Earth, Wind & Fire (10 Player) Video by Mediocrity
Mediocrity (US-Blackrock) is the 2nd guild in the world to complete Earth, Wind & Fire and they frapsed it! Congratulations to them.
<div align="center">A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity
Quote from: Daelo source=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/19820876298-a-tribute-to-dedicated-insanity.html
Here's the breakdown.
You can use:
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Instance Attunements
Attunements tended to cause more frustration than benefit so we have aimed to put the story parts into optional quests and allow players to have easier access to the dungeons. I don't remember when heading to Onyxia anybody being excited to help someone do the attunement again. (Source)
Amount of tanks needed in a raid
We think we can design better encounters that generally take 1-3 tanks in 25-player content and 1-2 in 10-player content. There will probably be exceptions from time to time, such as the occasional caster tank (Maulgar and Razuvious perhaps).
It's very easy to get burned out on raiding, and we think having fights that all felt the same would contribute to that. That goes as far as comparing raid tiers. We don't want it to be "Here's the Patchwerk fight. Here's the council fight. Oh, interesting, they switched the lots-of-adds fight to position 3 this time." ToC is fairly small as instances go, so you're not going to get the diversity that you do in larger raids. Heck, the Eye of Eternity is one boss with no trash. There is no way to make that a typical fight with a sample size of one.
We want you to approach every fight differently, and that includes shifting people around to different roles. Sometimes you need more healers and sometimes you need less. Sometimes the casters have to handle the adds and sometimes the melee have to be on interrupt duty. Sometimes you need to split the group up. Sometimes your OTs have to go dps since the fight only requires one tank.
It only gets to be a problem, in our minds, if the OT is such a liability on single-tank fights that she gets swapped out for another rogue or whatever. That has happened in the past in the history of WoW. It doesn't seem to be happening too much these days. All of the tanking classes can do much higher damage in a tanking spec with dps gear than they used to be able to do, and there is always dual-spec if that isn't enough for you. (The truth is also that very few fights only ever require a single tank.)
It's awesome so many players are interested in the tanking role, but no, we're never going to promise that every encounter will require 4 tanks. (Source)
Death Knight
Reasons behind the changes to Gnaw's cooldown
Yes. To spin an infamous old phrase of mine, being kited forever isn't fun. However, casters do need to actually be able to cast sometimes.
We don't find the argument that a longer cooldown makes the ability easier to use compelling.
We also don't buy that under-represented specs should be allowed to have frustratingly overpowered abilities. I'm not saying Gnaw falls into this category, but there are a couple of posts above slipping into the "So what, as long as we aren't at 10% of Arena representation balance doesn't matter" camp. (Source)
Hunter
Beast Mastery's popularity
BM is actually more popular than MM among level 80s. BM is also the most popular secondary spec, though maybe it could just be to play Pokemon with Spirit Beasts. (Source)
Rogue
Weapon Swapping with the new 3.2.2 Master Poisoner
There is some theorycrafting that suggests swapping weapons like this will be a net dps increase. It's not a huge dps increase, and the conditions in which the simulation were done were extremely generous.
Short story: we're not convinced ROUGES are really going to be doing this. If they end up doing it, we'll probably take some action because we agree it's a clunky mechanic. In the meanwhile, there are some legit and slightly less clunky opportunities to swap weapons and we'd rather not make those collateral damage if we don't have to. (Source)
Subtlety spec
Now, we do want Subtlety to be more attractive. All of the pure dps classes have a spec that isn't as popular as the others. Mages may be the closest because at least Frost has a viable PvP use, but there are also plenty of mages who want to be able to use Frost in end-game PvE too.
Subtlety (and Frost for that matter) are specs focused around utility. The problem is that players understandably nearly always choose damage over utility for raiding and often choose utility over damage for PvP, unless the damage is really high or the utility just doesn't cut it for some reason.
What we are talking about doing is sharing more of the utility among other specs, or the core class, so that there aren't "utility trees." To do that though, we have to make the way the different specs do damage different enough so that players might choose a play-style preference over highest damage. This is particularly challenging for rogues, who have a history of giving up a preferred spec or play style for one with a sub 1% dps increase.
I think we are closest with the Arcane vs. Fire mage specs at the moment. They play a little differently, which goes beyond just the type of magic damage they do. While Fire might still do the highest damage overall, Arcane is close enough and plays different enough that even competitive players don't feel stupid for playing that spec. There are a lot more Arcane mages out there than I think a lot of players assume.
That is harder with rogues. "I'm the sneaky one" doesn't translate into sustained raid dps. Assassination feels like it emphasizes poisons more and Combat feels like it emphasizes weapons more, so we're a little closer there. Subtelty needs a stronger yet damage-oriented niche.
HaT, sadly, is not a niche. HaT has scaling problems. It's appropriate for a 5-player group, but gets too in larger groups with all of their raid buffs. We don't want HaT to be the one talent that pushes players into Subtlety. (Source)
More...
Mediocrity (US-Blackrock) is the 2nd guild in the world to complete Earth, Wind & Fire and they frapsed it! Congratulations to them.
<div align="center">A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity
Quote from: Daelo source=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/19820876298-a-tribute-to-dedicated-insanity.html
Here's the breakdown.
You can use:
- Any item below item level 245.
