PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues, Part III

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#1 - Feb. 19, 2013, 11:51 p.m.
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Round Three. Fight!

- This thread is primarily aimed at theorycrafting, especially DPS tuning.
- This is not a good thread for brainstorming, pitching talent ideas, or general gameplay feedback. You are welcome to make these in other threads, but be aware we're pretty close to shipping patch 5.2.
- This is not a good thread for whining. Whining posts will be deleted and developers will be grumpier for your having wasted their time.
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#20 - Feb. 20, 2013, 12:34 a.m.
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Paladin
- We like our recent change to a lower cooldown on Avenging Wrath for Retribution in PvP. We like it so much that we want to make it a baseline change for Retribution and not a set bonus, since many PvE paladins are benefiting from shorter wings today, and our recent DPS testing suggests that Ret needs a DPS buff. However, this does mean changing the existing T14 4pc PvE bonus.

So the list of changes reads like this:
- Retribution has a two minute cooldown on Avenging Wrath baseline.
- We are reverting the PvP set bonus change. The Retribution set bonuses remain as they are on live. This line will no longer appear in patch notes.
- We are changing the T14 4pc PvE bonus to +10% damage on Seals and Judgment. We want you to graduate to the T15 set bonus fairly quickly and you won't be losing the shorter Avenging Wrath cooldown.

Tuning Adjustments
- These are in addition to any previous changes, unless specifically noted.
- You can't just apply these to 5.1 numbers. You need to keep the entire suite of changes in mind. I say this because we always get a few players who only see -20% on some ability and get all "Don't nerf me, bro."
- That said, feedback on these changes is always welcome. Numbers are more persuasive than feelings. PTR logs are better than simulations, since the latter are very dependent on the talent and time of the person doing the simming.

Death Knight
- Might of the Frozen Wastes to 20% melee damage, up from 10%.
- Icy Talons increases attack speed by 30%, up from 20%.
- Blood Plague and Frost Fever damage +30%.
- Howling Blast damage to primary target +23%. Damage to secondary targets remains unchanged. Note: the tooltip for secondary damage says 0.5 but it has been 0.8 for some time.
- Scourge Strike damage +7.7%.

Paladin
- Retribution damage was too low, but as I mentioned above, we buffed it through more frequent use of Avenging Wrath.

Rogue
- Envenom damage +20%.
- Dispatch damage +15%.

Priest
- Shadowform increases damage by 25%, up from 20%.
- We have heard some concerns that Atonement damage is higher than intended, so we are checking that out, but no changes to announce yet.

Shaman
- Shamanism increases Lightning Bolt damage by 70%, up from 50%.
- Elemental Focus now increases spell damage by 15%, up from 10%.

Hunter
- Aimed Shot damage +10%.
- Chimera Shot damage +50%.
- Steady Shot damage +20%.
- Black Arrow and Explosive Shot damage +15%.
- Hearing lots of concerns about Power Shot in PvP, so we may need a PvP-specific tweak there.

Druid
- Rip damage +15%.

Warrior
- Reduced damage of Bloodthirst, Colossus Smash and Raging Blow by 10%.
- Yes this is a nerf in a sea of buffs, but the Bloodsurge and Arms Deep Wounds changes ended up being too much of a buff.

Warlock
- Hand of Gul'dan, Shadowflame, Shadow Bolt, Touch of Chaos and Wild Imp Firebolt +15%.
- Soul Fire damage +22%.
- Conflagrate and Immolate damage +20%.
- Incinerate damage +10%.
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#45 - Feb. 20, 2013, 12:59 a.m.
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And now, they only post changes for DPS's... =/ A sad day for healers... time to start rerolling i think.


Whining. :(

These PvE changes are going to do too much harm to PvP.


Vague. :(
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#52 - Feb. 20, 2013, 1:01 a.m.
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For clarification, is the AoE aspect of Howling Blast going to be increased by this 23% single target buff, or will the AoE coefficient be lowered to compensate?


Single-target buff. That's what I meant by damage to secondary targets remains the same.

However, in case it wasn't obvious, these were all single-target changes. We haven't completed AE, healing or tanking changes. Healing or tanking numbers look pretty solid overall though, so don't expect much change there. (And feel free to disagree, but please provide some kind of evidence to back it up.)
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#56 - Feb. 20, 2013, 1:03 a.m.
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I want to play Unholy!


We buffed Unholy early on in the patch and I did mention disease and Scourge Strike buffs as well.
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#101 - Feb. 20, 2013, 1:29 a.m.
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You stated that shadow priest were overpowered in PVP and yet they received a 20% damage buff and now another 5% overall buff in shadowform how does that make any sense?


We're not convinced that Shadow's OPness in PvP came from overall damage. We think it is probably a combination of many things, and those we hit the hardest were healing and Phantasm. We did nerf the Mind Spike glyph, which will reduce burst.

(Gròmmash's answer above is good too.)

I'd imagine so since FnB is just a multiplier on the existing spells.


Correct.

Hand of Gul'dan, in metamorphasis form, is chaos wave. Does the 15% buff apply to the chaos wave too?


Yes.

Are there buffs designed to compensate for assassination getting less from the set bonuses?


Partially. This is a challenge for us, because we need to take the set bonuses into account, but everyone needs to function with the old set bonuses as well. We try to look at both situations.

Ret paladin damage will still be outclassed by other melee classes, causing us to be undervalued in the PvE scene, especially with the buffs to DK.


