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Developer Twitter chat transcript for January 15th, organized by category
After the break is the complete transcript of the developer Twitter chat with Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and J. Allen Brack. They talked a lot about Cataclysm and upcoming class changes, and reflect on some of the inner workings of patch 3.3. Unlike the last twitter developer chat, this chat was much more substantial and actually provided useful information for us all. We've broken up all the answers into the following hyperlinked categories for your browsing pleasure. Table of Contents Cataclysm Patch 3.3 PvP Classes Other Look for more analysis and updates on these answers in the coming days on WoW.com.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Destroyer
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is WoW.com's weekly column for all things angry and clanky. Matthew Rossi writes it, when he's not busy being angry and clanky. Dev Chat Update: While today's post is about fury, it's worth mentioning that in addition to nerfing Shield Block's contribution to Shield Slam, we will supposedly see a threat buff to the ability. Hopefully it's a scaling, and not a static, threat buff, something that adds X threat for every Y block value or something. They'd also supposedly like to add sustained damage to prot for PvE without PvP burstiness, which would be nice if it happened.. Lately I get plenty of tanking action in raids, to the point where I honestly don't want to do it in PuG's. When musing about it the other day I realized that I'm too used to hard modes and progression when tanking: I demand perfection of myself to such a degree that I get tense and stressed over the smallest error in execution. This is possibly admirable (when not taken too far) in a raid setting on a new boss where strategies are being tested and modified constantly and everything's on the razor's edge between being able to pass the checks inherent to the content. It's not when you're PuGging Halls of Lightning for a couple of extra Emblems of Frost. In fact, what can help you get past Rotface is downright madness causing when heading down to Loken. At this point, Loken holds no surprises, and neither does the trash. Being a tanking perfectionist just leads you to tend towards freaking the heck out over stupid crap bored people do, and that's turning the game from fun to a drag for yourself. (It probably does for them, too, but they can look out for themselves.) Lately, I've taken to running the random daily and any 10 mans I PuG on my own as DPS, just to get a break from my own self-imposed desire to try for flawless execution. (I'm not saying I ever accomplish that, by the way, just that I want to.) And I have to say: fury got good again when I wasn't looking.
Totem Talk: Fire Nova
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. This week, Matthew Rossi talks about Fire Nova, his absolute favorite new ability in quite some time. Boom! The hastily cobbled together screenshot above really only gives you a small taste of the awesome that is Fire Nova. The old Fire Nova totem was okay... you'd drop it on big AoE packs if you could do so, but for a lot of shamans, sacrificing their active fire totem to so so was a lot to ask. The genius of Fire Nova, the new ability, is of course that it works with any fire totem you have. You're a restoration shaman with a Frost Resist totem down up close to the melee on Sapphiron? Well, our first question could be "Why are you still running Sapphiron?" but we'll assume it's a weekly raid thing. Anyway, even that Frost Resistance totem can now provide some damage! I'm not saying waste your mana on DPS if it's a tight thing, mind you, I'm just saying that if you found yourself healing a fight you way overgeared you can pop a couple of FN's in there to liven things up. Yeah, okay, this happened to me. It was boring! Where Fire Nova has really shined for me, though, is running a modified Enhancement set-up. Now, granted, some of the DPS I'm seeing from this has also come from getting a few upgrades to my gear set, but in tight AoE situations I'm seeing Fire Nova as a solid 2nd on the DPS chart, just behind melee attacks.
