Sha of Fear Video, Q2 Earnings Call, Beta Class Balance, Blue Posts, Blizzard News

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Terrace of Endless Spring: Sha of Fear
The Sha of Fear is the final boss in Terrace of Endless Spring, which requires you to complete Heart of Fear before entering.





Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Terrace of Endless Spring
Straddling the mountain range between the Jade Forest and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, the Terrace of Endless Spring has been a sacred refuge for millennia. Its peaceful fountains are said to have the power to heal and rejuvenate, but when the Sha of Fear attacked, many of the complex's guardians turned on each other in fits of terror.

Achievements

  • Cutting Edge: Sha of Fear - Defeat the Sha of Fear in Terrace of Endless Spring on Heroic difficulty, with the Ritual of Purification inactive or disabled.
  • Heroic: Sha of Fear - Defeat the Sha of Fear in Terrace of Endless Spring on Heroic difficulty. Reward: the Fearless
  • The Mind-Killer - Defeat the Sha of Fear in Terrace of Endless Spring on Normal or Heroic difficulty without any raid members being feared by Dread Spray or Breath of Fear.

Sha of Fear

  • The Terrace of Endless Spring - The Sha of Fear looms atop the Terrace, attempting to consume the pure light emanating from its center.
    • Pure Light - A narrow column of uncorrupted light still projects skyward from the center of the terrace. When a player stands in this light it bends, forming a protective wall that extends back from this Champion of the Light in a 'V' shape. This attracts the attention of the Sha of Fear, who fixates on the Champion.
      • Wall of Light - The Champion and other players standing within the wall of light take 10% reduced damage from all sources. The wall also deflects the Sha's Breath of Fear attack.
    • Breath of Fear - The Sha of Fear unleashes a horrible breath attack, inflicting 255,000 Shadow damage to all enemies over 1.5 sec. Afflicted enemies are also feared for 5 sec. Players standing behind the Wall of Light are unaffected.
    • Eerie Skull - The Sha throws a skull at a player's location, inflicting 40,000 Shadow damage to enemies within 0 yards of the impact point.
    • Ominous Cackle - The Sha cackles ominously and transports a group of players to one of the outer shrines to battle a former guardian of the terrace.
    • Terror Spawn - The Sha periodically summons a pair of Terror Spawns to attack players. A bulwark of dark energy protecting each Terror Spawn deflects spells and attacks that strike the front of the creature.
      • Penetrating Bolt - The Terror Spawn hurls a bolt of Sha energy at a player's location, inflicting 60,000 Shadow damage to enemies within 0 yards of the impact point. Affected enemies take 25% increased Shadow damage for 15 sec.
    • Reaching Attack - The Sha strikes at a distant target, inflicting 100% of weapon damage as Shadow and increasing Shadow damage taken by 20% for 12 sec. The Sha uses this ability when no targets are in melee range.
    • Lei's Hope - The light in the terrace seems to glow more brightly after players force the Sha to retreat to the Dread Expanse. Attack and casting speeds are increased by 20% within the Terrace of Endless Spring on subsequent attempts.
  • The Outer Shrines - The group of players transported by Ominous Cackle must defeat one of three Sha possessed crossbowmen. The former terrace guardians Yang Guoshi, Cheng Kang, and Jinlun Kun attack the players.
    • Shoot - The caster shoots at the target, inflicting 75% weapon damage as Physical.
    • magic.png
      Dread Spray - The caster rapidly fires sprays of Dread Bolts in specific directions for 8 sec. The caster gains immunity to taunt for the duration. Each spray of Dread Bolts fires in a cone in front of the caster, inflicting 75% of weapon damage as Shadow and afflicting the target for 8 sec. At 2 stacks, the Dread Spray fears the target for 2.5 sec.
    • Death Blossom - The caster spins in a circle, unleashing a hail of bolts in all directions for 6 sec. Each bolt that strikes an enemy inflicts 25,000 Physical damage.
    • Sha Globe - Globes of Sha energy are knocked out of the possessed crossbowman as he loses health. Touching a globe will consume it, inflicting 10,000 Shadow damage but refilling the player's primary resource. If not consumed within 8 sec the globe will return to the bowman, healing him for 8% of his maximum health.
    • Fearless - Defeating any of the possessed crossbowmen allows the group to return to the central terrace and grants them 60% increased damage and healing, 60% increased movement speed, and immunity to Fear effects for 30 sec.
  • heroic.png
    The Dread Expanse - On heroic difficulty the Sha of Fear retreats to the Dread Expanse at low remaining health, dragging players along with him. This watery wasteland is a place of the Sha's making where he has access to a new set of abilities.
    • Fading Light - The last glimmers of light from the terrace heal players as they are extinguished, restoring 90% health and mana over 6 sec. In addition, all player cooldowns are reset.
    • Pure Light - The uncorrupted light from the terrace binds itself to the current champion and takes on a new form. It grows stronger, granting the champion immunity to fear and horror effects and reduces their damage taken by 25%.
      • Transfer Light - The champion can use this ability to move the Pure Light to a targeted friendly player.
    • Implacable Strike - The Sha unleashes an Implacable Strike in the direction of his current target that inflicts 700,000 damage to enemies up to 0 yards away.
      • Naked and Afraid - The Sha strips the gear from his current target before performing Implacable Strike, reducing the target's armor and chance to dodge by 100% for 40 sec.
    • Waterspout - The Sha agitates the water under several players, creating a series of waterspouts. Each waterspout takes 1.5 sec. to form and explode, inflicting 125,000 Frost damage to enemies within 2 yds.
    • Huddle in Terror - The Sha terrifies several players, causing them to cower in fear and inflicting 80,000 Shadow damage every 1 sec. for 15 sec.
    • Submerge - The Sha disappears below the surface of the Dread Expanse for a short time, then emerges under a random player and inflicts 600,000 Frost damage to enemies within 10 yds. The Sha summons a Dread Spawn at his location every time he submerges.
    • Dread Spawn - This creature fixates on the current champion of the light. If a new player becomes the champion the Dread Spawn changes targets.
      • Sha Spine - The Dread Spawn emits Sha Spines. Each spine inflicts 97,500 Shadow damage to a random player.
      • Eternal Darkness - The Dread Spawn kills his current target when he reaches melee range.
      • Gathering Speed - The Dread Spawn periodically gains 100% movement speed. This effect can stack up to 3 times, but is reset when a new Champion of the Light is chosen.






