I really am. I have a billion questions flying through my head, mostly geared towards PvP, so I'll try to hammer them out in a liear fashion.

FULL DISCLOSURE - I run a 3s setup that is pretty much entirely based around "CC the healer and burst a target down". I have zero problems with changing our team's playstyle, as long as a viable playstyle remains.

Deathknights -

Why didn't blizzard decide to "spread around" the damage dealt by frost DKs in PvP?

I totally understand that frost strike hits freaking hard, especially on wounded targets. I also totally get the avoidance change: defensive abilities like evasion need to have at least SOME effect against something that hits that hard. What I don't understand is why you nerfed a main component of a frost DK's damage and didn't try to recoup the lost damage through another ability. Unholy DKs already deal more overall damage during a match. I'm not linking screenshots of end-of-match reports, because I'm sure blizzzard is already aware of this. So why the overall damage nerf, and not a damage spread? Are you saying that DKs in general are doing too much damage in a match? Without MS? it seems puzzling.

Why was Hungering Cold left untouched?

This one has me completely stumped. At the high levels of arena, HC is arguably more important of a tool than frost strike, because it's 10 seconds, applies a damage-increasing DoT effect, and doesn't share a DR with most other forms of CC. This thing was begging to get nerfed to 6 seconds. Does this mean that Frost DKs are still meant to trap a healer in 2 HCs (one to force trinket, the second to make the healer sit through it) over the course of the fight in order to land a kill? I'll take a 6 second HC if it means we get a stronger plague strike or blood strike. Anything to get our overall PvP damage up to ret or warrior levels.

Why was desecration tweaked to be a single target (and therefore PvP-friendly) ability?

Unholy does perfectly fine as far as overall damage and burst damage goes in PvP. Why are you giving them Death-Coil deep wounds?

Overall PvP questions

Are you happy with resto shamans' reliance on "control" classes in arenas for viable comps?

The most effective 3s comp for a resto shaman right now is resto sham/muti rogue/destro lock. Why? Both classes have strong CC and can't be left alone without serious consequences. The overall effect is to prevent the shaman from being a viable target, allowing the shaman to utilize his offensive abilities. The riptide change that removes the haste from LHW is going to reinforce the necessity for shamans to pair with control classes or deal with failure. Secondly, I thought blizzard was trying to get away from the crit bonuses for healing spells after all the complaints from pallys regarding illumination. Is 25% more crit a reliable healing mechanic? Would you take a shaman because he says "hey I'm a great healer, my LHWs crit like half the time!". Good thing 2s don't count anymore, I'd love to see a shaman try to get a heal off against double-DPS...

Are you still happy with the current design of massive changes done infrequently, as opposed to minor changes done more often?

I honestly can see the pros and cons of each approach, but I wonder if blizzard is happy with saving the major PvP changes for the beginning of each season, as opposed to trying more significant changes to faltering classes in an attempt to raise representation.

Does blizzard factor in comp diversity for classes in regards to overall representation?

Apologies if the question is hard to understand, but I'd like to know if blizzard accounts for, say, a low warlock representation in 3s due to the fact that it really only has 1 or 2 viable comps. Same goes for hunters and shaman. Also, does blizzard ever make design changes specifically intended to boost synergy amongst the classes in order to increase comp diversity?

Does blizzard consider it a viable strategy for non-MS damage dealing classes to get kills without using CC or healer interrupts in arena?

Putting it bluntly, does blizzard find it okay if a ret, warlock, mage, etc can "brute-force" a kill by simply pumping out a lot of damage? I see an inconsistency here in regards to the non-MS damage dealing classes. Obviously, blizzard doesn't want rets or DKs hitting as hard as they do, but destro locks and mages still retain the power to overwhelm a target through healing if allowed to run their rotation. Is this more of an issue between melee burst/ranged burst? Is it an issue of setup? In my mind, I see that rets and DKs lost a viable strategy while casters retained it.

Does blizzard see MS effects as non-essential in 3s? In 5s?

I'm pretty sure anything other than "yes" or "no" is going to require a.... long-winded response, so I'm fine if blizzard can't answer this one. But the changes, taken as a whole, look to create a boost in the MS-using classes, with the inevitable decline in non-MS-using melee classes.

I have many more questions, but these are the ones bugging me the most. If any poster has some solid arguments regarding the questions, jump into the fray so I can personally attack you and ignore said argument : )

---

Q u o t e:
Does blizzard see MS effects as non-essential in 3s? In 5s?

---

I'd like to see the answer to that too.

New questions-

Why no attempts to make sub a viable PvP spec for rogues?

It seemed like a great time to fiddle with a lower-burst, higher-survivability spec for rogues to try out, especially given their low representation in 5s.

