
