Increased NPC Damage in latest build
There seems to be a problem where some (?) caster mobs do way too much damage. Your experience may have everything to do with the specific mobs you fight. Listing particular mobs that seem more deadly than you’d expect would be helpful. (
Source)
[…] The idea isn’t for you to be in Godmode, mowing through everything in your path. The idea is – in fact – for you to have to stop to rest, bandage, heal, every once in awhile. If you are reckless you will absolutely die. This is intended. (Source)
There are likely still a lot of areas that are going to be lethal. List the issues that you run into in this thread. We still have plenty of tuning left to do and we realize that. Thanks for testing. (Source)
We’re currently investigating issues with creature spell damage scaling. The intent is definitely not for players to have to rest after every single solo pull. Melee damage, on the other hand, seems about right, but may undergo some fine tuning. Keep the feedback for specific lethal creatures and deadly points of interest coming. We’re looking at everything submitted. (Source)
Relics class requirements gone in Cataclysm
You are looking at existing, Wrath of the Lich King, items. Those are currently only used by those classes, so there isn’t a great motivation or need to change them.
Cataclysm-level relics can be used by any paladin, shaman, druid or DK, though there may still be some class-specific ones from time to time. (Source)
Relics changes in Cataclysm
The "on paper" design of the Lich King relics sounds pretty cool: you have your choice of which of your spells or abilities you care about the most. Maybe a Resto druid takes the Rejuv idol over the Regrowth idol. In reality, what happens is that we make 3 druid idols per tier so the Resto druid is stuck with whatever idol we make. If we make the Rejuv idol, awesome. If we make the Lifebloom idol, probably less awesome (or at least much more situational). Of course we could just make the Rejuv idol every tier, but really that’s not much different than the stats. The procs are designed to mostly be always up, so it’s just clutter in the buff section of your UI.
With the new model, there is less risk of having the "bad luck" of having a bad relic for an entire tier for your spec. In fact, it should even offer a little more choice because you could choose the crit relic over the haste relic. Currently you don’t get a choice because we have to offer such specialized relics. The gem socket is to make them at least feel slightly different from the ranged items that can shoot.
To be brutally honest, I wouldn’t call our ranged weapon slot a success for any class. Warriors, rogues and all wand users don’t care much about their ranged weapon slot except as a stat stick. Warriors and rogues use their ranged weapons once in awhile, but we really don’t like the model where a caster wands everything while leveling instead of using their actual spells. The only class that really cares about the ranged slot is the hunter, and they in turn don’t care much about their melee weapon. Furthermore, the hunter doesn’t get the same kind of stat budget out of their primary weapon that the melee guys do. Believe me, we have had many meetings just to discuss the ranged slot. We don’t have a solution yet that we think is better than the current Cataclysm implementation, but it’s the kind of thing we’re going to keep working on for a long time. (Source)
Class "roles"
We try not to divide classes / specs into such discrete buckets. Our overriding design is to try and have classes feel diverse, such that rerolling or adding a new class to your group feels interesting, but still give you the tools to fill your role. If any healer is too good at one thing, they tend to get stacked, and if a healer is too weak at anything, they risk being unwanted.
Put another way, we used to have this design that say DKs were the magic tank and paladins were the AE tank. The thought was that if you had a paladin in your group you were happy when you had an AE fight but that you’d be fine with anyone else. In reality, this didn’t play out so well. Players felt compelled to swap players in and out of their groups, or be reluctant to run a 5-player dungeon with the "wrong" tank. We decided that tanks need to be tanks.
Likewise, our model for healers for a long time has been that everyone has their little niche. We now think healers should just be healers. We just have to make sure that they still feel different enough that you’d prefer to have as many different healers as you can. The big difference is that raids have more healers than tanks, so we have a little bit of room to make the healers more differentiated from each other than the tanks are. But only a little bit, and that space is going to be even smaller in Cataclysm than it was in LK. (Source)
Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Moonkin Form
We’ve had a lot of discussions about Moonkin form, as you might guess. We know opinions range among the player base from "cut it" to "make me stay in my adorable form all the time." At first we were trying to make it more of an option, so that cuddly-hating Balance druids could choose the spec without the shapeshift. After much discussion though, we’re going to go back to a Balance druid = Moonkin Form design. We’ll put some more damage into the Moonkin Form. (Source)
Restoration
As far as the history goes here, we thought at the time (and still think!) that the Resto druid wasn’t going to be well served as a "I only care about hots and nothing else" healer. It’s just too extreme a design. Any time when hots are good (by which I mean both individual encounters and periods in the game as a whole) the druid is going to dominate. Any time when hots are terrible, so will be druids. We probably, in retrospect, didn’t push Nourish enough, because we still ended up in a raid healing situation where druids used Rejuv and Wild Growth and were loathe to use any other button.
We are going to push even harder in Cataclysm. Druids will still have exceptional hots, but will need to cast direct heals as well. I usually get a lot of responses after such a post from druids saying "But I only want to cast hots!" I’m not sure how to respond to that, because we just don’t think it works. 🙁
As far as the AE healing goes, it’s definitely something to keep an eye on, but we’re not worried about it yet. We are trying to cut back (yet again) on the dominance of the smart AE heals. The cooldowns of CoH and WG need to stay high. We do have some room to lower the mana cost on WG, and probably will.