- The item level 245 set pieces that drop from 25-player Trial of the Crusader but also appear in the 10-player Tribute Chest.
- Any gear that drops in 10-player Trial of the Crusader or Trial of the Grand Crusader, including item level 245 Trial of the Grand Crusader drops and item level 258 cloaks from the 10-player Tribute Chest
- Any item level 245 items purchased with Badges of Triumph.
- Any item level 245 Bind on Equip item, including crafted pieces.
- Any item level 245 item not included above (primarily Bind on Pickup drops from 25-player Trial of the Crusader, but also notably Valanyr).
- Any item over item level 245 except for the 10-player Tribute cloak.
- Any higher item level loot introduced in future patches (25 player Onyxia 245s, Icecrown loot in the future, etc.)
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Instance Attunements
Attunements tended to cause more frustration than benefit so we have aimed to put the story parts into optional quests and allow players to have easier access to the dungeons. I don't remember when heading to Onyxia anybody being excited to help someone do the attunement again. (Source)
Amount of tanks needed in a raid
We think we can design better encounters that generally take 1-3 tanks in 25-player content and 1-2 in 10-player content. There will probably be exceptions from time to time, such as the occasional caster tank (Maulgar and Razuvious perhaps).
It's very easy to get burned out on raiding, and we think having fights that all felt the same would contribute to that. That goes as far as comparing raid tiers. We don't want it to be "Here's the Patchwerk fight. Here's the council fight. Oh, interesting, they switched the lots-of-adds fight to position 3 this time." ToC is fairly small as instances go, so you're not going to get the diversity that you do in larger raids. Heck, the Eye of Eternity is one boss with no trash. There is no way to make that a typical fight with a sample size of one.
We want you to approach every fight differently, and that includes shifting people around to different roles. Sometimes you need more healers and sometimes you need less. Sometimes the casters have to handle the adds and sometimes the melee have to be on interrupt duty. Sometimes you need to split the group up. Sometimes your OTs have to go dps since the fight only requires one tank.
It only gets to be a problem, in our minds, if the OT is such a liability on single-tank fights that she gets swapped out for another rogue or whatever. That has happened in the past in the history of WoW. It doesn't seem to be happening too much these days. All of the tanking classes can do much higher damage in a tanking spec with dps gear than they used to be able to do, and there is always dual-spec if that isn't enough for you. (The truth is also that very few fights only ever require a single tank.)
It's awesome so many players are interested in the tanking role, but no, we're never going to promise that every encounter will require 4 tanks. (Source)
Reasons behind the changes to Gnaw's cooldown
Yes. To spin an infamous old phrase of mine, being kited forever isn't fun. However, casters do need to actually be able to cast sometimes.
We don't find the argument that a longer cooldown makes the ability easier to use compelling.
We also don't buy that under-represented specs should be allowed to have frustratingly overpowered abilities. I'm not saying Gnaw falls into this category, but there are a couple of posts above slipping into the "So what, as long as we aren't at 10% of Arena representation balance doesn't matter" camp. (Source)
Beast Mastery's popularity
BM is actually more popular than MM among level 80s. BM is also the most popular secondary spec, though maybe it could just be to play Pokemon with Spirit Beasts. (Source)
Weapon Swapping with the new 3.2.2 Master Poisoner
There is some theorycrafting that suggests swapping weapons like this will be a net dps increase. It's not a huge dps increase, and the conditions in which the simulation were done were extremely generous.
Short story: we're not convinced ROUGES are really going to be doing this. If they end up doing it, we'll probably take some action because we agree it's a clunky mechanic. In the meanwhile, there are some legit and slightly less clunky opportunities to swap weapons and we'd rather not make those collateral damage if we don't have to. (Source)
Subtlety spec
Now, we do want Subtlety to be more attractive. All of the pure dps classes have a spec that isn't as popular as the others. Mages may be the closest because at least Frost has a viable PvP use, but there are also plenty of mages who want to be able to use Frost in end-game PvE too.
Subtlety (and Frost for that matter) are specs focused around utility. The problem is that players understandably nearly always choose damage over utility for raiding and often choose utility over damage for PvP, unless the damage is really high or the utility just doesn't cut it for some reason.
What we are talking about doing is sharing more of the utility among other specs, or the core class, so that there aren't "utility trees." To do that though, we have to make the way the different specs do damage different enough so that players might choose a play-style preference over highest damage. This is particularly challenging for rogues, who have a history of giving up a preferred spec or play style for one with a sub 1% dps increase.
I think we are closest with the Arcane vs. Fire mage specs at the moment. They play a little differently, which goes beyond just the type of magic damage they do. While Fire might still do the highest damage overall, Arcane is close enough and plays different enough that even competitive players don't feel stupid for playing that spec. There are a lot more Arcane mages out there than I think a lot of players assume.
That is harder with rogues. "I'm the sneaky one" doesn't translate into sustained raid dps. Assassination feels like it emphasizes poisons more and Combat feels like it emphasizes weapons more, so we're a little closer there. Subtelty needs a stronger yet damage-oriented niche.
HaT, sadly, is not a niche. HaT has scaling problems. It's appropriate for a 5-player group, but gets too in larger groups with all of their raid buffs. We don't want HaT to be the one talent that pushes players into Subtlety. (Source)
More...