We're not seeing Ret DPS below where we want it on live, except on AE or cleave fights, which these changes aren't targeted to correct. Again, as I mentioned above, you can't just take 5.1 numbers, mentally add these percentages to them and predict 5.2 numbers. I wish it was that easy, but a whole lot of things change. For example, we missed the mark on the current DK set bonuses, and they have been nerfed in 5.2.
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#181 - Feb. 20, 2013, 3:13 a.m.
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There's no theorycraft until now, just people asking for buffs and giving ideas read thousands of times. Main post completely ignored.


Yeah, par for the course, though to be fair, the changes have only been posted for a few hours and not all the folks who benefit from the numbers feel the need to post their results here (nor should they).

But your post is a helpful reminder that these threads are intended for a specific purpose and not a general forum for any game feedback or an "Ask GC" thread.
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#187 - Feb. 20, 2013, 3:24 a.m.
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Yeah, I'm thoroughly confused to the Fury nerfs after the MINOR buff to WS, a move that is used AFTER everything else.


Sorry, I brought too much focus to that one issue. Fury's DPS was just too high in 5.2 before these changes. It is a little high in 5.1 as well.
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#379 - Feb. 20, 2013, 6:03 p.m.
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Legendary Meta-gems

In order to further discourage the use of these in PvP, the effects are dispellable. Not all of them are Spell Steal-able because frankly some of the effects are too complex to work correctly when stolen.

In order to provide feedback on potential changes to rotational priority or damage modeling, please confirm these estimated new values, or provide the accurate value in their place:


Sure. Here are the correct values. Flat amounts are the values at level 90, as you’d expect.

- Howling Blast: 575 + 85.1% of Attack Power
- Frost Strike (motfw): 126% Weapon Damage
- Obliterate (motfw): 386.4% weapon damage, +25% w/ two disease
- Scourge Strike: 633 + 140% Weapon Damage, 25% shadow damage per disease
- Diseases: 187(FF)/223(BP) + 17.9% AP
- Diseases (Unholy): 299.2(FF)/356.8(BP) + 28.64% AP
- Soul Reaper (motfw): 120% weapon damage

…based on modeling I've done (with assistance from Theck and Hamlet), [Gaze of the Twins is] actually a Guardian's best trinket for Rage Generation.

Gaze of the Twins will only proc for Str users.

Thoughts on an Unholy Death Knight using Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen and using Festering Strike to maintain these 100% crit chance diseases permanently?

Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen will only proc for Int users.

The first the comes to mind is on the mage class. In frost spec, taking the rune of power talent, I noticed that the frost pet's waterbolt apparently is double dipping from Rune of Power. The first effect (reasonably) comes from the mage at 15%. But, it has another multiplicative 15% on top of that.


We’re not seeing this. Are you perhaps seeing the result of the Frostbolt debuff?
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#431 - Feb. 20, 2013, 10:56 p.m.
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Rune of Re-Origination

We're going to make some changes to this trinket based on testing and feedback. Our goal was to make it decent if you didn't game it at all but offer some opportunities for enhanced benefits if you did. We're going to try to meet that goal better with these changes:

- 10 sec duration (down from 20 sec) but with double the proc rate.
- Increase your highest secondary stat by 200% of the sum of your two lowest secondary stats. For example: you have 3500 mastery, 5000 crit, 7000 haste. Rune procs, and you get [-3500 mastery, -5000 crit, +17000 haste]. Same logic as before, just double the size of the buff to your highest stat.
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#442 - Feb. 20, 2013, 11:42 p.m.
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Forgive me for saying this....we are high right now? Locks/mages are topping meters and all I see is + + + + + + for them. If you go to raid-bots (shows what people are actually doing with the classes), click on any fight other than Galaron....look at who is on to....mages and locks (speaking 25 heroic).

We did not ask for a buff to haste.

I work for a software company, so I understand you have tools to see things that we don't. But don't friggin cop out and say things like "you are higher than you should be now"


Arcane and Affliction are high on many fights in 5.1, but they shouldn't be in 5.2. It's almost always the wrong argument to compare yourself to the highest DPS specs out there. "Middle of the pack" is actually where everyone is supposed to be.

Also, many warriors did ask for a buff to haste. Feel free to bring it up with them. :)

I try to always be careful to say "X is where or not where *we* want it." I say that because we pick the target DPS for everyone, not the community. We find that when we phrase it that way, players spend less time (though still a lot) campaigning for DPS buffs.

As someone who's main-specced Beast Mastery through most of his hunter career, these adjustments concern me about the implications for spec balance. Rough estimate, this seems like it's about a 5% adjustment upwards for Survival, and closer to 10% adjustment upwards for Marksman (maybe more if the rotation changes from 5.1 to favour Aimed Shot more).


This is why I added the caveat that you can't just take the 5.1 environment and mentally add buffs or nerfs. My advice here if you can't test it yourself on the PTR is to trust your theorycrafting community and see where they think everyone will end up in 5.2. (Zeherah made a post up above.)

I believe he's saying the damage buffs for pve will harm pvp, as a lot of ptr feedback was already very worried about very high burst and sustained damage ( people being gibbed in a few globals constantly) in pvp in full tyrannical gear with resil gems.


But that's a vague answer. That's not anything I can discuss with my design team. What would be more helpful are as many specifics as possible. What are you worried about from Shadow priests or Frost DKs? Mind Spike? Obliterate? Dots? We can go look at those specific cases where there are concerns. We don't think it's appropriate just to nerf everyone's PvP damage by 15% or something just in case.

