Posts with tag nethaera

You are mistaking the developers looking at the game with a critical eye with the claim that it was a "failure". We've seen a wide spectrum of opinions over Cataclysm and we're not afraid to look at what worked and didn't work (as we do with each expansion and game as a whole) and try to find better ways of doing things. I heard differing opinions overall during BlizzCon, but not once did I get the impression that any of those opinions boiled down to "Cataclysm sucks" as a whole. They had key elements that they disliked or thought could be improved on, but throwing the whole thing out the window as a "failure" is and should be considered a bit extreme don't you think?

As always, we want to keep learning and growing from each iteration of the game and that means that we're going to do that by continuing to look for your constructive feedback as well.

Since the release of patch 4.0.6, we've been keeping an eye on healers and how they are performing and are currently in the process of making some additional adjustments.

Priests

The cost of Power Word: Shield is being increased by 33%. While we wanted Discipline priests to be able to utilize this spell more often and with better results, we also did not want it to be the main spell (and often the only spell) used while in groups. We don't find this to be a particularly compelling playstyle and have found that it encourages players to avoid using other spells such as Penance. We believe that using a shield in a tight moment is totally appropriate, but we don't want it to be incredibly efficient to do so with more frequency than that.

We realize that by making Power Word: Shield slightly more expensive for Discipline priests to cast that it might cause Holy priests to avoid using it. To that end, we are adding mana savings into the Body and Soul talent. The tooltip will not reflect this change until a future patch, however. Ideally, Holy priests should not notice much of a change to the Power Word: Shield costs.

Shaman

We are also applying a hotfix for Purification for the Restoration shaman passive from 10% to 25%. We think that shaman healing per second is not as competitive with other healers and while we hoped to bring down Holy priest and Holy paladins (in particular) in 4.0.6, which we did, shaman still appear to be behind. In this case, it is simply easier to buff Restoration shaman rather than nerf everyone else or rebalance the encounters.

In Addition - Restoration Druids and Restoration Shaman

We agree with the sentiment among some players that Restoration druids and Restoration shaman are lacking in the healing cooldown department. The shaman buff and Power Word: Shield adjustment above should bring all healers reasonably close in terms of throughput. The decision on who to bring then might end up being dictated by the strong cooldowns offered by paladins or priests. This isn't the kind of thing we can address via a hotix, but it is something we are looking at for the next major content patch.

As always, we appreciate your continued constructive feedback and will do our best to keep you informed of ongoing developments.

We anticipate having these in relatively soon (possibly as soon as sometime today). We'll do our best to let you know once they're in and we'll be updating the notes on the Hotfix thread as well.

What examples are best to use to give GC and the Devs an accurate depiction of what has/has been happening?

Information about your class, your playstyle, the types of issues you're running into such as whether you're using a certain spec or certain spells and abilities when you're running into issues. The more specific you can be, the better really. Numbers are good on one level, but sometimes the numbers don't say whether you're having "fun" or not.

We've gone through a lot of changes in the last year together. Between a brand new community site and a brand new expansion, there's been a lot to adjust to. We want to make sure that the experience everyone has on the forums is the best it can be and wanted to take some time to remind everyone of the things that haven't changed and the conduct that is expected while in them.

We have decided to remove the added bonus of gaining Guild Experience from Guild Achievements earned. This change will realign Guild Achievements with our philosophy held for normal Achievements, which are intended to be predominantly their own reward (barring the rare exception of special achievements that grant an additional reward.) Previously, the experience reward had been seen as an additional side bonus and not something that should have been significantly skewing the advancement of guilds. During the beta, we greatly increased leveling speed across the board and since most characters were copied from templates, guild experience from Achievements didn't seem imbalanced. It has become clear that an imbalance does exist and should be addressed to ensure that guilds progress at the rates expected within the daily Guild Experience limits.

For guilds that are currently above the normally possible experience limit, we will be readjusting it back to the expected limit once more. This will not affect Guild Reputation gains at this point in time.

For the past few years, you may have noticed Community Team members moderating the various BlizzCon panels. This year, things are a little bit different. Instead of moderating panels, we'll be providing BlizzCon updates on the forums, Facebook, and Twitter as well as mingling with attendees around the convention center. That's right, this year we will be among you and look forward to getting meet and talk with you during the convention. If you see one of us, feel free to stop us and say, "Hi".

In the next beta build the minimum level for entering and questing in Mount Hyjal and Vashj'ir will change from level 78 to level 80. All associated creature will have their levels increased to match the new flow.

Additionally, after careful review and consideration we've decided to increase the hit point values of level 80+ Cataclysm creatures. The new hit point values are roughly double their previous values.

Level 80 (OLD)
16400

Level 80 (NEW)
31000

Players will also now need to be level 80 in order to use the Dungeon Finder System for Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns.

It's important to understand that the throttling that is being done isn't intended to break any functionality of add-ons, but merely to control the amount of queries that are being sent to the server at any given time. (Thus throttling the queries.) The queries will still occur, it just won't happen as quickly as they currently seem to. You can read the statements that WoW Ace and WoW Interface have up for a bit more information on these changes. We wanted to give mod authors a heads-up prior to making the change so that they could make any adjustments they needed to on their mods.

http://wowinterface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33432
http://www.wowace.com/announcements/blizzard-to-start-throttling-inspect-requests/

While we had originally announced the new Recruit-A-Friend X-53 Touring Rocket reward would be coming in just a few short days, it turns out there are still a few bolts to tighten, some loose wires to tuck inconspicuously under the upholstery, and a handful of parts leftover that we're going to ponder and then assume we can safely throw away. As a result, we'll be releasing this beauty a bit later than we'd first anticipated. This will also give anyone interested in the current Zhevra mount reward some extra time to claim one. While we don't have an exact release date nailed down yet, we'll make an announcement once the new mount becomes available.