(Give us this PUG our summoned water and forgive us our beratements, as we forgive those who trespass amongst our greatness. Amen.)

doesn’t mean I won’t break a chest off somethin’.

Pet was 37, the fight took a long time and was pretty much on the razor’s edge.

As a partial solution to traditional cockblocks and modest item progression didn’t I suggest weapons and armor that have beefed up effects for certain fights and instances?

Looks like Blizzard is goin’ for it. Remember now Blizzard, it’s time to put DOTA into WoW.

forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=96160201&postId=976737126&sid=1#290

In addition to the T6 Rogue/Warrior/Hunter sets, have you guys seen the new Rogue trinket? It is a proc of 1000 armor ignore for 15 seconds. Let’s review again what happened, shall we?

1. Even though BC was in development for a long time, it is released and everything in Outland heavily favors ranged magic users. Designers arbitrarily painting creeps with Sweeping Strikes and Cleave like freaking Jackson Pollack. Melee DPS gets crushed by armor/cleave/fear/poly/more. Test your own content much Blizzard?

2. Developers come to the laughably late realization that they screwed the pooch, and to remedy things they need some changes to improve the melee DPS situation.

3. People are complaining about horrible itemization, again. Blizzard scrambles to make Black Temple gear somewhat exciting, because let’s face it, raiding is trash and the only way to get people to feel good about the rooster-blocked grinds is to give them stats and set bonuses that nobody else in the game has access to.

4. Light bulb of an idea comes to Blizzard. Add “ignore armor” equip effects to T6 and raiding trinkets to benefit Rogues, Warriors and Hunters. Armor is new and shiny, raiders’ feelings of self-worth will be at all time high!

5. Second light bulb turns on. Hmm oh yeah guys remember that BoE dagger we put in early in beta with that cool proc? Now it clashes with our patchworked T6 itemization. What should we do? We can’t possibly let that dagger add on an additional 1200 armor ignore can we? Should we test it and run some numbers to be sure? No, reduce the proc rate by 75%.

Good game Blizzard, you are Saran Wrap. I would be inclined to respect your itemization and balance team if they discussed this situation, but instead they just hope all the posts fall to page 4. Disgusting.

And once again for anyone who is applauding this nerf out of pure greed to see their current weapon buffed by default. What happens when another item on another one of your characters receives a similar sort of BS “retooling”? This isn’t just about The Night Blade. It is about a long and sad track record of demolishing unique elements of the game just because MMOs can be quickly patched.

Get your finger off the trigger Blizzard and L2maintainyourmmo.

forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=96001556&sid=1&pageNo=2

forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=94161512&sid=1

By allowing players to use any number of elixirs it was necessary that we balance raid and dungeon encounters with the idea that all players in the group had the potential of having all available elixirs on them. In many cases this resulted in the spectrum of elixirs being necessary for dungeon and raid attempts as they were balanced to be more difficult. This put a large strain on guild alchemists and their need of materials for the elixirs they would then distribute throughout the guild. With fewer elixirs being allowed, fewer elixirs will be expected on raids, and less herb and material collection will be needed when attempting raid or dungeon encounters. In turn this change allows us to design and balance encounters around it, keeping the difficulty in line with a clearer limitation of what each group member has at their disposal.

Once again no middle ground or calming balance and instead a rash change. People were using 6-8 elixirs, so now we will have them use one instead. People in bleeding edge raiding guilds should have had their herbalist alts up to 70 for two months now anyway so what is the problem? Fuck you.

Since the number of elixirs is now limited, we can also now allow them to stack with class buffs, so intellect elixirs will actually matter since they will now stack with arcane intellect. As mentioned previously we’ll be introducing some new recipes that would have simply been left unused before as they wouldn’t have been allowed to stack with class buffs.

That’s twice now that you have listen an INT potion stacking with AI as a huge deal and something that has been a long time coming. Thing is, nobody fucking cares as raw INT is largely useless and there isn’t even a max level INT pot. Retract that shit right now. Even if you put in a new raw agility potion, what difference would it make? Are you telling me that it could possibly be classified as defensive? Doubtful. Potion of Kings? Fuck you.