GC we've still yet to get a clear cut answer on whether or not Lava Burst will scale (i know you hate that word, sorry) with crit rating (IE More crit chance = higher damage like Soul Fire/Chaos Bolt). Also, Bombay or Tanka Rey?


You used the word correctly, so no worries. What makes me reach for the Bombay are vague concerns about "scaling issues" masquerading DPS buff requests. (If you're worried about your DPS, just be up front and say you're worried about your DPS.)

We are unlikely to add extra crit damage to Lava Burst given the amount of time we have left for testing because we don't feel we can accurately predict what it would do to gear or rotational choices, and there is a PvP burst risk as well. We're not against the idea in theory and might try it at a future date once we have more information about what the 5.2 changes do to Elemental overall.

I also bet you did not test both Titan's Grip and SMF, since both do substantially different in Raids.

We treat SMF and TG (and also DW and 2H Frost) as separate specs for purposes of our testing. Nowhere do we see Execute anywhere close to the percentage of damage you're suggesting.

That said, several warriors have asked us to nerf Execute instead of the numbers we did hit. We might still do that, but Execute damage is a scary thing to mess with at this stage because it can cause relatively-hard-to-predict changes to priorities and damage between TG and SMF. We'll consider it though.

Yeah, that's whining, STOP MESSING UP OUR CLASS!!!


Our only recourse after we've asked you not to whine is to ban you. Sorry.

The fact that the reason behind the nerf was totally false.


You're conflating two issues. Stampede had a bug causing it to do too much damage, which we eventually found and fixed. At the same time, we also wanted to tone down all of the "because I'm immune to everything I'm going to come beat your face in" cooldowns. We deeply regret having so many "I'm immune to everything" mechanics. We don't think they are good for PvP overall, even though it can be fun to beat someone's face in while they have no recourse.

Anything uncounterable is probably something we are trying to phase out in PvP.

Blizzard seems to be unable to admit that having Sanctity of Battle as baseline for Paladins was a mistake.


Sorry, we just don't think it was a mistake. If you go back and look at a lot of the feedback about haste for paladins, many players like how haste feels. They like how well it ties into their active mitigation. We don't think there was any mistake here. We just have to make sure (long-term) that avoidance still has some role for tanks. We reduced the proc chance of Grand Crusader because we also allowed it to be caused from dodge and parry, which helps to make those stats somewhat more attractive.

There are numerous, serious issues with multiple different healer specs/classes. All of them are essentially being brushed under the rug so 5.2 can go live on schedule.


If we, the developers, though there were numerous, serious issues with multiple specs, we would delay the patch. We are fortunately in a position where we can do that and we do it all the time (heck, with almost every product we release). There are some players out there with concerns, and that is their prerogative, but it's also pretty par for the course for any of our major patches or expansions. We think things are pretty close.

with buffs to warriors/dks/rogues I only see the gap between us and other melee getting even larger.


We need evidence to evaluate claims like that. Unfortunately, as I've said, 5.1 evidence isn't super useful at this point.

If they make our cooldowns lower, damage without cooldowns becomes less of a concern


Yep. There is nothing inherently stronger about sustained damage than burst damage, provided the end result is the same (and often the opposite is true). There are encounter specifics that throw that out of kilter, such as the frequency of burst windows and the length of the fight, but in general we like those complexities because they help prevent every class from behaving exactly the same way. When CDs are too long, then the risk of things getting out of kilter are increased - consider the example of a 10 minute cooldown, that will rarely ever get used more than once per fight. We think a 2 min CD solves the problem sufficiently. Your DPS at any given second won't be the same as everyone else's -- this is a good thing -- but integrated over the course of a fight it will be close, again taking into consideration that we like variation among encounters.

Even including the 4-piece T15 bonus and boosted stats, I'm simming that 2/2 upgraded T14 gear is outperforming T15 gear of equivalent difficulty levels because of the reduced CD on an incredibly buffed Penance. This is an issue.


We have considered nerfing the priest T14 set bonus to 1 sec off of Penance (under the argument that Penance is more powerful now) and just reducing Penance by 1 sec baseline. That undoes a little bit of the first part of my argument, but Penance is a fun spell and a single-target one at that.

Tiriél is also correct that partially it's just a comparison between upgraded heroic 5.0 gear and normal 5.2 gear ilevels.

No. I can reproduce this consistently (100% of the time) on the live server. Steps to reproduce (at least on live, I will verify whether this still exists on PTR):


Okay, that sounds like it is just the tooltip and not the damage itself, but we'll still check it out. Tooltips can only be so accurate since so many things affect spell points these days.
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#602 - Feb. 21, 2013, 8:11 p.m.
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Shaman
- Spirit Walk – cooldown reduced from 2 min to 1 min.

Priest
- Penance – cooldown reduced from 10 sec to 9 sec.
Tier 14 4pc – cooldown on Penance reduced from by 3 sec instead of 4 sec. (In essence, this nerfs T14 and buffs Penance while keeping the same end result.)
- Power Infusion – we are lowering the +10% damage buff to +5%. Our goal here was noble to make Power Infusion more attractive to Shadow, but we’re worried about making the talent too powerful in PvP. Many PvP players had concerns about the buffed version of Power Infusion.

