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WoW Class Balance: Hunters

no.spam@gameriot.com (Idejder) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:42:53 -0400

I return!

Firstly, I apologize again for the fact that I have not posted anything in over a month. I have been very busy here in Arizona with classes, and that coupled with the fact some people wanted me to wait to post anymore of these until after 2.2, resulted in the absence. Yet here I am, writing to all of you again about yet another class in WoW: Hunters.

Hunters are a funny class in a few ways. They are the only physical dps range class and on top of that they have a pet. The fact they are ranged means they inherently hate LOS and anything having to do with LOS. This is just part of the class and I really won't address that here, as I think it is a valid part of the game (using LOS to negate a hunter). Their damage, as with other physical dps classes, is very reliant on the weapon they wield. A lot of "weapon damage" abilities are present and this relates them to their warrior or rogue cousins. This does not mean you treat them like physical classes. They are their own sect.

I have a big list of changes, a lot of them a lot of you will not agree on, which is standard for what I am used to. Comment as you wish as always. What I will address is those times when you have your target in LOS you should have the option to burst them harshly and have a great impact in a short time. Sort of like warriors if they are only in melee range for a short time and then kited around.

The pets are another topic of concern. I am going to address them as well as I think they can have a really cool and real place in an arena fight. I really want to see the people's ideas on pets more then anything else. As with the others, a change is listed and then the reason is below in italics.

Will start with some basic skill changes:

Serpent Sting now scales with attack power.
- This is just a basic change to let Serpent Sting be more viable as a damage tool. Currently it is more like a "put on rogues to stop vanish only" skill, which is not really intended. Now do not go crazy with this, I am not saying make the DoT equal to like Warlock DoTs, but just let it scale off of attack power a bit to let it be noticeable in a fight. If nothing else, it is damage that can be done when the target is out of LOS if you get it on them beforehand.
Silencing Shot now is a spell interruption effect and locks out the target's school for 1 second.
- This does not affect PvP much at all except in the rare cases when the silence is resisted, and even then 1 second is nothing. All this will do is allow the skill to be used in PvE as an interrupt just like kick, pummel, or counterspell. A slight buff to PvE hunters? Maybe.
Silencing Shot is now instant travel time
- In my personal opinion this should have happened long ago because it is bound by the global cooldown. The travel time makes it virtually impossible to hit a 1.5 second cast if you are even close to coming off of a global and need to wait even half a second. By making this a "magical arrow that travels instantly" it lets Silencing Shot be a much more useful skill.
Viper sting now drains mana from a shape-shifted druid if applied before shifting occurs (50% of normal rate). Viper sting cannot be applied to a druid in animal form.
- This is to let a druid who shifts out and gets stung to not be immune to the effect just by shifting back. They still get drained, but it is just much less then normal. Not like they cannot just cleanse it anyway, as it is a poison. This change will help a little bit in the hunter vs druid mana fight if the hunter can time it well.
Hunter traps now give the player a targeting circle, thus traps can be "thrown" up to 20 yards away where they appear and after 2 seconds may go off.
- I think this is a really cool and really fun change. This still allows for the "arming" time of traps, but now hunters no longer have to be right in melee range to pull it off. This reduces the risk of relaying a trap and makes all traps much more flexible and better in fights. The only downside is you have to click to target and lay the trap, but I do not think anyone will even think of that when they can start to chuck traps around a map. This is my favorite change out of the list, I really like it.

And now onto the pet changes:

Hunter pets now have the ability "Cleansing Bite". This makes the pet attack a teammate, which dispels one magic effect off them and then does 1 damage to them, but the pet becomes immobile and cannot move, attack, act, or be dismissed for 10 seconds. 1 minute cooldown. X focus cost.
- This is a team-based benefit for bringing a hunter. Every minute he can try to remove one CC effect from a teammate (or himself) as long as he has enough focus (more on that later). Does this make them a lot stronger in arenas? Not a lot, but it helps. It takes the pet out of commission for a bit after, which is a big deal if you want to kill it since he can't react to that. That and the hunter cannot use any other fun abilities the pet might have for that time. This is useful but not game breaking because of the cooldown and the "lockout" time of the pet after it is used. The focus cost is X because I am still debating what is the right cost for such an ability (it should be high).
Hunter Pets can now learn the "Redirect" ability, which makes the pet charge at the targeted teammate and redirect the next debuff that would be applied to that player to the pet instead. 6 second duration. X focus. X second cooldown.
- This skill got its idea from the warrior intervene of course, but instead of damage it absorbs a debuff. The duration is how long the pet will follow next to the target before he leaves, so if no debuff is applied in that time nothing happens. If one is applied, he gains it instead and then returns to his master. If you time it well, you can absorb a mortal strike or a hamstring or a warlock DoT or even a CC ability. This is a very open ended change and I think it would let good hunters show some skill. What I need some help on is A) a focus cost and B) a cooldown. I have several numbers in my head but I cannot decide, so I will see what you all can come up with. And before warlocks complain, your DoTs have no cooldown. Reapply.
Hunter Pets now gain 25% of the hunter's resilience.
- This is just a small change just like the pets before this (warlock class). Allows the pets to gain a small amount of survivability. Not a lot, but enough to matter.

And finally onto some new abilities or effects for hunters:

New Hunter Ability: Wounding Shot. Does weapon damage and applies a -40% healing debuff to the target for 7 seconds. 6 second cooldown. X mana cost.
- I know, I know. Many people will hate this idea, but I think since hunters are a physical dps class they should get a Mortal Strike. This does not do much damage and they will have to re-apply it often to keep it on, but this allows a hunter to be a main assist in a fight and not feel like they are not helping the team enough. Hunter damage is easy to heal through overall right now, and I do believe something like this is needed in the game. Remember you can just dead zone, get in melee range, or LOS a hunter to lose this debuff.
New Hunter Ability: Weapon Shot. An instant shot that hit an enemy's weapon, disarming the target for 8 seconds. 60 second cooldown.
- Disarm for hunters. Again, something I think is needed for hunters in general. This is a shorter duration then warriors disarm with the same cooldown, so it's not much. It is another way for a team to stop a focus fire and is a defensive ability, which is needed right now.

And taken from MMO-Champion.com, you can see a list of supposed patch notes for 2.3 that they have for hunters that some are "confirmed":

Trueshot Aura (Marksmanship) no longer costs mana to cast and will last until cancelled.
Serpent Sting, Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap now all gain additional damage based on 10% of your ranged attack power.
Wyvern Sting (Survival) is now instant cast and has a maximum duration of 10 seconds in PvP.
20 and 24 Slots ammo pouches have been added (Source)
Arcane Shot (Rank 6+) will now dispel 1 Magic effect in addition to damage (Source)

With those in mind, Hunters would be a great asset to a team in an arena match of all brackets.