We’ve seen many requests for new recipes, and to some extent it was necessary that we limit how and when we introduce new recipes as any new elixir added in-turn resulted in a potential power increase for every member of a raid or group. With the number of elixirs on any one player now limited we can add more recipes than we would have been able to in the past.

Track record. If this was a true concern you could have addressed it LONG ago. You are telling us the development team sat on their hands and failed to produce interesting crafted items because they were simply afraid? Also my guess is that the recipes you introduce will either suck, or they will eliminate the need to use previous recipes. Either way your additions are destined to marginalize the game’s crafting system even more. Fuck you.

This change will generally not impact solo players who currently already only use one or two elixirs at a time, but will certainly be a restriction for players who tend to use a lot of elixirs simultaneously.

Get way the fuck out with that bullshit. Casual scrubs who don’t use pot buffs or maybe the cheapest one will rarely be affected by anything you put into the game anyway so why even mention them? Certainly be a restriction for hardcore players who don’t raid 6 hours a night and fill the gap by working hard to jack their character as high as the biased game design lets them? Indeed, thanks for fucking hardcore small guilds over because you are so hardheaded about making the epicenter of the game a 25-man crawl and uberguild pennis yard stick. Fuck you.

In the case of raid and small group parties the change is a clear benefit.

Leave small group parties out of that. They are totally owned by the change. It is SOLELY of benefit to massive guilds who force themselves to raid every night of the week and have difficulty as a result of your 25-man cockblocks. Fuck you.

We’re currently planning to implement this change in a future patch and we’ll release further details as well as information on the new recipes as soon as we’re able.

You can’t even provide us with some ballpark information on the type of new elixirs you are putting in? It would help ease the strain of these BS changes a lot. Does it mean you haven’t even thought about them yet before making these sweeping changes? Fuck you.

If you want some advice on how to fix these fucked up changes you seem relentless to implement, here’s a couple starting ideas:

- Change the “one of each” balance limit to two total elixirs. I don’t see how you can possibly categorize things properly with the current stats and naming schemes. Major Agility is largely defensive on a Druid tank, but totally offensive on a Rogue. Things will never match up and certain classes are gonna get fucked.
- Buff certain elixirs so that they have multiple effects and possibly proc effects. Leave some elixirs as pure buffs in a specific area of power.
- Focus on the combinations of two elixirs for every class in the game and make sure each class has various options and choices for multiple scenarios. If this ends up being a situation where parsed math dictates a clear single winner option for each class in every situation, FUCK YOU.

forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=93032551&postId=930146591&sid=1#0

- Elixirs now stack in two categories, Battle (Offensive) and Guardian (Defensive) Elixirs. You can only have one of each type of Elixir up at a time. As a result Elixirs now stack with class abilities such as “Arcane Intellect.”
- Four new defensive elixirs have been added. Two are on trainers, one is in Halaa and one is in Cenarion Expedition.
- “Flask of Petrification” can no longer be turned off during its duration, but it now will clear all threat from all monsters for the duration of the effect. Though monsters may reaquire you after the effect ends.
- The cost to purchase Imbued Vials has been reduced.

Horrible from many angles, and mainly I am annoyed because I enjoy farming for two types of buffs, but this is also an outright nerf to melee dps and tanks more than anyone else. Just make it two elixirs of any type, rebalance flasks a bit (while still allowing them to stack with pots) and it’s done. Allowing pot buffs to persist through death and upping the mastery proc rate are other possibly solutions to easing the strain on raiders.

Let the games begin.

Also went 6/6 on skill ups from cutting them. One more to go before meta crafting can be done.

Newwwwwwww recorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd! (Toad voice)

wow.boom.net/ggfarmer/talents.html

I still think the new Arena format makes MS and it’s related complexities even more ripe for evaluation. I am the first one to hate on balance changes based purely on PVP, but if they aren’t gonna nerf MS, it means they are largely balancing everything else around it.

Personally I am for implementing PVE/PVP effect duality much like War3 had for Heroes and normal units. Or just remove PVP from the game entirely and put in DOTA-style battlegrounds with one hundred custom characters.

