Mists of Pandaria

Yes.

Awesome.

Muzjhath wrote:
Yes, it's tedious, yes you'd likely rather do more fun things. It is still a whole lot less tedious than in a tonne of other games. It is also not as bad as people complain that it fucking is.

Thing is, I don't care really how it compares to other games. I care how it is in the game I currently play. And I don't enjoy tedious!

It's not a 100% bad, but I do welcome the change.

If I could press a button to ding to level 90 in one go, I'd do it.

Hooray! Less time spent doing 4 fucking instances over and over and going through the same questzones again. It was not as much the time it took that made it tedious for me to level to 90, but more the incredibly dull way of getting there.

Emrys wrote:Hooray! Less time spent doing 4 fucking instances over and over and going through the same questzones again. It was not as much the time it took that made it tedious for me to level to 90, but more the incredibly dull way of getting there.

This. So much THIS! I haven't been able to level my rogue due to the incredibly dullness that is the Pandaria levelling zones. I mean, in WotLK you at least had two places to go start levelling from and alternate between. But BC, Cata and MoP? Same boring crap over and over, which drives me slightly mad.

It was a lot of fun doing it the first two times, though. Loved it! The quests are more interesting, the storytelling is better handled, and there's a real sense of progression.

The third time it got a bit dreary.

I'm having real trouble plowing through the fourth

Patch 5.3 - No Sky Claw Mount or Pierre Pet
It looks like the Engineering created Sky Claw and Pierre won't make Patch 5.3, so you will have to make do with Waffle Joe!


Upcoming Pet Battle Changes
Here's what we're thinking and working on at the moment, and again, please share your thoughts and feedback:

Aquatic: Harmful DoTs reduced by 50% (up from 25%)
Aquatic-types currently reduce the effect of harmful damage over time abilities by 25%. Because few creatures have more than one DOT, this ends up being a less than steller damage reduction over the course of the battle. We feel increasing the effect to 50% should help aquatic pets benefit more from their passive.

Critters: Immune to CC completely
Critters currently reduce the duration of crowd control effects by one round, which makes fast critters significantly more powerful. We'd like critters of all speeds to benefit equally from their passive, so we're considering making them immune to crowd control effects completely. This would include stuns, roots, and other incapacitating effects.

Magic: Cannot be dealt more than 35% of total health in one move (down from 40%)
Magic-type creatures currently cannot take more than 40% of their maximum health as damage when struck. When balance changes were made to reduce the damage of some very heavy-hitting abilities, this passive was indirectly nerfed. We're thinking if we buff the effect to 35% of maximum health, that should compensate for previous adjustments.

Again, everything is subject to further adjustments, but our ultimate goal is to bring all passives up to the power level of some of the current favorites, such as Undead.

Class Uniqueness
Didn't people complain about class favoritism whenever a class got something special? And now people complain about this. Figures.
We still strive to make the classes as unique as possible while offering a balance that doesn't lead to anyone feeling useless in raids (which was a very real concern a few years ago), and to a greater or lesser extent, I think we accomplish that goal. When I play a Warrior, Death Knight, Rogue, or Monk, for example, there are certainly similarities--they are all melee classes, after all. Crucially, there are also significant differences that span the entire experience of playing each class, and which contribute to a distinctly different feel for each one. Even among "pure" classes, each spec can feel quite distinct from the others, and that's certainly the case amongst hybrids.

So, for fear of using an often tossed buzzword, "homogenization" is a matter of degrees. I personally don't feel that we've at all crossed a threshold where playing one class feels essentially like playing another. I find myself reading posts where players are talking about the buffs a class brings to a raid, or listing off the abilities a class has like a litany. These lists are, themselves, devoid of context though. More classes bring more buffs because that was a problem we needed to solve. Classes have similar abilities to encourage flexibility in group composition. If these are the only measures by which you judge how similar classes are, then I think that you're missing the trees for the forest. Nuance matters. "Feel" matters. How a class toolset interacts with itself matters.

