Stealth Starfall nerf eh?

At some point I posted some numbers for Starfall since there hadn't been a PTR build in some time and druids were chomping at the bit to figure out just how much damage it was going to do. The numbers we went with for 3.3.3 were slightly lower than that if I recall correctly, but we haven't made any changes to Starfall since the patch went live. The live Starfall numbers are still much higher than they were in 3.3.

We generally don't try to execute actual "stealth nerfs." The community will nearly always figure it out anyway so we don't gain much by trying to hide anything. Sometimes "stealth nerfs" are just things we didn't manage to document, but many times they are misunderstandings.

(I'm talking about live anyway. On betas and PTRs numbers are going to change quite a bit -- that's the whole idea.)

Q u o t e:
Pretty much. Remember logging on that wonderful Tuesday and all of a sudden Exorcism couldn't be used on players anymore? That was a good stealth nerf.

I guess you are using "stealth nerf" as synonymous with "nerf." My general impression of the use of the term "stealth nerf" is that the developers decide to sneakily change a spell or an ability in a way players won't immediately recognize and have to explore and math out. For example, if we thought Exorcism did too much damage, we might lower its coefficient. Players might notice, but it would take a lot of testing before anyone was convinced. Someone mentioned the Windfury ICD above, which is a good example of what I would call a stealth nerf. It was hard to notice. Making a change so that a spell doesn't work on players doesn't really sound like "stealth" because it's going to be noticed immediately.

There is little point in us making actual "stealth nerfs" with the intent to deceive, because players are going to figure it out anyway. (The WF one wasn't made recently.) What you seem to be calling "stealth nerfs" are hotfixes or mini patch changes that came without a GC or other blue post. But there are many of these made regularly, probably far more than you realize. Many of them will never affect your character, but some will. Some are made late at night when good developers are asleep or at blues bars.

We haven't yet come up with a great way to communicate changes that come in between patches. For patches we have the patch notes. Sometimes I'll make a blue post and we've tried to get better about documenting hotfixes. We've considered trying to use the launcher or login screen for breaking news or maybe even have a place in game where you can check out recent patch notes. Again, we make a lot of these, and some of them are too trivial for most players to care, and we wouldn't want the list to be so long that players just skip through it.

If you're defining "stealth nerf" as any change that comes in between patches or any nerf in general, well then you're just using your own private use of the term, which is a big problem with game jargon (see examples just as "cleave," "WG," "dead zone" etc.)

Q u o t e:
It's "champing at the bit". The verb is intransitive

Technically you are correct, but the other version is in such widespread use now that it's pretty acceptable... like using the word "data" when you aren't referring to a plural.

Incoming "could care less" vs "couldn't care less" Internet flame war. :)