Patch 3.2.2 is not this week
I get that question a lot, Patch 3.2.2 is obviously not this week. US realms do not even have a maintenance scheduled for today actually.
WoW Cataclysm Features - The Abyssal Maw
Quote from: Blizzard source=http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/features/abyssalmaw.html
Azeroth's native elementals wreaked havoc across the world while they were under the influence of the Old Gods.
To keep Azeroth safe from these threats, the titans imprisoned the Old Gods underground and banished the savage elementals to the titan-constructed Elemental Plane, a secure dominion where the elementals could dwell without harming Azeroth.
Four domains were created within this primordial realm to serve as ideal environments for each type of elemental. For ages since, the elementals of air, water, earth, and fire have engaged in endless strife with each other, waging titanic battles in the confines of their realm. One of the Elemental Plane's domains, a vast ocean known as the Abyssal Maw, is home to the water elementals. Legend says that Neptulon the Tidehunter, the powerful being who rules over the aquatic realm, possesses a potent weapon that allows its owner to control the very seas of Azeroth. Thus far, the artifact has remained secure inside the water elementals' domain... but that will soon change.
Within Deepholm, the domain of the earth elementals, the malefic Dragon Aspect Deathwing is on the verge of executing a catastrophic act: to burst forth from the Elemental Plane into Azeroth. Doing so will ravage the surface of the world and breach the barrier that separates Azeroth from the elementals' realm. Whether Neptulon and his subjects have entered into an alliance with Deathwing remains unknown. Regardless, if Deathwing's actions create an opening into the Abyssal Maw, nefarious and honorable factions alike will seek out the fabled weapon carried by Neptulon. Whoever secures the artifact will have control over the world's seas, a power that perhaps no one, not even members of the Horde or the Alliance, should possess.
Arena Titles Issue
Quote from: Nethaera source=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/11/19675818406-arena-title-issue.html
Characters who transferred during the week between title awards and re-awards will be receiving their corrected titles during the next regularly scheduled maintenance.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Runescroll of Brilliance removed from 3.2.2 PTRs
We felt that the near-mandatory buffs were Fort, Kings and perhaps Gift. It may be very hard to do say a 10-player heroic without those buffs.
Once you get into Arcane Int then you have to start thinking about Spirit and Shadow Protection and whatever. We didn't want to create a dozen or more new scrolls. And honestly, we'd rather you have players than scrolls. But we recognize that you don't always have that much flexibility in a 10-player run. (Source)
Reasons behind the "killing" of 2v2 Arenas
One, the 2s comp tended to reward sticking the most abilities into one class. Really well-rounded classes with lots of offense and defense tended to dominate simply because you have fewer people in which to package everything you need.
Two, there has to be a point at which you balance healers. If a healer can keep themselves and one other player alive, then they are hopeless in 3s. If a healer can keep themselves and two other players alive, then they are overpowered in 2s. (By the time you get to 5s, we think other factors come into play so it matters less that the dps to healer ratio is the same.)
Three, we just think the larger matches are more fun overall and we think we can offer a better game experience by focusing on them. If you just love 2s, well, they're still around. They just don't offer the best rewards so perhaps the players most focused on balance won't obsess with two vs. two balance. (Source)
Avoidance in Cataclysm
We're not ready to talk about it yet. However, keep a couple of things in mind:
Heh. No, we actually did. The problem is we made three changes that undid some of that effort. (These affected all rating and stat inflation, not just tanks.)
1) We added glyphs, which just inflated player power for almost no cost.
2) We improved a lot of talents. For tanks, Prot and Prot became more streamlined, allowing you to get more survivability at much less cost. (Remember when Anticipation was defense?)
3) We jumped the item level more than we originally intended in order to provide a nice jump from blues to Naxx and particularly to offer hard modes in Ulduar and beyond. (Source)
Balancing healing and tank survavibility in PvE
In order to make encounters scary (esp. hard modes) there needs to be a real threat of tanks dying. That threat does not always need to be a threat of dying in one hit obviously. However, any situation that lets tanks not take a lot of damage can make the fights feel very easy or in fact make them very easy -- you can analyze incoming damage and guesstimate whether you're going to live or die. On the other hand, any situation where the tank is at a risk of dying then feels like it is punishing the healers.
(I'll also add that I don't think the solution is just to give tanks so many cooldowns and debuffs that they have ultimate control over whether they live or die -- it's supposed to be a group effort and we want tanks to feel sturdy without feeling too self-sufficient.) (Source)
Is raiding easier in WotLK?