Status Update on Balance Blogs

no.spam@gameriot.com (Idejder) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 14:59:36 -0400

So it has been a while since I posted something here, and for that I apologize. Here is why I am taking so long:

First I went to GenCon in Indy for about a week. That was very fun and we ended up with a lot of good connections to dev teams. These teams include EA-Mythic, Blizzard, and Flying Labs. Pretty fun stuff overall (and I got into the Pirates of the Burning Sea beta, which I haven't played much of yet. It looks good though.).

Well after I got back from that, I read all the comments on my Rogue blog and then 4 days later had to move across the country. I moved from Pennsylvania to Arizona for school. I have been busy with events and the people here for the last week+, thus no new balance article.

I still plan to continue to write articles and hopefully now that my schedule is set and things are calming down here I will be able to do so. Hunters are next for those wondering minds, and again I apologize for taking so long. Within a few days when I finish the formatting and final ideas I will let my Hunter article go.

WoW Class Balance: Rogue

no.spam@gameriot.com (Idejder) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:51:49 -0400

Before I start I want to thank the people who commented on my last blogs, as the feedback was amazing and it changes how you look at things. With that said, it brings me to the next class I am covering in detail, which should please a lot of people: Rogues.

Rogues are an interesting class. They are good burst when it's needed and also have the ability to be excellent sustained damage over a long period of time. I really like the Energy Bar as the best out of the three types (Rage, Mana, Energy) and think it allows for some neat mechanics down the line.

What is very intriguing to me is how much the class changed from level 60 to 70. At 60 they were strong and everything worked well. The long cooldowns were balanced and the ability to stunlock someone from full to dead was their signature. At 70 though, they are weak due to the large changes in the structure of the game (like Arenas) and very limited by long cooldowns that are needed much quicker than ever before. This is all on top of being incredibly kite-able when compared to the only other melee class.

Rogues have a lot of problems, especially in 5v5 arenas. I have talked to a lot of rogues over the past few weeks. Ming, Supatroopa, Nitrana, some very important people and high rated rogues from other battlegroups all gave the same message. It was pretty clear what needed to happen. I would appreciate it if everyone tried to be objective when giving feedback on anything you like or dislike. Give me reasons, not just ranting with no purpose. Suggestions are good, but do not take offense if I disagree.

When I read through my list of changes, it is a lot of buffs. When I look closely, I realize that a lot are merely fixes to broken or unused abilities and several changes have a few parts to them. Keep that in mind when reading all of this, as it will look like more then it actually is. All of these are serious, but there is one change listed that I think will make all of the rogues out there laugh. You will know it when you see it.

I was debating how to break this up correctly, as there are a lot of jumbled changes. I am going to break it down into categories based off the qualities or concerns of rogues. Crowd Control, Defensive Changes, Offensive Changes, and Mobility Changes along with some Sideboard changes at the end. In Italics under each change it is explained in detail why I think it is necessary. If you disagree, say why.

Suggested Changes

Crowd Control (and Disarm)

Blind is now a Physical effect with a cooldown of 95 seconds. Elusiveness reduces cooldown by 15/30 seconds. Blind no longer requires a reagent.
- I will start with a change I think is needed. Back in the day blind was a nice extra ability for rogues as it was on a long CD and lasted only a short duration while still being removable. Now that Arenas are around, it's time to take this ability to the next level as a reliable CC spell that you guys bring to the playing field. Making it a physical effect while lowering the cooldown to 65 seconds (talented) brings it up to par with other forms of reliable CC. The reagent cost isn't needed anymore since this ability is completely required to play in arena, no other choice.
Immune to Disarm abilities, items, or effects now reduce the time spent disarmed by 40%. These effects do not stack.
Weapon Expertise now increases weapon skill by 5/10 and reduces the time disarmed by 20/40%.
- If you read my warrior suggestions you would know I changed the immune disarm talent in Arms to 40% less time disarmed. This applies to rogues as well in a way. If they have a weapon chain or immune to disarm gloves, those would be changed to 40% less time disarmed. Weapon Expertise is edited to give rogues the disarm reduction in talent form like warriors. This isn't a large change to the rogue community, as most rogues have been disarmable for some time and run with a spare weapon chained in their bags incase it happens (which it rarely does).
Riposte cooldown increased to 8 seconds and the disarm time reduced to 5 seconds.
- Even with 40% reduction if the cooldown was kept at 6 seconds it would be too much. Putting it up to 8 seconds and moving it down to 5 seconds disarmed makes it so that if you use it every cooldown, a warrior is disarmed about 38% of the time he is attacking you. This is that "do not attack the rogue" effect you all have been asking for. If a warrior attacks you and you have Riposte, he will spend a lot of his time disarmed.

Defensive Changes

Vanish now grants 1 second of 1,000% 360 degree miss chance against the rogue.
Rogues may now vanish or stealth while under flare or faerie fire, but are immediately pulled back out of stealth.
- This is a two part fix to vanish. The first is to TRY to stop the "get hit out of stealth" effect that happens so often. That really sucks and makes the ability a lot worse than it should be. The second note is to let rogues use the snare/root break effects of vanish but the effects of faerie fire and flare are retained. Something as cheap as Faerie Fire should not negate a 5 minute cooldown so completely.
New Rogue Ability: Swirly Ball. 0 Energy. No cooldown. When used, the old detect traps animation is played. That's it. Nothing else happens.
- I know for a fact all rogues are grinning like idiots reading this if they played back when detect traps was a buff. For you unknowing few, detect traps used to be a buff you had to cast on yourself and it would play basically a color altered Dispel Magic animation over your head. When they made detect passive, they removed the animation. Many rogues claim that this was the single worst thing Blizzard has done, as now they have nothing to do while bored. With the return of Swirly Ball they can now spam it to entertain themselves once again! You may use this ability while mounted (normal or flying), swimming, running, sitting, standing, walking, eating, dying, in ghost form, in pirate form, in ninja form, in skeleton form, and while tiny. If you wonder why this is in Defensive Changes... defense against boredom!
Cloak of Shadows is now 100% spell resistance (or 100% spell absorb?).
Cloak of Shadows is now off the Global Cooldown.
- This is a two part fix to Cloak of Shadows. All rogues have turned on cloak and then been nuked right through it like nothing. Why should a rogue have to play the RNG game on such a key survival skill? Here is a good example of what I want to eliminate (it is a .jpg): http://tinyurl.com/23dnzb. Yea, that mage was skilled the way he went right through cloak. Anyway. Taking it off the global allows it to be a good reactionary defense like ice block and divine shield for those "Oh ****" situations where you are crit by spells suddenly.