Breakfast Topic: The all-DPS Group
Oh, you know what I mean. There's five folks in your Dungeon Finder random group. One is signed up as a tank, one is signed up as a healer. Only, the 'tank' is in full DPS plate with nary a shield nor a ghoul in sight (nope, that there's a ret pally/arms warrior, sure enough) or the 'healer' is in full PvP gear and has Flametongue on his healing weapon. You all stand around, waiting for someone to equip gear that would allow them to tank the instance (preferably the tank) but he seems as content to wait it out as everyone else. Often in these situations I'm unfortunate enough to have decided to DPS on a character that can tank, but luckily (or unluckily as the case may be) yesterday I was on my shaman and so could simply sit back and wait. It was mentioned to the 'tank' that, as the person who had signed up to tank the instance it might behoove him (or possibly her, hard to tell who's behind the keyboard) to slap on a shield and some tanking gear, but only the grim silence of the truly disinterested was our reply. Was he even at the keys? Hard to say. The wait extended to the point where we could safely kick him, and kick him we did. but that's ten minutes or so of my life I'll never get back. (And no, my shaman couldn't tank HHoR, I didn't even try).
Recent in-game fixes
Two minor in-game fixes that were applied last night to the game. These fixes should be active once the servers come back up later this morning/afternoon. They're modifying the Professor Putricide encounter just a tad, and should make a couple annoyances with the fight go away. The fixes as enumerated by Bornakk are: Professor Putricide's Tear Gas will no longer remove player auras. The Growing Ooze Puddles in the Professor Putricide encounter will no longer continue to grow while players are stunned. That's all, and if there's any more in-game fixes we'll be sure to let you know.
Prot Warrior nerf details
Protection spec warriors, did you enjoy being able to charge out of roots and snares to get back to the boss fast? Well, thanks to PvP, you won't be able to do that anymore. What else won't you be able to do? Well, if you've been stacking block value in PvE content, first off, I kind of don't get you. Seriously, except for very specific gimmicky fights, why would you stack block value? (I said value, not rating, and I also said gimmicky fights so don't bring up Heroic Anub) But if you have been... perhaps you have a block value set for totally destroying adds or something... then get ready for a Shield Slam nerf. They're 'testing that one internally' which, if you remember how horrible the Rage Normalization changes went in early BC, always works. Honestly, neither of these are huge gamebreakers. I liked that Warbringer cleared roots and snares for me when I was tanking, and I barely even noticed it in PvP: it was like a free self-cast Hand of Freedom. As for nerfing Shield Slam, well, like I said I don't stack block value so a lower block value cap on the ability wouldn't really affect me. Irritate me? Yes, it will do that. But it isn't a game breaker either. Of course, since as the commenters mentioned yesterday prot PvP warriors don't stack shield block value at all (I know you guys don't read my posts, Blizzard, but if for some reason someone is, look at all that ArP. Look at all that lack of block value. It is ArP that drives the prot PvP damage machine. ArP, not block value. Just thought I'd mention that) then I fail to see any point to the change either. So there we have it: Warbringer gets changed and Shield Slam might get changed which is like taking a club away from a guy who is shooting people.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: I deserved that
Every week, Matthew Rossi writes The Care and Feeding of Warriors. Every week, he claws at his feeble brain to come up with a header paragraph, which really is kind of unfair. Warriors shouldn't have to think. Do you have any idea how many blows to the head we take? So yeah, turns out I should probably have shut up and not told you guys that prot was actually good at PvP. Sorry about that. I'm not going to actually freak out until I see how they plan to balance prot so we're not good at PvP anymore, since I barely even PvP and am far more concerned with prot as a PvE spec, that is to say, tanking with it. If they make a bunch of changes and my threat stays the same and my survivability stays the same and I'm not seeing any major hits to my tanking, then whatever, I'm sure there will be enraged prot warriors still but I won't be one. If, however, I see a 2k threat loss and I'm dying like a chicken trying to tank a bloody heroic, then yeah, I'm gonna be upset. I'll probably skip 'fevered pet' and move straight into 'enraged mouth breathing' territory. I can think of all sorts of ways to tweak prot in PvP that wouldn't have much of an effect in PvE, and I know the folks at Blizzard are better at class design than I am, so waiting and seeing is the order of the day. That being said I do find it irritating when we get told over and over again that we're fine until suddenly we're not. Just saying, some consistency would be nice.