Hmmm. This sounds a bit like elitist chest-thumping, but I'll try not to read between the lines too much. It's hard to talk about a typical hard-core raider, but a lot of them do their progression raiding (25 heroic Coliseum at the moment) on 3-4 nights a week, and spend other nights also doing the 10-player version or even going back to Ulduar to get a second hammer or whatever. I don't know very many progression-oriented players that breeze through the content and then log off.
I'd also put the complexity of fights like Yogg, Mimiron or the Twin Valkyr against any ever offered in the game. If it feels like you aren't struggling to learn these fights as much as you used to, then that's probably true: there are now many sources for videos and strategies that have become a lot more robust and user-friendly, as well as pretty sophisticated UI mods to help you track everything going on. The whole raiding community is just more well-connected than it was in the MC and BWL days. Many casual raiders could name a handful of cutting-edge guilds these days, which just didn't happen 4 years ago.
I don't think the server first folks are beating their heads against the content any less than they used to. What has changed is that the rest of us are able to follow in their footsteps a lot more easily now. Blizzard will definitely take some credit for letting a larger population of our player base to enjoy raiding. But I don't think the cutting edge folks are finding the cutting edge encounters any more trivial. (Source)
Bosses dealing very high damage
The bosses aren't overpowered though, and therein lies part of the problem. They actually get proportionately weaker. Say you dodge a Naxx boss 40% of the time and your mages crit that boss 40% of the time. Now you get to Icecrown and you dodge 60% of the time and the mages crit 60% of the time. This is a boss that is supposed to be much harder, and in fact hits harder and takes more damage, yet your chance to crit him or his chance to hit you has improved in your favor. You crit or avoid a "hard" boss more often than an "easy" boss. Bosses don't scale with gear.
Since we like boss fights to last around say 5 min, because that just feels good, and the boss misses you more often, that means when he does hit he has to hit really, really hard or you'll never really be in danger and the fight will be trivial. This however makes the fights feel really RNG and places the risk of dying on every boss hit (or at ...
More...
I get that question a lot, Patch 3.2.2 is obviously not this week. US realms do not even have a maintenance scheduled for today actually.
WoW Cataclysm Features - The Abyssal Maw
Quote from: Blizzard source=http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/features/abyssalmaw.html
Azeroth's native elementals wreaked havoc across the world while they were under the influence of the Old Gods.
To keep Azeroth safe from these threats, the titans imprisoned the Old Gods underground and banished the savage elementals to the titan-constructed Elemental Plane, a secure dominion where the elementals could dwell without harming Azeroth.
Four domains were created within this primordial realm to serve as ideal environments for each type of elemental. For ages since, the elementals of air, water, earth, and fire have engaged in endless strife with each other, waging titanic battles in the confines of their realm. One of the Elemental Plane's domains, a vast ocean known as the Abyssal Maw, is home to the water elementals. Legend says that Neptulon the Tidehunter, the powerful being who rules over the aquatic realm, possesses a potent weapon that allows its owner to control the very seas of Azeroth. Thus far, the artifact has remained secure inside the water elementals' domain... but that will soon change.
Within Deepholm, the domain of the earth elementals, the malefic Dragon Aspect Deathwing is on the verge of executing a catastrophic act: to burst forth from the Elemental Plane into Azeroth. Doing so will ravage the surface of the world and breach the barrier that separates Azeroth from the elementals' realm. Whether Neptulon and his subjects have entered into an alliance with Deathwing remains unknown. Regardless, if Deathwing's actions create an opening into the Abyssal Maw, nefarious and honorable factions alike will seek out the fabled weapon carried by Neptulon. Whoever secures the artifact will have control over the world's seas, a power that perhaps no one, not even members of the Horde or the Alliance, should possess.
Arena Titles Issue
Quote from: Nethaera source=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/11/19675818406-arena-title-issue.html
Characters who transferred during the week between title awards and re-awards will be receiving their corrected titles during the next regularly scheduled maintenance.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Runescroll of Brilliance removed from 3.2.2 PTRs
We felt that the near-mandatory buffs were Fort, Kings and perhaps Gift. It may be very hard to do say a 10-player heroic without those buffs.
Once you get into Arcane Int then you have to start thinking about Spirit and Shadow Protection and whatever. We didn't want to create a dozen or more new scrolls. And honestly, we'd rather you have players than scrolls. But we recognize that you don't always have that much flexibility in a 10-player run. (Source)
Reasons behind the "killing" of 2v2 Arenas
One, the 2s comp tended to reward sticking the most abilities into one class. Really well-rounded classes with lots of offense and defense tended to dominate simply because you have fewer people in which to package everything you need.