Offensive Changes

Wound Poison now grants an 8% healing debuff per application, max of 40% with a stack of 5.
- This is a combo with the warrior change of reducing mortal strike to 40%. Overall healing buff since damage is starting to get too high because of gear in Arenas.
Deadly Throw is now a 4 second cooldown.
- The ability to just spam this over and over based off of the RNG if you get a combo point back or not is really silly. Adding a 4 second cooldown it lets it be used enough to snare your target so you can catch them but not to the point where axes are being thrown at them faster then they can think about casting.
ONHOLD - Kick is no longer on the Global Cooldown.
- Basically ONHOLD means its in the sideboard, but I am not physically moving it. I heard a lot of arguments for or against this, so let me know what you think. I am close to removing it, so for now consider it mostly gone. This is also a chain off my last blogs. I have a vision of all essential twitch interrupts taken off the GCD. So, as with all the others, this applies to kick. Taking it off lets it be more reactionary and lets good players separate from the not as fast ones.
Mutilate, Backstab, Garrote and Ambush can no longer be dodged.
- I have always wondered to myself the following: "One cannot dodge from behind, yet attacks that require you to be behind your target can be dodged. WTF?" I finally came up with the reason: there is none. I cannot think of a single design reason why a positional attack from behind should be able to be dodged when game mechanics say it should not be able to. This is a bit of a common sense change to alleviate a problem with server lag and client-side reporting.
Envenom is now usable with Wound Poison and consumes the stack when used.
- Nitrana has been bothering me about this for about 7 months. I do not see any reason why it could not work with Wound Poison. As a note, though, it WOULD consume the charges, so keep that in mind. This would give you a valid attack that does good damage against heavy armor targets but it is a risk to use, so it's up to you guys to use it properly. When used well, though, it can be quite good.

Mobility Changes

Shadowstep is now usable in combat and roots the target for 2 seconds.
- Mobility change 1. This one is for all the sub rogues out there! You still retain the damage buff and the move behind your target. On top of that they are rooted for 2 seconds (even if you use it in stealth) so you are sure to land a hit or opener (or if you are slow they will pull you out of stealth). Be warned, though, the root can be resisted, shifted out of, freedom'd out of, etc. Same cooldown and energy cost.
Sprint duration changed to 5 seconds, cooldown changed to 60 seconds, and for the duration the rogue ignores any snares on him (they persist and re-snare after the effect ends).
Endurance now lowers the sprint cooldown by 7/15 (or 12/25) seconds.
Improved Sprint now successfully removes Curse of Exhaustion.
- The second mobility change. Yes, you read it right. 45 (or 35) second cooldown 5 second duration sprint where you cannot be slowed during the length. This gives you the same effect that is granted to warriors when they intercept, only it lasts for 5 seconds. If you are slowed (like curse of exhaustion) before you sprint, you will not be slowed at all during the sprint, but be re-snared after it ends. If you are snared (hamstrung for example) during the sprint, it will not slow you until after the sprint ends. It does not dispel your snares or roots when used UNLESS you have the improved sprint talent, then it will remove both upon activation. You CAN be rooted, stunned, CC'd, etc during the sprint. This is will allow rogues to be able to negate a frost trap for 5 seconds before being perma slowed again and at the same times makes improved sprint not a mandatory talent. If sprint stayed the way it was and just the cooldown was changed, rogues would basically be forced to take improved sprint and that would kill a lot of partial sub builds. Think of it this way. A warrior can get almost 3 intercepts on you in the time it takes for the rogue to use this and have the cooldown finish. Or if a rogue sprints and someone HoJs him, it will counter the sprint completely.
Fleetfooted now passively increases your movement speed by 20% instead of 8%. This effect does not stack with other movement increasing effects.
- The third and final mobility change. This is passive and while it would not play much of a difference in matches when the rogue is snared, when he is not snared he will finally be able to keep up with someone who has blessing of freedom on or is trying to kite him by just running away. This also helps rogues who do not have the stealth movement talent to move faster while trying to land an opener. More of an anti-kite talent. Not necessary to have, but very good for mutilate rogues REMEMBER THIS: Druids have a passive 30% movespeed buff in cat form. Rogues would still move slower then cat druids, how is that so bad?

The sideboard is a place I put talents or abilities I think have potential, but I have either cut them from the true suggested changes or I am not sure if it is completely needed. In this will be two changes. The first is a damage increase and the second is a group utility. I am not advocating these right now, but if you think they should be added to the Suggested Changes portion, post a comment and tell me why. And "just because" is not enough; something in the Sideboard would take a really strong argument to move back up. The first person to post "OmG the changes your sideboard are overpowered!" gets the â€˜IQ of a Park bench' award and I ignore anything you have to say. They are in this section for a reason.

Agility and Strength now give 1.5 Attack Power instead of just 1.
- This came about because I was curious how much of an increase this would be and I enjoy doing math about changes like this, so I whipped up a spreadsheet that you all can see: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4LB-eZIz13daEueTCCEdUA. It ends up being roughly a 10% increase on white damage, which is the reason I put it down here. I think it's probably way too much seeing as rogues already top the PvE charts, but I put the work into it so here it is. If you think rogues SHOULD get this increase, post on Gameriot and let me know why. You will need one hell of a good reason to convince me of this. I think a better PvP damage buff if rogues need one lies with eviscerate, but I am still working on that.

Rogue new ability: Smokescreen. Instant. 20 Yard Range. 3 minute cooldown. Reagent: Flash Powder. The targeted teammate is thrown into improved stealth (+55) by the rogue and taken out of combat. Snare and Root effects are removed but any action taken by the player will break the effect. Stealth lasts 4 seconds. Damage or debuffs do not break this stealth. Cannot target self.
- This is a quick mechanic to try to save someone being bursted, but it does not remove Mortal Strike effects. It is a way to give group utility to rogues while not making them any stronger in 1v1 situations since they cannot use it on themselves. The reason it is down here is because I am split and unsure if rogues need such an ability to make them wanted/needed in Arena groups or if this is just overkill. I know that all of the readers will have an opinion on this, so it should be an interesting debate.

By popular demand I am going to write out all the changes I suggested without the explanations real quick. I have gotten quite a few requests for this so people can copy and paste thing easily, so here you go:

Crowd Control (and Disarm)

Blind is now a Physical effect with a cooldown of 95 seconds. Elusiveness reduces cooldown by 15/30 seconds. Blind no longer requires a reagent.
Immune to Disarm abilities, items, or effects now reduce the time spent disarmed by 40%. These effects do not stack.
Weapon Expertise now increases weapon skill by 5/10 and reduces the time disarmed by 20/40%.
Riposte cooldown increased to 8 seconds and the disarm time reduced to 5 seconds.