Sha of Fear Loot
Keep in mind that this loot table may not be complete or final.

LevelTypeSlotName
496JunkHelm of the Shadowy Vanquisher
496JunkHelm of the Shadowy Conqueror
496JunkHelm of the Shadowy Protector
509JunkHelm of the Shadowy Vanquisher
509JunkHelm of the Shadowy Conqueror
509JunkHelm of the Shadowy Protector
483JunkHelm of the Shadowy Vanquisher
483JunkHelm of the Shadowy Conqueror
483JunkHelm of the Shadowy Protector
496MiscellaneousSpell DPSTrinketEssence of Terror
483MiscellaneousSpell DPSTrinketEssence of Terror
509MiscellaneousSpell DPSTrinketEssence of Terror
496ClothSpell DPSLegsDreadwoven Leggings of Failure
483ClothSpell DPSLegsDreadwoven Leggings of Failure
509ClothSpell DPSLegsDreadwoven Leggings of Failure
496Two-handed AxeMeleeTwo HandShin'ka, Execution of Dominion
483Two-handed AxeMeleeTwo HandShin'ka, Execution of Dominion
509Two-handed AxeMeleeTwo HandShin'ka, Execution of Dominion
496One-handed SwordMeleeOne HandKilrak, Jaws of Terror
483One-handed SwordMeleeOne HandKilrak, Jaws of Terror
509One-handed SwordMeleeOne HandKilrak, Jaws of Terror


Activision Blizzard Q2 2012 Conference Call on August 2
The Q2 2012 Earnings call will take place on August 2, at 1:30 PM PST, which brings us an update on subscriber numbers for the second quarter of 2012. Keep in mind last call informed us that no subscribers were lost in Q1, but 1.8 million were lost in 2011. This time around we have Diablo 3 and a long time without new content that may have pulled away some players.


  • Q1 2011 - 600,000 subscribers lost
  • Q2 2011 - 300,000 subscribers lost
  • Q3 2011 - 800,000 subscribers lost
  • Q4 2011 - 100,000 subscribers lost.
  • Q1 2012 - 0 subscribers lost.
  • Q2 2012 - ???



Theramore Lore

Originally Posted by Dave Kosak (Blue Tracker)
Jaina's response to Theramore will be explored in Christie Golden's upcoming novel, and later in the Mists patch cycle. Neutral? Pah!

I don't know, man. It seems pretty bleak for the Alliance again.
It's supposed to - Theramore is a dark moment. The Alliance is being challenged, and will respond - stronger than ever!