It’s also worth mentioning that Efflorescence does some great AE healing, and is probably overpowered at the moment.
One change we are going to make is reintroducing the talent that lowers Rejuv to a 1 sec GCD. Since haste affects Rejuv ticks and since druids will be casting cast-time spells that benefit from haste, we’re not as worried about druids turning up their noses at haste. This will let you get Rejuvs up on more people when you want to, though it still should be mana-inefficient to just do so at random. We think hots are going to be enormous in the Cataclysm healing model just because they won’t be overhealing nearly as much as they are now.
We like the way Nourish interacts with hots. Yes, it’s different from the way priests, paladins and shaman use their heals, but we do want the classes to play differently, as long as those differences aren’t so extreme that you can’t use a druid on some dungeon or raid fights.
I suspect we won’t end up keeping the snare on Tree of Life. We knew that we could try snare and then remove it. We would have a hard time trying no snare and then adding one. Our intent was to make you think about when was the best time to push ToL rather that just hitting it the second it’s off cooldown. In practice though we just think it feels crappy so even if it accomplishes our goal, it’s probably not worth it.
We’re still working on the Resto tree (and druids in general). You were missing the talent to lower the cast time of Nourish and Healing Touch, which is a pretty painful thing to live without. We’re also considering changing Furor to provide intellect to caster form too so it is attractive to both caster trees. We agree that too much of the early Resto tree felt like it was there for Feral.
I’m talking PvE in almost all of this, since that was the original thrust of the thread. (Source)
This seems really at odds with the increase in Rejuv’s mana cost. We’re not supposed to pre-HoT the raid, but you’re adding in a talent designed to let us do exactly that? I’m very confused by this.
We don’t like prehotting (or pre-shielding) as a general strategy. On certain fights where you know that the damage is going to come fast and furious then maybe it’s appropriate, but we don’t want the current LK style to continue. I’ve healed a lot as both Resto and Disc, so I know the power of prehealing, though it’s not as if you need first-hand experience to understand how useful and powerful it is.
On the other hand, if a lot of people take damage at once, we have no problem with getting a Rejuv out on several of them at once, and a lower GCD will help there. It’s still possible to screw that up (by which I mean we want healing to have some player decision-making as part of the gameplay) by using too much mana on Rejuvs or casting too many Rejuvs when the situation called for something else. (Source)
I am still concerned about the proc-rate of Efflorescence, however, and hope it isn’t underpowered at lower gear levels and then overpowered in higher gear levels.
It’s okay — to a point — if some talents are more useful at different gear levels than others. It’s interesting if you consider changing talent specs rather than having one that serves you well in almost all stages of the game. But we don’t want the extremes either, where it never procs as you’re leveling and is up 100% of the time so that you fish for it in the endgame. Definitely something to keep an eye on. We also might take the wounded restriction off of Nature’s Bounty, so that Regrowth just crits a lot. (Source)
I’m going to assume that the lowered GCD is to allow for situations where Players A, B, and C got him by a small AOE and were taken down to 70% health. Nourish is too slow to heal all three, Regrowth is too expensive for that little damage, and Wild Growth costs too much for just three targets. So instead you just toss a Rejuv on each of them and move on. This is much different than the current model where you would just keep as many players Rejuv’d as possible with WG on cooldown.
Yes! (Source)
Hunter (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Silencing Shot damage gone
We’re going to take the damage off of Silencing Shot. It’s supposed to be a situational utility ability, not something you macro into every shot. (Source)
New Call Pet
Here is the way the new Call Pet works.
At some higher level (25?) you get "Call Pet 2." If you have a second pet (e.g. Festus), it will change the spell name to "Call Festus" instead. You can then call either pet 1 or 2, so long as you dismiss the other one first. Dismissing no longer affects happiness because we want you to be able to do it often.
Eventually you will get Call Pet 3-5 as well. If you ever want more pets than you are able to call, you need to visit the stable and swap some into "deep storage."
We are discussing just giving you Call Pet 2-5 at the same level, to make this a little less confusing. Getting the ability to swap from a fourth to a fifth pet isn’t nearly as exciting as getting the ability to call a second one.
The Call Pet button is a flyout. You can put this button on your bar and expand it to pick a particular pet. In this way, you only sacrifice one button to calling all your pets. If you like having all your pets separately, then you can either drag the individual pets to your bar. You can even drag them from the Call Pet flyout.
Warlocks work almost exactly the same way with regard to the flyout. Warlocks have no dismiss button, but instead summoning takes a cast instead of being instant like with the hunter. (Source)
Hunters in Cataclysm
We’re still following this discussion. Some players are making some good points and we have addressed some of these in our most recent builds. Here is a quick update on some of the issues being discussed:
Focus — We think we’re in a much better spot for focus regen now. Our goal has been for focus to be a resource you spend on your higher damage shots, which is regenerated passively at a rate lower than energy regen, but faster than energy if you are using Steady / Cobra (which can only be done while stationary). At the lower regen rates, we found it felt bad if you couldn’t Steady / Cobra rather than Steady / Cobra feeling like a bonus. We think we’re closer to the sweet spot now, but please let us know (preferably after you’ve actually tried it rather than prophesizing doom).
