Month: February 2010

In our thirteenth BlizzCast episode, we focus on the recent start of the StarCraft II beta! An interview with the StarCraft II's production director and game director discusses what beta testers and the overall StarCraft community can expect in the latest multiplayer version of the game. The developers also provide some insight into other topics such as the single player campaign, eSports, and macro mechanics. In our second segment, World of Warcraft and Diablo community managers take you through a Q&A segment sharing exciting information about how the future of those series are shaping up.

Check out BlizzCast 13 now: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/blizzcast/archive/episode13.html?rhtml=y

Hey all,

Ever wanted to Pwn a Blizzard employee in WoW PvP? Now's your chance because tomorrow from 4:00PM to 6:30PM (PST) a few of us will be queuing up for BGs via the new Random Battleground Finder on the US realms! Bring your main/alt/premade and show us what you got!

What: Random Battleground Finder
Who: Blizzard Community Team and Blizzard QA
Place: US Servers Broxigar and Anasterian
Time: 4:30 – 6:30 PST
Date: 2-26-2010

(Note: Time/Event is subject to change.)

A photo from us to you. The Blizzard Community Team – http://i616.photobucket.com/albums/tt243/bashiok/CMTeam.jpg (Mirror)

Easy gear in TBC Arenas
We definitely make mistakes, but you are mischaracterizing how we feel about Arena. The problem was that the initial BC Arena gear was so easy to obtain, that it attracted many players to Arenas who really had no business being in there or in fact didn't even enjoy it. They just went where the loot was. In LK, we offered the same or better loot through raiding and lots of people went raiding.

We like Arena. It isn't going anywhere. We just want to reserve it for people who actually like it, not for those who feel like they have to do it. (Source)

AE Healing
True, but many of those spells require targeting. Even PoH requires targeting. I'm not a big fan of the way Wild Growth has turned out either, but at least its hot prevents it from being the "nobody dies from AE" spell. Again, they are good spells, and they have their place. I wish there was more of a decision of when to use them instead of always on cooldown. I realize part of that is encounter design. Part of it may be that they are still too good. (But we aren't nerfing them anytime soon.) (Source)

Mana management and encounters difficulty
Fights are designed to be hard (to a degree). If you have a proposal for how they can be hard in a different vector, please share. Running OOM is a tool that we lost and want to regain, but I suspect that will lead to a lot of "Healing isn't fun anymore" responses. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Rake Bug
Right. It's possible that there is server – client disagreement (because of lag) about what's going on, so that you think you can reapply Rake (because it has fallen off) but get the "more powerful aura" error instead.

We did have a similar problem with Immolate at some point, but we fixed it by letting you clip that last tick. I don't think you would want that with Rake because it would be a dps loss when that happened. (Source)

Nature's Grasp in 3.3.3
That's a bug. You can only cast one Entangling Roots. You can proc the roots on 3 targets with Nature's Grasp. […] They are two different spells that just look alike.

There is a small ICD to keep a rogue from blowing through all 3 charges quickly. (Source)

Priest (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Lightwell
Lightwell isn't okay either. We don't want to turn it into a totem, because the class already has plenty of spells that require little interaction. We're not entirely sure what we'll do yet, but we still like the basic idea (creating something and it does the healing) so we aren't going to just scrap it. (Source)

We will be holding our next Developer Chat on Twitter on Friday, February 26, at 5:00 p.m. PST with World of Warcraft's lead content designer and lead systems designer. This chat session will focus on Icecrown Citadel and other Fall of the Lich King content.

Questions will be taken live through Twitter, so be sure to sign up for a Twitter account at https://twitter.com/signup and follow account @Warcraft in order to participate!

To submit a question for the Developer Chat, please tweet using the #BlizzChat hashtag between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. PST on February 26. Due to the character limitation on responses within Twitter, all answers will be posted on the World of Warcraft forums in a dedicated thread.

Link to the last Developer Chat: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22418868790&sid=1

People with multiple Battle.net accounts cannot log on this PTR Build
There is currently a bug in the build that the PTR is being updated to that is causing this issue. This issue should be resolved in the next PTR build, but for the time being there is no work around available. If you have multiple Wow game accounts attached to a single Battle.net account, you will not be able to log into the PTR until the next PTR update.