Defensive Changes

Vanish now grants 1 second of 1,000% 360 degree miss chance against the rogue.
Rogues may now vanish or stealth while under flare or faerie fire, but are immediately pulled back out of stealth.
New Rogue Ability: Swirly Ball. 0 Energy. No cooldown. When used, the old detect traps animation is played. That's it. Nothing else happens.
Cloak of Shadows is now 100% spell resistance. (Or 100% spell absorb?)
Cloak of Shadows is now off the Global Cooldown.

Offensive Changes

Wound Poison now grants an 8% healing debuff per application, max of 40% with a stack of 5.
Deadly Throw is now a 4 second cooldown.
ONHOLD - Kick is no longer on the Global Cooldown.
Mutilate, Backstab, Garrote and Ambush can no longer be dodged.
Envenom is now usable with Wound Poison and consumes the stack when used.

Mobility Changes

Shadowstep is now usable in combat and roots the target for 2 seconds.
Sprint duration changed to 5 seconds, cooldown changed to 60 seconds, and for the duration the rogue ignores any snares on him (they persist and re-snare after the effect ends).
Endurance now lowers the sprint cooldown by 7/15 (or 12/25) seconds.
Improved Sprint now successfully removes Curse of Exhaustion.
Fleetfooted now passively increases your movement speed by 20% instead of 8%. This effect does not stack with other movement increasing effects.

So I thank you all for reading and appreciate any comments that you may have. On Wednesday I am leaving for GenCon Indy and will not be back until Monday. I should have access to computers there to check Gameriot, but do not be surprised if I cannot reply for a while. If (or When) I edit this article (because balance is an ever changing art), changes will be below in bold. I will also link any response blogs I get on Gameriot down here under the edits when I can.

EDITS:
Changed Sprint cooldown to 15 seconds.
Put kick change ON HOLD. This means its basically on sideboard status.
Re-worded vanish change.
Re-buffed Weapon Expertise for PvE rogues. Sorry, had a stupid moment.
Added spell absorb idea for cloak
Edited sprint to show origional

Response Blogs:
Ming:
http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/Response-To-Idejders-Rogue-Balance-Changes/

Thank you again. If there are any spelling or grammar errors let me know. I am no English major, so I will just apologize now.

WoW Class Balance: Priest

no.spam@gameriot.com (Idejder) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 03:10:40 -0400

If you have never read one of my blogs before, welcome. I am not going to go into a large introduction, but I think of myself as quite knowledgeable about the game and have been doing this (balance changes/ideas) for quite a while. Anenga from Notorious helps me out, as he is just as knowledgeable as I am. This time I will be covering my thoughts on Priests.

Before you ask:
Am I an employee for Blizzard? No.
Then why is this important? You never know who is reading. Think about that.

Before I get into it, I want to extend a thank you to everyone who posted a comment on my Warlock and Warrior blogs. Especially to those who decided to make their own blogs based off of mine. It's awesome and every comment and opinion has been read. You all watched the flow of the changes as time went on as some suggestions were modified or removed. Balance is an ever changing science, so nothing is ever absolute.

Now we move onto the Priests. This is an interesting topic, as priests really are pretty decently well balanced in Arenas and PvP overall. Shadow and Holy/Disc you see in all brackets and I am happy with that, but the issues with priests are more in the definition of trees and of course random bugs or fixes with abilities.

I am going to run you through my thought process on the largest part of this, so it might be a bit long winded. If you want to skip this part, go for it and jump down to the second set of bullets.

All of the talent trees should define how the class plays and feel different. If you spec deep (41 point talent) then you should feel unique from someone else who went 41 points into a different tree. To show the point I will break it down real quick the way I did initially. Think of this breakdown as "If you spec into this tree what will you be doing/getting?"

Druid - Balance (Nature DPS), Feral (Physical DPS), Resto (Healing)
Hunter - Beast (Reliance on pet), Marks (Physical DPS), Survival (Physical DPS & survivability)
Mage - Arcane (Arcane DPS & mana efficiency), Fire (Fire DPS), Frost (Frost DPS)
Paladin - Holy (Healing), Prot (Tanking), Ret (Physical/Holy DPS)
Priest - Disc (Healing), Holy (Healing), Shadow (Shadow DPS)
Rogue - Assassin (Dagger emphasis), Combat (1H emphasis), Subtlety (Stealth Emphasis)
Shaman - Elemental (Ranged Nature DPS), Enhancement (Physical/Nature DPS), Resto (Healing)
Warlock - Affliction (DoT Emphasis), Demonology (Pet Emphasis), Destro (DD Emphasis)
Warrior - Arms (2H emphasis), Fury (1H emphasis), Prot (Tanking)

So I got that stuff down and I was thinking along the lines of "Alright, a Balance druid plays different from a Feral druid which plays differently from a Restoration druid." That is how all of the classes should feel if it is done right. There are problems of course; an example being that Hunters struck me as odd with the similarities between Marks and Survival. Seeing as this blog is about Priests, though, I will jump to them, but I know there are other problems.

Disc and Holy trees of Priests struck me as that they have no focus but are a mix of both. There really should be a difference, and it lets me address a PvE problem that has plagued the class for a while. Priest healing really is not used when compared to the other healer hybrids. Swapping around a few of the talents would help give them a bit of help as well as giving the trees some definition. The goal, of course, is to get to the point where someone is a "holy priest (Healing)" or a "disc priest (Survival)" and not just a jumble of both.

Moving talents is never easy. You need to make sure there are enough points to get the next tier, that pre-reqs are kept as they are, and that nothing is thrown completely out of wack. Now that I explained the reasoning behind the talent changed I am proposing, I am going to get into the actual priest changes.

Going to start different then I did last time. Not going to break it up, as almost all of them have to do with talents in one form or another. The actual talent suggestions are at the bottom (last changes for easy viewing).

Lockout of spells is reset to zero when spirit of redemption is activated.
- If you are Counterspelled or kicked right before you die and go into spirit of redemption form, you can't cast anything until the lockout finishes. It is extremely annoying and negates a good chunk of the time you are in the form. Setting lockout to zero when spirit is activated stops this annoyance and lets the talent function properly.

CURRENT DEBATE: Mana Burn now has a 6 second cooldown.
Improved Mana Burn now reduces the cooldown by 1 seconds per point and the cast time by .5 seconds per point, up to 2 and 1 seconds respectively.
- This is a very debatable change, and I have heard all sides. I do think that the mana burned from spam casting this spell especially with bloodlust is too much in too short of a time. Thoughts. Mana Burn is a great way to destroy someone's manapool quickly, but I feel it needs a cooldown to put a hard cap on how quickly someone like a hunter's manapool disappears. Currently with bloodlust a priest can rape a manapool in no time at all, and it should be limited a little. This is my suggestion to help that.