Breakfast Topic: Effective Communication
One of the good things about running more PuG's than ever before is that it's forced me to learn how to communicate what I intend on a pull to a group of people I don't really know. This, in turn, has made me better at communicating with my guildies and friends when we raid, in part because now I'm finally thinking about how to express what I intend to do in a more organized way. One example is the pulls directly after Krick and Ick in Pit of Saron: even in raiding gear, these pulls can be fairly difficult if steps aren't taken to ensure that the caster mobs are controlled properly from the start and the diseases aren't allowed to run rampant. The Flamebearers in particular with their Tactical Blink and Hellfire abilities can wreak havoc. It's not that these pulls are super difficult, especially not if you make use of abilities like Hex or Polymorph (on the Deathbringers), Shackle, Repentance and so on to ensure that a couple of the mobs are taken out of the equation for a few seconds. I've had these pulls go extremely poorly in groups that were extremely chatty, mind, if what they're chatting about isn't really exchanging any meaningful information. In our new age of grouping with complete strangers, do you find yourself just hoping your group knows what it is doing? Do you take a leadership role, or have one foisted upon you, and if so how do you go about making sure everyone knows what they should?
Patch 3.3: Updated Icecrown Citadel raid information
The Icecrown Citadel raid overview here on WoW.com has been updated with even more information on the bosses contained in the Plagueworks, which has opened this week. You'll find summaries on the new bosses along with links to other resources like loot, videos and detailed strategy for Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide. If you're just setting foot in the instance now, don't worry as there are resources for the first bosses in the Lower Spire. Enjoy and good luck! Read the Raid & Boss Information Guide Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
In-game changes for January 5th, 2010
There is a new round of in-game fixes that have just been released. Chief among these is a nerf to Lady Deathwhisper in Icecrown Citadel and the ghost waves in normal and heroic Halls of Reflection. Lady Deathwhisper is having her 25-man normal version changed (not the 10-man) to decrease her mana pool and to decrease the health on all the adds. This means that the shield will go down much faster for guilds currently struggling with that aspect of the encounter. Additionally, tanks get a bit of a buff here in that the Adherents will wait a little bit longer before casting, which means there will be more wiggle room in picking them up. We have a feeling the necessity of these changes will be hotly debated. The ghost waves in Halls of Reflection have also been changed to allow for easier combinations of mobs (no more two mages in one group). The AoE the mage does will also do less damage and be more interruptable, which should make for an easier time staying grouped up. The complete list of fixes after the break.
In Game fixes for January 4th, 2010
Bornakk recently posted a nice short but sweet list of fixes for the new year. There's a couple gear fixes and one little dungeon tweak that should make a lot of frustrated dungeon finder runners happy: The mail Bloodsunder Bracers have had their appropriate socket bonus added. The proc on Zod's Repeating Longbow should no longer reset auto shots. The gear requirement for heroic Halls of Reflection has been increased. Like I said, short but sweet. Of course, we do have an extended downtime coming up tonight, and there's a few of us here at the WoW.com secret headquarters who are thinking (and it's just a gut feeling, mind you) that we'll see a few more patched in bug fixes in the morning. Regardless of what comes though, we will, of course, have all the news right here.
You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry
When writing this Breakfast Topic I noticed in the comments a certain disconnect between how I approach running heroics and how other people seem to. So I thought I'd try and encapsulate the differences and try and help explain why sometimes tanks seem a little touchy or off in runs. It's not just the blows to the head, guys.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Warriors in Icecrown Citadel, part II
The Care and Feeding of Warriors this week goes back to Icecrown Citadel to discuss the last two currently accessible encounters, the Gunship Battle and Deathbringer. Matt Rossi kind of wishes the Deathbringer fight was just against a great big talking axe. We don't have enough boss fights with inanimate objects. Okay, so you've done the first two bosses in the place. Now what? Well, now you launch yourself via poorly designed goblin explosives between flying boats and you fight the son of possibly the greatest living warrior on the face of Azeroth. And then if you're Alliance you turn the whole thing over to a gnome with a frying pan and go raid Trial of the Grand Crusader for another week, I guess. Horde are presumably too clever to trust the opening of Icecrown to breakfast technology. Or too hungry. At any rate you're stuck with the same content as the rest of us. So let's get on with it, shall we?
