Month: March 2010

Alterac Valley imbalance
We have discussed this numerous times. Based on the data we've collected over the years after all of the changes that have been made to Alterac Valley, we simply do not agree that there are any glaring imbalances in the map favoring one side over the other enough to easily sway a match one way or the other. (Source)

Masteries Cap
It's possible you will only get the benefit of the tree in which you've spent the most points, or will only get the benefit from say 50 points maximum with the bonus chosen from the tree with the most points in it. We'll have to see when the talent trees are more finalized and we start to figure out build strategies.

Overall, the goal is to spend points as you want, and not feel penalized for spending into another tree or feel like you have to game things by spending more points than you want in your tree. Remember these passive bonuses are designed to give you flexibility, not lock you into anything. (Source)

[…] Imagine you spend 55 points in Retribution, so you get the maximum passive talent tree bonuses from that tree. Your remaining points you can spend where you want, in Retribution, Protection or Holy. It does discourage some kind of true hybrid build where you go partway down multiple trees, but we aren't really trying to support those, and they aren't very popular today.

The flexibility comes (hopefully) in having more discretionary points that you can spend on talents you like, rather than sacrificing raw damage, healing or tanking to do so. (Source)

Mastery/Talent system and new players
It's designed partially with new players in mind. It will be much harder to have a truly terrible talent spec because you won't be able to help but be reasonably good at your chosen role.

The mastery stat itself won't show up until high level, and even when it does, you should have more confidence that it's a stat you want instead of say trying to figure out the percent of your damage that is physical damage to calculate if armor pen is good for you or not.

I admit that adding passive bonuses at all to talent trees complicates the talent feature slightly. We hope to make up for that by there being less paranoia about picking "the wrong" spec. The wrong spec might only be a slight loss instead of a tragic loss. As a point of comparison, dual-spec complicates talents a little, but overall we think it was good for the game. (Source)

Mastery bonus distribution
To answer your question — and this applies to all classes. the first two mastery stats are gained by placing points into a given talent tree (and wearing the gear intended for your class, e.g. leather for druids). This will allow us to remove many of the talents that always felt mandatory, especially at the min-max level, and allow room for customization.

When we begin revealing specific class information, (such as new spells and abilities, and the talent tree revamp) — the posts we've made thus far, will make much more sense. I feel, players should look at the stat/system changes, as well as this mastery post as a "piece of a puzzle" — and ask questions, provide feedback, but understand that until more information is released, it's not possible to see the whole of the picture. (Source)

Masteries Q&A
# 1. 28/28/20 spec. Does mastery on gear affect both highest trees or give no benefit at all?
Mastery on gear gives you one bonus. That bonus is the third passive (the unique one) in the tree in which you’ve spent the most points. In the examples we gave, those are Absorption, Radiance and Runic Power generation.

# 2. How are ferals and Dks as tanks working with mastery system in place? Are they to care about it for threat or do they have separate bonuses.
Ferals will have passive bonuses that say Cat: melee damage done, Bear: damage reduction. For death knights we have a different plan in mind that we’re not quite ready to discuss. DKs are undergoing some slight changes so they aren’t so GCD constrained and are less limited by rune cooldowns.

# 3. How are the non-pure classes going to be balanced against those with a full 76 point passive benefit? Balance, enhancement(not so much), shadow, feral, ele, resto, holy and Ret all have this issue.
Assume you only get the passive bonuses for the tree in which you’ve spent the most points, and there is a ceiling per tree (which could be something like 51-55 talent points). If you spend more points than that in a tree you still get the benefits of the talent. If you spend points in another tree, you are benefiting from those talents instead. Unless you try to make say a 40 / 36 / 0 build, you shouldn’t be losing passive bonuses.

If you turn level 10 and spend 1 point in Discipline, you are now a Disc priest. You receive the Disc talent tree passive bonuses and mastery rating on gear benefits your Disc passive bonus (Absorption). If you reach level 85 and have 70 points in Disc and 6 in Holy, you are still a Disc priest and the same rules apply. If you change your build to 51 Disc / 20 Holy / 5 Shadow, you are still a Disc priest.

# 4. Hybrids who use spells not improved by their spec on occasion such as heals or the extra lava burst are feeling that their non-specced spells are going to be extremely weak as compared to now.
They are weak now and the intent is to keep them that way. We aren’t trying to nerf them any more than they are today. If we want to make sure Resto shaman can do big Lava Bursts, we’ll give them a talent or something to make that happen. We don’t want Resto shaman to Lava Burst anywhere on the scale of an Elemental shaman. Again, how they perform today is pretty much the target for where we want to end up.

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Runic Power boost through Frost masteries
I know it's hard to get a feel for the design when you can't see the complete picture, but talent trees are changing for Cataclysm. As Eyonix referenced above, we are changing the DK rune mechanic a little so that you aren't so GCD constrained. This in turn will give us a chance to rebalance how much runic power Frost gets. Remember that in many cases we are pulling talents out of the trees and giving them to you as passive bonuses. In general if you see a passive talent tree bonus and think to yourself "Hmm, that doesn't sound very good for me," then it's probably because we haven't revealed the changes that lead to that being attractive to you. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Shockwave vs. Thunder Clap
Shockwave is technically a ranged attack, like a hunter shot. This means it's treated like an attack (and not a spell) for purposes of what you want but can't be dodged or parried. (I believe ranged attacks can be blocked, but I can't honestly remember off the top of my head.) The Shockwave treatment might be the right way to go for Thunder Clap. Thunder Clap is currently a spell that hits for physical damage and can't be dispelled. The distinction among spell, melee and ranged attack (or persistent auras like Consecrate) is a largely technical one that doesn't always encompass unusual abilities well.  (Source)

