Day: February 16, 2010

Class synergy and PvP difficulty
Class synergy matters a lot more in PvP than in PvE. As a very simple example, chaining crowd control with different diminishing returns is almost non-existent in PvE. Therefore, classes with different forms of crowd control play very well together in PvP. To break that (to make class synergy not matter), we'd have to make all CC's DR with each other. I think it would get worse than that though. I think you'd have to give just about every ability to every class for fear that you might be missing one if you just paired with 2 other random players. It takes a whole raid to get almost one of everything in PvE and that's with a lot of homogenization on our part. We like that class comp matters in Arenas. It really doesn't much in BGs.

I also understand that there is a component of players who liked the aspect of BC Arenas where you could pretty much go in with anything and eventually get good gear. Maybe there is a way to still have a place for that, but we backed off of it because too many players were opting for Arena over PvE content simply because the loot per unit effort was so generous. Adding a skill component to earn the best PvP loot pushed some players back into PvE to earn the best gear. (Source)

"Interesting" talents in Cataclysm
Will we keep simple talents that staticly reduce cooldown or cast times?
Will talents that staticly increase walk/run speed by 15% count as interesting?
Will talents that staticly increase or decrease the length of time a dot or hot ticks for count as interesting?

Yes, all of those are "interesting." Sure reducing cooldown or cast time is just a dps (or healing) increase, but it does so in a way that requires more on the part of the player than just passively boosting dps (or healing). It changes your rotation depending on whether you have that talent or not. It makes your dps tree play differently from your healing tree.

Everyone can come up with the example of "I think X talent is really fun, but I only have 2 free points in my build, so I can't get it." We'd like to see that 2 be a much larger number, like 10 or more.

Another way to think about it is that every talent in say the Elemental tree also says "…and increases your spell damage." That's the bonus you get just for investing in the tree.

Talents are one of the few choices with regard to customizing their character that players really get. Gear is often subject to random elements or even whether you have access to the content or not. Everyone gets the same spells as they level. We can't get away from cookie-cutter builds completely, but we can have more of the type that say "and spend your last several points wherever you want." (Source)

Healing and mana regeneration in Cataclysm
I was about to write what I often do about healer mana management, which is that without mana being a consideration, healing is boring because you can just use your most powerful spell non-stop. Then I read your second paragraph, and it seems like you sort of agree with that. Imagine then that both MP5 and Spirit are going away and being replaced by a new stat called "Regen." Then imagine that a few weeks down the road, we decided that "Spirit" was a sexier name than "Regen." (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Buffing Owlkin Frenzy?
I don't think Owlkin Frenzy would be a good area to buff Balance burst damage in PvP. It's very dependent on actually being the one focused. That almost by definition is not "on demand."

I also don't think it's a great place to buff them for PvE. There are fights without a lot of predictable raid damage, and void zone diving shouldn't be critical in keeping your dps up. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Revenge buff
 I suspect we will buff Revenge to make it more attractive to push even in high rage situations. (Source)