Reminder: Second wing of Icecrown Citadel opens soon
After four weeks of repeatedly storming the citadel, the next wing in Icecrown Citadel should be opening soon. Specifically, the Plagueworks should be available on January 5th. At least, that's what Muradin here said. The screenshot above shows that there are still 28 days remaining even though it was taken this week. I'm not sure if there is a glitch in the Matrix or what. In theory though, we should be breaking through the gates with next week's raid reset. More bosses available, means extra loot and more Emblems of Frost to pick up. The bosses Festergut (My impressions) Rotface Professor Putricide Some loot Black Bruise (Festergut) Trauma (Rotface) Tiny Abomination in a Jar (Professor Putricide) I'm getting impatient. I want to kill Arthas already. Don't you? But we'll just have to wait. This will help satisfy our raiding cravings a while longer. Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Halls of Reflection exploit trivializes Lich King encounter
Today a guildy induced me to run Heroic Halls of Reflection on my tanking warrior. Sighing, I slapped on my heroic set and we went into the instance (actually, we ran all three ICC heroics) and when we finally got to the Lich King, said guildmate said "Okay, we'll do the ledge strat." I had no idea what the ledge strat entailed, and told him so. He said "go stand over there" and so, bewildered, I did as he asked. What followed completely trivialized the event. So much so that I'm torn: on the one hand, I hate HoR in no small part due to the difficulty of picking up multiple abominations and tanking them while also trying to get aggro on the spell casting Risen Witch Doctors. The 'ledge' strategy is very simple: let Arthas walk past you and lumber his slow way up the tunnel after Jaina or Sylvanas like he always does. Meanwhile, the hordes of undead he spawns? They come running back to you, even if you're still at the door to the ledge. Since you could never stop the Lich King from getting to Jaina anyway, you don't lose anything for staying behind him, except that you no longer have to adjust in the event that the Lich King is getting closer to you with his aura of hurty.
The Wrath you never saw
As we're heading towards the final confrontation with the Lich King and the end of this chapter of the World of Warcraft saga, we end up reminded of how much of Wrath of the Lich King was designed and never used, or used sparingly, or even resurrected later, fittingly enough. But not only do we have loads of models that either weren't used at all or were used later in places completely unrelated to where they were supposed to drop, we have entire zones that either didn't happen at all, or did but which don't seem to go anywhere.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Warrior of 2009
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is WoW.com's column about aromatic essential oils for use in baths and to spruce up the house. Unfortunately I don't know anything about those so I'm going to have to talk about playing a warrior in World of Warcraft instead. My hands are tied, I'm afraid. Wow, that was a year, huh? From the dizzying highs of fury spec in Naxxramas to the somewhat less dizzying highs of Ulduar, arms' constant evolution and protection spec's astonishing makeover as the expansion launched, 2009 was a year that saw warriors sway from top DPS and solid tanks as if in some kind of gale force wind. Armor Penetration went from a stat we'd take if we had to and is now one of our top DPS stats, Block got a makeover that led to changes in how abilities like Shield Block and Shield Slam calculate, and in general we saw the effects of stat inflation on gear really have an effect on us and how we stack up to other classes as tanks and DPS. If you were a tanking warrior in Naxx on January 1st. 2009, for example, you may have had upwards of 35k health. (To be honest, it's hard for me to remember, it may have gotten up to 38k if you stacked stamina.) Now, a geared TotGC tank walking into ICC can pretty easily hit 54 to 55k health fully raid buffed. And it's only going up from here. Icecrown Citadel promises much improved itemization as well as crazy old school procs that should have warriors, be they DPS or tanks, salivating. Warriors have definitely had their ups and downs this year, but I think we can say we're ending the year on a fairly high note. Fury DPS has managed to get back to a competitive place with the new weapons, arms still lags behind but has solid PvP and PvE uses, and protection is quite possibly the single strongest tanking class by virtue of sheer flexibility: other tanks may have more health, more armor, or more AoE threat, but protection's suite of abilities includes standouts like Shockwave, Vigilance, Spell Reflection and Warbringer, making it possibly #2 in every single tanking category when no class can claim to be #1 in them all. Let's look at some changes and how they shook out for warriors.