Two, there has to be a point at which you balance healers. If a healer can keep themselves and one other player alive, then they are hopeless in 3s. If a healer can keep themselves and two other players alive, then they are overpowered in 2s. (By the time you get to 5s, we think other factors come into play so it matters less that the dps to healer ratio is the same.)
Three, we just think the larger matches are more fun overall and we think we can offer a better game experience by focusing on them. If you just love 2s, well, they're still around. They just don't offer the best rewards so perhaps the players most focused on balance won't obsess with two vs. two balance. (Source)
Avoidance in Cataclysm
We're not ready to talk about it yet. However, keep a couple of things in mind:
- If your avoidance is 20% in say the second raid tier, then it might be 10% or less when you're running your first heroic at 85. Ugh.
- If on the other hand, your avoidance is closer to 15% at 85, then the diminishing returns going from 15% to 20% are going to be so brutal that players might just give up and use other stats.
- If avoidance is 20% in both the first tier and last tier, then you also have DR problems and in fact don't really feel like you are improving by acquiring more gear at all.
Heh. No, we actually did. The problem is we made three changes that undid some of that effort. (These affected all rating and stat inflation, not just tanks.)
1) We added glyphs, which just inflated player power for almost no cost.
2) We improved a lot of talents. For tanks, Prot and Prot became more streamlined, allowing you to get more survivability at much less cost. (Remember when Anticipation was defense?)
3) We jumped the item level more than we originally intended in order to provide a nice jump from blues to Naxx and particularly to offer hard modes in Ulduar and beyond. (Source)
Balancing healing and tank survavibility in PvE
In order to make encounters scary (esp. hard modes) there needs to be a real threat of tanks dying. That threat does not always need to be a threat of dying in one hit obviously. However, any situation that lets tanks not take a lot of damage can make the fights feel very easy or in fact make them very easy -- you can analyze incoming damage and guesstimate whether you're going to live or die. On the other hand, any situation where the tank is at a risk of dying then feels like it is punishing the healers.
(I'll also add that I don't think the solution is just to give tanks so many cooldowns and debuffs that they have ultimate control over whether they live or die -- it's supposed to be a group effort and we want tanks to feel sturdy without feeling too self-sufficient.) (Source)
Is raiding easier in WotLK?
Hmmm. This sounds a bit like elitist chest-thumping, but I'll try not to read between the lines too much. It's hard to talk about a typical hard-core raider, but a lot of them do their progression raiding (25 heroic Coliseum at the moment) on 3-4 nights a week, and spend other nights also doing the 10-player version or even going back to Ulduar to get a second hammer or whatever. I don't know very many progression-oriented players that breeze through the content and then log off.
I'd also put the complexity of fights like Yogg, Mimiron or the Twin Valkyr against any ever offered in the game. If it feels like you aren't struggling to learn these fights as much as you used to, then that's probably true: there are now many sources for videos and strategies that have become a lot more robust and user-friendly, as well as pretty sophisticated UI mods to help you track everything going on. The whole raiding community is just more well-connected than it was in the MC and BWL days. Many casual raiders could name a handful of cutting-edge guilds these days, which just didn't happen 4 years ago.
I don't think the server first folks are beating their heads against the content any less than they used to. What has changed is that the rest of us are able to follow in their footsteps a lot more easily now. Blizzard will definitely take some credit for letting a larger population of our player base to enjoy raiding. But I don't think the cutting edge folks are finding the cutting edge encounters any more trivial. (Source)
Bosses dealing very high damage
The bosses aren't overpowered though, and therein lies part of the problem. They actually get proportionately weaker. Say you dodge a Naxx boss 40% of the time and your mages crit that boss 40% of the time. Now you get to Icecrown and you dodge 60% of the time and the mages crit 60% of the time. This is a boss that is supposed to be much harder, and in fact hits harder and takes more damage, yet your chance to crit him or his chance to hit you has improved in your favor. You crit or avoid a "hard" boss more often than an "easy" boss. Bosses don't scale with gear.
Since we like boss fights to last around say 5 min, because that just feels good, and the boss misses you more often, that means when he does hit he has to hit really, really hard or you'll never really be in danger and the fight will be trivial. This however makes the fights feel really RNG and places the risk of dying on every boss hit (or at ...
More...