Warrior
- Recklessness – We are considering changing it to a 3 min cooldown with a +30% crit chance (down from 5 min, 50%). The glyph would need to change as well. We’re trying to move away from very long cooldowns, especially those without a lot of visual noise (e.g. a 1 min Army of the Dead would be pretty annoying to see, but Recklessness is pretty chill). It would let Recklessness line up better with Skull Banner (and maybe we would eventually just merge the two buttons), and have the added bonus of reducing warrior burst in PvP while still giving them more frequent use of the CD to avoid that all eggs in one basket feeling.

DPS Tuning
- Warrior – we reverted the nerfs to Bloodthirst, Colossus Smash and Raging Blow. We planned on taking the damage out of Execute instead, but before we do that, we’re concerned that the actual problem is the legendary meta-gem being too good for warriors, and we don’t think it’s fair to nerf all warriors because of an item that nobody will have for some time. We may nerf the metagem for warriors instead.
- Priest – we also reverted the 20% buff to Mind Blast. This buff had also become a big PvP damage burst concern. It has a pretty small effect on PvE damage overall, but we will buff something if needed. The buff to Shadowform remains.
- Monk – In efforts to further discourage Jab, Jab, Uplift, we increased the mana cost of Jab from 6% to 8%, increased the mana restore on Muscle Memory from 2% to 4%, and increased the mana cost of glyphed Uplift to 16% mana. So that monks feel like they can be less reliant on Jab, Jab, Uplift, we also changed Soothing Mist to generate chi more consistently (to avoid long stretches of bad luck) and increased its generation rate overall.
- Death Knight – We reduced the health of Bloodworms to 15% (from 18%) and reduced the health healed to 25% from 30%. Our earlier buffs were too generous (and they are still significantly buffed from 5.1).
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#604 - Feb. 21, 2013, 8:14 p.m.
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GC said it's a bug. I noticed that it also has not been fixed (um, GC, can you guys pls fix??).


We thought we did fix it. Any more information? It costs 1 ember, but if it kills the target or the target dies within 5 sec, it restores 1 ember, for a net costs of 0. If it ever restored 2 embers on a kill, that was a bug and probably got fixed.

Quick follow-up though: Is the ICD [on Rune of Re-Origination] still 22 seconds with the "new" version?


Yes. We considered lowering that to match, but held off on that for now.

It has been shown quite conclusively that a Monk using 2 one handers will out dps an equal skilled, equal geared 2h monk by about 2-3%.


It's much more helpful to show us that evidence (or link it) than to state that it exists, unless it's just up in the thread somewhere and we missed it. In any case, we're not seeing it at all. DW has an additional enchant and gem, but 2H has slightly more stats and more procs.

Capactive Meta-gem
Proc now uses ranged crit/hit chances for Hunters.
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#648 - Feb. 21, 2013, 9:24 p.m.
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But mages are allowed to 100 to 0 anyone in a deepfreeze every 30 seconds with instant casts, awesome


This is either vague and/or hyperbole and without more information I can't tell which.

I feel like fury could use some nerfs (especially SMF).


We're not seeing this in 5.2. Any more information?

Either way, the point remains that Supremacy is highly inferior in most situations. This is because your mastery (extremely powerful for affliction and destruction) does your pet no benefit. Additionally, your haste does not scale the fel energy gain of the minion. This leaves your pets scaling tied directly to critical strike and spell power, unless using a pet with melee attacks (which then gets marginal haste benefit).


We think this is a legitimate criticism. We think it's only a problem at very high gear levels, but once players see the highest DPS players choosing Sacrifice, it's going to be conventional wisdom that you just have to take that talent... which we really don't want. If anything, this talent should be rare. As I've said before, the common warlock should be one with a demon. Short of having Supremacy and Service somehow give Affliction and Destruction Demo's mastery or just nerfing Sacrifice to the point where it's really only for players who hate pet bars (even at a DPS loss), we don't have a great solution yet.

If this is even remotely true then blizzard has done a horrible job.

This is the first time I've read or heard the sentence "middle of the pack" regarding mages and warlocks.


I think you might be misinterpreting my comment. Perhaps it was vague. What I meant was that if you are a player wondering if your DPS is low, compare it to someone in the middle. Players almost always compare themselves to the guy at very top of the stack rank, but that dude is often overpowered and it's rarely our goal to buff everyone else up to that line. More than likely, he'll be getting a nerf.

Is removal of the T11 Protection tier gimmic going to be addressed before 5.2 hits so don't have to keep it for a 45 sec guardian prepull as retribution?


We addressed it in 5.2. When you remove the set bonuses, the buff is also cancelled.

Mage frostbolts are doing crazy damage on the PTR on full resilience targets. Something along the lines of 200k damage crits with CDs.


We did shift some damage to Frostbolt, but overall it's a good thing for the game for mages to hard cast. They have to stand still and you can cause a Frost lock.

[Asked by everyone] Are you done changing my class?


It is impossible for us to answer that.

This


I've never been in a forum where this is welcome. It's particularly unwelcome in threads this long that move this quickly. If you really agree with someone and can't add anything to the conversation, use the up vote.

Blizzard really does need to start listening to the higher rated players on the PTR testing this !


We actually do and not all conversations happen on the forums.
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#699 - Feb. 21, 2013, 10:31 p.m.
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Warrior
- We are going to lower Recklessness to 3 min cooldown, 30% crit. We will have to adjust the Glyph of Recklessness and T14 4pc (and probably other mechanics I forgot) to keep them at the same relative power.