Although the rage cost and damage of MS have been changed multiple times, the healing debuff amount (50%) and duration (10 seconds) have remained unchanged since the ability was first introduced in the beta three years ago. The excessive use of paladins in the arena has shown, if anything, that healing is too powerful in PvP and even more ways to counter it should be introduced.

I was just thinking about it recently and MS in PVP is overpowered. Maybe just add a charge to the debuff so that it only reduces healing for a couple heal spells or something. I am too lazy to formulate a full report on how it should be tuned, but it will probably be nerfed in the coming months.

forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=88680668&sid=1

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about the same subjects – subjects that have been addressed in an upcoming patch – so I wanted to let you guys know where things stood.

The Rogue Situation

We’ve done a tuning pass of many of our dungeons/bosses/encounters to ensure that nothing overly punishing occurs to “melee DPS’ that would lead people to favor ranged DPS over Rogues/DPS Warriors etc.

Also, we’ve changed the NPC cleave mechanic so that it’s now a frontal cone ability rather than a 360 degree chain attack. Sweeping Strikes has been removed from all Burning Crusade NPC’s.
We’re also reducing the Glancing Blow damage penalty for creatures 1-3 levels higher than the player. This will have a significant effect on melee DPS as it relates to endgame melee dps. More details on this at a later time.

End Game Itemization

As we’ve stated before, we made a lot of improvements to endgame gear progression. To put it in perspective, take a look at this Warrior Tanking Breastplate from before and after.

Destroyer Chestguard – Currently
+24 Strength
+22 Agility
+39 Stamina
Blue Socket
Yellow Socket
Red Socket
Socket Bonus +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases Defense Rating by 23
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 16
Equip: Improves hit rating by 18

Destroyer Chestguard – Patch 2.1.0
+21 Strength
+22 Agility
+51 Stamina
Blue Socket
Yellow Socket
Red Socket
Socket Bonus +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases Defense Rating by 23
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 20
Equip: Improved hit rating by 20

”Trash” Concerns

Equally interesting yet non-epic-dropping non-bosses (or “Trash” as he community likes to call it) has been of concern lately on these forums. In all of our 25 person raid zones we’ve made a number of bug fixes and tuning adjustments. For example, the trash should be significantly easier to clear in most cases – and take less time. Also, we’ve lengthened the time between respawn on a lot of the trash. Yes, trash will respawn in some cases. It’s a pacing mechanic and one that works well when tuned correctly. For example, the trash before the Prophet Skeram or the trash before Attumen the Huntsmen or the Maiden of Virtue works well. You get a couple of tries on the boss, and if you fail, you spend a short time re-clearing. Yes, there are cases of the trash respawning too fast or the trash being too difficult or too lengthy. Those are the cases we hope to fix. We’ve also fixed some bugs that were allowing the trash to respawn after the boss for a certain area was dead.

Consumables

We’re making substantial changes to the way certain consumables work . In particular, Flasks and Elixirs are going to undergo major changes. More information will be available later on. We want Flasks and Elixirs to be a part of the game. We want alchemy to be a cool, needed profession. But we want to remove the tedium and cost from the massive consumable farming that’s going on for endgame raiding. We’ll provide more information soon – but for now, expect big changes to Flasks and Elixirs.

Boss Tuning

We’re looking at the boss tuning from dungeons to heroics to raids. Your feedback is being listened to.

To Summarize

We’re making big improvements to the game. Whenever possible, we hotfix changes to get them to you as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, there are many changes that require a patch and cannot be hotfixed. Many of these changes are coming in Patch 2.1.0. The patch will be on PTR’s in the upcoming weeks. You’ll be able to see them there and try them out for yourselves. You’ll also be able to test Black Temple. We’re also looking into ways of making Hyjal accessible on the PTR as well to get more testing on that zone.

I can assure you that we’re aware of the issues you guys are discussing on the boards and we’re listening closely. We’re also dedicated fans of the game ourselves. We play it every day =D We will affect change as quickly as we can. Patch 2.1.0 will be on the PTR soon enough and you’ll all have the opportunity to comment and make suggestions on the changes.