Yeah it just takes one person to press Need after everyone's pressed Greed on the Frozen Orbs and you miss out. But the good news is that in patch 3.3.3 this won't be the case anymore -- the roll for Frozen Orbs will be an automatic Greed roll. Rejoice!

A forum has been made available for those who wish to discuss the World of Warcraft Trading Game. To begin discussing the TCG with others please follow the link below.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=26146637

Low level talents in Cataclysm
Yes, low level talents will be looked at extensively. The talent tier just above the 51-point talent was just a good example. (Source)

Tanking stats and Stamina

I'm not sure I buy that logic. If tanking gear had thousands and thousands of Stam, tanks would still socket Stamina because it's reliable. If your health is low, then even if your avoidance is 99% that means sometimes you're just going to die and no healer can save you. Now, if healers can generally heal you through damage but then eventually gas out, then avoidance becomes more attractive because it lets healers heal you longer. Does that mean you gem it? Not sure, but at least a trinket with all avoidance might be pretty exciting.

We also think we figured out a budgeting scheme to let tank gear have the same basic Stamina as dps gear. It's not a huge balance concern either way, but it does look weird when dps plate has more.

As for parry vs. dodge, there are just going to be a lot of debates both within our office and on all of the boards about how it should ideally work and the relative value of each. Those conversations are going to go on a long time and not the kind of thing that can easily be summed up in a pithy GC post. (Source)

1v1 Balance and Healer vs. DPS
To reiterate:

1) I said at some point "All things being equal, a dps should be able to kill a healer."

2) OP wondered what the context was for that statement.

3) I said the context was probably (because I don't remember) mana: meaning that all things being equal, a healer should eventually run out of mana. In other words, the way to counter a healer is to run them out of mana. It can't just be "I explode the healer with my awesome damage" because if that was true, it would mean a healer couldn't heal themselves through one attacker and would have little chance keeping themselves or a team member alive vs. 2 attackers.

4) The real take home message is that we don't put a lot of time balancing 1 v 1. The reasons are A) that there is nothing in the game that showcases 1v 1 encounters (you don't get Arena points from duels), and B) 1 v 1 balance doesn't scale well to team balance, which is showcased in Arena and BGs.

Players like to argue "If it's balanced 1 v 1 then it will be balanced for any number of participants." But that math doesn't actually work because of team synergy. The definition of synergy is that the total effect is greater than the sum of the component parts, or in other words, 1 + 1 > 2. The second you buff someone you are making both of you more powerful -- the buff is not divided by the number of recipients. Your team is more powerful than just the sum of what each of you can do individually. A 3 v 3 Arena match is fundamentally *not* a trio of 1 v 1 duels happening simultaneously.

Another way to consider it is to look at the damage done by a 10 player raid. Is a 25 player raid roughly 2.5 times that of the 10 player? No, it's probably closer to 3.5 times. It's not a linear scale. Now to be fair some of that is from fewer healers and tanks, but even that helps to support my point that you can't extrapolate upwards from 1 player and expect to have a meaningful encounter.

[...] If healers were overpowered relative to dps then you would see more two healer teams. Most of the time, that's just not worth the sacrifice you make in giving up that second dps player. I wish we saw more 2 healer teams in 5s, but that's a slight tangent.

I do think mana for healers is too easy to come by and I've said that several times. Even if healers ran dry more often though, I don't think that should let a dps guy just beat a healer in every duel because "Hey, I'm dps -- I should win." (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Glyphs

• Glyph of Focus: Now increases the damage done by Starfall by 10%, down from 20%.

Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator)

• Heart of the Phoenix: Cooldown reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)

• Thunderclap: This ability now counts as a ranged attack, granting it double damage on critical strikes instead of 150% and ranged miss chance, and still cannot be dodged or parried.

Arms

• Bladestorm: Warriors can now be Disarmed while under the effects of this ability.

Hi all,

We will be hosting another PvP event on the US realm Anasterian tomorrow (3-11-2010) at 4:00PM PST! Queue for Random Battlegrounds for your shot to PvP with us!

What: Random Battleground Finder
Who: Blizzard QA

• Horde - 'Blizzard' guild
• Alliance - 'Blizzard QA' guild

Place: US Server Anasterian (Those on Broxigar can participate by Queueing for a Random Battleground)
Time: 4:00PM PST
Date: 3/11/2010

(Note: Time/Event is subject to change.)

