GameGuide

5/21/09

• Furious Gladiator's Libram of Justice will now only grant additional healing to Flash of Light as originally intended.
• Amice of Inconceivable Horror and Vestments of the Blind Denizen will no longer have class restrictions
• It will now take the proper 4 seconds of drinking in arenas before a player will start gaining mana.
• Storm, Earth and Fire talent root proc will now properly affect a 10 yard radius.
• Mimiron Assault Bots no longer despawn during the transition from phase3 to phase 4. This should allow the achievement Not-So-Friendly Fire to be completable.

The update to the 3v3 and 5v5 brackets are now active.

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The current arena rating system allows more players to have higher ratings in the 2v2 bracket when compared to 3v3 and 5v5. We are preparing an in-game update that will be improving the rating system of the 3v3 and 5v5 brackets to allow all three of the brackets to have a similar number of players able to achieve ratings on par with what's currently possible in our 2v2 arena bracket. As a result, we are changing the personal and team rating requirements for the item level 239 weapons from 2200 to 2350, but keep in mind the tooltip will continue to show the requirement as 2200 until patch 3.1.2.

As a result of the above improvements, this change will prevent an excessive number of players from reaching much higher ratings and acquiring the highest grade of weapons in-game. The increase in rating requirements is designed to keep the number of players able to obtain these arena weapons on par with the number of players who are able to obtain the same grade of weapons from Heroic Ulduar.

When Arena Season 7 launches we plan to return the highest rated season 7 weapons back to 2200 while also ensuring that the difficulty in achieving that rating is closer to what is intended, yet of similar difficulty for all brackets (rather than being easier for 2v2). (Source)

Next PTR Phase?
Patch 3.1.2 was removed from the test realms, as it is now live. We do not have a date to provide yet for when the next content patch will be available for testing. We'll let players know when the time is right. (Source)

Zeppelin between Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff in an upcoming patch
The Zephyr is getting set to transport players between Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff in an upcoming patch. (Source)

Raids & Dungeons
"Nerfed" raid instances
We changed some of the base design of the game to cut down on the idea of content (and the items come with it) being only for a certain group of the playerbase. We have tried to open up content and give more people more things to do.

I don't have any numbers to share, but we are seeing more people in the raid instances than in the past, so people are running things and picking up as many epics as possible. A lot of players are skipping normal dungeons because it's faster to do so, but they have done it on other characters already so they know the fights and just want to get geared up asap. Sure, we could limit the number of epics to certain content and whatnot, but we don't feel that would be a real benefit to the game. (Source)

Itemization
Choosing the best item
The goal is not "Whatever Mimiron drops, I put on," nor should it be "Whatever Mimiron drops, I shard unless it is loot that some spreadsheet says is my best piece." Gear is a complex puzzle. If you put on one piece, you might want to change another piece. That piece with all the Int might get you hit capped, so you change a gem or enchant. It might not be an upgrade for another player of your spec but it's an upgrade for you. Make sure you are making decisions about gear wisely, and include in that the way you play, not what a forum post says your theoretical dps output could potentially be. (Source)

Stats distribution on gear for multiple classes
We have allowed the "good stats" and "bad stats" to get too far apart. The answer, as you point out, is not to only design gear with very narrow uses because it is only attractive to one spec (but then exceedingly attractive to that spec). We can't be in a situation where armor pen is junk for Unholy DKs (because they do so much spell damage) because then we are making Unholy DK tier sets. From an item design point of view, yuck. We just need to get the stats closer together on a class-side, not an item-side. (Source)

Druid (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Moonkin T8 4 Pieces Bonus
The reason we increased the proc chance from 5% to 15% is because of the issue where you can lose the proc on an existing Starfire. For a number of technical reasons, we can't apply the proc to a spell already being cast.

[...] The problem is that you can't modify a spell's cast time while the spell is already being cast. The tooltip is accurate… if frustrating. We just talked about it and we might have a solution. It might not be hotfixable, but it shouldn't take until 3.2. We might lower the proc rate if we got it to work however. I'll try and update when we work it out. (Source)

Is druid tree form fun?
This is an open question to the community. Is druid Tree of Life form fun? The question applies to both PvP and PvE, so it would be helpful to provide for which part of the game your answer applies.

We think cat and bear forms are fun. They have very clear roles and unique abilities. Tree of Life has no unique abilities. It essentially forces you to give up a portion of your class abilities in order to be as good a healer as other classes. In PvP it lets you tank a little, but again with the downside of giving away a good deal of your mobility, damage and crowd control.

Please do not over-interpret our asking for feedback. No huge changes to Tree of Life are on the way and we may in fact never change it. But it's something we have been discussing lately, so we thought it would be interesting to get a wider perspective. (Source)

Paladin (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
MP5 Gear isn't really useful for Holy paladins
Yes, that is exactly what I said. You are saying you'll just use the shaman gear. Why? Because you don't care about the mana regen. Why? Because your mana regen is so good based on things like Illumination that mana regen stats are not attractive. That doesn't mean we stop putting regen stats on plate. That means we nerf Illumination. An even better solution would be to get rid of MP5 and make Illumination return mana based on your spirit. Now not only do you want a regen stat, but you want the same stat that other healers want. (Source)

Shaman (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Elemental Shamans do not gain anything from Spirit or MP5 items
Agreed. As you point out, that is why we made sure your tier sets didn't have them. We can't remove the regen stats from everything else for obvious reasons. We can make the regen…