PVP and You. Mistakes Revisited?

When we designed the DK class, we wanted to give them some PvP utility that felt different. Specifically, we didn't want to give them Mortal Strike, and we didn't want to give them lots of stuns, because both of those have been done to death.

Removing hots we thought was an interesting mechanic. It is more situational than MS (since it affects different healers differently), and with Mind Freeze and Strangulate, we had given DKs a chance to cancel non-instant heals already. And yes, at the time, Resto druids were very dominant as PvP healers, so we didn't feel too bad about offering another way to counter them.

During the beta, many of the participants were worried that DKs weren't going to be functional in PvP. Even with Death Grip there were many dire predictions of kitability, which is partially why DKs ended up with so many diverse snare mechanics (though they have fewer now than they did in beta).

In the actual season though, it turned out the tanking-oriented survivability cooldowns ended up to be far more useful in PvP: Icebound Fortitude, Anti-Magic Shell, Bone Shield, etc. Of course Death Grip is still quite potent, and there are snares, interrupts, and even reasonable self-healing available. Simultaneously, many of the changes to both the Resto and Feral tree (Feral Charge for instance) as well as healing changes themselves made Resto duids less dominant than in previous seasons.

As a reult, we're just not sure DKs need hot removal, and consequently, that would allow us to justify bringing up the damage of Plague Strike to where players weren't so loathe to hit the button, which might also make "diseaseless rotations" less attractive.

That is the history of the feature, since you asked.

Q u o t e:
I just really wish you weren't so slow to fix things. You have your numbers now, and time has passed. Yet we now have to sit and wait until you release 3.1 (which is weeks if not months away) to have any hope of competing against this completely broken mechanic.

That is probably the major reason why people get so upset and lash out at you guys on the forums so much. Mistakes are common and understandable, but the glacial pace at which you change things makes it very difficult for us to enjoy certain aspects of the game.

I think that is totally fair. If we could get changes turned around faster, we would. We have been hotfixing more often, though we can't change everything via server patches like that. Patch 3.09 was an attempt to do a quick client patch with few changes that would require less QA testing. We hope to do more of them, perhaps even getting to very frequent and regular updates. However, WoW is a really large piece of software and any change affects a lot of people, both here working and customers. Balance problems may seem bad, but crashing servers or knocking people offline are far worse. As I have said, WoW is a supertanker, and those things don't turn on a dime.

Q u o t e:
While there were some smart, experienced PvPers providing feedback on the Death Knight class, feedback on PvP issues was less than PvE issues, and I don't think there was really the volume of PvP taking place full stop to iron out all the bugs.

Testing PvP during beta is challenging. Unless you have the best players involved and they can essentially play through the season before the season actually begins, it is hard to get the coverage necessary. Betas are always going to be buggier than shipped products, and everyone realizes that PvP can be more sensitive to bugs than PvE. Again, it is a process we want to improve in the future.