We're aware that this temporarily blocks some people from accessing the PTR. Please understand that we're working on getting this resolved in an upcoming PTR patch. (Source)

Top guilds and raid encounters difficulty
Players try to play that card a lot, that skill isn't a big deal because the mechanics are all pretty easy to understand, and therefore it's the class mechanics that are to blame, not the player. I don't buy it. I've seen the world first, or even server first kills of difficult bosses. Those players aren't just good, they are exceptionally good. They are probably ten times better than the guilds who get those kills a month or two later, and that's really no exaggeration. In fact, skill plays such a gigantic role that we have trouble balancing harder encounters. The skilled players can beat them without new gear while the second tier of players can never beat them. Now you can try to argue that all tanks are of about the same skill and it's the dps or healers that really make up the difference, but I don't buy that either. I've seen what the best tanks in the world do. They are really good. Don't dismiss them as being just lucky or dedicated. (Source)

Healers coordination
Now in general I wish there was a little more coordination among healers, but the current damage model we have just doesn't really allow it. I remember when tanking Molten Core, that the priest would say over vent "Big heal coming on the OT!" as he powered up a Greater Heal. You don't have that luxury these days. One of our designers was watching an old Illidan video recently and remarked how everyone was at 50% for so much of the fight. Now days someone is at 100%, will hit 100% in the next couple of GCDs, or will be dead. In that environment, you'd get "Big –" out of your mouth before it would be too late. Players need more health and heals have to be a little more expensive. (Source)

Tanking homogenization
There are extremes. One is just giving everyone say block and parry and Last Stand and Demo Shout because heck those are useful, and no doubt some players would be thrilled by that. The other extreme is to be so stubborn and so scared of homogenization that we never make a change. It doesn't surprise me at all that when a player finds his dude wanting, then looks around and sees a sexy ability or mechanic on another class that that grass can look awfully green. I'm just pointing out that homogenization is often our very last solution when all else has failed.

A great deal of WoW's depth is because of the differences among the classes and among the various talent trees. We think it contributes to players not getting bored. We think it contributes to rerolling, perhaps trying another class when you get burned out instead of walking away from the game. It was cool for me the first time I healed a Feral druid in UBRS (if you're still playing, you rocked by the way) because she tanked things differently and I had to heal her differently. I felt like I was discovering something new in the game. I would have been sad if someone had pointed out, Ghost, dude, that was just bear art. Mechanically, she was blocking and Sundering (this was pre Devastate) and basically being a warrior.

Resisting homogenization may not be important to you, but it is very important to us. Understand the huge mountain you have to climb whenever you're asking us to put those concerns aside. You're thinking about how to make your character a better tank. We're thinking about how to keep this game popular for five more years, or even longer. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Icy Talons changes clarifications
You put 5 points in Icy Talons. While fighting (and applying Frost Fever), you swing 20% faster. If you have talented Windfury Totem on you, you swing a total of 40% faster.

You now put a 6th point in Improved Icy Talons as well. You have a passive personal 25% haste at all times. When you engage in combat and apply Frost Fever, you now have 45% melee haste. If you have Windfury also, you still only have 45% haste since Windfury and Improved Icy Talons are exclusive.

This is basically a 20% haste buff to any DK who has Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons. (Source)

Will of the Necropolis Buff
As I've said several times now, the Will of the Necropolis change wasn't an "OMG DKs are vanishing – let's buff" decision. A couple of designers looked at the cooldown, evaluated how often it really mattered, concluded not often, and thought the ability would be simpler to understand, less frustrating, and perhaps a small DK buff without the cooldown. The paladin and warrior health adjustments were a result of seeing progression on hard mode encounters, where bosses tend to melee for a lot all the time so health might trump cooldowns. Neither of them were huge changes and you can make the argument that things might have been fine without the changes at all. We thought a small adjustment was appropriate. I concede that these things are often subjective and others might have made a different call than we made. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Starfall Buff
The Starfall change is difficult to patch note because of the nature of the spell, but I'll share the numbers so that the theorycrafters among you can plug them in. It's a significant boost to the spell's damage.

Initially, we had designed the spell to be more AE focused, but that hasn't been super useful for a class that also has Hurricane. Rather than adding another nuke we thought it made more sense to make the 51 pointer something that really delivers on damage. Yes it can be countered. PvP is designed with the intent that things can be countered.

Main shot
Base points 432 -> 562
Coefficient 0.21 -> 0.37

Splash damage
Base points 77 -> 100
Coefficient 0.12 -> 0.13 (Source)

[…] I think I figured out how you all are calculating the coefficient, so maybe this will make more sense. Again, I'm not 100% sure we're speaking the same language here. If I have time, maybe I will just log in with a moonkin and compare the before and after and post numbers.

Main star
Old coefficient: 4.8%
New coefficient: 37%

Splash damage
Old coefficient: 1.2%
New coefficient: 13%

As I said, these numbers are very generous. If Balance druids melt the world we may have to back off of them. (Source)

Nature's Grasp Buff
Nature's Grasp is a self buff that causes things that hit you to become rooted. That effect now has 3 charges. There is a small internal cooldown in between roots to keep say a rogue who hits you twice very quickly from wasting two charges. In your example, both the DK and pet should get rooted. If the DK breaks the roots and gets on you again, they will get rooted again (subject to the 45 sec duration).

The intent of this spell was to be a defensive tool for druids. Since it hasn't quite kept up, we wanted to try to get it to be more useful (i.e. do its job) rather than come up with an entirely new mechanic.

[…]  The DR hasn't changed. I would suggest go trying it out if you aren't sure how it works. ([url=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/23425763051-n…