Warlock
- We are going to go ahead and grandfather in the bug of Shadowburn granting 2 embers on a kill. It is technically a bug, which is why we fixed it, but it's been that way since MoP launched and we don't think it's causing huge balance problems, so in cases like this, we think the right thing to do is just make it official.

Mage
- While we like mages hard casting spells more often in PvP, we agree with the consensus that we overdid the buff to Frostbolt. We are going to revert one of the earlier changes and have it once again increase its damage by its own debuff. Base damage has been reduced to compensate, but should not change for the fully stacked case.

Old patch note: Frostbolt deals 52% more damage, but its debuff no longer increases subsequent Frostbolt damage.

New patch note: Frostbolt now deals 32% more damage.
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#788 - Feb. 22, 2013, 1:14 a.m.
Blizzard Post
I'm still confused. In 5.1 I never felt my DPS, or rather DK frost DPS in general was bad, or even close to bad. Where are all these buffs coming from, is there going to be some kind of counterweight in 5.2 yet to be announced?


It's a lot of things. Overall, we are balancing for 5.2. That's a different environment. Nearly everyone will quickly get better gear with more secondary stats. While everyone scales to some extent with those stats (and as much as I like to tweak the community about its seeming obsession with scaling) the fact still remains that those numbers do affect damage. Set bonuses will change. There are new trinkets and meta-gems. Not everyone will get all of those items, but we still have to take into consideration with our tuning that many will. We have to look at the new bosses. While we like there to be some variation from boss to boss depending on encounter mechanics, we also understand human nature well enough to expect that players will quickly start worrying only about their performance in the new raid and stop worrying about how well they did on the previous one. For DKs specifically, also recall that we also nerfed the current T14 2pc because it ended up so good that there was a risk DKs wouldn't feel like they could upgrade to the T15 gear.
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#808 - Feb. 22, 2013, 1:50 a.m.
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im not saying revert the dk buffs, they are fine...but by that same logic, where are the ret sustained buffs to keep us competitive? we are already pretty far behind frost as it is.


Unless you can demonstrate to us that Ret is behind Frost in 5.2, we can't do much with comments like this.

We think Ret and Frost are where they should be in 5.1 with the exception that Frost pulls ahead too much in certain cleave and AE situations.
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#953 - Feb. 22, 2013, 6:14 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Do the spirits from the DK 2-piece DPS set "snapshot" your stats like the Ghoul do upon summoning?

Neither the 2T15 Zandalari or your Ghoul “shapshot” stats (and hasn’t since 5.0).

GC, when dealing with the Rune [of Re-Origination] trinkets, will the only difference be between the three trinkets be the agility on the three or will there be a further adjustment of stat allocation.

The proc frequency changes based on the ilvl of the trinket:

541 ilevel = 112.88% proc multiplier
535 ilevel = 106.74% proc multiplier
528 ilevel = 100.00% proc multiplier
522 ilevel = 94.56% proc multiplier
502 ilevel = 78.49% proc multiplier
463 ilevel = 54.57% proc multiplier

This counts for both Unerring Vision and Rune of Re-Origination.

Are there any plans in 5.2 for changing or removing the ability to build up Tigereye Brew stacks before a pull and use them as a pre-pot? I grow tired of casting Spinning Fire Blossom.

Yes. The charges and buff are cleared upon beginning raid boss combat. Ultimately we'd like to remove the burden from players for any behavior like this, such as using Holy Shock to stack up 5 Holy Power prepull. We just have to be clever about it to distinguish between this annoying use and a legit use, such as pulling a boss quickly after trash, the way you might in Challenge Modes.

Druid
- The Symbiosis version of Dispersion is now 3 min.

Hunter
- Dismiss pet now has a 3 sec cast time (up from 2 sec). This is to discourage swapping pets in the middle of PvP to get a different form of CC.
- Powershot now cancels Camo when the cast begins rather than the shot landing. Powershot is much more effective in 5.2 since it is so reliable now.

Mage
- Incanter's Ward can now be dispelled. We agree with the concerns that the 30% damage buff is a significant contributor to mage PvP burst and often one not recognized by the recipient of said burst.

Monk
- Spear Hand Strike's silence has been reduced to 2 sec.

Meta-gems and Trinkets
- All of the PvE Legendary meta-gems, the Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen and Rune of Re-Origination now have a reduced chance to proc against players. We're not crazy about hidden penalties like this, but we don't want PvP players to feel obligated to pursue these raid items in order to stay competitive.

DPS Tuning
- We overshot the mark on DKs and hunters a little, and we think warriors need that Execute nerf after all. All of this may change tomorrow as we look at different situations, so don't overly freak out about anything.

Death Knight
- Might of the Frozen Wastes to 15% melee damage (down from 20%).
- Icy Talons increases attack speed by 25% (down from 30%).
- Blood Plague and Frost Fever damage +15% (down from +30%).
- Howling Blast damage to primary target +8% (down from +23%).
- Scourge Strike damage +3.8% (down from 7.7%).

Hunter
- Chimera Shot damage +25% (was +50%).
- Black Arrow and Explosive Shot damage +10% (was +15%).

Warrior
- Execute damage -25%.

EDIT: Added the actual chances above. As always, you don't need to understand ANY of that to benefit from the trinkets.
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#1591 - Feb. 26, 2013, 5:35 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Monk
- We'd rather you try out Soothing Mist in a combat situation rather than try to predict how it will feel, but the chi proc chance is 15% plus 15% for each tick that it doesn't proc. The chance to generate chi increases with each tick that doesn't proc and resets when it does.

