Blue Roundup: 3.0.8 Please?

admin January 17 2009 8:08 pm 8 Comments

News still slow, but the PTR blues just keep rolling in. For those of you that are sick of hearing about 3.0.8 and not seeing it go live, some of the following blues may help quinch your thirst.

Tons of Howling Blast talk. We haz a CD…we haz no CD…We haz a CD!?! I guess for you DWers and frost people, the Howling Blast CD is here to stay.

Ghostcrawler
Howling Blast was designed for AE dps, for which it was doing too much damage without a cooldown. We totally understand the concern about having a cooldown being awkward to work along with rune cooldowns, which is why we removed it. But that change made the spell too powerful, as we feared.

We will continue to iterate on the design and the ultimate goal is to remove the cooldown. There are some ways we can reign in the damage (such as a smaller AE cap or the damage falling off after the initial target) that will take some more time and testing to implement.

The DK is a new class, and while it is working well overall, you can expect to see some iteration on it compared to the classes that have been tested and upon which players have experimented for four years.

More HB talk…

Ghostcrawler
I believe the cooldown is 5 seconds now, so at least it should mesh a little better with 10 second rune cooldown.

We knew there was a risk in taking the Howling Blast cooldown off. Unfortunately, we saw dual-wield DK numbers as high as ever even with the Killing Machine and Gargoyle nerfs. It typically only happened when the DK was fighting multiple targets, which suggests Howling Blast is the right thing to change.

We still agree that a cooldown makes rotations more awkward, and we will continue to look for an implementation that lets Howling Blast be off a cooldown without all death knights feel like they need to DW Frost or go home.

(And no, we can’t buff other DK specs and other classes to 7000 dps or whatever to compensate.)

Speaking of nerfs, you might as well just get over the Glyph of DnD nerf…

Maaven
The glyph’s changed and that’s the harsh reality for people who liked its old functionality. It’s something you guys are going to have to live with.

So, with all these changes can we expect a free talent tree respec? Nope.

Nethaera
We normally only offer respecs to classes that have some significant changes in talent locations and costs. At this point there is no plan to allow for free respecs for death knights.

Not really a DK issue unless you’re stacking stamina for a particular encounter, but you can kiss Titanguard goodbye.

Ghostcrawler
Had this enchant gone live it would have become THE enchant for nearly all tanks. It would not have been an interesting choice. We would have had to keep introducing higher tiers of the same enchant, or else players would just keep using this version for perpetuity. We put Stamina already on many items. We don’t think your weapon needs one as well. I received messages from several tanks for very prominent guilds asking us to please not go forward with this enchant. They understood why it was bad for the game.

Death knights have access to superior enchants in part because they do not have a shield or ranged weapon slot and the stats provided by those items.

The PTR is for testing. If you find yourself frustrated that things change between the PTR and live, I would suggest you stop paying attention to the PTR notes. Even if a change like this had already gone live, we probably would have changed it anyway. We did not like what this enchant would have done for the game.

P.S. I had to ban about 6 people in this thread. While we accept criticism, this is not the place for rants about how you hate Blizzard or our development staff. Obscene language is not permitted on the forums. Please be adults.

Spread the DK:

8 Comments »

Loomineel said:

I’ll miss that DnD glyph ._.

# 18 January 2009 at 11:55 am

Vilereaver said:

Me too. Giving any class CC and then taking it away (outside the PTR) is irritating.
I hear, however, that random stun abilities are being phased out, like priest’s Blackout (in shadow tree), which is supposed to be taken out permanently soon.
I don’t like the idea of removing abilities that help in pve because of pvp reasons. I think that it would be a better idea to make the cower effect on Glyph of DnD not work on players-the same way warlocks’ Curse of Doom cannot target players, or the way that undead mobs are immune to fear (as opposed to removing it completely).

# 18 January 2009 at 3:50 pm

Bongo said:

Its nice to see someone other than Maaven swinging the discipline quick :D

# 18 January 2009 at 6:22 pm

Bongo said:

quick = stick.

# 18 January 2009 at 6:23 pm

Noctis said:

Here here, Vilereaver.
Nothing irritates me more then seeing something useful for PvE getting removed for PvP reasons.
Farewell, DnD glyph. You shall be missed. Alot. ;_;

# 19 January 2009 at 6:16 am

Tj said:

Let’s hope it counts for all rng type effects like the Dnd cower effect::cough mirror mage poly included::

# 19 January 2009 at 9:32 am

Saoul said:

What REALLY irritates me is the whole “Howling Blast” thing… >.>

Don’t give that a cooldown, that’s a pretty staple move. As for the DnD thing, It was always like 60 golds on my server, so I couldn’t afford it anyways. Nothing Gained, nothing lost.

~Saoul
MoonGuard (US, Alliance)

# 19 January 2009 at 12:49 pm

Saoul said:

By the way, when does this patch go live?

I’m anxious to start greating a DeathKnight army.

# 19 January 2009 at 12:50 pm