I'd rather not be forced to read a book to get a story from a game...
Totally agree, that's why we pushed to get Theramore in-game as a playable event. But to get really inside a character's head - emotions, motivations, love story - well, that's good territory for novels to explore!




Beta Class Balance Analysis

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
ideathknights.gif
Death Knight (Forums)
Ghostcrawler, you probably have the best resources to do this: Can test Gargoyle with extreme levels of haste (100-200%?) just to see if he's getting GCD capped. If not it's an AI issue severely limiting his dps time.
It’s not a matter of getting GCD capped. Even with extreme levels of haste, he isn't capped. There’s some delay between his casts just because the AI can be slow about starting the next cast after one finishes; it doesn’t use spell queuing like players do. Regardless, the Gargoyle is tuned around this effect on his casting speed, and also tuned around him not benefitting from Mastery. Your Gargoyle being 3% of your total damage isn’t an issue to us; it’s a cooldown to help you stack extra damage during important moments, and it does that.

Currently unholy death knights are facing an issue regarding gnaw and leap in pvp. Unholy death knights are the only pet owning spec to have to toggle their pets resource in pvp. The ghouls main ability claw currently drains the ghoul of all his energy making it impossible to case gnaw and leap because of their energy cost.
This is fixed for the build after next. The Ghoul will only autocast Claw it if it has at least 60 energy, so that it reserves enough for Gnaw and Leap.

The amount of downtime Blood dks have to deal with in beta, is way too much, and it isn't fun at all. In some setups it is almost double of that what it is on live.
We understand that Blood's rotation feels really different because of the 1 sec GCD. We're not sure yet what we want to do about that, if anything. The wrong solution, we feel, is to give Blood more buttons to hit, because fundamentally we like the rotation in terms of rune usage and decision points. We could give Blood a 1.5 GCD and Frost and Unholy a 1 sec GCD (or tie it to presence or something).

Another issue I'd like to bring up using these sims is that, Blood dks still feel like we are lacking behind dps wise (and threat, in terms of ST, compared to other tanks, pre execute phase.), especially in lower levels of gear.
We're not seeing that. At lower gear levels, monks and DK tank DPS is slightly high compared to paladin, warrior and druid. At higher gear levels, druid tanks are slightly high. That's all within the level that we can tweak by ship. If you have specific numbers, feel free to share them.

ipaladins.gif
Paladin (Forums)
The ret paladin Glyph of Mass Exorcism also increases the Exorcism cooldown by 5 seconds. The cooldown increase is not in the tooltip. Is this intended behavior?
Nope. Fixed for next build.

ipriests.gif
Priest (Forums)
Is this intended or will we see a cooldown on SW:I in an upcoming patch?
It's intended. Mostly you're just benefiting from multi-dotting.

iwarlocks.gif
Warlock (Forums)
Currently the Shivarra doesn't seem to actually do any off hand swings, but I'm assuming this is a known bug that will be fixed. More importantly, there seem to be weird things going on with the AP scaling of these dual-wielding pets. Both the Shivarra and the Wrathguard appear to get the exact same amount of AP per owner SP (2.9), which is odd given that the Succubus and the Felguard get such different amounts (1.67 and 3.5, respectively). Is this intended? Also, is it intended that the dual-wielders have a different base weapon damage than all the other warlock pets?
All of these things are correct and intended (though coefficients like that may chance as our tuning progresses). The Shivarra will get her offhand swings in the beta build after next.

In this last build, Fel Energy has stoped regenerating when the pet is out of combat, is this an intended change?
No.




Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Scenario Rewards
We will be dropping a grab bag at the end of every scenario. The bag has a chance at a dungeon quality blue (for your class) along with gold. This should be in our next push. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Scenarios on Beta!
We just lit up Greenstone Village on the beta server. We are very interested in your feedback so please check it out and then post your thoughts in this thread!

Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PvE trinkets in PvP, A comprehensive review
I will just jump in here and say that is an excellent post Daisyx, I can see that this must have taken you a lot of time and effort to construct. As you can see in the difference between season 11 and 12, we have already begun adding additional stats to the PvP trinkets. This will hopefully begin making them more appealing comparatively to the PvE trinkets.

Actually the only ''design'' I want to limit are:
1. No more ''damage on proc'' trinkets
2. No more ''haste on use or on proc trinkets''

Understandable, however as has already been pointed out, a lot of people find these trinket procs fun and would find it quite saddening to see them go. What's your feedback for alternative procs that could replace these?