Aspects — We’re not happy with the way the Hawk vs. Fox choice is playing out. We think that ultimately either damage or focus regen is going to win out and the other aspect won’t get much use. For now, we are going back to Hawk being used for damage and regen. We’ll discuss other potential uses for Fox. Changing Aspects will not affect focus regen.
Mobile damage — This is always a touchy subject. In our testing, we found that it wasn’t fun with the current implementation when hunters had to move around a lot, especially in PvP. This is why we are giving up on the current Aspect of the Fox design. We also significantly reduced the focus cost per damage of Arcane Shot, so that it is usable under almost all circumstances. We’ve also removed the focus costs on several utility abilities (e.g. Concussive Shot, Intimidation, Bestial Wrath, Scatter Shot, etc.) One potential use for Aspect of the Fox is to generate additional focus when you take damage, but we don’t want to get back into a world where you are "aspect twisting" when someone comes into melee with you in PvP.
Survival — We’re still iterating a lot on this tree in particular. We agree it’s probably the least polished of the hunter trees so far. The reason is that we just have it in for Survival hunters.
Pets — As I posted in another thread recently, a pet scaling pass is underway. We still plan to do passes on the hunter pet talents and abilities as well. With the design that allows you to swap pets often in the field, we want to make sure that there are some interesting choices in which pet you use for a given situation. Provided they are all crabs.
In case I need to say it, the last two sentences of the last two paragraphs are not meant to be taken seriously. 🙂 (Source)
Pet Scaling
Pet scaling is getting a massive overhaul at the moment. For starters, we still intend for pets to scale with all of the master’s stats for things like hit, haste and crit. For the big stats, our current plan is something like this:
Ferocity (damage) — 50% of master’s AP, 40% health, 50% armor
Tenacity (tanking) — 35% of master’s AP, 50% health, 70% armor
Cunning (utility) — 40% of master’s AP, 40% health, 60% armor
Warlock pets will be getting a similar pass. In general, we want pet dps to be 20-30% of player dps. Note that this is a lot lower than current BM and Demo lock numbers. Pet damage as BM will still be higher than Marks or Survival though, and we want BM to be competitive overall with Marks and Survival. (Ditto for locks.) (Source)
Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Enlightened Judgement
Enlightened Judgements does not affect hit rating, but the Holy passives do that. (Source)
Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Desperate Prayer
Desperate Prayer isn’t gone. It’s just back in the talent tree. We don’t have a new level 10 Holy ability in this build (it’s not Sanctuary). (Source)
Shadow
Phantasm — Having a 2 sec immunity is something we may consider, but we also don’t want snares in PvP to be quiet as prevalent as they are today.
Mind Melt — The timing of the Mind Melt buff interaction with Mind Spike sounds like a bug and will be fixed.
Shadowy Apparition — It sounds like there are a lot of bugs still with the implementation. The way we intend for it to work is that the Apparitions are shades of your character and will attack the correct target (the one with SW:Pain on it). We have already fixed several bugs relating to Shadowy Apparition interacting with Shadow Orbs and Mind Blast. (Source)
Warlock (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Pet Scaling (See Hunters)
Warlock pets will be getting a similar pass. In general, we want pet dps to be 20-30% of player dps. Note that this is a lot lower than current BM and Demo lock numbers. Pet damage as BM will still be higher than Marks or Survival though, and we want BM to be competitive overall with Marks and Survival. (Ditto for locks.) (Source)
Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Inner Rage
The numbers on Inner Rage are very easy to adjust. I wouldn’t obsess over the current ones too much.
We don’t want warriors to sit around autoattacking until they proc Inner Rage all of the time. We also don’t want them to be bummed when they slip into it. It’s there so that if you get 100 rage and can’t spend it fast enough that you aren’t overly penalized. I realize some of you think that can’t ever, ever happen with the new numbers, but we haven’t seen enough high-end PvP or raiding to be convinced yet.
The numbers just need to be such that you play normally until you get Inner Rage and continue to play normally if it happens. Changing your behavior to try and hit it ASAP or avoid it isn’t what we’re going for. (Source)
Protection Warrior
I’m not sure why you feel that the new Shield Spec is required. If you struggle with rage it might be nice, but there are other solutions to that too. We left it as 3 points because it’s a nice talent for backfill potential. If you have 1 spare point, you get a little bit of benefit out of it (compared to say talents that have a 33/66/100% chance to work with 1/2/3 talent points).
I would get Toughness and Shield Mastery, no question. You either need 2/3 Incite or 2/2 Hold the Line and then 2 more talent points to get deeper.
In the deeper tiers, I would consider Last Stand, Bastion of Defense, Devastate, Sword and Board and Shockwave to be non-negotiable. Heavy Repercussions, Improved Revenge and Warbringer are very close to being non-negotiable. The others are up to debate or your individual style. (Source)
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