Hey all,

We need your help in collecting information on issues you may be running into while using the Random Battleground feature. Specifically we want to know if you are experiencing the following (and when you experienced these issues):

• Not being able to enter Battlegrounds when the queue pops.
• Not being resurrected by the Spirit Healer when dying in a Battleground.
• Unable to see Spirit Healers after dying in a Battleground.
• Getting stuck in a Battleground after the match has finished.
• Becoming un-killable after dying in a Battleground.

If you've come across other issues related to Battlegrounds that are not included in the list, please feel free to describe what you were seeing and when you were seeing it.

Thanks!

We've updated World of Warcraft's five-year anniversary site to include two fansite interviews.

Exorsus, currently the third best guild in the world, is also the top Russian and former top European guild. We met Viksh, its leader, to talk about how the guild was created, what makes it different from others, and how a team should be ruled to be efficient.

In the second interview, we speak with Fraya, the leader of the Enigma guild on the Deathwing realm, about his most memorable moments over five years of playing, Enigma’s experience in high-end raiding, and where the guild expects to find itself in Cataclysm and beyond.

Check out the anniversary site to read the full interviews.

Anniversary Site: http://www.wow-europe.com/wowanniversary/interview/
Exorsus Interview: http://www.wow-europe.com/wowanniversary/interview/exorsus.xml
Enigma Interview: http://www.wow-europe.com/wowanniversary/interview/enigma.xml

Tanking Stats
Stamina is always going to be valuable for tanks, so I'm not sure a strategy of trying to force tanks to gem / enchant other stats is ever going to feel good. That said, tanks used to worry more about being the mana sponge. The way to alleviate being the mana sponge is to take less damage and a great way to take less damage is to dodge more.

The relative value of dodge vs. parry is something we'll have to play with. My gut reaction is that parry needs to be cheaper since avoiding 100% of one hit is more valuable than avoiding 50% of two hits, but I'm not sure how much cheaper. Avoiding spikiness (which dodge will contribute to) also has value, and if the second hit after a parry is dodged instead (such that you lose the parry "charge") that plays into the cost as well.

The passive talent tree bonuses for tanks will probably be something like 1) reduces damage taken, 2) increases damage done, 3) reduces damage taken in a way unique to your tree.

Yes, we're still dodging the DK question. For now. (Source)

1v1 Balance - Healer vs DPS
I think my point there was that the healer will eventually run out of mana. If they are able to damage you while healing themselves though, they will likely win.

It comes down to this: If a healer can't beat a dps one on one, then there is no way a healer will be able to keep an entire three-person team alive. In that scenario you might as well just run with 3 dps and there becomes no role for the healer in Arena teams.

Note: this does not mean that in every single case that a dps spec defeats a healing spec in a duel that there is a problem with the class. (Source)

Alterac Valley imbalance
We have discussed this numerous times. Based on the data we've collected over the years after all of the changes that have been made to Alterac Valley, we simply do not agree that there are any glaring imbalances in the map favoring one side over the other enough to easily sway a match one way or the other. (Source)

Masteries Cap
It's possible you will only get the benefit of the tree in which you've spent the most points, or will only get the benefit from say 50 points maximum with the bonus chosen from the tree with the most points in it. We'll have to see when the talent trees are more finalized and we start to figure out build strategies.

Overall, the goal is to spend points as you want, and not feel penalized for spending into another tree or feel like you have to game things by spending more points than you want in your tree. Remember these passive bonuses are designed to give you flexibility, not lock you into anything. (Source)

[...] Imagine you spend 55 points in Retribution, so you get the maximum passive talent tree bonuses from that tree. Your remaining points you can spend where you want, in Retribution, Protection or Holy. It does discourage some kind of true hybrid build where you go partway down multiple trees, but we aren't really trying to support those, and they aren't very popular today.

The flexibility comes (hopefully) in having more discretionary points that you can spend on talents you like, rather than sacrificing raw damage, healing or tanking to do so. (Source)

Mastery/Talent system and new players
It's designed partially with new players in mind. It will be much harder to have a truly terrible talent spec because you won't be able to help but be reasonably good at your chosen role.

The mastery stat itself won't show up until high level, and even when it does, you should have more confidence that it's a stat you want instead of say trying to figure out the percent of your damage that is physical damage to calculate if armor pen is good for you or not.

