Echoes of Doom Update
Quote from: Nethaera (Source)
Echoes of Doom, the new World of Warcraft content patch that sets the stage for the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King, is now live. The patch brings many changes and additions to the game, including the new achievements system, the inscription profession, changes to class and buff mechanics, new talents, and more.
Since the release of the patch, we have experienced some realm instability as many players logged in to the game for the first time and began to access the new achievement system, resulting in a large amount of data being transferred at once. This led to a variety of issues, including player disconnects and general lag within the game. We have since applied optimizations to improve these issues, and we expect stability to continue to improve in the coming days.
During the initial instability, some players experienced a loss of mounts or pets after attempting to add them to the new mount and pet interface. We have since resolved this issue and will continue to replace lost mounts and pets for players who have experienced this problem.
We also wanted to address the concern some players have expressed over the balance between classes now that the new talents (including the new 51-point talents), spells, and abilities are in the game. As with the Before the Storm patch released prior to the launch of The Burning Crusade, many of the changes in Echoes of Doom are intended to act as a bridge to the next expansion and are meant to give players a chance to play with some of the new changes prior to Wrath of the Lich King's release. As such, they have been designed with the 10 additional levels and new gear players will receive in Northrend in mind. While we performed balance testing for level 70 gameplay, our focus was on gameplay beyond level 70. As always, class balancing is an ongoing process, and we will continue to monitor the effects of these new talents, abilities, and spells on the overall game.
We'd like to thank everyone for their patience during this transition, and we look forward to seeing you all in Northrend!
Hunter - Upcoming Changes Part II
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
Aspects are now off the GCD. It's true. There will still be a 1 sec cooldown to switch from one aspect to another. It should feel a lot more like warrior stances or death knight presences.
We're also going to be putting a little bit of dodge (~10%?) onto Monkey. I'll update when we decide on a final number.
Just for consistency, paladin auras will probably get the same treatment.
These changes should go live before Nov 13.
As always, thanks for all of the feedback, and please keep it up now that many of the changes are live.
EDIT: After further discussion, we're not crazy about the "stance dancing" that hunters need to do to switch to Monkey when someone is in on you in melee. As we've said a few times, Disengage and Deterrence should be your go-to abilities at that time. If anything, removing Aspects from the GCD makes it feel like you are supposed to go Monkey every time you're in melee.
Rather than revert the change, we are introducing a new spell!
Instead of getting new ranks of Hawk at level 75 and 80, you now get the new Aspect of the Dragonhawk. This powerful aspect combines all of the effects of Hawk and Monkey. Any talent or glyph that affects either Hawk or Monkey also affects Dragonhawk the same way. The idea is that you retire Hawk and Monkey at level 75 and go to essentially two Aspects: Dragonhawk for combat and Viper for mana regen.
Paladin - Retribution Changes
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
As I stated yesterday, we are happy with Ret's PvE damage and sustatined damage in PvP, but were concerned that the burst damage in PvP could be too high. We discussed this for literally hours yesterday, which was certainly not the first time we have discussed the issue. Thus I hope these changes are not perceived as a knee-jerk reaction, but I am sure that will depend a great deal on which class you play. :)
Divine Storm -- the damage was changed from Holy to Physical. As you know, Holy damage is almost never mitigated and this talent could pack a lot into a very short time. This is a nerf to the ability's damage. This change is now active on Live.
Repentance -- this ability now lasts for only 6 seconds in PvP (down from 10). Obviously this is also a nerf. This change is also active on Live.
Art of War -- now affects all damage done by Judgements, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm (instead of critical strike damage). Net dps should be about the same but less bursty. This change will be made before Nov 13.
Righteous Vengeance -- now applies a dot affect similar to Deep Wounds (instead of critical strike damage). This ends up being a significant buff to the ability to make up for the damage lost to Divine Storm, but is also less bursty. This change will be made before Nov 13. EDIT: The dot will NOT break Repentance.
Glyph of Crusader Strike -- now reduces mana cost (instead of increased damage on stunned targets.) We thought paladins could stack too much damage vs. stunned targets. This change will be made before Nov 13.
We also fixed a bug with Seal and Judgement of Light that could sometimes result in too much healing.
In our tests, Retribution dps remains the same over longer periods of time, but they can't do quite so much damage in the initial few seconds of a PvP encounter.
I know Ret pallies feel a little picked on since we've made this mistake before of having them come out the gate too strong and then had to correct them. For that I do apologize. It's a difficult spec to balance since part of its design is to have large crits and stuns, which have obvious PvP implications. We are pretty confident this will not nerf pallies into the ground as I facetiously promised yesterday, but if we overdid it, we'll be happy to back off some of the changes.
On the other hand, maybe we'll see fewer BGs with 20 paladins on the opposing side and can get some reasonable feedback on all the other classes in the game.
EDIT: To clairfy the new dot will not break Repentance.
Paladin - Small Aura Change
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
To be consistent with stances, presences and aspects, paladin auras are now off of the GCD with a 1 sec cooldown. I realize paladins don't switch auras as often as the other examples, but we also saw no reason to keep it the way it was.