Thunder Clap in 3.3.3
I think we're likely to make Thunder Clap a ranged attack (like Shockwave) for 3.3.3. This will let it get 20…

Last week, we gave you an early look at the changes we’re making to the stat system in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and explained how these changes will ultimately provide players with more interesting gear choices and make stats easier to understand. Today we’d like to go into more detail about a brand-new feature that’s an integral part of this overhaul: the Mastery system, a set of new game mechanics designed to allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. With this system, we want to accomplish three things: give players more freedom in how they allocate talent points, simplify some of the “kitchen sinky” talents that try to do too much at once, and add a new stat to high-level gear that makes you better at your chosen role.

Here’s how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you’ll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree — meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear.

One of our primary goals with Mastery is to give players more flexibility to choose fun or utility-oriented talents rather than make them feel obligated to pick up “mandatory” but uninteresting talents, such as passive damage or healing. (For examples of the kinds of powerful but boring talents we’re talking about, take a look at the talent tier just above the 51-point talent in many of the existing trees.) In a sense, Mastery makes it so every talent in (just for example) a rogue tree essentially has an invisible additional bullet point that says “???and increases your damage by X%.” This way, if you choose a talent like Elusiveness (which reduces your chance to be detected while stealthed) or Fleet Footed (which affects movement), you won’t feel like you’re giving up damage in exchange for utility.

There will still be talents that boost damage, of course, but those talents will also affect the way you play. For example, you can still expect to see talents like Improved Frostbolt, which reduces the cast time of the Frostbolt spell; it increases DPS, but it also affects the mage’s rotation. Piercing Ice, however, is just “6% more damage” and is the kind of talent we’re trying to eliminate by implementing the Mastery system.

As we get closer to Cataclysm’s release, we’ll go into more detail about the changes coming for each class, including individual talent-tree adjustments and how Mastery will affect them. In the meantime, here are a few examples to demonstrate the three kinds of passive bonuses we described above. Please keep in mind that we're still working on this system, and the handful of examples we're providing here are, of course, subject to change.

Holy Priest
For each talent point spent in the Holy tree, the priest also gets:

• Healing – Improves your healing by X%.
• Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent from the Discipline tree, which many Holy priests consider to be a “must-have.” Regeneration will also probably be determined by whether you are in or out of combat, and not the “five-second rule.
• Radiance – Adds a heal-over-time effect to direct heals, such as Flash Heal. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.

Discipline Priest
For each talent point spent in the Discipline tree, the priest also gets:

• Healing – Improves your healing by X%.
• Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent.
• Absorption – Improves the amount of damage absorbed by spells such as Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.

Frost Death Knight
For each talent point spent in the Frost tree, the death knight also gets:

• Damage – Improves your melee and spell damage by X%.
• Haste – Improves your melee Haste by Y%. This might allow us to remove some of the Haste in the Icy Talons line of talents.
• Runic Power – Improves the rate of runic power generated by abilities. While all death knights want runic power, Frost death knights would generally have more runic power than Blood or Unholy death knights (who would receive a different benefit from their respective trees). An Unholy death knight who sub-specs into Frost would still be able to benefit from this bonus, though because they’re investing fewer talent points, they’d benefit to a smaller degree. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.

A couple other things to note: Currently, we’re not planning to retrofit the Mastery stat onto current level-80 gear when we roll out the stat-system changes prior to Cataclysm’s release. However, Mastery will begin appearing on select quest and dungeon items. You will also gain a small amount of Mastery by wearing gear of your intended armor type (such as plate for paladins). For players with dual specs, when you change between your two chosen specs, the Mastery bonuses and the benefit you receive from the Mastery stat on gear will adjust automatically based on your new spec.

We’ll have more details to share about these and other changes we’re making in Cataclysm in the future, and we’ll do our best to answer your questions about the Mastery system here on the forums. For information on many of the stat changes being made in Cataclysm, please check out our earlier update at –

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425636414&sid=1

Items

• Item – Coliseum 25 Normal Healer Trinket – Now affects all spells instead of just helpful spells.
• Item – Coliseum 25 Heroic Healer Trinket – Now affects all spells instead of just helpful spells.

Icecrown Citadel

• Strength of Wrynn and Hellscream's Warsong now also boost the effect of damage absorption spells.

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Glyphs

• Glyph of Icebound Fortitude now always grants at least 40% damage reduction.

Priest (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Glyphs

• Glyph of Scourge Imprisonment now reduces the cast time of your Shackle Undead by 1 sec. (Up from 0.5 sec)

Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Glyphs

• Glyph of Feint now reduces the energy cost of Feint by 20. (Up from 10)
• Glyph of Expose Armor now increases the duration of Expose Armor by 12 sec. (Up from 10 sec)
• Glyph of Deadly Throw now increases the slowing effect on Deadly Throw by 20%. (Up from 10%)

Warlock

• Dark Pact now has a 100 yards range (up from 30 yards) and ignores the line of sight.

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)

• Dark Pact: This ability no longer requires line-of-sight with the summoned demon, and the range has been increased from 30 yards to 100 yards.

Technical

• Frame Rate: A maximum capacity of 200 frames per second has been added. To disable the frame rate limit, the following line should be added to the Config.wtf file: SET maxFPS "0".