Today marks the beginning of the Feast of Winter Veil. We wanted to remind everyone that this special in-game event runs from December 15th to January 2nd, and expands to allowing players to open gifts starting on December 25th! To help out with this year's event, we've created a Feast of Winter Veil page in our Guides section. It's chock full of information on the event, including the bosses in Northrend that drop the Winter Hats this year. Be sure to check it out!
Arena Season 5 is starting soon, so Blizzard wanted to share information on the new system of items for each Arena season. There will be a dungeon, 10-player, and 25-player quality items that you can obtain for various Honor and Arena Point costs.
Damage in PVP (Source)
I think we can all agree that once players have more resilience, healing will be more meaningful and burst damage will be less meaningful. So then the issue becomes the matter of degree -- will it be enough?
In beta, we noticed a huge difference between matches that occured near the resilience cap and those that didn't. But at the time we were very concerned that all Arena matches had devolved into dps races and that healers couldn't even heal themselves through a single attacker. It may be that now that players have their real characters and made a major effort to learn the new mechanics and get the best gear that damage greatly outweighs healing again.
So I would say it's definitely a concern, but we're not sure yet if we want to make sweeping changes just before the next Arena season starts. We will all learn a great deal more over the next week or two.
Mana Management in Raids (Source)
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. :)
Raid Design and Guilds (Source)
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.
What Makes a "Good" Raid (Source)
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.
Death Knight
DK Threat (Source)
We could definitely use some more feedback on this. We aren't seeing many threat issues on death knights overall, but that's why I am asking for more input. It could be that DKs are really gimping themelseves threat-wise in order to reach the defense cap.
It is also interesting that DKs would complain about their initial burst threat, since there are several posts in this forum from druids arguing that their initial burst threat is the weakest among the tanks.
Druid
Swipe (Source)
I haven't commented on Swipe in some time because a lot of different arguments tend to get mashed together. That in turn makes it hard for us to detect if the ability actually isn't doing its job, or if [some] druids just want it to work differently, or if [some] druids want more different kinds of buttons to push.
Here are the arguments I typically see, roughly ranked in what I think is most to least important.
-- Swipe doesn't generate enough sustained threat.
-- Swipe doesn't generate enough burst threat.
-- Swipe's angle and target requirement make it hard to use.
-- Swipe is okay, but you want other abilities to throw in there with it (and without giving Swipe a cooldown).
More on Swipe (Source)
Part of my point was that many of you are posting something to the effect of "All druids agree that the main problem is X," when even within a few posts you see wildly different opinions.
We aren't going to turn Swipe into Thunder Clap, and I don't think many of you are asking for that (though a few are).
The problem is if we changed the cone or if we changed the threat or if we added another ability, then a large portion of this thread at least would respond "But you didn't fix the problem."
So the kinds of discussions we are having are what changes to make to Swipe (if any) that will solve some of these problems without turning Swipe into Thunder Clap.
Swipe: The Hot Topic! (Source)
Right, but imagine we increased the threat generated by swipe by 400% (just for the sake of argument). Now it is possible to say:
Swipe generates so much threat that I can use Mangle, Maul, Lacerate, Bash, Feral Charge or Demo Roar without worrying about losing aggro.
I can spam Swipe, but why? After a hit or two I have more than enough threat. I can afford to save it even.
If the threat was high enough, it could have a cooldown to enforce not spamming it. (We'd be very reluctant to do this though.)
Swipe has a positional requirement which requires a little more planning or skill to use than Consecrate, but in return it generates a lot more threat.
My point above was that we are not going to make everybody happy, so you will probably find yourselves less disappointed if you don't get tied to the One True change that will fix Swipe for you.
It is very easy to look over at another character and think "Man, if I just had that ability, I could do my job so much better." That's a good thing. It means that other classes' abilities are so cool or useful that you want them. But for the same reason we are hesitant to give them to you because then the ability is less special and the classes all end up feeling really similar. If you ever switch from druid to warrior or paladin or DK, we want you to have to relearn the class. Make sense?
We want druids to be great AE tanks, and it may be that you aren't quite there yet. But we will almost certainly do it without removing the positional requirement AND adding a lot of threat to Swipe.
Hunter
Hunter Melee Capability (Source)
Hunters are fundamentally a ranged class. I don't think many people are arguing against that.
The melee issue came up as a potential answer to what you do when someone closes on you?
Plate-wearers can often stand there and take it.
Rogues can pop Evasion, or stun and run.
Mages can Blink... and so on.
Maybe it makes sense that hunters, as mail-wearers with some melee specials, should be a little closer to the top of that list than the bottom. We're not saying a hunter should take out a death knight at point-blank range. But maybe if the DK is wounded or the hunter has good healing that you should think twice about always running up on the hunter.
Hunters and Arenas (Source)
Some of you guys make it sound as if every decision in an Arena is pre-determined. If you fight a hunter you will ALWAYS run up to melee with the hunter. If all of the decisions were that easy, we would all be walking around with Gladiator titles.
Rather, what really happens is that you make a lot of decisions on the fly. You process a lot of information quickly, and those of us who can make the right decision very, very fast tend to do really well in PvP. Maybe I can burst that guy down while he's on cooldown. Maybe we need to switch targets right now. Maybe we need to buy some time until my ability has finished its cooldown.
Arenas are fundamentally not duels simply because there are teams involved, and that makes a world of difference.
I can totally imagine a situation where "run up on the hunter" makes sense somtimes (perhaps the hunter has no healer nearby and I'm at full health and his Disengage is on cooldown) and not at other times (perhaps I am very wounded so I know that a Raptor Strike could actually do me bodily harm instead of being something missing from many hunter bars). Nobody is suggesting "Hey, what if hunters could also be rogues?" least of all the hunters.
Paladin
Halls of Lightning Healing Strategy (Source)
Here is a strategy I have seen used a lot on heroic Loken with a paladin healing.
-- Everyone moves to melee together. The paladin casts Beacon on himself.
-- When you get the emote for Lightning Nova, everyone moves back together.
-- There is often a misperception that Lightning Nova has a huge range. It doesn't. You don't have to move far.
-- You also don't need to run back to Loken. Let him come to you. Then next Lightning Nova, move backwards again. You can do a slow kite all the way around the globe if you need to.
-- Of Loken's three abilities, Lightning Nova is the worst, followed by Pulsing Shockwave. Arc Lightning can do a lot of damage, but it's not always worth spreading out to try and avoid it because then the other two abilities can nail you. However, if you are getting multiple stacks of Arc Lightning, the damage can add up. If it gets to be a problem, try to spread out slightly but still move together as a group.
-- This isn't a healing fight at the end of the day. It's a movement and coordination fight, much like Murmur in Shadow Labs.
Loken does kill more players than any other boss. He's not a pushover. Good luck!
Judgements Failing: Possible Fix Incoming (Source)
Okay, we think we have been able to isolate this bug and put in a fix that prevents Judgements from failing any longer. Assuming a little more testing supports this conclusion we plan on hotfixing this.
Sorry you had to endure it for so long. :(
Rogue
Raid DPS (Source)
Rogues should be doing very high dps if not the highest dps for some fights. If that isn't happening we will buff them (ideally in a way that does not inflate their PvP damage potential).
There is a known bug with Honor Among Thieves where multiple rogues with the ability in one group generate too many combo points. It isn't our intent that this bug make up any PvE dps deficiency.
A similar bug was mentioned months ago where only one rogue in a group would receive combo points frequently if other people in the group received a lot of crits. This is working as intended as far as we can tell.
