Sept. 9, 2009

Patch 3.2 PTR Build 10433

Ahem, pretty major change.

• The Beast Within now lasts 10 sec (Down from 18 sec) but now also increases all damage you deal by 10% at all time.
• Bestial Wrath now lasts 10 sec. (Down from 18 sec)

Beast Cleave haters rejoice.

I love data-mined patch note day.

It should be no surprise to anyone who has been on these boards for long that we’re trying to chill out abilities that convey offensive and defensive bonuses with the same button press. At the same time, BM damage was a little low and too dependent on the pet. With this change, hopefully, Bestial Wrath becomes more of a defensive ability while taking Beast Within will boost hunter (and just the hunter) damage at all times.

I call it more of a defensive cooldown because it now breaks all CC like a PvP trinket.

Sept. 8, 2009

Recent In-Game Fixes

Mostly relating to the Trial of the Crusade raids but this is of interest.

• Relentless Gladiator ranged weapons damage has been adjusted to the appropriate value for their item level.

Sept. 6, 2009

Might have seemed obvious...

The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems.

In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.

This change is largely for PvE reasons, though we won’t cry at all if melee damage in PvP drops a little as a result.

We’re letting you know now so that this doesn’t feel like a stealth nerf, assuming it goes live. While you might disagree or be frustrated by the change (though I also suspect it won’t come as a surprise to many players), we ask that you try and keep your response to something appropriate for these forums.

In before tears.

There is rarely an ideal time to announce a nerf. In the case of e.g. the Prot paladin healing nerf, we had already decided we were going to fix it and how we were going to fix it so we announced it relatively early. The armor pen decision included more debate. I am sorry if the timing was bad for any of you personally, but we certainly can’t promise that future nerfs or buffs won’t necessitate gear changes.

I wouldn’t focus too much on the issue of using too many of the same kind of gem. There are plenty of situations where that has been the case since BC (though it’s not ideal in a perfect world). Rather the case was that classes that had been using Agi or Str or whatever were now switching almost exclusively to armor pen and being greatly rewarded for it. Gear without armor pen was being passed over. Specs that benefited a lot from armor pen were outstripping specs in the same class. As many other players have concluded, it was just too good.

That said, we don’t think it will be a trash stat if we make this change. If you could beat plate-wearers in PvP before we don’t think that will suddenly flip overnight. We don’t think you’ll feel the need to shard your items with armor pen.

We also think the change is good for both PvE and PvP. My earlier comment was to try and discourage players from thinking their PvE got nerfed for PvP reasons, though that absolutely happens sometimes when we can’t avoid it. Some players have been concerned about the power of melee classes in Arenas. While this change alone isn’t likely to sway their opinions, chilling out melee damage in PvP probably isn’t a bad thing.

Yes, armor pen is gone in Cataclysm, at least as a rating on gear. Until then we want it to be a good stat but not one that trumps every other gear consideration.

GC: stop messing with us. While making your “exciting” changes to this game, you’ve managed to frustrate many with all your tweaks, requiring re-gemming and re-gearing to stay competitive.

There are two basic strategies for balancing the game. One is that we just let things go until major content patches (or even expansions). The other is we step in and make adjustments when we feel it’s appropriate. We tried the first way for a long time, but it was fairly frustrating for classes who were behind or had other issues knowing that they would be that way for months or longer. We’ve been trying the other way more lately — making pretty rapid adjustments, though not always as rapid as some players would like. However there is a consequence that sometimes you’ll get nerfed even as other classes get buffed, or you’ll have to rethink your gear when some stat becomes better than something else. It’s a two-way street. Now, we don’t want it to feel like a roller coaster or feel arbitrary in any way. But we also don’t want broken things to just endure, and everyone here would agree there is more we can fix.

We’re not trying to prevent having a “best stat for me.” To some extent, that’s unavoidable. But if the best stat isn’t far above the second best stat, then gearing is a decision beyond just “take the thing with the best stat.” While there may still be a best in slot item, those are rarely trivial to obtain and in the meantime you might have to actually consider the drops you do get.