I believe that my solution of a an on use resilience buff would be desirable in PvP, good for the game and have little negative side effects. It increases the skill cap, it could counter some of the burst and it would make the game slower.
I personally like this, it is something that would help protect you from burst and if it instead was an on use that added both PvP power and defense it could be instead used to either counter burst or be utilised to create your own :O Would create some great optional choice to the trinket on how it can be used.

You can make damage trinkets apply a dot, and they should have a chance to be activated when cc is cast.
This I am not so much a fan of. On top of what was already said by Daisyx, DoTcleave teams or similar using this (This is all thinking theoretical) would have an additional DoT that they can apply across your whole team, which could be a large sum of additional damage.

Guys, try to thread Jito with some respect
This as well, and it applies for everyone. A differing perspective is not trolling and you should all should treat each others opinions with respect. This is a great thread so far, so keep up the wonderful feedback. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Content Consumption Speed and Difficulty
Casual players can't expect to get everything spoon feeded just because they pay for it tbh.
Yet you can demand content that is up to your skill level? Why? I mean, they have as much right to demand content fit to their skill level as you have to demand content at your skill level.

If one argument is valid, there's no reasonable way to say the other argument isn't just as valid (if you do, then you're basically arguing that you are more valuable than other players).

Well, if he wants to do crippled boss fights in LFR, his business, but talking about it as an alternative to raiding, no. If I have no time to raid, I quit, simple as that.
That is your choice, but you can't expect nor force other people to just quit if they don't have what you consider enough time to raid.

My logic might not be 100% accurate but I believe Blizzard's is a faulty one. They say LFR is a great tool, this assumpion is purely based on fact how many people do it each week, almost everybody was doing it at launch, right? They know how many do that, but they do not know their incentives. Who knows, maybe 90% playerbase hate it and do it only for VP, who knows we will never know, right? Because in 7 years in a game we have been given no in-game feedback what we like/dislike, some sort of enquiry sheet.
Do you really think 90% of players do something they hate? I mean, 99% of the statistics on the Internet are usually made up.

So now you can see my problem with statement that LFR is a great success because almost everybody is doing it, but somehow they always forget to mention that running LFR was a must for raiders if they wanted to stay competitive and for the non-raiders it is the most effective VP grind. Sure there are alternatives to VP grind, but this one is the most effective.
It wasn't a must for raiders. Sure, the most hardcore players ran it until they could get the set bonuses completed. But you need to keep in mind that these players are so dedicated and focused on the race to be the first in the world. That they'll literally take whatever they can to get an edge over their competitors.

And very often, by putting means that aren't just available to pretty much any other guild, even those that are almost as hardcore as them.

The fact that my guild, who is casual as !@#$, breezed through normals on the first day of Dragon Soul release, should be proof that it is indeed way too easy.
Dragon Soul cleared on the first day of release is casual?

I'm checking WoWprogress (since it's a widely accepted site in the community to measure raid progression), out of curiosity, and here's what I've gathered:
4 guilds cleared Dragon Soul in the US on release day (and 101 on the day after)
225 cleared Dragon Soul on EU on release day.
14 guilds cleared Dragon Soul in TW on release day.
66 guilds cleared Dragon Soul on KR on release day.

Which amounts to a total of 410 guilds in the world (counting those 101 on the US that did it on the day after, otherwise, 309) clearing the raid on the respective release days of their regions. If that's casual (considering WoWprogress is tracking, by now, close to 60000 guilds), then I believe we have a serious issue measuring effort, dedication, and success, in the community.

One of the things that frustrate me about you, Draztal, and probably about Blizzard as a whole, is how you're not remotely sympathetic to people who have a different idea of what is good than what Blizzard's current design direction is.
I am sympathetic. And through 81 pages of discussion, I've tried to join a discussion with those players. There're few things that have really been made clear during this thread; and many of my questions and points have either been ignored or discarded, while the thread has mostly kept going on in their reasoning about why things should go in a different direction even when questioned about how things might look from a different perspective.

You could try to understand our points, yet instead you attempt to undermine us at every turn, twisting around our arguments to make it sound like we're a bunch of arrogant jerks who are only interested in being special snowflakes at the expense of other players.
Not at all, but if you want to argue something, there's got to be more flesh to it than "bring TBC back" or "because 1% of raiders seeing the last boss is good" or "because casual players don't deserve what we do".

And as I said a while ago, the only way to have a proper discussion is to actually see both sides of the coin. Some of the people posting here just refuse to even consider the fact that there's another side of the coin (or if they do, just to demean them).

