Naxx Difficulty, "Hard Mode," Dual Specs (Source)
I have discussed the dungeon difficulty issue before, so I will just bulletize it here:
- Naxx is an entry-level raid.
- Many players have seen the encounters before.
- Players were allowed to learn the encounters on beta.
On the topic of hard modes:
- I think a lot of players do enjoy the challenges, especially when some kind of badge of honor is involved.
- We do realize that vanity items like titles and mounts can only motivate people so far and we do have plans to offer better loot for such accomplishments.
- We aren't likely to spend several months of development time on content that less than 5% of players will ever see.
- We do understand that groups like a challenge though. Ulduar will be more difficult.
On dual spec:
- The idea is to let you swap glyphs and action bars along with your talents.
- It will be trivial to do in town.
- You will also be able to do it out of towns, but not as trivially.
- We hope to have this done for the next major content patch, but it's a big feature and takes some time.
Smart Heals (Source)
I'm not sure why we need to keep starting threads on the same issue, but since you seem to have trouble finding our thoughts on the issue of smart healing, I will offer them again.
The old model of targeting a group out of a raid to heal it goes against one of the changes we tried to make for Lich King, which is that the raid structure matters, but the party structure within the raid doesn't. Almost all buff are raid-wide now, so we didn't want raiders to have to structure their groups just around things like Circle of Healing. "Um, can you put the MT and OT in the same group please, so CoH can get them both?" That sort of thing.
One of the things we wanted to do was give players more flexibility in how they set up their raids. This extends to your UI -- if you like to put the tanks in a separate part of your UI, or organize things by class or functional role instead of group, you can do that without having to worry (so much) about who is in what group.
We couldn't get rid of the group concept for every spell - Mana Tide is one example. But we have gotten rid of a lot of them.
We did ask all of the class designers and almost everyone on the WoW team who plays a raiding priest, and to a person they all thought the cooldown was a better solution than removing the smart component of the heal.
I will say again, if one spell (talented at that) is what makes the difference between you A) having fun, B) being able to heal competitively, or C) being brought to a raid at all, that is a much bigger problem than anything CoH itself does.
State of Healing in Wrath (Source)
One of the design goals in LK was to make tanking more fun and I daresay a little easier because it could be very challenging. I have tanked and healed A LOT on various classes and I feel pretty confident saying that tanking can be much harder than healing on some fights (on others it is reversed). Challenging the dps classes is harder, but you often see it in the form of berserk timers -- if the dps can't maximize their output, then the raid is going to wipe at no fault of the healers. Repositioning fights often tax the dps characters, though to be fair, they often tax the healers too.
I'm pretty happy with the current state of tanking, modulo polishing up a few bits here and there. Healing is something we have committed to taking a good hard look at now, so threads like this are helpful. Unlike tanking, it is a harder problem to solve, in part because some healers like the way healing works now just fine thank you, and risk walking away from it if we make very dramatic changes. The kinds of dramatic changes that get suggested a lot are things like causing damage to heal, having to heal through the main game window and not the health bars, having combo points and that sort of thing. You may say "That sounds awesome!" but many other players say "Yech."
Others say just having better UI, having more diverse spells to rely on, not having to time things so tightly, or having something to do besides healing will make their game more fun.
We do think the game can handle more diversity in healing mechanics than it can in tanking mechanics. In other words, it's okay for healers to have niches moreso than the tanks. This is largely because raids require more healers than tanks.
Death Knight (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)
Cooldown-based Class (Source)
Death knights are a cooldown-based class. They can't count on abilities being there and ready to the same extent other classes are. In return though, they have an unlimited resource that neither goes away over time (mana) or is dependent on doing damage or taking damage (rage). While a DK may struggle a little more when things get out of control (because of cooldowns) they are also fantastic in other situations -- you can actually battle rez a fallen DK tank and have them get back in the fray because they don't need to build up rage or mana first.
The rune system definitely has some strengths and weaknesses and that is by design so that the DK actually feels like a different class using different mechanics. Cooldowns won't appeal to everyone, just as drinking to restore mana doesn't appeal to everyone.
Now, that said, we do hope to be able to post some more definitive changes to DKs soon (putting numbers on the rune strike nerf and all that) and one of the things that comes up a lot is removing the cooldown from Pestilence.
Druid (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)
Resto DPS (Source)
I'm not sure the OP was even talking about PvP. I think he or she just wanted to be able to do a little more damage in a resto build, which doesn't seem unreasonable.
I find that I can generally do passable damage as a healing spec (of any class) trying to dps. Where I suffer is in utility. A resto druid trying to go up against a caster (even in PvE as in questing) can't do much to interrupt those heals. You generally just try and wait for them to go OOM.
Hunter (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)
Upcoming Hunter Changes (Source)
That isn't to say that there weren't some good responses in that thread, or that we don't understand the issues or aren't working on the problems. We do have some hunter PvE nerfs and PvP buffs we're working on and hope to be able to announce soon.
Where you will find me in disagreement is on the subject of hunter changes. It is absurd to say that we haven't made any attempt to address PvP concerns. They may not be the changes you would have made in our shoes, but the hunter class of LK looks dramatically different than the one of BC. It's fair to say that the changes aren't sufficient if you feel that way, but let's at least be precise; it's just silly to say no changes were made or that we ignored the issues.
Pet Tanking (Source)
We have heard some reports of hunter pets tanking say Nexus, which doesn't have a lot of movement required of the tank. Really though, as others have suggested, the goal is more for them to be able to OT large pulls or group quests. Now pet threat generation (Voidwalkers too) is something we are looking at right now.
Shaman (Skills / Talents / Glyphs)
Chain Heal (Source)
We don't think Chain Heal needs a nerf at the current time.
Unlike CoH (and to a lesser extent WG) it isn't used to the exclusion of other shaman healing spells. It also has some pretty severe drawbacks compared to CoH -- cast time for one.
But if after we add a cooldown to CoH and WG, we find that CH is making AE healing too trivial or if we find that shamans are being invited to heal raids at the expense of priests and druids, then we will absolutely nerf CH too.