Some of you are saying you’ll never touch armor pen again, which I find questionable, but we’ll see. Some of you are saying you’ll stack it even more to get as close to the cap as you can. But there is a point at which you are giving up too many other stats just to benefit from armor pen. Not many people really wanted it when it was at the original LK value (we’ll call that 100%) so there has to be a sweet spot between that and the 3.2 value of 125%.

One valid point many players have mentioned is that stats that cap, say hit, just keep getting a more and more generous allotment of rating on higher gear even though players don’t necessarily need more as they face tougher foes. That is a design flaw with the system, though not necessarily an easy one to fix with these kinds of number tweaks.

Sept. 4, 2009

Faction Action

So the faction change service is now live in the US (I actually was all pro for this pre-Cataclysm announcement, was trying to convince my guild to go Horde). For any and all of your questions about this service, Blizzard has a nice FAQ write-up that should quench your thirst for knowledge about it.

Aug. 28, 2009

On the mend

So, I’m finally recovered from whatever it was I caught at Blizzcon (or on the plane to Blizzcon, or in the airport, waiting for the plane to Blizzcon, take your pick) and have managed to organize my notes and get them posted. Do feel free to ask me any questions you might have regarding my write-up and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Now that that’s out of the way – no, I haven’t been ignoring PTR. Been sick, remember? Time to bring us back up to date with the latest Hunter changes there.

• Hunter Tier-9 2-Piece Bonus: Critical damage from Serpent Sting will now work properly with the Mortal Shots and Expose Weakness talents.
• Master’s Call: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Infected Wounds, Frostfire Bolt and Slow.
• Trap Mastery: Tooltip now states the correct amount of snakes summoned.

And, what would a news update be without a little blue.

Not surprisingly, there was probably a riot somewhere when Shadowmourne showed up on the big screen with the comment “Hunter Weapon”. Even I could tell it was a joke (about it being a hunter weapon, not Shadowmourne itself).

Anyone capable of using a two-handed axe can use Shadowmourne. The stat allocation may not benefit hunters or shamans as much as warriors, DKs or paladins.

Is the removal of some stats on gear for Cataclysm “dumbing down” the game too much?

What we were finding is that in many cases things had just become so complicated that players were not making intelligent decisions based on their knowledge of how various stats benefited them. That sounds like what you wanted to have happened, but it really wasn’t. Instead players would pull up a BiS list, or plug the item into a spreadsheet. If the answer was “upgrade” they equipped the item. We could pretty much just give the items a name and art and make all the stats not displayed.

If you were one of those players who picked up a piece and understood how armor pen vs. attack power benefited you or whether defense was still worth collecting after you had hit crit immunity, then you were in the minority. Hopefully we can get back to a system where eyeballing an item’s stats has some chance of being right.

This is not a “catering to the casuals” issue. This is an issue that even some of our most educated and math-savy players could not make gear decisions without the help of external tools. We’re much less concerned about more casual players because the specific choice of upgrade will mean less for them (skill outweighs the contribution of stats for all but the absolute best players) and they often choose pieces based on things like art over stats.

I’m talking about very hardcore raiders who no longer could eyeball a piece of gear with any degree of authority. I might believe that some very few of you are so proficient with the math as to be able to eyeball the stats, but I think you are vastly overestimating the number of players who can or do. Remember, the formula to convert armor penetration into damage was so complicated that we had to take the unusual step of actually spelling out how it was calculated.

With this change will you still have to make hard choices about upgrading? Absolutely. Will there still be quasi-religious debates about which neck is best in slot for a given spec? Of course. Will you still need to understand the mechanics to make the best choice for your character? We think so. One of our overall design philosophies for WoW (and Blizzard) is to be simple but have a lot of depth. Some people mistake needless complexity for depth.

Meanwhile, we think there is a lot of benefit of getting rid of problematic stats like defense and accomplishing things like letting casters improve by focusing on throughput over mana pool.

The Mature Black Dragon Sinew will still be available (somehow) for people who are working on or want to work on Rhok’delar in the future.

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