The "aura twisting" aspect is actually something we're a little concerned about. We don't want paladins to feel like the right thing they're supposed to do is switch to fire right before an incoming Pyroblast in PvP, or perhaps worse, notice when the dragon is about to breath, shift into fire and then shift out. At that point, the change may do more harm than good.
Warlock - Small change to Master Demonologist
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
The Felguard magic damage reduction now extends to Holy. I believe this was hotfixed yesterday.
Typically we don't change Holy resistance (which this is not), but it's consistent with other damage reduction abilities (which this is) to reduce all magic damage. This should help warlocks stand up to paladins in particular in PvP.
Ghostcrawler on Dual Spec
Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
As a few people have pointed out, hardcore raiding guilds already respec in between bosses. All it takes is a little bit of patience, gold and maybe a warlock. The new feature just takes some of the busy work out of it by remembering say what spell you had on button 2 or button 3.
What the new feature really is supposed to do is let you change your mind. Oh, I was going to PvP tonight but now my buddies want to do Naxx 10 instead. I can flip on the fly instead of having to run back to Org or IF to respec and get summoned.
Very skilled or "into it" dps players absolutely can maximize their trash or boss dps through their spec. In fact, you hear a lot that certain talents aren't good for bosses because they do things like improve your down time, AE or survivability. But all of those things can be great for fast clears. Players also sometimes say (silly) things like how they only care about how they perform on a boss. But if you want to do something like the LK equivalent of a ZA fast clear for the bear mount, you need to be fast across the board, not just on the 4 bosses. Players wipe on trash too.
We're not going to make crazy fights where we expect the entire raid to respec into something weird. That was even asked at Blizzcon and the guy in charge of all of the boss design said simply "No" in reply. If we can't assume you have a warrior or druid tanking, then we can't assume you have a mage with an obscure talent build or 12 healers or something else abnormal.
Having to run to town to respec all the time between two common specs was a burden, just like pots and drums were a burden. Very few players enjoyed having to farm consumables for their raid night. (Though to be fair, some did). Players may have enjoyed the advatantage those consumables might have given them, but of course they forget that the encounters were designed around the expectation that the group was chain potting and doing drum rotations. The encounters should be of similar difficulty, with the major change being that you don't have to farm (as much).
Likewise, I understand that some players like having to commit to a talent spec at least for the night. Those players may feel that this is a "catering to the casuals" decision, but it's one we think is right for the game. The different needs, for example, of PvE and PvP combat were putting a lot of constraints on the design of talent trees. Every talent needed to be very useful in both modes, which also tended to make them overbudget. That's not the only reason for the feature, but it's still a good one.
We won't let you change specs within an Arena or BG, nor will we let you do it in combat of any kind. When the feature is fleshed out more, we'll let you know more details.
Blue Posts
Patch 3.0.2 and WotLK DvD
The Wrath of the Lich King DVD contains the installer for patch version 3.0.1. This means installing the expansion will require you to patch back up to the latest version of the game after installation. Since you will have already downloaded all of the patches prior to Wrath of the Lich King's launch, you will not need to download them again, unless you delete them.
Which means, we highly encourage players avoid deleting any 3.0.x patches until after the installation of Wrath of the Lich King.Of course if you would like to hang on to these patch files just in case you need to reinstall the game at a later date, you're free to do so, as it would save you the time of having to re-download them. (src)
Discipline Priests and Raid Spots
We have definitely tried to boost Discipline into a healing role that is slightly different from Holy. We'd like to see raid leaders consider inviting both specs into their groups. It's a little difficult to gauge Disc's effectiveness since so many people (sadly) rely just on healing meters to see "who is the best." (src)
The Violet Hold Heroic
The issue where Xevozz would hit the party for huge amounts of arcane damage has been resolved.
We also added a behind the scenes spell that will give the tank of Ichoron some additional threat to keep the healer from pulling aggro quite so easily. (src)
BlizzCon Lost and Found
BlizzCon is over, but we still have a few reminders of those that graced the halls. If you’ve lost an item at the event, we may just have found it. We've consolidated the lost and found items collected at BlizzCon and those that are looking for their items can email an inquiry on these to blizzconsupport@blizzard.com. (src)
Death Knight
Rune Strike threat
I'm pretty sure the intent is for it to do 175% damage as threat and not 75%, but I'll make sure it's working as intended. (src)
Druid
Survival Instincts
Survival Instinct is off the GCD now. (src)
Hunter
Dual spec = 2 pets?
We'll definitely consider something like this. The BM with exotic pets will almost certainly require us to have to solve it in some form. (src)
Pet stomping to be turned off
We're going to turn off pet stomping. (src)
Viper change
Here is the actual Viper change we're going to implement: The per attack mana regeneration has been reduced by 50% but it now generates 4% of maximum mana every 3 sec. In addition, the per attack regeneration now also works on melee attacks. (src)
More pet per family in the future
Now that we have a better system for introducing pets, I have no doubt we'll add more per family and more families over time. (src)
Balancing the exotic pets
On the exotic pets issue, I have said before that we want to be very careful with the balance here. If the pets are immensely better, then the talent becomes a non-decision (which isn't so bad) but the exotic pets also becomes a non-decision, which means that the tree that is supposed to be all about pets has fewer options to choose from.
