WotLK Beta - Blue Posts
Lower mana cost of new ranks/spells for all classes (src)
We'd like to note that we are currently in the process of revamping the mana cost of new spells, abilities and the new ranks of spells and abilities in the expansion. We are aware players feel the mana cost of certain abilities is too high, and we agree. Though I can't really go into much detail yet as the actual specifics of what's changing is still being debated internally, be rest assured your voice on the issue has been heard and it is one of our top priorities right now. We've found the feedback from the players in Alpha and Beta to be more constructive and helpful than ever, and we hope that you continue to give feedback on your experiences in the beta.
Region Level Page Updated with Northrend (src)
We’ve updated our Region Level page with the zones comprising Northrend, the new continent in Wrath of the Lich King. This is the first of many Wrath of the Lich King updates planned for the World of Warcraft Game Guide.
BlizzCon 08 - What time tickets go on sale? (src)
I just wanted to follow up on this question to say that while we don't have an exact time for the tickets to go on sale, it will be after the start of the business day on Monday August 11th. It won't be a surprise 12:01am or 2:00am opening for tickets. So get your sleep Sunday night and keep an eye out for information on Monday.
Death Knight
- Fps issues with the Anti magic zone - We can fix the fps problem without having to redo the graphic. I suspect the lower detailed versions for a lot of these spells haven't even been done yet. (src)
- Plague Strike & Lifebloom - To whichever forum or site was asking about this, Plague Strike *removes* a hot instead of *dispelling* it. In other words, Lifebloom (the whole stack) just goes away and doesn't bloom. Ah, the challenge of writing tooltips. (src)
Tanking talent changes - part 3 (src)
Thunderclap and Icy Touch don't stack, at least considering the melee portions. That's part of the raid consolidation pass I have referenced a few times.
If Frigid Dreadplate was changed to something like -AP when you hit a DK, then it could act like Demo Shout. It would work on bosses but wouldn't stack with Demo Shout.
Some other classes might be sad when they find their awesome raid buff no longer stacks with someone else's raid buff. Nobody has played a DK for years at this point so anything that feels like a hit to "you MUST bring a death knight" stings, but probably less than if a shaman or paladin starts hearing it about their class.
Say we gave DKs a talent that allowed Icy Talons to apply to the whole raid, but it didn't stack with WF. The first reaction is typically, well that sucks because EVERY raid brings an Enhancement shaman, and that's true today. But at some point if there are enough classes who offer +haste, then the haste buff is mandatory, but WF is not. What if all the +AP buffs didn't stack? What if all of the +spell damage buffs didn't stack? That's the kind of thing we're looking at.
Diseases and Rotations (src)
We talked about Scourge Strike refreshing diseases, but it leads to some weird rotations because you have a spare Frost Rune lying around. There is no point doing Icy Touch since the disease is already on, but you don't have an extra Unholy for a second Obliterate because you used the first one on Scourge.
Scourge -> Blood -> Blood -> Obliterate -> Icy Touch?
Unholy has a reasonably interesting rotation with Epidemic, which extends disease length, and Annihilation. First rotation is your standard: Icy Touch -> Scourge -> Blood -> Blood -> Obliterate.
But next round the diseases are still there and you can: Blood -> Blood -> Obliterate -> Obliterate. Even without Annihilation, you can double Death Strike.
Scourge Strike might get an extra debuff (src)
Sorry for any typos. The only difference between Plague Strike and Scourge Strike is that the latter hits for Shadow damage, greatly increasing its amount of damage. If you spec Scourge Strike, pull Plague Strike off your bar just like a warrior with Devastate will do to Sunder Armor.
We might still give Scourge Strike some kind of extra debuff, but it really doesn't need it to be a strong return on one talent point.
Heart Strike doesn't need it either, but we got excited about the haste prevention debuff. It was suggested by an encounter designer, precisely because he knew it would work on a lot of bosses. You can pull Blood Strike off your bar if you get Heart Strike.
Frost Strike is something else entirely, and not a complete replacement for Death Coil, since the latter is ranged. Only spec Frost Strike if you don't mind managing an extra ability.
Talent Coherency and Death Knight tanking (src)
It's definitely a different approach than we've tried before.
But here's the problem with those existing tanking trees: not many warriors or paladins want to go into those protection trees, so there are a lot of 4-player groups out there wishing they could run an instance but unable to find a tank. And even if there were a lot of prot warriors and paladins, there is a math problem because a 5-player run needs 1 tank but a 25-player run doesn't need 5 tanks. A potential prot warrior might not see the point of taking up the shield knowing that some percentage of prot tanks will have to give up that role in order to get into the raid.
We chose the death knight as the new class partially to address that tanking shortage. We feared that having Frost be a traditional protection tree might flood the realms with even more dps specs looking for groups.