I admit that adding passive bonuses at all to talent trees complicates the talent feature slightly. We hope to make up for that by there being less paranoia about picking "the wrong" spec. The wrong spec might only be a slight loss instead of a tragic loss. As a point of comparison, dual-spec complicates talents a little, but overall we think it was good for the game. (Source)

Mastery bonus distribution
To answer your question -- and this applies to all classes. the first two mastery stats are gained by placing points into a given talent tree (and wearing the gear intended for your class, e.g. leather for druids). This will allow us to remove many of the talents that always felt mandatory, especially at the min-max level, and allow room for customization.

When we begin revealing specific class information, (such as new spells and abilities, and the talent tree revamp) -- the posts we've made thus far, will make much more sense. I feel, players should look at the stat/system changes, as well as this mastery post as a "piece of a puzzle" -- and ask questions, provide feedback, but understand that until more information is released, it's not possible to see the whole of the picture. (Source)

Masteries Q&A
# 1. 28/28/20 spec. Does mastery on gear affect both highest trees or give no benefit at all?
Mastery on gear gives you one bonus. That bonus is the third passive (the unique one) in the tree in which you’ve spent the most points. In the examples we gave, those are Absorption, Radiance and Runic Power generation.

# 2. How are ferals and Dks as tanks working with mastery system in place? Are they to care about it for threat or do they have separate bonuses.
Ferals will have passive bonuses that say Cat: melee damage done, Bear: damage reduction. For death knights we have a different plan in mind that we’re not quite ready to discuss. DKs are undergoing some slight changes so they aren’t so GCD constrained and are less limited by rune cooldowns.

# 3. How are the non-pure classes going to be balanced against those with a full 76 point passive benefit? Balance, enhancement(not so much), shadow, feral, ele, resto, holy and Ret all have this issue.
Assume you only get the passive bonuses for the tree in which you’ve spent the most points, and there is a ceiling per tree (which could be something like 51-55 talent points). If you spend more points than that in a tree you still get the benefits of the talent. If you spend points in another tree, you are benefiting from those talents instead. Unless you try to make say a 40 / 36 / 0 build, you shouldn’t be losing passive bonuses.

If you turn level 10 and spend 1 point in Discipline, you are now a Disc priest. You receive the Disc talent tree passive bonuses and mastery rating on gear benefits your Disc passive bonus (Absorption). If you reach level 85 and have 70 points in Disc and 6 in Holy, you are still a Disc priest and the same rules apply. If you change your build to 51 Disc / 20 Holy / 5 Shadow, you are still a Disc priest.

# 4. Hybrids who use spells not improved by their spec on occasion such as heals or the extra lava burst are feeling that their non-specced spells are going to be extremely weak as compared to now.
They are weak now and the intent is to keep them that way. We aren’t trying to nerf them any more than they are today. If we want to make sure Resto shaman can do big Lava Bursts, we’ll give them a talent or something to make that happen. We don’t want Resto shaman to Lava Burst anywhere on the scale of an Elemental shaman. Again, how they perform today is pretty much the target for where we want to end up.

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Runic Power boost through Frost masteries
I know it's hard to get a feel for the design when you can't see the complete picture, but talent trees are changing for Cataclysm. As Eyonix referenced above, we are changing the DK rune mechanic a little so that you aren't so GCD constrained. This in turn will give us a chance to rebalance how much runic power Frost gets. Remember that in many cases we are pulling talents out of the trees and giving them to you as passive bonuses. In general if you see a passive talent tree bonus and think to yourself "Hmm, that doesn't sound very good for me," then it's probably because we haven't revealed the changes that lead to that being attractive to you. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Shockwave vs. Thunder Clap
Shockwave is technically a ranged attack, like a hunter shot. This means it's treated like an attack (and not a spell) for purposes of what you want but can't be dodged or parried. (I believe ranged attacks can be blocked, but I can't honestly remember off the top of my head.) The Shockwave treatment might be the right way to go for Thunder Clap. Thunder Clap is currently a spell that hits for physical damage and can't be dispelled. The distinction among spell, melee and ranged attack (or persistent auras like Consecrate) is a largely technical one that doesn't always encompass unusual abilities well.  (Source)

Thunder Clap in 3.3.3
I think we're likely to make Thunder Clap a ranged attack (like Shockwave) for 3.3.3. This will let it get 20...