The weeks starts slowly because it's pretty hard to connect to the PTR these days, hopefully we will see a new PTR build very soon to fix the current issues.
Is Patch 3.3.3 going live this week?
Not a chance. The last 2 ptr builds were fairly unstable and Blizzard would never risk pushing it live this week, especially with some of the developers and lead developers attending the GDC in San Francisco this week.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Healing and Mana Efficiency in Cataclysm
If you use your efficient heal 100% of the time, then sometimes people will die for want of a quick or big heal. If you use your quick or big heal 100% of the time, then sometimes you will run out of mana. If you use the right heal for the job, you will be awesome and get fat purps.
[...] We want the choice that downranking provided (don't use a big heal when a small one will do) without all the problems of gaming the coefficients of the lower level spells.
[...] Prior to LK, healers wouldn't use their quick / big heal every GCD. They would even stop heals to avoid wasting mana. We're not really trying to bring back cancel macros in a big way, but we would like for the best healers to be the ones who know when to use the right spell at the right time. (Source)
Tanking Threat
I would be very curious to see those numbers. You're making a jump from "Sometimes AE pull off of me" to "AE will always pull off of me," and that's just not what we're seeing. I totally buy that a warrior may work harder to generate as much, or less, AE threat as a paladin. We've acknowledged that is a problem. But that is the comparison I would make, not the comparison between "Sometimes I have to do stuff to maintain threat" and "Under no circumstances should I ever have threat problems."
It isn't the goal that dps can never pull off of you under any situation. If that was the goal, we're wasting an awful lot of the game space on all of these +threat and -threat talents and abilities, when we could just institute a rule that mobs will never retarget off of their initial target (which would hopefully be the tank). I don't think that would make tanking more fun, though it would definitely make it easier.
The threat-related goals still remain:
1) All -- Get threat to scale better at higher dps levels.
2) Paladin -- Nerf the threat capacity of HoR and SoC.
3) Druid -- Something to do on AE packs besides Swipe.
4) DK -- More burst threat, which the Icy Touch change should accomplish.
5) Warrior -- As I've said, we're pretty happy with, minus points 1 and 2 above.
6) I'll add that if taunts retain the ability to miss at all, it should be something you can gear your way out of. It's also possible we'll just make them always hit. (Source)
The MMO Report
It's monday and the MMO Report is always a nice way to start the week!
Comics
Dark Legacy Comic #228 and Teh Gladiators #116 are out.
More...
Is Patch 3.3.3 going live this week?
Not a chance. The last 2 ptr builds were fairly unstable and Blizzard would never risk pushing it live this week, especially with some of the developers and lead developers attending the GDC in San Francisco this week.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Healing and Mana Efficiency in Cataclysm
If you use your efficient heal 100% of the time, then sometimes people will die for want of a quick or big heal. If you use your quick or big heal 100% of the time, then sometimes you will run out of mana. If you use the right heal for the job, you will be awesome and get fat purps.
[...] We want the choice that downranking provided (don't use a big heal when a small one will do) without all the problems of gaming the coefficients of the lower level spells.
[...] Prior to LK, healers wouldn't use their quick / big heal every GCD. They would even stop heals to avoid wasting mana. We're not really trying to bring back cancel macros in a big way, but we would like for the best healers to be the ones who know when to use the right spell at the right time. (Source)
Tanking Threat
I would be very curious to see those numbers. You're making a jump from "Sometimes AE pull off of me" to "AE will always pull off of me," and that's just not what we're seeing. I totally buy that a warrior may work harder to generate as much, or less, AE threat as a paladin. We've acknowledged that is a problem. But that is the comparison I would make, not the comparison between "Sometimes I have to do stuff to maintain threat" and "Under no circumstances should I ever have threat problems."
It isn't the goal that dps can never pull off of you under any situation. If that was the goal, we're wasting an awful lot of the game space on all of these +threat and -threat talents and abilities, when we could just institute a rule that mobs will never retarget off of their initial target (which would hopefully be the tank). I don't think that would make tanking more fun, though it would definitely make it easier.
The threat-related goals still remain:
1) All -- Get threat to scale better at higher dps levels.
2) Paladin -- Nerf the threat capacity of HoR and SoC.
3) Druid -- Something to do on AE packs besides Swipe.
4) DK -- More burst threat, which the Icy Touch change should accomplish.
5) Warrior -- As I've said, we're pretty happy with, minus points 1 and 2 above.
6) I'll add that if taunts retain the ability to miss at all, it should be something you can gear your way out of. It's also possible we'll just make them always hit. (Source)
The MMO Report
It's monday and the MMO Report is always a nice way to start the week!
Comics
Dark Legacy Comic #228 and Teh Gladiators #116 are out.
More...
Im not puttin down the 1 button spammers, chain heal isnt always efficient when the raid cant stack up and such.
