Racial ability changes
September 8th, 2008 by Dinak
Source: Kalgan
Changes that should be in the next beta push. Bear in mind that some of these may change somewhat or entirely, and there may also be other changes coming in subsequent pushes:

Orc
- Hardiness now reduces the duration of stun effects by 15%

Troll
- Racial Passive “The Voodoo Shuffle”: Reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 15%. Trolls be flippin’ out mon!

- Berserking: no longer has an activation cost of energy/rage/etc

Draenei
- Gift of the Naaru: The amount healed is increased based on the caster’s Spell Power or Attack Power, whichever is higher. This ability does not lose casting time from taking damage.

- Shadow Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Shadow spells by 2%

Dwarf 
- Frost Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Frost spells by 2%

- Racial Passive “Mace Specialization”: Expertise with Maces and Two-Handed Maces increased by 5. 

Undead 
- Shadow Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Shadow spells by 1% (yes, this is lower than the other resistance racials) 

- Will of the Forsaken: removes any fear, sleep, or charm effect (no longer has a lasting immunity). 

Night Elf 
- Quickness: reduces the chance to be hit by melee or ranged attacks by 2% 

- Nature Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Nature spells by 3% 

Tauren 
- Endurance: now scales based on base health, to be tuned to approximately a 5% heath increase if the player were wearing green quality gear 

- Nature Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Nature spells by 2% 

Gnome 
- Escape Artist: the freeing effect can no longer be resisted 

- Arcane Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Arcane spells by 2% 

Blood Elf 
- Mana Tap: ability removed (partially integrated into Arcane Torrent) 

- Arcane Torrent: restores 15 energy, 15 runic power, or 6% of mana to the Blood Elf (along with the current 2s silence effect) 

- Magic Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by spells by 2% 

Human 
- Perception: changed to a passive, now grants one character level of passive stealth detection 

- Racial “The Fall of Humanity”: Feign death which may trick enemies into ignoring you. Any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancellation of this effect. 5min cooldown 

- Racial Passive “Human Supremacy”: The dominance of Humanity is evidenced by having one more racial bonus than normal. Actually, make that two counting this one. (just a tooltip, no actual functionality) 

- The Human Spirit: spirit bonus lowered to 5% 

Note: this is a list of changes/additions, not an exhaustive list of all abilities. Racial abilities not mentioned here haven’t changed (or are ones I forgot to put on this list).

Posted in Patch Changes, PvE Commentary, PvP Commentary, Wrath Commentary | No Comments »
A couple blue tidbits today
September 8th, 2008 by Dinak

Concerning the undocumented change to Thunderstorm (knock back changed from 15yards to 5yards):

Source: Koraa
Not exactly intended. It’s still supposed to have relatively the same knock back distance, just we toned down the knock “up” effect. Should be fixed in the next build.

Concerning Shamans having so many abilities to use in PVP and being limited by the Global Cooldown (GCD) - someone complained about the new Wind Shock skill being on the GCD, to which we have this reply:

Source: Koraa
It will be off the GCD.
Posted in Patch Changes, PvE Commentary, PvP Commentary | No Comments »
Blue Post Roundup
August 6th, 2008 by Dinak

Sorry for the few days of downtime, I was spending all weekend moving into my new house :) Anyhow, here’s the goods!

Concerning totems survivability in PVP

Source: Koraa
In a future build your Stoneclaw Totem will “protect” your other totems, virtually increasing their HP by a value. We haven’t decided how much it will give your totems, but it should be enough to protect them from being one shotted.

Totems are intended to be as fragile as they are, it’s what balances out their power. If we gave Totems base increased survivability, we would have to give them increased cooldowns, mana costs etc.

Some WotLK patch notes listed on MMO Champion back on the 2nd

Source:

  • Flametongue Weapon: Now has a passive spell damage.
  • Natureâ??s Blessing no longer increases spell damage from Intellect, and the effect has been reduced to 5/10/15% from 10/20/30%. This is in result of the new spell power system. Players should notice little to no change in the power of the spell relevant to healing spells.
  • New Talent: Tidal Force- Increases the critical effect chance of your Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave and Chain Heal by 60%. Each critical heal reduces the chance by 20% and lasts 20 seconds.
  • Stoneclaw Totem: Health of the Stoneclaw totem is increased by 5% of the Shamanâ??s total health.
  • The range of all â??friendly totemsâ? has been increased to 30 yards, up from 20.
  • Totemic Mastery talent removed and replaced with â??Tidal Forceâ?.
Posted in Patch Changes, PvP Commentary, Wrath Commentary | No Comments »
Kalgan comments on Arena balance
March 6th, 2008 by Dinak

A few posts from Kalgan concerning class balance and representation in Arenas. I am a little surprised by the numbers for Shaman in 5v5 - the other brackets are about where most would expect shaman to be - underrepresented :(

Source: Kalgan
No other warlock nerfs are planned for 2.4. One of the things we look at is class representation in arenas (although normalized for class popularity). In this particular chart, a value of 100% means the class is represented as we’d expect, a value over 100% means the class is represented that much more often than we’d expect, a value below 100% means they’re represented less than we’d want (obviously this chart doesn’t include a spec breakdown in any way).

         2v2     3v3     5v5

Druid	276.0%	184.0%	80.5%

Hunter	43.0%	50.2%	43.0%

Mage	8.7%	96.0%	96.0%

Paladin	19.7%	29.5%	147.4%

Priest	113.3%	164.8%	185.4%

Shaman	37.8%	50.4%	138.6%

Rogue	144.2%	175.1%	61.8%

Warlock	149.2%	93.2%	111.9%

Warrior	130.4%	90.7%	79.3%

Locks are doing pretty well overall, but what had us worried was that it appeared to us a month ago or so as though warlocks were on an uptrend. However, the evidence is strong that that trend is reversing, which means significant nerfs aren’t really what we want right now (we really don’t know where those numbers will settle down).

Edit: one other detail regarding the chart, this one is set at 2200+ rating.

And  for the 1850+ charts

Source: Kalgan

Here’s 1850…

Druid	184.0%	138.0%	92.0%

Hunter	50.2%	50.2%	50.2%

Mage	61.1%	87.3%	87.3%

Paladin	68.8%	88.4%	137.6%

Priest	133.9%	133.9%	154.5%

Shaman	75.6%	88.2%	138.6%

Rogue	154.5%	154.5%	82.4%

Warlock	121.2%	102.5%	102.5%

Warrior	90.7%	85.0%	85.0%

Posted in PvP Commentary | No Comments »