MMO-Champion - Mage Tier 14, Blue Posts, TCG Art Gallery Update
Diablo 3 - Diablo III Cinematic Screenshots, Results Conference Call, "One of the Chosen", Blue Posts

Mage Tier 14

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Account-Wide Reputation
We don’t want to make reputation account-wide. We think that removes too much of the gameplay of having an alt. Harkening back to the blog, the goal is for players to feel free to play their alts. If you have a cool mount on character A, then that might be an issue. Being exalted on character A so that enchants are easier to buy doesn’t seem like the same issue. (What I mean is, it’s a short step from there to saying character A has better gear so you aren’t going to play B).


For all intents and purposes, assume that the game doesn't really understand the concept of a WoW license. The account-level achievement system will all be based on the account and not each individual WoW license attached to it.

Will this affect reputations associated with mounts?
The best answer right now is we're not sure. We're still discussing some of these details and honestly haven't drawn final conclusions as of yet. So just keep that in mind as you read on.

For Ramkahen, you'll probably just need to buy the mount once by gaining the necessary reputation on one character, in order to unlock it for all characters on your account. The challenge comes with the city mounts. If I have a dwarf today, I have to get Exalted Darnassus to buy a nightsaber. But if the nightsabers become account level, then I should probably just make a night elf rather than grind exalted on the dwarf. If that doesn't feel right, we could "fix it" by making the city mounts non-account level. Or we could let them be account level, but make you require the appropriate reputation to use them. If we did THAT, then it might make sense for all faction mounts to require a rep.

But again, the simple answer is we’re not sure yet. I left out your question about reputation-based titles because we don't have an answer as of yet. I guess you could say that also falls within the "we're not sure" category at this stage.(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Account-Wide Achievements
Let’s consider Loremaster of Kalimdor.

  • Character A completes Ashenvale Quests for a toast and 10 points.
  • If Character B then completes Ashenvale Quests, they will get the toast, but not 10 more points. (It is NOT a new achievement for the account.)
  • If Character B then completes Felwood Quests, he gets a toast and 10 points. (It is a new achievement for the account.)
  • If Character A never completes Felwood Quests, he will not get a toast, but the achievement will show that the account has the achievement. (It is NOT a new achievement for the account.)
  • Loremaster of Kalimdor is a meta achievement, so it is account only. If we assume that Character A complete half of the Kalimdor quest achievements and Character B completes the other half, then Loremaster of Kalimdor will give a toast for whichever character is logged on at the time. The account will get 10 points.
  • Any new characters will continue to get toasts (but not points) for doing Felwood Quests or whatever, but . No character on that account will ever see a toast for Loremaster of Kalimdor again.

This sounds more confusing than it is. In the Achiement UI, you will see normal achievements (which are now shared) and account-only achievements, which use a different color and symbol to indicate that you can only get them once. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mage (Forums)
Wizardry Missing
I looked through my spellbook for this guy and a premade and neither have the 5% int bonus, but my priest and lock still have theirs.
Just a bug. It will be back. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums)
Priest Feedback
Heals cast during Spirit Shell should benefit from Grace. Mastery affects the bubbles. We built Divine Aegis into the effect by making the bubbles scale with your crit chance.

It sounds like your PoH Spirit Shells are low, but you are often operating a few builds behind us.

Shields are generally smaller than equivalent heals, since there is much less risk of overhealing and the absorbs always go away first. That's just a general tuning philosophy and not a die-hard rule. Shields have disadvantages too (such as at some point you need to get targets back up to a safe health level).

Again, don't focus on the numbers. It's fine to bring up the numbers if they seem off, but don't let simple balance adjustments get in the way of evaluating whether or not you think the mechanic is fun. I know that is hard sometimes with healing, since efficiency and throughput dictate so many decisions.

The beginning of MoP Beta: "We want Discipline to feel different, so we're removing several of the heals you have become accustomed to using over the years and replacing them with absorb mechanics."