Could we get some clarification on how the "time since last chance to proc" variable in the RPPM equation interacts with ICDs?

For RPPM procs with ICDs, none of the attacks during the ICD are considered chances to proc. So if I have a 22 sec ICD, the first attack after the ICD ends will have the full capped 10 sec ICD. In other words, option “A”, as you have it working already.

Jabx2 - BOK costs 6% more mana (100% increase), requiring BOK to be preceded by jab to proc muscle memory. The cleave change is a nice mechanic change and will make BOK circumstantially less unviable.

Against a single target, you should pretty much never be using 2 Jabs in a row (at least when efficiency is a concern). To Blackout Kick, you’ll use a Jab plus the chi from Renewing Mist. In a 3+ target situation, you’ll likely want to use Spinning Crane Kick instead of Jab, which is considerably more efficient, and does more damage.

Surging Mist now costs 8.8% of base mana, up from 8%.

It already did cost 8.8% mana by default. The glyphed version was mistakenly still at 8%.

Water Jet is back on the Frostbolt tooltip. As much as I would dearly like this to indicate a return for Water Jet in some form, am I right in assuming this is just a result of a rollback to the tooltip of the version that buffed Frostbolt's damage? (Or, of course, just a datamining error.)

Unfortunately, that is just a persistent tooltip bug. We still are interested in the concept, but are not introducing Water Jet for now.

I would really like to know why Monk healers were given a dps increase and healing decrease?

Assuming you’re talking about fistweaving, that’s always been the intention (and always been the case). Fistweaving is an alternative that provides less HPS in exchange for very significant DPS.

Think about it like this:

Holy priest / Mistweaving monk: 100% healing
Combat rogue / Windwalker monk: 100% DPS
Atonement priest / Fistweaving monk: 50% DPS AND 50% healing at the same time

DPS Tuning

- Standard, yes, this is a roller coaster. Our process is to try things out and iterate if we don't like them. If the churn offends you, just hang on for another week or two.
- Undid the buff to Vitality for Combat. It's back to 30% AP.
- Partially reverted the -25% nerf to Execute. It's now -15%. (As mentioned previously, we adjust the meta-gem.)
- Rising Sun Kick now increases your damage to the target by +10%, down from +15%.
- Sword of Light now increases damage by 15% up from 10%.
- Haunt now increases damage to the target by 30% up from 25%. This is partially in compensation because we also nerfed Sacrifice for Affliction because it was looking too mandatory.
- Partially reverted the buffs to Conflag and Immolate. They were +20%, and are now +15%.
- We are concerned that fully geared Subtlety, Enhancement and Windwalker DPS are still too high. None of these are particularly easy specs to play, so it might be okay that given that players won't realistically be able to hit their theoretical maxima. Just wanted to let you know they are on our radar.
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#1734 - Feb. 27, 2013, 12:43 a.m.
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What I'm wondering, is how long it'll take you to notice/nerf/fix fistweaver monks using agility 2h weapons while fistweaving. Is that going to be intended game play?

Do you have some evidence or numbers of this? We've heard it a few times from the community, but we don't see how it would work.
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#2000 - March 1, 2013, 2:55 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Here are some recent changes:

- Renewing Mist - mana cost reduced 10%.
- Healing Rain - mana cost reduced 15%.
- Beast Cleave - damage increased from 30% to 50% of original damage.
- Critical Mass - nerf reverted. It's back to 30%.
- Pyroblast - direct damage reduced 10%.

The mana changes were to help less well geared healers. The Beast Cleave change was because we felt Survival's multi-target damage was too far ahead. We don't mind good AE as a spec niche, but it shouldn't be so high that you feel like an absolute idiot for not swapping to that spec. (This is the same mentality we used when trying to tone down without destroying Combat rogues being good at cleaving.) The Fire changes were because we needed to nerf Fire to keep other mage specs competitive in PvE in 5.2, but we agree that nerfing Critical Mass unfairly targets less well geared players, and that the spec is just less fun if it crits too rarely. (Long term, we might investigate some of the non-linear percent scaling suggestions players have made.)
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#2169 - March 4, 2013, 7:29 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Updated Trinket and Meta Gem numbers

Warning: Arcana! This information is targeted at theorycrafting. You don't need to read any of the following to benefit from these items in patch 5.2.

RealPPM Functionality Changes
We changed RealPPM to use your true melee haste or spell haste (whichever is higher) to scale the proc rate instead of attack speed or casting speed. The difference is that things that buff your attack speed (such as the raid buff or Slice and Dice) do not increase the frequency of RPPM procs. True haste boosts, such as Bloodlust or haste rating on gear will improve proc rate. We felt this change was necessary to balance proc rates among different specs.

Trinkets

Agility DPS
- Vicious Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault – 15% chance on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 105 sec ICD.
- Renataki’s Soul Charm – 0.56 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 22 sec ICD.
- Talisman of Bloodlust – 3.00 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.
- Bad Juju – 0.50 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD. Voodoo Gnomes are mostly for flavor and deal ~200 damage before armor per hit.
- Rune of Re-Origination – 0.92 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 22 sec ICD
- Proc rate multiplied by 0.1 for non-melee specs. Proc rate multiplied by 0.25 against player controlled units. Proc rate multiplied by 1/(1.15^((528-ItemLevel)/15) for the various Item Level versions of the trinket.

