Posts with tag patch-5.4

Yes, patch 5.3 isn't even out yet, and we're already looking towards patch 5.4. Thanks to Ghostcrawler, we have this to think about for the future, namely that Vengeance is getting capped at a significantly lower threshold in raids in the future. If you remember back at August of last year, Vengeance saw some significant changes that increased how fast it could ramp up in raids and also gave it a far larger maximum potential. It's been adjusted over time, but in general what GC said back last August has held true -- tank DPS in raiding really did go up. To the point where on some pulls it's not unusual to see tanks leading the DPS, sometimes by extremely large numbers.

Since this is a big change that will drastically lower tank damage output (25-man tanks with their 600,000 or more health buffed will lose roughly 300,000 AP on fights where Vengeance was capping at 100% of their health) I'm not surprise it won't be coming in 5.3 -- I am a little surprised it's happening at all, because we all knew Vengeance and tank damage would do exactly what it has done when it was changed. Still, I wait to observe if it has much practical difference since aside from AoE tanking where a multitude of hits can roll in a short window of time (that 20 second ramp up period) and the tanks can make effective use of all that AP I'm not sure it will matter. 5-mans and scenarios were not mentioned, so for now I'm assuming this is only for the raids mentioned.

Convert to Raid, the podcast for raiders in the World of Warcraft, recently interviewed Blizzard's Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas. You can listen to the full interview over on their site, and in the video above, but we've plucked some of the best bits out for your convenience.

Pat started off by asking Ion how he felt the raid tier, Throne of Thunder, had worked out, what he was happy with, what could possibly be improved for future tiers and so on. Ion responded that they were very happy with the tier, the structure and feel of the dungeon, and particularly the progression of the World First race. He spoke about the Lei Shen encounter really delivering on what a heroic end-boss should be, in terms of difficulty and fight construction. However, when Pat asked about learning points, Ion had plenty to say.

Not too long ago it was announced that there would be an Ask the Devs dedicated to the patch 5.3 PTR changes. Now, it's here. If you're dying to know exactly how all these changes are going to play out, this is the Q&A for you. Some highlights: