Quote from Blizzard staff
5-man dungeon runners rewarded with tier gear (Source Re: Why do dungeon runners need tier gear?)
The end is really more of a reward -- an achievement with stats. Very little of our content is tuned to the point where you have to farm to a large degree before you are capable of beating the encounters. I remember in the BC days guilds running a new recruit through SSC to gear up before they could survive BT. That really isn't the case anymore. Now as you to the hard modes, this is more true, but players tackling that content have access to better gear faster anyway.
I don't find it offensive that players who only run dungeons can eventually get some decent Frost badge loot at a much slower pace than the raiders can. That pretty much happens anyway when we advance tiers and the old badges become much more farmable.
There are two known bugs with Chains of Ice that should be hotfixed today (Dec 11) or possibly soon after that if something goes wrong. (Stupid caveat that I have to put in everything I type now: this is not a promise of when it will be fixed; only our intention to fix it when we can.)
First, there should not be a target limit. That is, the single limit nerf you are seeing now was not intentional.
Second, it appears to not be functioning correctly with Endless Winter. The disease is not being applied at all against snare-immune targets. The intended behavior is the snare is not applied, but Frost Fever is.
Unless I am forgetting some change we made early on, the design intent is that Chains of Ice functions as it did before 3.3 shipped.
Hunter
Icecrown Ammunitions (Iceblade Arrow / Shatter Rounds) (Source Re: Can hunters get an ammo hotfix?)
If you can't afford to AH the ammo, you probably can't afford to get the best gems and enchants for you new gear which would probably be a bigger dps increase. That is going to affect the economic decision of looting more than the ammo I suspect. I don't think the ammo will be outrageously high on the AH given the mats. It may be high for the next week or so while it's scarce, but as I've said, we don't really want every hunter in the game to be able to get ammo which is tied to a rep grind and rare drop on day one.
You may not be able to afford to constantly switch Engineering specs, but we're not trying to make that a very attractive option in the first place.
[...] Some of you are still arguing about the cost of ammo or the fact that it's a consumable or tied to a trade skill, but all of that has been true for some time. The Engineering specialization didn't affect any of that to a large degree. It may affect cost or availability for a short time, but that is true of most new and valuable resources. What is Primordial Saronite selling for on your server? Do you think it will still be at that price in a week? In a month?
The materials to make the ammo are not hard to get. The recipe itself is quite hard to get. Therefore it will probably take awhile before the ammo is widely available at a low cost. That's what we want. After the ammo is widely available it would basically take a unified cabal of Engineers to keep the prices inflated. Almost always in those situations someone blinks because the loss of selling things for cheaper is a lot better outcome than not selling anything at all.
Priest
Shadow Word: Pain not benefiting from Haste (Source Re: Shadow word pain needs hotfixed as well)
We think Shadow Priest dps is in a good place without SW:P benefiting from haste based on the data we have seen so far.
[...] There is no bug per se. On the PTR for a time Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague all benefited from haste. We remove SW:Pain because the dps increase was too high, particularly given the ability to constantly refresh the spell with an inflated haste rating. Some players interpreted the inflated haste rating problem as the reason we removed SW:P, but I posted when we made that change that Shadow dps was just too high.
The OP was pointing out that since we fixed the haste problem for Corruption we could go back and fix SW:P pain too. But that point of view is based on the assumption that Shadow priests need that additional dps to be competitive. We don't think that is the case. Hence, we have no plans to change SW:P at this time.
The end is really more of a reward -- an achievement with stats. Very little of our content is tuned to the point where you have to farm to a large degree before you are capable of beating the encounters. I remember in the BC days guilds running a new recruit through SSC to gear up before they could survive BT. That really isn't the case anymore. Now as you to the hard modes, this is more true, but players tackling that content have access to better gear faster anyway.
I don't find it offensive that players who only run dungeons can eventually get some decent Frost badge loot at a much slower pace than the raiders can. That pretty much happens anyway when we advance tiers and the old badges become much more farmable.
Death Knight
Chains of Ice bugs (Source Re: So when's Chains of Ice getting hotfixed?)There are two known bugs with Chains of Ice that should be hotfixed today (Dec 11) or possibly soon after that if something goes wrong. (Stupid caveat that I have to put in everything I type now: this is not a promise of when it will be fixed; only our intention to fix it when we can.)
First, there should not be a target limit. That is, the single limit nerf you are seeing now was not intentional.
Second, it appears to not be functioning correctly with Endless Winter. The disease is not being applied at all against snare-immune targets. The intended behavior is the snare is not applied, but Frost Fever is.
Unless I am forgetting some change we made early on, the design intent is that Chains of Ice functions as it did before 3.3 shipped.
Hunter
Icecrown Ammunitions (Iceblade Arrow / Shatter Rounds) (Source Re: Can hunters get an ammo hotfix?)
If you can't afford to AH the ammo, you probably can't afford to get the best gems and enchants for you new gear which would probably be a bigger dps increase. That is going to affect the economic decision of looting more than the ammo I suspect. I don't think the ammo will be outrageously high on the AH given the mats. It may be high for the next week or so while it's scarce, but as I've said, we don't really want every hunter in the game to be able to get ammo which is tied to a rep grind and rare drop on day one.
You may not be able to afford to constantly switch Engineering specs, but we're not trying to make that a very attractive option in the first place.
[...] Some of you are still arguing about the cost of ammo or the fact that it's a consumable or tied to a trade skill, but all of that has been true for some time. The Engineering specialization didn't affect any of that to a large degree. It may affect cost or availability for a short time, but that is true of most new and valuable resources. What is Primordial Saronite selling for on your server? Do you think it will still be at that price in a week? In a month?
The materials to make the ammo are not hard to get. The recipe itself is quite hard to get. Therefore it will probably take awhile before the ammo is widely available at a low cost. That's what we want. After the ammo is widely available it would basically take a unified cabal of Engineers to keep the prices inflated. Almost always in those situations someone blinks because the loss of selling things for cheaper is a lot better outcome than not selling anything at all.
Priest
Shadow Word: Pain not benefiting from Haste (Source Re: Shadow word pain needs hotfixed as well)
We think Shadow Priest dps is in a good place without SW:P benefiting from haste based on the data we have seen so far.
[...] There is no bug per se. On the PTR for a time Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague all benefited from haste. We remove SW:Pain because the dps increase was too high, particularly given the ability to constantly refresh the spell with an inflated haste rating. Some players interpreted the inflated haste rating problem as the reason we removed SW:P, but I posted when we made that change that Shadow dps was just too high.
The OP was pointing out that since we fixed the haste problem for Corruption we could go back and fix SW:P pain too. But that point of view is based on the assumption that Shadow priests need that additional dps to be competitive. We don't think that is the case. Hence, we have no plans to change SW:P at this time.