Lightwell (LOLwell) will no longer break on damage, is a 5 min cooldown, has 10 charges, and gains bonus from your +healing gear.
- This talent is actually pretty good in theory, but was implemented poorly. It needs to not break on damage and scale better before it's worth the point. The 5 minute cooldown lets it be used more then once in some of the shorter fights. Hopefully if these happened we would see priests not skip it (as often).

Pain Supression is now 40% damage reduction, undispellable, lasts 8 seconds, can be cast on other players in your party/raid, and puts a debuff on whoever it is cast on that disallows Pain Supression from being cast on them for 2 minutes. 3 minute cooldown.
- This turns a self-defensive spell that is barely used into a good group utility for when paladin blessings are on cooldown. If you see this one go through, then priests got a nice group bonus (even though the damage reduction is much less then it is now) as it would help counter the 1-button gib groups that spam CC one player. A pretty good change.

Circle of Healing now heals the five players with the largest health deficit in the radius as long as they are in your raid.
- Currently this spell does not prioritize party and raid, and just heals the players in a given party if they are in range. This makes it a big drain in raid situations where low health people are strewn about between all the groups. If its made to pick the lowest 5 players in the radius in your raid, it makes it a pretty damn good spell for raid healing. Priests are supposed to be the best AOE healers, so this would solidify that.

Silence is no longer on the Global Cooldown and locks out the school it interrupts for 1 second.
- This is hand in hand with my "all kick/silence effects off the global" argument, and if you read my warlock changes it was explained there pretty clearly. All timed reactionary interrupts taken off the global cooldown to separate the good from the best. Simple enough. The second effect is made for PvE. It's so that mobs that are immune to the actual silence effect can still be interrupted by priests when casting.

Power Word: Shield now scales by 43% of +healing gear.
- I did the math on this one myself, and with up to 2000 +healing (a stupid amount in PvP survival gear, its usually much lower, but its a round number), currently that gives 460 more absorbed. Which is nothing. If you scale it up to 43%, it gives around 1000 with 3/3 improved shield. That still isnt a lot given damage output, but its much better scaling then how it is now. I apologize for missing this earlier, not sure what I was thinking.

Shadow Resilience now decreases the chance to be critically hit by 2/4% and also increases the chance that mind flay will not be interrupted by 25/50%
- Keeping it the basic talent, I could have just said flat 2/4% damage reduction and it would be idenitcal to mage's talent. Copying talents isnt cool and different things are better. Thus they get something they have wanted for a while, which wont change it overall as its still easily interrupted by any melee.

Spirit of Redemption swapped with Divine Spirit
Remove Improved Divine Spirit and integrate it into the base buff
Blessed Recovery swapped with Meditation
Blessed Resilience swapped with Force of Will
Rough Idea: http://talents.utimer.ppvh.eu/?p=vt&i=31695

-OR-

Spirit of Redemption swapped with Divine Spirit and Improved Divine Spirit
Blessed Recovery swapped with Meditation
Blessed Resilience swapped with Force of Will
Rough Idea: http://talents.utimer.ppvh.eu/?p=vt&i=31722
- This is based off the talent explanation I had earlier. The difference, as you can see, is clearly in what to do with Divine Spirit. Do you integrate it into the base spell, thus making it give spirit and 10% boost from the stat or do you leave it as two separate talents? Either accomplishes the goal of defining the trees without throwing off the balance horribly. The offset for this is that current BR/disc priests will lose a lot of healing power in exchange for disc talents. I favor the one that removes Improved Divine Spirit, but really it does not matter to me much. It just keeps the tree cleaner.
- NOTE: The talents like Pain Supression and Circle of Healing on the linked example talent trees might not correlate with the suggestions I have posted here. I did not go through and change every talent. I just moved things around to give you an idea.Â For now go off what is posted in this blog.

This is a big change, but instead of saying "OMG OVERPOWERED" think of what a priest would lose if this happened. A standing 28/33 healing pvp priest would roughly lose:
passive 10% healing, passive 20% mana cost of PoM, passive 15% mana cost of Gheal, passive 4-5% crit heals

And what you gain:
dispellable 12% of crit healed over 6 seconds after being crit (lawl), dispellable Power Infusion, passive 5% stamina/int, and 40% Pain Supression.

Overall you end up losing 4 good passives, gaining 2 buffs that can be dispelled along with the new Pain Supression and 4% more mana and life. Its not too strong.

I know there is one massive thing that I did not touch on right now, and everyone is thinking it. Priest Racials and Fear Ward in particular. I am not going into this, simply because this blog would end up being a massive amount longer.

I will return to priests eventually and we will all talk about the Priest Racials just like I plan to return to warriors eventually to talk about Specializations. We have plenty of time before patch 2.3. =)

I would advise you to check out Anenga's Blogs if you enjoy mine. He thinks along the same lines I do and produces quite some great ideas like his Dispel Mechanic.

Also I just noticed (afer I wrote this) that Kow made a priest blog recently. Check it out here:
http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/Kows-Hardline/A-Holy-Wish-List/

Edits:
Decided on Shadow Resilience
Removed Silence Cooldown Change
Fixed Mana burn, I messed it up
Added PW:S change
Removed weaving change
Pointed out Manaburn debate
Added basis for Shadow Resilience change

Enjoy. If there are spelling or grammar mistakes I will fix them as they are found.

WoW Class Balance: Warlocks

no.spam@gameriot.com (Idejder) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:47:17 -0400

So this was a hard choice which class to publicly evaluate in detail next. I had it down between Rogues, Priests, and Warlocks before Blizzcon. During Blizzcon I saw the overwhelming "booing" towards Warlocks when they were discussed by the devs, so I figured it was a good class to talk about here.

Warlocks are very questionable in their dominant role, as they can be both great support or supreme damage. They have the ability to get great damage mitigation through Soul Link or to be a support class's worst nightmare through sheerDoT power. They have a very strong presence in the smaller brackets of Arena and have been called the "Best Dueling Class" by Blizzard, even though I think Ming would give any warlock a run for his or her money.

Everyone calls them overpowered constantly, and the warlock community defends themselves through any means possible. I share the feelings of most that Warlocks are slightly over-tuned in some areas. These include the infinite mana cycle, the drain complaints (all 11,573 of them), the Nightfall chain proc issue, and the new Damage over Time Resilience change(which I feel is not enough). Although they are strong on many fronts, they still need a little bit of work in terms of helping the pets survive longer.

I will address all of these, but overall I find the warlock does not need many revolutionary changes to bring them in line with the other classes. We will see what everyone thinks after this article is read and comments are made, but I am confident these limited changes are all that are needed for now.