Strength DPS
- Brutal Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault - 15% chance on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 75 sec ICD.
- Fabled Feather of Ji-Kun - 0.56 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. 22 sec ICD.
- Primordius’ Talisman of Rage – 3.00 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.
- Spark of Zandalar - 5.00 RealPPM on landing harmful abilities and spells, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.
- Gaze of the Twins – 0.75*(1+MeleeCritChance) RealPPM on critical harmful abilities and spells, periodic spell, and melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.

Intellect DPS
- Volatile Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault – 15% chance on landing harmful spell. 45 sec ICD.
- Wushoolay’s Final Choice – 0.56 RealPPM on damage/absorb from harmful abilities and spells, and periodic spells. 22 sec ICD.
- Breath of the Hydra – 0.50 RealPPM on damage/absorb from periodic spell. No ICD.
- Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen – 0.50 RealPPM on damage/absorb from harmful spells and periodic spells. No ICD. Proc rate multiplied by 0.00 for non-caster specs. Proc rate multiplied by 0.5 for Balance Druids. Proc rate multiplied by 0.25 against player controlled units. Proc rate multiplied by 1/(1.15^((528-ItemLevel)/15) for the various Item Level versions of the trinket.
- Cha-Ye's Essence of Brilliance – 0.77*(1+SpellCritChance) RealPPM on critical harmful spells and periodic spells. No ICD.

Healer
- Soothing Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault – On Use, 180 sec CD.
- Horridon's Last Gasp – 1.00 RealPPM on heal from helpful spell and periodic spell while in combat. No ICD.
- Inscribed Bag of Hydra-Spawn – 1.13 RealPPM on heal from helpful spell and periodic spell while in combat. 17 sec ICD.
- Stolen Relic of Zuldazar – 3.00 RealPPM on attempting helpful spell while in combat. No ICD. Use effect has a 20sec CD.
- Lightning-Imbued Chalice – 3.00 RealPPM on heal from helpful spell and periodic spell while in combat. No ICD.

Tank
- Steadfast Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault – On Use, 120 sec CD.
- Fortitude of the Zandalari – On Use, 120 sec CD.
- Delicate Vial of the Sanguinaire – 4% chance on dodge melee ability or swing. No ICD.
- Ji-Kun's Rising Winds – 100% chance on taking damage from melee abilities or swings, that leaves you below 35% health. 30 sec ICD.
- Soul Barrier - On Use, 120 sec CD.

Legendary Metagems

Capacitive Primal Diamond – 21.00 base RealPPM on landing melee/ranged abilities and swings. No ICD.
- At 5 stacks, fires a Lightning Strike, which deals [280 + 75% AP] Nature damage. This is considered a ranged attack for Hunters, and a melee attack for everyone else.
- Base proc rate is multiplied by an additional coefficient:
Assassination: 1.089
Combat: 1.232
Subtlety: 0.388
Feral: 2.397
Windwalker: 0.495
Beast Mastery: 0.960
Marksmanship: 0.984
Survival: 0.714
Enhancement: 0.266
Retribution: 1.199
Frost DK (2H): 2.098
Frost DK (DW): 1.479
Unholy: 0.639
Arms: 1.783
Fury (TG): 0.944
Fury (SMF): 0.596
Anyone Else: 1.000

Sinister Primal Diamond – 1.18 base RealPPM on damage/absorb of harmful or periodic spell. No ICD.
- That base proc rate is multiplied by an additional coefficient:
Arcane: 0.282
Fire: 1.155
Frost: 0.589
Demonology: 0.519
Affliction: 0.610
Destruction: 9.631
Elemental: 3.489
Moonkin: 6.192
Shadow: 0.495
Anyone Else: 1.000

Courageous Primal Diamond – 1.40 RealPPM on attempting helpful spell. No ICD.

Indomitable Primal Diamond – 1.40 RealPPM on damage/absorb taken from melee ability or swing. No ICD.

EDIT: Apparently I hadn't mentioned the RPPM haste changes before and this is the first you're hearing of it. My mistake. It's hard to keep straight sometimes what we've discussed internally and what we've shared publicly.
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#2184 - March 4, 2013, 8:17 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Apparently I hadn't mentioned the RPPM haste changes before and this is the first you're hearing of it. My mistake. It's hard to keep straight sometimes what we've discussed internally and what we've shared publicly.
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#2243 - March 5, 2013, 12:08 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Destruction: 9.631

GC wat r u doin

GC stahp


Yeah, you're right. Those numbers make no sense. I transposed a column or something. Actual numbers coming when I get a chance. My apologies to anyone who tried to model the Sinister Primal.

I double checked all the other numbers and they appear correct, though we may continue minor tweaks.
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#2278 - March 5, 2013, 2:38 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Meta Gem Madness

Okay, these should be the correct meta gem proc rates. I also updated the melee ones, just because that's the kind of thing we are going to continually tweak until we're happy with them. The caster ones should be more sane.

Capacitive
1.136 Combat
1.789 Assassination
1.114 Subtlety
1.339 Arms
1.152 Fury SMF
1.257 Fury TG
1.721 Feral Cat
1.532 Frost DK 2H
1.134 Frost DK DW
0.838 Unholy
1.295 Retribution
0.809 Enhancement
1.087 Monkbot
0.950 Beast Mastery
1.107 Marksmanship
0.950 Survival

Sinister
0.761 Arcane
0.302 Fire Mage
1.387 Frost Mage
0.625 Affliction
0.598 Demonology
0.509 Destruction
1.891 Elemental
1.872 Moonkin
0.933 Shadow
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#2280 - March 5, 2013, 2:40 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Recent DPS Tweaks

- Might of the Frozen Wastes includes melee damage by 20%, up from 15%.
- Icy Talons increases attack speed by 30%, up from 25%.
- Threat of Thassarian now increases Frost Strike damage by 50%, up from 40%.
- Assassin's Resolve now increases damage by 30%, up from 20%.
- Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 25%.
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#2282 - March 5, 2013, 2:41 a.m.
Blizzard Post
So the Windwalker proc rate is the same regardless of whether they use 2hand or DW?