Currently in the MoP Beta: "We don't want Discipline feeling TOO different so here's all your old heals back. Oh, and Spirit Shell is now a semi-useful-in-certain-situations cooldown. Enjoy."

We usually start out more bold and refine things as we go along, which often means going to a known fallback position. That direction makes more sense than starting off cautiously and getting more reckless as we get closer to ship.

...what does "making the bubbles scale with your crit chance" mean?
If your chance to crit is 20%, your bubbles are 20% stronger. If your chance to crit is 100%, you get double bubbles.

For Divine Aegis, the heals are 30% times your crit chance, except for PoH which is just +30%.

Logically, I understand this, but in practice... it's a bit more difficult since sometimes the numbers DO define the fun, or at least what some people think of as fun.
Yep, we get that. When understanding the target numbers is key to understanding how you'd use the spell, we try to get things in the ballpark. On the other hand, it's not a good use of development time to balance a mechanic if we ultimately (and sometimes quickly) remove it. We could have spent many more hours balancing the previous version of Spirit Shell, which we ended up scrapping. Everyone in this business very quickly gets used to "wasted" design time like that, but it's better for the project as a whole if we spend our polish time once everything has stabilized a bit more.

If the numbers go up to something reasonable, then it becomes intensely fun again because it gives a choice. Is there about to be a ton of aoe coming in? Pre-shield. Is there only some aoe coming in? PoH. If I chcoose wrong.. if I pre-shield and it is a little damage.. I wasted absorbs. If I choose not to shield and it is a lot of damage, then I tax myself (and the other healer) trying to get everyone back up. Having options and needing to know when each particular option is the right thing to do is what is fun for me.
That's the intent. Also, because it's not a very long cooldown, you're not overly punished for making the wrong call. It will be back soon enough.

That said, GC, can we get more clarity to the dev team's vision of the mechanic-- specifically how it's meant to stack on itself and refresh?
We're not sure yet. Stacking sometimes leads to behavior where you feel like you have to spam something over and over to the max stack. We wouldn't want Spirit Shell to only be used on a tank for instance. That may not happen, but the mechanic is still in it's toddler stages, so we need to evaluate it some more. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Rogue (Forums)
Rogue feedback/explanation
As I stated this thread is NOT meant to rant on about things I find wrong. I am merely asking for an explanation as to WHY some of these changes have happened. Usually when they make this types of changes I can get a sense as to what caused it/the reasoning behind them even if I think they are wrong.
Totally fair and reasonable. I'll handle some of these. Please be understanding that I am one guy and I have a day job. It's not realistic for me spend equal amounts of time on every class thread every day. We read all of these posts though, because reading is much faster than responding.

1) Sang Vein change to exclude hemo: Currently this SUB ONLY buff excluded hemo….which is SUB's REPLACEMENT for SS. I find it very odd that a spec specific buff would exclude the only spec specific bleed it has.
Honor Among Thieves generates a lot of combo points, so we think having multiple finishers is appropriate, so we want Rupture to be used in the rotation. Sang Vein being used only on Hemo, while convenient, meant Rupture could be skipped over easily. We understand that this has PvP ramifications and we're prepared to buff if necessary, which in this case I think is likely. Note that it is much harder for us to predict PvP damage compared to PvE damage, so it requires a lot more testing and player feedback. (Also note that most classes do have a significant gap between PvE and PvP damage, and that's fine.) We agree that Rupture would feel better as a button to push if it rewarded you with better damage. That's something we're looking at.

2) Hemo DoT buffed: Now don’t get me wrong, I welcome any damage buff….but buffing a DoT (on a skill you recently excluded from SV no less)?
We buffed all of Hemo, not just the DoT. This is partial compensation for the above change, but as I said above, probably not enough compensation for PvP yet.

Hemo is like Mangle -- it's the button you're supposed to use in PvE when you can't get behind the target. It's a dps loss, but not a huge one. It's a minor DPS increase in PvE to use both Backstab and Hemo at the same time, but we'd prefer that to be a niche strategy.

Venomous Wounds not procing on both Garrote and Rupt when both are up.
This was all part of a suite of changes to discourage the use of Vanish (and Prep) as DPS cooldowns. We generally want utility / survival cooldowns to get used for that. It sort of sucks when you are asked to give up your survivability button in order to max DPS. (Yes Shadow Focus still gives a slight DPS increase for using Vanish, but we can live with that.)

Para/Leeching poison mutually exclusive.
It will probably be unlikely for very optimized players to take both poisons. We think they are appropriate in each of their talent tiers though and you have other choices to take in both cases. This seems like it’s on the level of someone who chooses an AE talent for a single target fight.

Versatility: This talent..well has some issues I think.
We don’t want cps on the rogue. That’s not the design. The rogue builds up attacks against a target. We understand though that sometimes the build up can be overly restrictive, which is why we have cooldowns like Redirect, and we understand some players love rogues but just can’t stand the cp target switching limitation. Versatility is for them.

The level 90 tier for rogues is supposed to feel like it breaks the rules (you know, within reason). Shuriken gives a ranged attack to a melee class. Versatility overcomes the rule that cps are on the target. Anticipation overcomes the rule that there are 5 cps.

HaT not proccing unless in combat: First it was not proccing in stealth, then you change it to not proccing out of combat at all. Again I ask…why? What was the purpose here?
First, we don't like players to have to live with burden of building up something before a fight starts. It may be a DPS increase, but it's not a fun one. More specifically though, we didn't want Anticipation and HaT to build up 10 cps before the fight even begins. Obviously, I hope, that just couldn't fly.

And what of Find Weakness? And Find Weakness's synergy with Preparation? Those alone, at least for Subtlety, introduces the concept of a mandatory talent.
It's fair to say that Prep is going to be more of a dps increase for Sub than the other two specs. Still, there are also fights (in PvE) where the other two talents are just as useful. We're still considering ways to solve that issue though without nerfing the cool aspects of Prep.

To speak nothing of the Shadow Walk glyph in PvP, which will be another forced requirement, since all Rogues will be working under the competitive expectation of squaring off like that.
We understand the concern, but we're not convinced -- yet -- that it will be a problem. Shadow Walk is up such a brief period of time, and you're giving up a whole glyph slot for that brief theoretical "double stealth" encounter against another rogue. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Rogue Feedback
It's a wording change, because the dodge chance now applies to shots as well as melee attacks. If anything, it's a buff, now you have 50% against range attacks.
This is correct. I will say that I am totally in favor of complete hyposcrisy from one day to the next (the thread title), just so you can quote me on it from now on. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlock (Forums)
Glyph of Fel Regeneration
We were a little worried about whether we could balance the glyph for both Destro and Demo with models that supported both mana and fel energy. Can you elaborate on what you liked about it? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Glyph of Lifetap Stealth Nerf
"Stealth nerf" typically refers to changes we deploy on live without telling anyone. To be honest, we don't really do these any longer because players quickly figure them out anyway. Since we barely document any of the thousands of changes going into each beta build, I'm not sure the term applies here.

Regardless, the intent of the glyph was never to let you opt out of the cost of Life Tap. It was intended to let you stay at full health and defer the cost. If you used 4 Life Taps without the glyph, it would cost 4x the health cost. It stands to reason that if you used 4 Life Taps with the glyph that paying 1x the health cost would make the glyph very good. It was just a bug fix to do what the glyph always claimed it did. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warrior (Forums)
Warrior Feedback





Not generating rage in Defensive Stance hurts DPS warriors as well.













Here are some upcoming changes to Arms and Fury:


As always, let us know how these feel in beta. These are very much experiments (as are many of our beta changes) so we may decide not all of these changes are good or necessary. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

TCG Art Update

This article was originally published in forum thread: Mage Tier 14, Blue Posts, TCG Art Gallery Update started by chaud View original post
Comments 56 Comments
  1. Badhairday's Avatar
    But... but account-wide reputation is very much connected to account-wide achievements. Those who don't feel that they can't change main because of their achievements will probably feel the same way about their reputation. It's a bloody pain in the ass to go grind it all up again. Sure, you might have the achievements for the reps on all characters, but we (or at least I) love having things maxed out. Guess I'm stuck with my paladin after all.
  1. Baracuda's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Vampyrr View Post
    Make it worse and extra god awful in all things pvp
    As a PvP warrior for the past 5 years, I like these changes,
    Our signature abilites regenrating rage and such will make the specs way more reliable.
  1. Rekuja's Avatar
    please... stop... using.. human male...
  1. au revoir's Avatar
    I can see that mage helm being kept for transmog by a lot of people. Floaty crowns seem to be popular transmog items.
  1. h4rr0d's Avatar
    I second the notion of using human for showing new armor models. Especially in case of shamans and druids it makes no sense at all. Maybe try using Pandaren instead for a while now please?

    Also I like how there isn't any notes or blue posts about Monks. It means that they might be quite happy with how the class plays right now.
  1. Trixzy's Avatar
    Wow.. the tier set looks really amazing. Can't wait to get my hands on them.
  1. Polarthief's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by one_entity View Post
    Well ... it's not as bad as I feared it'd be after what they delivered for Challenge Mode. So... I guess there's that.

    It's not bad, not great, it's just ... fine. As pretty much all mage sets are. I'm ok with all of them but I don't love any of them as I do the Paladin Tier 2, Warrior Tier 6, Priest Tier 6, Warlock Tier 5 etc.
    Why can't we have *one* badass set....
    T10/T11 wasn't "Badass"?

    However, I dislike this set over "like" it tbh.

    I can safely say: DNW.
  1. shearx's Avatar
    eww t14 looks horrible.. gonna be transmoggin that crap immediately
  1. soulkeeperx's Avatar
    Those shots of the cinematics are awesome, can't way to see them for myself. Also, those last two screenshots of Leah actually kinda scared me, reminded me of the exorcist or something O.o
  1. Suliso's Avatar
    That mage tier 14 Helmet looks like an Angel shat on ma head I dont like it
  1. deviantcultist's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Paraclef View Post
    Its green/fel fire color fits this class perfectly... Designers trolling Warlocks deserve a ban.
    They seem to like using Mages as scapegoats for Warlock rage, thats true....
  1. DragonSoul's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kootabang View Post
    Uh..... warrior's are the highest dps in the game right now. QQ somewhere else.
    lol are you kidding warriors are the worst dps in pvp and in pve, there not as broken in pve as pvp but i suggest you play wow cos i dnt know what game your playing and what your smoking
  1. Hysteria's Avatar
    Tier 14 mage doesn't look to bad however it doesn't look good either haha but hey you got transmog their for a reason.
  1. ridish's Avatar
    The mage set looks wierd, theirs alot of light a stuff around the head and shoulder area but from the chest and down is compleatly the same as like lvl 10 robes....
  1. megrim's Avatar
    I think T14 looks great, not as obnoxious as so many sets have been and it has a lot of Asian influence to it, fitting with the theme. Not overly crazy about the head slot, but that's hardly a difficult issue to get around.
  1. AncientNecro's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Badhairday View Post
    I had a similar reaction. I hope that Blizzard implements BOA reputation tokens that can be purchased at exalted that raises the user's reputation to 999 exalted when used. Would allow completionists (like myself and yourself) to have things maxed out on any character they choose.
  1. Harthmut's Avatar
    I know it's not finished, but still, this Mage set looks like someone ate a lot of bacon and then threw up.
  1. fohhee's Avatar
    gz, mage shoulder with 4 baby milk bottle on it, good job blizz
  1. CcFreAk's Avatar
    Maybe the gloves finally won't ruin the robe arms this time, but I can foresee clipping issues once again (gnome)

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