Just like with the Warrior changes, I will break it down into gear/stat based, ability based, and talent based changes. Explanations for these changes will be under the change listed.

Gear/Stat Based Changes

Warlock Pets now gain a portion of the Warlock's Resilience, Spell Penetration, and Spell Hit.
- This should have happened when stats from the warlock like stamina went into the pets. At the moment, I believe that 25% of the warlock's resilience and 75-100% of the warlock's Spell Penetration and Spell Hit should go into his or her pet as a means to help keep them alive and stop RNG factors with counterspell. The pets die quickly already to any form of steady damage for a few seconds, so this might help a little in that department.
REMOVED - Damage over Time effects are now reduced by the critical damage modifier of resilience, not the critical change modifier.
- After a lot of talks, I am convinced this is not needed and was just overkill. I apologize. At the time it was great sounding, was solid on paper, and seemed to fix the problems. In practice this would be too much as time goes on. Old Description: In simpler terms, this would double the amount of DoT damage that is mitigated by resilience. With the current 400-500 resilience soft cap that players are experiencing, the current patch 2.2 change would reduce the damage of a stack of dots by roughly 10-12% (400-500resil, roughly). Changing the modifier from resilience that the DoT damage reduction is calculated off of would result in a total of 20-24% reduction instead. I know, this sounds like a lot... but overall its not as bad as it sounds if you think about how much damage DoTs do currently.

Ability Based Changes

Felhound's Spell Lock is no longer on the Global Cooldown of the pet.

I am a big fan of all very timing sensitive abilities not being limited by the global cooldown. This includes all forms of counterspell, kick, or silence effects. The pet is no exception and I apologize for overlooking it in the first place.

Drain Life, Siphon Life, and Soul Leech are now affected by healing reducing effects.
- Currently, the healing granted from these abilities isn't affected by Mortal Strike effects. It is healing you. Your bar is going up, so it clearly should be affected by heal-reduction abilities. I mean if even bandage healing is changed by Mortal Strike, all forms of healing should.

Drain Life and Drain Mana now have a 5 second shared cooldown -OR- a 7-8 second non shared cooldown w/ 80% Fel Conc).
- There have been a lot of players(high and low end) who complain that warlocks can just spam drain someone, even if it is interrupted. Drain health allows warlocks to tank players indefinitely(even MS warriors, see above change) and drain mana can be quite a game changing effect when spammed and draining 200 mana a second. A lot of players want a 20 second cooldown, but they don't see how much that would hurt the PvE side of warlocks. They rely on drain in many many situations, so I feel since the drain lasts 5 seconds... the cooldown should be 5 as well. If they are interrupted or is it broken, then they cannot attempt it again for a few seconds, while PvE warlocks will not even notice such a change, as the drain is rarely ever broken unless it is the warlock's choice in the first place. A fair solution for both sides. EDIT: Thoughts on the other option now that Life Tap change has been kinda cut.
Drain Mana now check for LOS every second before the drain ticks. If LOS is broken with target, the drain effect ends.
- Now before you get started and rip into me about this one, hear me out. By the way, this would not be applied to Drain Life(if you did not catch that part). I understand it is channeled and all other channel effects do not break if LOS is lost, but being able to hurt the mana bar of a player is one of the most disastrous abilities a player has. All forms of mana drain have downsides. I do not feel that drain mana has enough of a drawback currently, and letting it break on LoS lets the skilled players show themselves when compared to the average players. Drain Mana would still be strong, but it could no longer be spammed without care.
ROUGH IDEA CHANGE - Life Tap is now a 1 second cast. Pushback is affected by Fel Conc.
- This change is very rough, and while I know why I want it to happen... I doubt it will ever come to light. I understand that, accept that, but I will not remove it. I still think something needs to happen about mana in general, but I accept this might be not be the right way. All you warlocks win, for now. =) Old Description: Basically I feel Life Tap is too strong, as it allows a mana dependent class to have infinite mana. Would it be fair if every mana class had basically an energy bar? That would make classes like hunters and shaman completely insane. I do understand that warlocks were created knowing they need that much mana and they have Life Tap for a reason, but the result is that warlocks don't value intellect at all. They just value all stamina and damage while the other casters need to have intellect as well. The reason there are three choices for this change is that it is highly debated, and I would like to hear your opinion on this change.

Talent Based Changes

Nightfall and Backlash can only proc once every 6 seconds and the procrate of Nightfall is increased to 6%.
- This is a fix to directly counter the RNG effect that crops up with this talent. Sometimes a warlock will get lucky and have two, three, and four shadow bolts rapid fire out of him and instantly kill someone. This is as bad as mace stun sometimes with how random and devastating it can be. I think a soft cap of every 6 seconds would be enough to allow it to fill the role of random burst, but not be so overwhelming that it can gib someone from full health. To help it fill the role of random burst, the procrate is increased to 6% from 4%.

These are the only changes that are necessary at this time, as it takes care of a lot of the issues players are having with warlocks. It addresses a weakness(Pet resilience) and takes some of the overpowered abilities and knocks them down a few pegs. I think if these changes went through, we would see a much more rounded and balanced meta-game.

Next time will probably be rogue or priest. If you have a preference let me know. Post a comment, you never know who is reading.

EDIT: Edits will be in Bold.

-Edited the Life Tap idea
-Added second option to drain life cooldown
-Edited the leech-MS topic
-On Hold'd the Life Tap change
-Removed Resilience Change
-Added Spell Lock change
-Changed Nightfall procrate to 6%, up from 4%.

Blog Response by Noktyn, the Warrior of Team Pandemic.
http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/Noktyns-Blogtyn/A-Response-to-Warlock-Changes/

Blog Response by Quest, Shaman of Check Six (a rant more then a reply)
http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/The-Kevz-Report/Warlocks-LOL/

(If there are grammar or spelling mistakes point them out and I will fix them)

WoW: The PvP Evolution

no.spam@gameriot.com (Idejder) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 01:50:11 -0400

So my last entry was about Warriors, a highly debated class. I got a lot of feedback either way towards liking and disliking the suggested changes, and I thank everyone for it. I have actually added two more changes to warriors since then and removed one of my suggestions due to a lot of talking and discussion through game, IRC, AIM, and Email. You can see the article on warriors and the changes I made here:

http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/WoWs-Balance-Blogs/WoW-class-balance-Warriors

Balance is an ever-evolving thing, so expect change as time goes on.

But for now...

I am going to cover another class this time, as I want to mix things up a bit. Instead, I am going to cover some more general changes that I think would help the game a lot for both hardcore and casual people. Later I will discuss the Evolution of PvP in WoW from Beta all the way to now and what I think should happen in the future. This is going to start slow, and get better at the end.