Yes.
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#2402 - March 5, 2013, 6:54 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Then why is it okay to force every Unholy DK to go Frost?


That's not the intention. Now it's not realistically possible to have Unholy and Frost do idential DPS on every single boss given how different mechanics are, and that's not really our goal anyway. For players who care about 1% theoretical DPS changes, they will probably just swap specs constantly, and there isn't much we can do to change that behavior. What we do try to do is get things close enough so that someone who loves Frost and can play Frost on every encounter and someone who loves Unholy can play Unholy on every encounter. In 5.1, Unholy's DPS was probably a little too low (though take the huge sampling bias in mind when comparing DPS on sites such as Raidbots). Through all the changes going into 5.2, we found that Unholy had such an advantage that we were scared we had tipped the scales too far in the opposite direction and would see every DPS DK abandon Frost, so we buffed Frost a little again. Do we always balance these things perfectly? Of course not, and sometimes despite our best intentions Arcane ends up ahead of Fire or BM ends up ahead of Marks, or there are just more encounters that favor one over the other or whatever. Realistically our only solutions are to keep trying (which is our plan) or just give up and accept that some DPS specs aren't really for raiding (which we think would be really lame).

Prior to these buffs, we'd estimated 2h Frost and Unholy were close on most single target scenarios while DW pulled ahead in cleave.

Hey GC, so the weakest Warlock spec (destro) gets the lowest RPPM on the meta gem?

So You Are Buffing Classes Yet Again That Do Not Need A Damage Increase, Brovo!

Don't understand why buff assassination and not combat?! Combat still behind assassination...

And combat? just 5% Vitality buff, why assassination got so many buffs? Just because of the T15 raid set bonus? and pvp as combat rogues?


Yeah, my above comments apply to every DPS class. “Why did you buff Spec X when they were already tied with Spec Y? Do you hate Spec Y and want us to only play Spec X?”

We’re making these changes based on actual data and test results. Unfortunately, the primary tool the community uses for comparing and reviewing test results (World of Logs) hasn’t worked for 5.2 PTR at all, as far as we know (largely I believe to some well-meaning changes we added to let players better track things like attack power and mana gains). That basically restricts performance measurements to occasional Recount screenshots or LFR streams. This has added a fog of war effect to class balance tweaking that didn't exist last patch.

As I said in an interview recently, it's our job to balance the game. A lot of players want to help, and we appreciate that, but it's not something every forum poster needs to concern themselves with. We don't mind you challenging any of our assumptions, but try to do so in a reasonable manner, ideally with some kind of data to back it up. Most importantly, don't freak out. That just drags the conversation down for everyone.

To be clear, we buffed Frost DKs yesterday, because they were significantly behind Unholy, and we want them to be equal. Same with Assassination (compared to Combat), and Shadow. Also, for clarification, we are explicitly not using legendary meta gems as a form of balance tuning knob. We’re balancing specs without the legendary meta gems, and we’re also balancing the performance gain of the legendary meta gems. Players will have a variety of gear levels, and we strive to balance them all.

We've been told many times over the course of this testing that ret was around the same spot as the other melee specs in terms of single target but that ret was lacking in the AOE/Cleave department and that was something you were going to look at.


Since the Seal of Righteousness change, Ret is actually one of the best specs at clumped AE. I’d encourage you to try it out. Now, AE is a pretty broad encompassing term and it depends a lot on number of targets, length of the fight and so forth. Players tend to focus less on the encounters that are considered easy and a lot more on those that are considered blocking, so the specific encounter mechanics of the hardest fights become the yardstick of which kind of AE is considered important at any point in time.

I assume that you mean ranged, melee or spell haste (whichever is higher) right? Otherwise hunters will lose the benefit of RPPM scaling on ranged specific haste abilities like rapid fire and focus fire. I also assume that when you refer to non-melee specs you mean non-physical specs. Sorry to be picky about language but based on past history it's necessary to verify these things.

Yeah, sorry, I meant ranged/melee/spell haste for determining RPPM proc rate. And yes, clarification on Rune of Re-Origination: The *0.1 proc multiplier is for non-Agility users, not non-melee.

For clarification, does the last statement about the proc rate multipliers apply to all the agility trinkets or just the Rune of Re-Origination?

Just Rune of Re-Origination.

Do you currently have any plans to change/alter the elemental shaman tier 15 4 piece set bonus?

We did. It's -1.5 sec per Lava Burst.

[Re: Unerring Vision having a 0% proc chance for “non-caster” specs] Does anyone know if healers fall into this group?

No, it will proc for healers.

As others have asked, was the RPPM change live?

It's not always easy for us to keep track of when certain PTR builds were triggered so it's possible it was excluded, but my guess is that it was on PTR for about a week.

I noticed none of the buffs mentioned earlier are in the updated patch notes. I dont know if it is a mistake or just not implemented yet?

If they aren't live yet, they should be soon. Sometimes there is a lag for late changes, but we haven't reverted them.