So we thought maybe it's time to try a different approach: Let a tank choose what kind of abilities they want access to, while still giving them access to enough tanking talents to do their job. While every tanking warrior worth her salt has Shield Slam, Imp Shield Block and Last Stand, none of them has Mortal Strike (at least not since MC and BWL), or Imp Execute or Flurry. A death knight can be a tank, yet some death knight tanks will have Howling Blast and some will have Heart Strike. A death knight tank that gets a little bored with his spec can try a completely different one and still tank. A warrior tank trying a different spec gets very limited options, like whether he wants Improved Revenge or how many points to put into Imp Defensive Stance.
The point isn't that ALL death knights will be amazing and effortless tanks regardless of talents, but that there will have some variety in what talents the tanks do pick up. All Frost tanks will get Unbreakable Armor for the armor and parry, but maybe some will take Deathchill and some will take Killing Machine. Maybe that will convince them to tank a little longer. If not, maybe the possibility of spec'ing into Unholy and having to change up their play style will keeping them interested.
Bottom line: maybe the DK style of tanking trees will be more fun and encourage more players to try tanking out.
(I'm excluding druids because they actually do pretty well swapping from tanking to dps with one spec, but then again it is still pretty much one spec.)
Side note: clearly there are some things we can do to make tanking more fun for all classes, and those are discussions we are taking very seriously.
I hope this does not come off as dismissive or defensive. It's a totally valid question you're asking, so I wanted to try to give you a glimpse of our logic here.
Hunter
%Hit and Resilience on pets (src)
If we do it for Warlocks, we'll do it for Hunters too (%hit).
Regarding Resilience on pets, we feel we'd rather give the classes tools to keep their pet alive rather than giving them passive defense (we want you to care about keeping them alive, not ignoring them because you know it's impossible to kill them). If you're talking about a group environment, you can heal your pet and your group can heal your pet. The drawback to players attacking your pet is that they are essentially crowd-controlling themselves. Currently we feel (in PvP) that we've more or less achieved the right amount of survivability for the pet (without giving it Resilience). This of course changes all the time because of gear and scaling. If we feel the pet does not scale in terms of health with the master, we can make changes in that regard.
That said, if we find that pets aren't surviving as well in beta compared to live, then we can explore the possibility of increasing it's base defense.
Mage
Fire tree changes (src)
There are some significant Fire changes coming in an upcoming build, I'll see if I can get the web team to update the calculator.
Fire is intended to do compelling single target damage, as it's traditionally been. When first designing the classes, we always intended the Mage to be the king of AOE and for AOE to be an important part in the game. Living Bomb, and other talents in the tree are intended to bring the Mage back in line with our original vision. Part of what pegged the Mage down a notch was Seed of Corruption, which ended up being better than we anticipated.
That said, again, we do want Fire to be a strong single target DPS spec along with Frost and Arcane. Frost is not intended to be the Mages "PvP spec" and Fire isn't intended to be the "PvE spec," they only turned out that way because of unintended factors. We're trying to make Frost more viable in raiding by allowing you to effectively freeze the target without having to nova it, allowing you to throw in some "shatter combos" in your rotation. Arcane, Frost, and Fire (and a mix thereof) should all more or less be viable in as many aspects of the game as possible. Where they should be different is in playstyle and gameplay differences (stacking Scorch vs. freezing and shatter etc.).
AOE will be more prevalent in encounters in the game, yes. However, Fire mages are assuming they're being converted into a pure AOE spec, which is not the case. We want the strong AOE to just be a feature of the Fire Mage. The Fire Mage doesn't need a new single target DPS nuke or ability as a 51-point talent in order to continue to be a good single target DPS class.
As an edit, we dont want ANOTHER single target nuke, we want the one we have to not suck, make it stronger fix a talent to say Does more damage than a warlock because we have less health less mana less utility a *%*! version of a pet less and worse CC and theres no damn good reason to bring more than one of us to any given raid, and in sunwell if you buy water from a vendor, you dont even need a single mage for anything.
The talent isn't finished in design, this is beta. A new iteration will be presented in a future build.
Taiwan Regional Final Winners
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
We’re glad to announce the winners of the Taiwan regional final of the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament. These two teams demonstrated their Arena combat expertise this weekend, rising above an elite field of competitors to claim the top spots in the tournament.
1. 海軍陸戰隊 (warlock, warrior, druid)
2. Made In Taiwan (priest, warrior, druid)
Made In Taiwan may be familiar from its strong showing at the Worldwide Invitational 2008 in Paris, and was able to mount a comeback after being down 0-2 to win the first series of the regional finals. 海軍陸戰隊 however, was able to take control of the final series, winning it 3-0 and walking away with the $15,000 first-place prize.
Each team will also be invited to participate in the global final at BlizzCon for a chance to further showcase their skills, win cash prizes, and compete against the other top regional teams. For more information about the tournament, please see our Arena tournament information page. Congratulations to all the winners!
New Fan Art