But to see Wolfstabzor the worgen rogue in BoE PvP gear killing the LFR deathwing doesnt motivate me to kill DW 25 HC AT ALL.
Why? He's killing LFR Deathwing. While you're aiming to kill Deathwing on its hardest incarnation available.

So you saying "Look, I killed Heroic Deathwing! I'm good at this game!!" still stands on its own as something remarkable.

I've been against LFG and LFR since release and I think you should consider removing this.
Why would we remove something that is popular and that our developers have mentioned several times in the past that they are very happy with their popularity? This "let's punish everyone else because I don't like it" is not really an argument.

By this reasoning, let's go back to MUDs, because those were the true ways of a hardcore player, where you would even end up drawing the dungeon on paper because you weren't sure of where your character was. And you know what? That'll be good for the gamers because we just got it too easy in the 90s with all those 2D graphics and maps.

Yet I (and others) have done exactly that. Many of us have tried to explain that for us, it is not about being better than "the rest", it is about a sense of accomplishment - whether that takes the form of bosses you haven't seen before in a watered down difficulty, unique-looking equipment as a reward, "graduation" into the next tier of content or simply progression at our own pace instead of the pace Blizzard artificially dictates for us. You don't tend to answer these posts at all, and if you do it is to point out how wrong we are to believe such.
I don't believe you're wrong. But all those arguments have something in common: exclusivity. And that's fine. I mean, it's a valid point and it's feedback I can pass to the developers.
However, at the end of the day, those posts still ignore what I've asked. Why is it such a big deal that other players, in a much longer amount of time, can get what you're getting now?

Why those players that can't devote as much time, or don't have as much skill as you, should be excluded of experiencing content? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

What should Blizzard learn from the new MMOs?
Again, one has to weigh up the benefits of spending time updating animations versus creating new content. Many would like to see more to do at level cap as the OP pointed out.

With more dynamic, player driven content in the game there would be a lot more to do at the level cap instead of just raiding or running arenas and rated BG's and, better still, there would be far less of a chance to burn yourself out. After all, if you have a wider choice of content to play through as you please, rather than a single raid with three difficulty levels, you'll grow tired of it far less quickly.
Remember you'll have scenarios to look forward to in Mists, not to mention the Challenge Modes. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Pet Collection Achievements
We have updated the chain of collection achievements with two new entries at 250 and 400. Both of these entries have new, unique pet rewards with custom idle animations. (Feral Vermling and the Jade Tentacle)

In addition, we will now count pets caught via the Pet Battle system towards these achievements. Keep in mind that the pets caught must be unique, we won't count catching the same pet twice. (Official Forums)

RIP "Judgement"
We considered : Glyph of Judgement -- Changes the name of your Judgement [sic] spells to use their older name.

Sadly, cheekiness like that doesn't translate well into languages other than English.(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

iwarriors.gif
Warrior (Forums)
Warrior Issues
One thing we are going to try is increasing the rage from autoattacks somewhat, but not all the way back to 5. Something like 3 or 3.5 might be the right ballpark, but then lowering the rage gained from Enrage.

To expand upon that, we wanted Enrage to feel exciting (insofar as any proc that happens routinely can feel exciting) and flood the warrior with rage. We also wanted rage to feel a little unpredictable, because that's what drives things like Heroic Strike use. With very predictable rage income, the resource feels too much like energy, and Heroic Strike doesn't get much use.

However, I think the problem we ran into was that rage income while Enraged was too high, which meant rage income when not enraged had to be too low to compensate. The bursts of rage feeling I described above are important, but the base rotation has to feel good as well! We're going to try some different things, such as Enrage granting flat 10 rage, but also increasing damage dealt by 5 or 10% while Enraged. Flat rage gain from Enrage will also help with scaling, because then crit and haste won't work in such synergy to increase rage generation at high gear levels.

We want crit and haste to be valuable of course, but we're trying to break the (exhausting) cycle where warriors are weak with bad gear and then so powerful with good gear that we have to nerf them. But we're also trying to keep some rage gain scaling with gear because that feels fun and helps the resource feeling unique. (Can you say overconstrained design challenge?)

I know I am tossing around a lot of rough ideas, and we will need to try a few internally before we release a new design into the wild. Remember the goal: we're not trying to nerf warriors. We're trying to make the resource something you interact with rather than something you ignore. We don't want warriors to be a cooldown-driven class. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)




Blizzard Games News
Power of Aspects gets a little bit stronger, Battle Pets have their own website, Blizzard announces BattleNet World Championship, and an epic Diamond Gate gets built in Minecraft; all in this weeks Blizzard news.






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