I would make the case that, for the purposes of game play, how a given spec or class plays is really what makes it distinct from the others, even if different classes can sometimes share similar roles. After all, that's nothing new to World of Warcraft; we've always had healers, dps, and tanks. Players have greater flexibility than ever to choose a class that they enjoy playing for the raw experience of playing it, rather than for what buff it provides.

I don't mind so much the same effects on different classes to even out raid need but I do wish that the classes were different enough that just by eying a piece of gear you could tell what class it was meant for even if it wasn't a set. A good example was back in BC when you could tell the difference between Lock oriented gear and Mage oriented gear by the amount of Stamina on it.
This is intentional. There was a lot of "wasted" gear back in the day.

It was very common to go into a raid without a full assortment of classes (which was also common, because some of the classes simply didn't have enough to offer in a raid), and get gear that wasn't good for anyone in attendance. It didn't prove to be a good item design then, and I suspect that it wouldn't work much better now. We've done a lot to solve problems like this over time.

Introducing actual choices in gearing is extremely difficult, because when it comes to player power, all it takes is a spreadsheet showing that item A is better than item B, and suddenly item B is "trash". It becomes a let down to get it, even though ostensibly it's supposed to be an upgrade.

Is that why rogues all feel the same?
Rogues are something of an edge case, and moving previously spec defining abilities into the talent tree probably contributes to this, though I'd argue that it's resulted in a class that's more fun to play overall. Still, I find that Combat feels different from Assassination feels different from Sub. The differences are admittedly more subtle (no pun intended) than some other classes, though.

PvE
Doing amazing dps on raids, then walk out and everything feels slow and clunky cause I don't have a 5% crit buff
Our goal is that you feel more awesome when you're with your friends. That is the whole intent behind raid buffs.

Tier skipping is necessary, old content is OLD and should be treated as old. Blizz needs to stop catering for elitists
It's fun to kill the final boss in a raid. We don't want players to kill boss 1 and 2 and then go on to the next raid.

I propose world bosses should only drop loot you don't have, especially if it's Unique-Equipped loot, so much frustration.
Would you rather have no loot or repeat loot? Because we're not just going to give you good loot every kill.
why not?
Because you'd be done with the raid in two weeks and then ask politely how long until the next raid is ready.

Why is there no time for 5-mans but plenty for Heroic raids? More do dungeons than heroic. Why not develop to larger group?
Many players care about heroic raiding even if they don't run it. Blood Legion's Lei Shen video has like 60K views.
And to be fair, most of the work goes into the raid in general which also supports LFR and normal, not into heroic content.

Screw that! I don't want a healer queing in scenario, 45min LFR Q, I don't have time to waste about 5-10 mins.
It's a heroic scenario. You won't be able to queue.
No queueing, will there be an ilvl req for these? Please say no, would rather they be skill-based.
There is an ilevel requirement but it's more to keep people from stumbling into content that they can't handle.
If you're interested in heroic scenarios, chances are you'll meet the requirements to do them.

PvP
We are trying role checks for BGs in 5.3 to make sure there are enough healers on both sides.

50% Battle Fatigue ouch. That'll hurt things like Recup/Second Wind severely. Any thoughts on letting them ignore it?
We don't think the %heals need the nerf. Might let all classes (e.g. rogue, warrior) benefit from PvP Power healing to offset it.

Disabling auto follow in Battle Grounds has only hurt the multi boxer.
The problem is when multi boxers are having fun in PvP, everyone else often is not.

Any thoughts of making fear break from damage? It's just a thought. I usually take at least 20-25% of my health before it does
It used to, but if a lock had someone dotted, the Fear would just immediately break. It could be the threshold is too generous.

If an equally skilled & geared DPS and Healer 1v1'd, in your opinion should the healer be able to forever out heal the damage?
If they can't then how would the healer ever keep up a 3 player team?
That said, it's more complicated than that. Healers can run OOM. DPS can interrupt or CC or get kill windows.

I think when exp 5 class/systems design team begin their work you might consider one CC DR and nerf pvp healing.
Agree on taking another look at DRs. PvP healing doesn't feel bad to us at the moment though (except maybe too many instants).

