coriel
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Blizzard fights ingame spam (and the addon meant to stop it)
If you've been using an addon like Spam Sentry to quickly and easily report ingame gold whisperers, it turns out Blizzard might not be completely happy with you.You'd think Blue might be happy players were helping them get gold spammers out of their game, but apparently Spam Sentry isn't actually helping... at least in the way Blizzard wants it to. Blue poster Kaone says, in a thread repeatedly linked to by Coreiel, that reports need to be submitted as soon as possible (Spam Sentry collects gold spammers, and then either lets you report them when you click to do so, or all in one go at the end of the day-- apparently more players have been going for the easier option). Addons, Blizzard says, aren't cutting it, because they aren't hearing about the spam quickly enough to catch the accounts while they're logged on.Which is kind of understandable. But what's not understandable is that Blizzard is going to remove the ability of addons to create a GM ticket as of the next patch. So as of 2.1, we can pretty much say goodbye to Spam Sentry in its current form.The good news is that Slouken (the addon CM, if there is one) promises that Blizzard is working on a "much easier-to-use method" of reporting gold spammers in 2.1. However, as we all learned from the LFG system, what Blizzard thinks is easier doesn't always match with what the players want to use. And my guess is that if Blizzard is getting "spammed" with Spam Sentry warnings now, their system will be a lot more full when everyone has access to a quick-reporting ability. It seems like a better plan to help Spam Sentry fix itself by building functionality into the addon system, rather than remove that functionality for a tool that players aren't familiar with.
PTR Notes: Fixing illumination
Over at Blessing of Kings, Coriel has a great explanation of how the paladin's to-be-changed Illumination talent -- which has been happily residing in the holy tree since the game's release -- became such a thorny problem. The talent (as it exists now) returns the base mana cost of a healing spell to the paladin when the healing spell crits. (It costs 5 talent points to bring it to this level of effectiveness and requires 15 points in the talent tree. So a fully maxxed illumination will cost you 20 talent points in the holy tree.) The end result is that, overall, the paladin receives a mana discount on their healing spells equal to their spell crit rate. Prior to patch 1.9, a paladin could boost his or her holy spell crit rate by 5% through talents (priests have a similar talent that boosts holy spell crit), but it was difficult for paladins to get any other spell crit gear. The plate itemization simply didn't exist and there was heavy competition for generic items that a paladin could use like the Azuresong Mageblade.