Starting with some general fixes, I am not listing every single bug fix I have written down(as they are quite boring and numerous, but needed). Some examples include:

You can no longer get feared out of the arenas.
You can no longer get feared inside the pillars of the arenas.
Increase the range that pets despawn at to the length of the Lordaeron arena.

The reason behind these changes are obvious except maybe the last one. Currently, if you send your pet on someone on the far end of the Lordaeron Arena it will despawn, as it has reached the maximum range. This is why its needed to increase it a bit, as losing a pet to such a silly glitch is a real pain in the ass.

This change I left as a tidbit on the end of the last article:

Major Combat Health and Mana Potions now have different flavor texts depending on which token was used to purchase it:
- Warsong Gulch: "The (Warsong Clan/Silverwing Sentinals) brewed this in a hollow log. Enjoy."
- Arathi Basin: "The (Undead/Humans) from Arathi Basin claim this is an old family recipe."
- Alterac Valley: "The water in Alterac Valley is known for its healing properties."
- Eye of the Storm: "The (Blood Elves/Draenei) from Eye of the Storm infused this potion with nether energy."

As Renew asked in a comment, what is the reason for this flavor text? Simply, its just so you know which BG you need to run for tokens if you are running low on potions. Its just a slight fix to something that has annoyed me and many other people for a while. I run around with like 3-4 different stacks of different sizes, it would just be nice to know which one is which.

Another change a ton of people have been asking for:

Battlegrounds now grant players a buff at the start that lets them use abilities for no cost until the battleground begins.

And honestly, there is no reason to not have this. I don't even need to explain myself here, do I? Comon.

From here, we venture into a more general and open setting. No more specific changes for the remainder of this blog, but instead I am going to talk about and cover the PvP atmosphere in WoW since the beginning, where it has evolved to, and where we need to go from here.

Back in the original beta for WoW, Player vs Player (PvP, of course) combat was not even in the game. This was when WoW was considered to be just a PvE game and that was it, cut and dry. Then they made a PvP server ruleset, and players flocked to it. At this point PvP felt heavily like an afterthought more then a feature, and this mentality continued on through the rest of the beta and into release.

So we continue to meander through the WoW World with promises of more PvP content as time goes on. That satisfies us and finally they release the honor system around patch 1.4. This makes world PvP actually mean something, and let me tell you the TM-SS zerging was at an all time max! It was fun for a time, but slowly players realised that nothing changed other then now we get points for killing people, which we were doing anyway.

This all changes with the next patch, where battlegrounds are finally released and we can play even games against each other. This is the start of "honor grinding", and it really takes off in patch 1.6 where the HWL rewards are made worth it. 40 man organized AV groups are the hotness of the day and 24/7 there are 40 man groups running for honor and the occasional good (and long) game.

The next large change was when AB was released and we had the 'rounded' number of 3 battlegrounds all for different sizes. But oh wait, they destroyed AV because you cannot queue as a group anymore. Sadly, Alterac Valley never recovered from that blow and to this day is a joke to many players (this is evident by the afk-ness). So it was down to AB and WSG for PvP adventures. Warsong soon rose to be the more competitive and favored battleground between the two. Teams formed and practiced against each other (like TAO and Noto against each other on Tichondrius), but the competition wasn't very high... until a few patches down the road.

The Drums of War, patch 1.12. Cross-realm battlegrounds and battlegroups were born, and suddenly competition was at an all time high. Players found thousands of new people to play against and hundreds of battlegrounds were open at a time. Soon after, at least on BG9 and a few other Battlegroups, there were Warsong Gulch competitive leagues formed. This was a great example of players taking the tools at their hands and making it more competitive. In the same patch, Blizzard also took a stab to make outdoor PvP objectives. Sadly, they did not take off and were pushed to the wayside quickly (sand lol).

Taking the PvP content streak and running with it, Blizzard released patch 2.0. In this patch we got not only the new honor system, but the new arena system as well. We are all familiar with these two systems (at least I hope you are).

When the full expansion hit, we see that Blizzard is trying yet again to make world PvP viable, and this time there are reasonable rewards for doing so. Tokens, rewards, and zone buffs are all given as rewards to players who participate... but again they fall by the wayside. Even the epic battles at Halaa only lasted so long with battlegrounds and Arena dwarfing them in both activity and time to reward ratios. Eye of the Storm was also released with the expansion, but we can all see that it went nowhere fast (thankfully). Currently, Arena is the hot PvP front and every patch there are balance changes specifically for it.

Looking back like this, we can see how far the PvP side of WoW has evolved. It started as a shadow of nothing, what seemed like an afterthought. As its popularity grew, it started taking more and more of the spotlight, and now it is rivaling the PvE side of the game in the amount of time Blizzard seems to spend developing it. It was actually a smart move if you think about it. They built a strong PvE base with a strong community in a fun game, and then they slowly injected all sides of the game with PvP content. More people are playing Arena now and PvPing then ever before in MMO gaming.

Not everything is good as a whole for PvP in WoW, though. Battlegrounds are by the far wayside at this point. No one plays them competitively and they are widely considered just something to afk in to get honor. Arena, sadly, gets boring after your million's match. There needs to be some variety... some other activity or goal in PvP for the players. There

But where does WoW go from here? I think some essential things need to happen, and it can start with the current structure. Battlegrounds need an overhaul, and they need to become competitive. Battleground teams need to revolve around guilds and making people feel proud to be in a "PvP" guild over a strictly raiding guild (or one that does both). The competitive battlegrounds need to follow special rules such as arena rules on consumables, changing the rez timer to being individual other then as a group, and a guild rating through Win/Loss or ELO systems. These need to be applied to both AB and WSG and sooner rather then later.

Alterac Valley needs to have its group queuing system re-installed, but let it be focused around guild vs guild battles of up to 25 players. I think players from outside of the guild can participate, but whatever guild the leader of the group is from is what the group is named after at that time. AV has a ton of potential as you can let the leader place objects around the map such as elite NPC patrols, catapults, and walls. I would remove the wing riders and change the wolf riders to be used as an organized final push into a team's base instead of a slack-jawed unorganized frenzy they are currently. These games would influence the guild's ELO or Win/Loss ratios just as WSG or AB would.

In the future, as in the next expansion, I see them putting even more of a PvP focus on the game. This includes massive and controllable battles like Alterac Valley(but better and/or done right) with incredible siege weaponry, more Arena-type systems, a new battleground or two, and successful and worthwhile outdoor objectives. All of these should be at least attempted by Blizzard in the next expansion. We will see shortly at Blizzcon what they plan for us, but I would truly expect them to show off PvP events and activities players can look forward to. Look for siege weaponry in particular, they have been wanting to pull this off for a while. I will be attending Blizzcon myself, so lets see how much they reveal.