Just so we're clear: PvP balance (buffs/nerfs) happen around the Top PvP spec of a class, instead of "All 34 specs"?
There are two schools of thought: make PvP fun with fewer specs vs. get all 34 in there and embrace chaos.
We don't have an official stance yet and try to keep in touch with how the community feels.

is the new debuff when holding flags as prot in rbg meant to disscourage tank roles in rbg or to encourage pvp power for them?
We want tanks as flag carriers to feel useful but not mandatory.

You guys don't think there is too much CC in PVP? reality check please.
I'd argue nearly all of the depth from PvP comes from CC. Without it, you're just blowing people up.
The CC that offends us the most are stuns, since they stop you and let someone do lots of damage.
Debating having more stuns that break on damage (even if it's faily high damage).

65% base resi takes away from the feeling of progression for PvPers. Power isn't enough to keep that feeling. Your thoughts?
That was our philosophy for years, but we've come around. Increasing damage / healing with gear feels better.
When you can't even survive PvP with very low resilience, it's hard to be motivated to continue.

erwtenpeller wrote:It was a lot of fun doing it the first two times, though. Loved it! The quests are more interesting, the storytelling is better handled, and there's a real sense of progression.

The third time it got a bit dreary.

I'm having real trouble plowing through the fourth

This is why they should have benchmark levelling. You hit 90 on one char, the next char levels 50% faster. When two chars are 90, the next char is 100% faster! Levelling is fun the first time.

Now -that- I could very much dig!

OR just let us buy XP in the blizzard store. I'd totally go for that.

I bet one of the Kor'kron will kill the Warchief and be called the Chiefslayer. Seems familiar.

On Friday we mentioned that on the PTR you now needed 400 PvP Power rating to get 1% more damage, rather than the 265 needed on live. Holinka confirmed that this was a real change over the weekend.

PvP Power change intentional. Reduce gear gap. Reduce bursty damage/healing gameplay. Reduce power of sockets.

I play a class that can do shit all without big burst damage

?????????????????

Do I quit pvp now ???????????

Or maybe I should go PvE? I'd do more damage in PvE epics ((change intentional)))

Despite all the changes to make PvP accessible to PvEers without any effort, I still won't be accepted into a raid in PvP gear.

The burst is out of control, so that's a welcome change. And most classes depend on burst to deliver kills you know, it's just a game of cooldowns. Looking away from that, the change makes DoT classes weaker as well, so you're not off any worse than anyone else. You'll just have to think a bit more to set up for a kill rather than mouthbreathe and push your swifty macros. But as I said, sadly the change will only fix things a bit. But here's an advise: gem and enchant your gear (And do it correctly), that'll be a bigger buff for you than this nerf will be a nerf.

I'd do more damage in PvE epics ((change intentional)))

If you're out in the world you'll do more damage in heroic raiding gear, but not inside battlegrounds and arenas.

+324 Stamina and Reduce Spell Damage Taken by -2% in Meta gem... Er yeah he's right Raen. I mean if you had 10% stun reduction i'd understand, but you need to gem and enchant, same thing is in raiding, you need to do it and do it right!

Also you need to generally not be a shit druid to do damage xD

Sorry, but it's true.

Coppersocket wrote:
I propose world bosses should only drop loot you don't have, especially if it's Unique-Equipped loot, so much frustration.
Would you rather have no loot or repeat loot? Because we're not just going to give you good loot every kill.
why not?
Because you'd be done with the raid in two weeks and then ask politely how long until the next raid is ready.

I do enjoy being told I'm the rat in the box

Don't you mean pidgeon?

Rats in boxes can learn tricks too, you know.

Thelos wrote:Don't you mean pidgeon?

Pigeons are flying rats anyway.

Just stop thinking and start pressing that button until you get your reward bitch!

Holy shit where did you find THAT??

You know what's fun? feeding "carbiet", to pigeons.

That usually teaches them not to shit on my porch, balcony and car.

Amaryl wrote:You know what's fun? feeding "carbiet", to pigeons.

That usually teaches them not to shit on my porch, balcony and car.

Can't be as bad as this:

Spoiler:

It generally means their stomachs explode from the inside out, and they fall out of the sky like bricks.