Totem Talk: The Shaman of 2009
2009 has been a year of almost continuous changes for shamans. It seems that not a patch has gone by without some changes to the class, some major, some not so severe. The class has seen mysterious DPS shortfalls, a minor controversy about health in PvP that then carried over into PvE content with the high levels of AoE damage in Ulduar with patch 3.1. Flametongue Weapon saw changes to prevent enhancement shamans from using caster weapons. Resto got a fairly substantial review and some significant tweaks. Elemental also saw some talents redesigned. While all of this was going on, shamans also saw some controversy about itemization, gear scaling and having to share caster mail between two specs that value different stats, as well as the constant battle with holy paladins to keep their grubby, grasping mitts off of our mail. Yeah, we know you don't want that MP5 plate, but since you're the only ones who can possibly get anything out of it, go away and leave our precious alone. (Cue the pages of discussion on why it's perfectly acceptable for holy paladins to take caster mail and explanations in detail of why I'm an inhuman monster who drowns fish. Yes, fish, That's how evil I am.) Now that we've got the pleasantries out of the way (remind me to tell you the story of the year my mom beat Santa Claus up in front of the extended family) we move on to shamans in 2009.
Use brute force, Luke
Usually, I am the 'perfectionist tank' in a run. I want things to go perfectly: I want to never lose aggro, I want the DPS to all attack the proper target, I want the healer to, well, okay, I mostly just want the healer to heal us, I'm not looking for anything fancy there. As long as a healer seems to be casting healing spells I'm willing to cut her or him a lot of slack, especially in dungeons like Halls of Reflection where people often die through not moving out of giant, inky pools of blackness on the floor that they stand in as if they were instead duck ponds full of adorable baby ducklings. There are no ducklings in the fetid wells of corruption, guys. Last night, however, I had a sort of small revelation. First and foremost, I was stressing myself way the heck out over a pick up group with four folks I was likely never to see again. Secondly, the faster you go in a PuG, the less likely perfection is to be attainable, and if four people want speed and one guy wants flawless, you'll get very fast flaws. So that meant I've come up with an entirely new tanking philosophy for the new five mans, and an entirely new way to gear for them. I'd talk about both.
The Sacred and the Corrupt, Light's Vengeance
Be warned: This post, as well as the video above, includes minor spoilers for Patch 3.3's Shadowmourne quest chain. If you don't want to be spoiled, do not read/watch. We've featured a video showing off this stretch of the Shadowmourne questline before, the bit where you retrieve Light's Vengeance, but I would hardly call The Sacred and the Corrupt old news. It's still a quest just about every class that can wield two-handed is thinking about. Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to witness this amazingly epic quest themselves. Because of that, I set out to try and get a better recording of the quest for everyone. There were some successes, like actually being able to record the sounds and voice acting. There were also some failures, like my inability to do the quest completely without my UI. Here's a tip: When you turn off most of your addons to improve the quality of your recording, don't forget that some of those addons controlled your stun/interrupt keybinds. You usually need those. I'm sorry, Clique. I didn't mean it. Come back to me, please? It's not perfect, but hopefully it will give you all a better look at what goes on here. Enjoy! Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