At a slight dps increase, the particular pet you choose is still up for debate. On a boss where you need to go all out and the pet's debuff isn't imporant and survivability isn't important, then yeah maybe you take the devilsaur or core hound. But when farming, running heroics, PvP or in other situations you still can bring which pet you want.
We did a big pass at pet dps and found that while some exotics were near the top, others were near the bottom. We made a big numbers pass to consolidate things a little better, and make sure the exotics were all near the top or at the top. Cats and other pets without a strong debuff should also do good dps as well. (src)
Mage
Living Bomb mana cost to be lowered
We still like Living Bomb. We realize not everyone does, and that's cool. Not every spell or ability in the game is going to appeal to everyone and players are constantly re-designing spells into something they'd rather see.
However, we do think the mana cost on Living Bomb is too high, and we'll be lowering it to something more like Arcane Explosion. (src)
Statement of intent still not in the game
It should be in before Nov 13. It has befuddled me even more than normal trying to keep up with what change is on what build of the game, especially now that we have updates going into both Live and Beta. (src)
Paladin
Retribution Q/A (src)
Q: Is Ret OP?
A: Perhaps. We think Ret's dps isn't abnormally high in PvE, and may not even be high in PvP over the course of a long fight. Where we are worried is how much damage Ret can do up front. It's also Holy damage, which isn't a big deal when you're considering a fully sundered mob, but can turn into a lot of damage in PvP.
Q: Are we going to nerf Ret?
A: TO THE GROUND BABY. Okay, not really, but sometimes I can't resist. We'll see how much that quote comes back to haunt me. We will probably be making some changes soon, perhaps even hotfixes. We want to be very surgical about what we do. We don't want to overdo it, and we don't want to hurt their sustained PvE damage. When we've decided, I'll make sure you all know.
Q: Why did it take us this long to admit there was a problem when EVERYONE knew about it?
A: A couple of weeks ago there were some bugs with weapon equipping that caused some problems that of course were being exploited. We didn't want to nerf Ret TO THE GROUND BABY only to discover that the weapon problem was causing 90% of it.
Q: Enough about Ret. Unholy death knights are worse!
A: That wasn't a question, but we think we have Unholy in a better place now. We made some changes to a few deep talents (that the DK community is already aware of, so don't fret) to get Unholy's dps more in line. Also, you aren't going to see any PvP DKs for a long time, so we need to focus on paladins for now.
Priest
Shadow Glyphs
One of (but not the only) changes we're making to Shadow is to make some glyphs provide better dps. (src)
Divine Providence
We are sympathetic to the notion that Divine Providence feels like a second Spritual Healing but with less effect. So we're making this change:
Divine Providence now also reduces the cooldown of Prayer of Mending by 6/12/18/24/30%. With 5 points, it takes PoM from 10 to 7 sec cooldown. (src)
Shaman
Shaman Glyphs
We're going to be adding more glyphs over time, especially for new spells, most of which don't have glyphs yet. (src)
ETA on Tidal Waves & Riptide change
It was changed to get 2 charges. The Riptide design is still as I stated. You should get these changes sometime between now and Nov 13. (src)
Restoration - mana issues
Teams stacking all dps do seem like they might be too dominant at the moment. We're going to keep an eye on it for a little longer, but it is something we're concerned about. One of the things I like about Arena is that healing strategy and tactics are a really big deal (vs. say BGs where it's more about just killing stuff). (src)
Enhancement DPS
Right now, Enhancement dps is very high. If we changed say UR, we'd have to also nerf Enhancement dps to make up for the extra talent points you'd get to spend. It is something we want to take a look at, but there are also classes and specs right now whose dps is too low that need more attention. (src)
Warlock
Metamorphosis bar
We changed the bar largely because the feedback was that warlocks wanted to cast their own, normal spells in demon form. Once we went that route, we thought it might just be a hassle to have to make a new bar that got turned on only in demon form. Druid forms aren't on a cooldown or timer, so it's easy to set up those bars. We imagined the warlock waiting for the cooldown on Metamorphosis in order to have a chance to set up the bar again. (src)
Warrior
Titan's Grip 12% miss penalty
It should be fixed before Lich King itself goes live. That depends a little on what other issues crop up over the next few days that need more urgent attention. But the plan is to get all of those changes out soon. (src)
Around the Web
Around the Web will be a frequent feature in our news articles with updates on coverage and content from around the World of Warcraft community.
WarCry
WarCry recently released their Northrend Traveler's Guide -- a video series that takes you on a tour of Northrend. Head over to check it out.
WoW Vault
IGN's WoW Vault has compiled a few guides related to the new Achievements system. Sprawl also takes a look at the potential talent builds for Rogues in 3.0.2.
WoW Stratics
Elorian over at WoW Stratics has put together a fairly useful starter FAQ for 3.0.2. It answers some of the more common questions you might have related to the patch, so head over and check it out.