Not touching Blood PvP for DKs?

Still gets kited, still can't compete with frost burst or unholy overall damage.

Feral druids had a niche in 2s, and basically don't exist in the higher brackets are a competitive level. Why nerf the overall damage without giving them some sort of control or disruption in return?

Ya, I know resto is in a great place for both brackets, but it's gotta be tough on the kitties who lost their only viable bracket for arena rewards...

Feel free to toss in your own questions. No such thing as too many cooks in this kitchen!

First will enter a real response in a second??

edit: yay, first. 2nd one in my life ^_^

Okay.

---

Q u o t e:


We made almost no crowd control changes this patch. We wanted to tame damage and healing (in PvP).

---

Thank you for this. The patch notes look great so far in terms of handling this.

---

Q u o t e:
We did. We moved damage into Blood Strike.

---

And do you think the increased damage from disease modifiers is an adequate recoup of the damage? Or is this a "wait-and-see how the damage plays out before we give them more" kind of change?

Not a rhetorical question, either. I'm very aware of how powerful blood strike already is with the glyph and 5/5 blood of the north. My blood strike crit for nearly 4k on heavy-resil cloth. But I fear that having my frost strikes not land on a player when I need them too opens up a very large hole in my kill strategy.


Forgot to sat thank you very much for answering the questions. And pretty pretty please can you respond to the MS question? I have a feeling that the MS debate is going to get explosive as the patch gets nearer.

---

Q u o t e:
New questions-

Why no attempts to make sub a viable PvP spec for rogues?

It seemed like a great time to fiddle with a lower-burst, higher-survivability spec for rogues to try out, especially given their low representation in 5s.

---

I'd like this answered please =(

I love sub so much. Like managing cds and timing things.

So wait... GC you're saying that blood strike doing nearly 200% of an auto attack on a non-crit is considered to be legit? That it wasn't a typo?

---

Q u o t e:
So wait... GC you're saying that blood strike doing nearly 200% of an auto attack on a non-crit is considered to be legit? That it wasn't a typo?

---

Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.

So...

Start with 40% weapon damage.
Add 100% weapon damage with 2 diseases up.
Add 20% from glyph on snared targets.
Add 15% from Blood of the North.
Add 15% from Tundra Stalker.

190% weapon damage plus 305 on an ideal target. Wow. Ok, I retract my gripe about Frost DKs not getting their damage back. Sheesh, those things are gonna hit hard... I can understand making blood strike that powerful though, since it makes us less of a hard-counter vs other melee, and increases our deadliness to casters who normally have success absorbing our frost/shadow damage.

---

Q u o t e:
So wait... GC you're saying that blood strike doing nearly 200% of an auto attack on a non-crit is considered to be legit? That it wasn't a typo?

---

Are you serious? So frost strike does 5% less damage and blood strike now hits like a truck.

Cool.

---

Q u o t e:
Are you serious? So frost strike does 5% less damage and blood strike now hits like a truck.

Cool.

---

It's generaly considered that it's a typo and should say BY 50% instead of to 50%.

They have to buff nerf + dk = buff

Duh! Blizz nerfs one of their strikes and makes another one better so when people look at patch notes they see the currently op strike get nerfed without realizing they just buffed the next one. Every strike needs their own representation I suppose.

---

Q u o t e:


It's generaly considered that it's a typo and should say BY 50% instead of to 50%.

---

If that's the case, the modifiers would take blood strike down to 127.5% weapon damage on an ideal target.

Which makes obliterate still look just plain crappy. 155% of weapon damage on an ideal target. Would be nice if they made Blood of the North affect oblit.

Super-important question regarding the resilience change: Crittable DoT's on live right now are effected by resilience in a way that doesn't double-stack the effect. Say a warlock's target has enough resilience for 8% crit reduc, 8% DoT damage reduc, and 16% crit damage reduc. A warlock's DoT tick would be reduced by 8% if it didn't crit, but if it did crit the effect would be reduced by 16% while NOT stacking with the original 8% passive reduc. Will the new across-the-board damage reduction granted by resilience function this way?

Ive got a question, Why is it that only melee are allowed to have a chance against healers? either through a ms effect or by sheer longevity due to there constantly regenerating energy supplies.

Why are there no caster ms effects and why cant casters in pvp have the longevity of the melee classes?

---

Q u o t e:
Ive got a question, Why is it that only melee are allowed to have a chance against healers? either through a ms effect or by sheer longevity due to there constantly regenerating energy supplies.

Why are there no caster ms effects and why cant casters in pvp have the longevity of the melee classes?

---

Hunters don't have a chance against healers either and they have MS.