WoW class balance: Warriors

no.spam@gameriot.com (Idejder) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 01:04:16 -0400

Hey everyone, some of you know me, some of you do not. I am Jder, one of the leaders of TAO. I have been helping to make and tweak balance changes in WoW for about 7 months, and I have played the game since Beta (gogo level 40 cap) on Tichondrius.

What I am going to use this blog for is to break down each class and relate strengths and weaknesses, then state how I feel they can be tweaked for the better. Some classes need complete overhauls. Some need just a few touches, like warriors.

This is by far not a fast science, so do not expect me to meander through a whole class and break down their talents and abilities correctly in a day. Just recently, Anenga from Notorious agreed to help with the class remakes, so hopefully the time between classes wont be horribly long.

Remember one thing when reading and replying. Every idea is good. If you think we are off the wall in terms of what we want to do to your class, tell us! If we haven't done enough, tell us that too! If you have a unique idea for something, say it.

And now, the first class we already had done.

Warrior

Warriors are one of the top damage dealers; they are the brute force behind many groups in today's arena and when not stopped, they are a source of steady and unlimited damage. Currently in the game, warriors fill the damage role perfectly, and do not need any form of damage increasing mechanics. On top of being great damage dealers, they are also one of the hardest classes to kill, with massive hitpoint pools while topping the armor charts. Finally, warriors have one of the strongest debuff moves in the game through Mortal Strike, and maybe it is time for a change to such an ability. The weakness of warriors, as with any melee class, is that if their target gets out of reach of them they cannot do any damage. Currently I feel the weakness of warriors is not strong enough, or at least is erased too easily by support classes and compounding bonuses from sets and talents. The follow suggestions for warriors will first be grouped by any changes to gear that directly influences them, then skill mechanic changes, then talent changes. A detailed reason for each change will follow each suggestion, underneath it in italics.

Gear Changes

-Warrior 4-piece set bonus for Arena and Honor sets now reduces the cooldown of Intercept by 2 seconds.
- ---Currently warriors are slightly too mobile, allowing for them to catch up to someone every 15 seconds(for 3 seconds, that target is stunned). In combination with the cooldown talent change for improved intercept, this will allow the weakness of range to actually show itself in battles, where currently it does not exist.

-Two handed crafted maces(such as Stormherald) now reduce the maximum health of their target by 700 for 10 seconds.
- ---Currently, the 4 second stun on these weapons puts a huge part of the warrior's game in the hands of the Random Number Generator (RNG). This is not fun waiting for a proc, but when it does go off the target has only doom awaiting him unless his trinket is unused. Together with mace specialization and intercept, this proc allows for warriors to stun lock players almost better then rogues. Decreasing maximum health is a unique mechanic and synergies well with Mortal Strike when trying to burn down a high priority target.

Ability Changes

-Mace stun effect from Mace Specialization can only affect the targeted player.
- ---Currently, mace stun effect can proc on secondary targets off abilities such as Cleave or Whirlwind, and I feel this needs changed to just the primary target. The other specializations do not allow for secondary targeted effects, so Mace Specialization should not differ.

-Hamstring now has a 3 second cooldown.
- ---Hamstring a powerful snare, as it not only slows movement speed considerably, but can be used to trigger effects such as weapon procs, windfury, and specializations when spammed. Adding a cooldown to this will not only solve these issues, but also allow the affected player to escape if they can break the snare fast enough, yet again exposing the weakness of the warrior (which presently is missing).

-Berserker Rage is no longer on the Global cooldown.
- ---This change has its roots deeply planted in a PvE setting, as if this ability is on global cooldown when a boss fears, someone else in the raid will probably die in a single hit. This can spell doom for any normally successful raid. On the PvP side of the coin, this would impact the ebb and flow of both arena and battlegrounds minimally. Warriors who are feared usually break it within 1 second, and then immediately intercept back to the target. If anything, this might be a nerf to fast warriors, as they will break fear too quickly and not be far enough to intercept, but out of melee range and turned in the wrong direction!

-ONHOLD- Pummel is no longer on the Global Cooldown
- ---Gonna remove this, as I was convinced otherwise.Â Apologizies. This is a change I have been wanting to do for a while, and recently got the... err.. enough support to formally suggest it. This is not just pummel alone. All interrupt effects, be them talents or trained, should be off the global. They are essential timed abilities and if you are on GCD , you can miss an interrupt because of it even if you are skilled enough to catch it normally. With more sub 1.5 second casts being put in the game, I feel this change is worthwhile.

Talent Changes

-Weapon Mastery now reduces the duration of disarm by 20/40%. Effect does not stack with other disarm reduction effects.
- ---I feel this is a necessary change, as currently casters and healers can be silenced and unable to act, but warriors cannot be given the equivalent treatment with the talent as it is. After the change, the silence and disarm mechanics will act in the same manner. Disarm chains, equip bonuses, or enchants will all be retrofitted to be 40% less time disarmed.

-Reverted Sword Specialization change.
- ---I did not like the suggestion I had originally for the Sword Spec. For now I think all of the specs should remain as they are until a better suggestion comes up. I overall dislike the Specializations, so I will be talking to people about this one more.

-Improved Intercept now reduces the cooldown of Intercept by 4/8 seconds.
- ---Currently warriors are slightly too mobile, allowing for them to catch up to someone every 15 seconds(for 3 seconds, that target is stunned). In combination with the set bonus change, this will allow the weakness of range to actually show itself in battles, where currently it does not exist.

-Mortal Strike is now a 40% healing debuff, down from 50%.
- ---Yes, I realise this is a large change. It is a direct efficiency buff to healing by 20%. I feel we have come to that point where healing is become too underpowered in matches and it needs a buff. That is really all there is to say about it, healing across the board is not strong enough anymore. This change would apply to other forms of healing debuffs as well, so warriors are not alone here.

A response Blog done by Noktyn, warrior of Pandemic.
http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/Noktyns-Blogtyn/A-Response-to-Warrior-Changes-oops/

The next blog might not be on the next classes I am evaluating (Rogues or Warlocks) but instead on general game changes. Here is an example of one of the general changes I am working on:

Major Combat Health and Mana Potions now have different flavor texts depending on which token was used to purchase it:
- Warsong Gulch: "The (Warsong Clan/Silverwing Sentinals) brewed this in a hollow log. Enjoy."
- Arathi Basin: "The (Undead/Humans) from Arathi Basin claim this is an old family recipe."
- Alterac Valley: "The water in Alterac Valley is known for its healing properties."
- Eye of the Storm: "The (Blood Elves/Draenei) from Eye of the Storm infused this potion with nether energy."

More coming soon =)