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Tank homogenization (Source)
There are extremes. One is just giving everyone say block and parry and Last Stand and Demo Shout because heck those are useful, and no doubt some players would be thrilled by that. The other extreme is to be so stubborn and so scared of homogenization that we never make a change. It doesn't surprise me at all that when a player finds his dude wanting, then looks around and sees a sexy ability or mechanic on another class that that grass can look awfully green. I'm just pointing out that homogenization is often our very last solution when all else has failed.
A great deal of WoW's depth is because of the differences among the classes and among the various talent trees. We think it contributes to players not getting bored. We think it contributes to rerolling, perhaps trying another class when you get burned out instead of walking away from the game. It was cool for me the first time I healed a Feral druid in UBRS (if you're still playing, you rocked by the way) because she tanked things differently and I had to heal her differently. I felt like I was discovering something new in the game. I would have been sad if someone had pointed out, Ghost, dude, that was just bear art. Mechanically, she was blocking and Sundering (this was pre Devastate) and basically being a warrior.
Resisting homogenization may not be important to you, but it is very important to us. Understand the huge mountain you have to climb whenever you're asking us to put those concerns aside. You're thinking about how to make your character a better tank. We're thinking about how to keep this game popular for five more years, or even longer.
Healing is stressing! (Source)
But the stress is why it's fun!
Here is the best advice I can give someone who feels overwhelmed. Your job isn't to keep everyone at 100%. Your job is to keep anyone from hitting 0%. If someone's hurt, but stable, then they may not need your attention right away. You're the medic, so you need to practice triage. There will be enough breaks to get those folks who aren't at 100% back up there at some point.
This is the part where focusing on unit frames to the exclusion of all else can get you in trouble. As you start to really learn the fights, you tend to get a feeling for when the damage is coming. If the boss is going to do a big AE pulse soon, then try and get everyone up quickly. If the hunter pulled aggro and got hit, but has since feigned, then she's probably okay for a bit.
Death Knight
New Icy Talons explained (Source)
You put 5 points in Icy Talons. While fighting (and applying Frost Fever), you swing 20% faster. If you have talented Windfury Totem on you, you swing a total of 40% faster.
You now put a 6th point in Improved Icy Talons as well. You have a passive personal 25% haste at all times. When you engage in combat and apply Frost Fever, you now have 45% melee haste. If you have Windfury also, you still only have 45% haste since Windfury and Improved Icy Talons are exclusive.
This is basically a 20% haste buff to any DK who has Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons.
Virulence and totems (Source)
This is an enduring myth, but from all the testing we've ever done, Virulence works against totems.
Druid
Nature's Grasp's usefulness (Source)
Nature's Grasp is a self buff that causes things that hit you to become rooted. That effect now has 3 charges. There is a small internal cooldown in between roots to keep say a rogue who hits you twice very quickly from wasting two charges. In your example, both the DK and pet should get rooted. If the DK breaks the roots and gets on you again, they will get rooted again (subject to the 45 sec duration).
The intent of this spell was to be a defensive tool for druids. Since it hasn't quite kept up, we wanted to try to get it to be more useful (i.e. do its job) rather than come up with an entirely new mechanic.
New Starfall Coefficients (Source| Patch Note)
Hey Hamlet, sorry for any confusion. We probably should have just waited until you guys could test it on the PTR.
I think I figured out how you all are calculating the coefficient, so maybe this will make more sense. Again, I'm not 100% sure we're speaking the same language here. If I have time, maybe I will just log in with a moonkin and compare the before and after and post numbers.
Main star
Old coefficient: 4.8%
New coefficient: 37%
Splash damage
Old coefficient: 1.2%
New coefficient: 13%
As I said, these numbers are very generous. If Balance druids melt the world we may have to back off of them.
Mage
Amplify / Dampen Magic -- Do they make sense? (Source)
Sorry, I said "no" to the OP's question of do they make sense.
Recent 3.3.3 changes to Combustion and Glyph of Fireball (Source)
The Combustion change was to let its cooldown line up better with e.g. trinket cooldowns. It just felt awkward at 3 min.
The Fireball glyph change was because some Fire mages were getting such absurdly high crit rates that even more crit wasn't attractive. We weren't trying to make this particular glyph ridiculously powerful.
The actual dps increases are something more like adding Pyroblast to Torment the Weak and Empowered Fire. That may have missed the most recent patch notes.
I would also expect Arcane damage to fall overall with the Incanter's Absorption change. (Torment is also gratuitously overpowered, but that would be too big a change for now.) That should get Fire a lot closer to Arcane. Getting Frost up there too is harder, but we're still trying.
Paladin
Paladins are "too cemented" as MT healers (Source)
Yeah, as I said in another thread just now, I think the paladin is an outlier. It's okay for healers to have things they are slightly better at or slightly worse at, but the paladin is too firmly cemented into the role of MT healer. We don't want building a raid to be "Okay, grab a paladin and another healer." It should be "Grab 2 healers, preferably different ones." This doesn't mean paladin nerfs are incoming, because some of the problem is the nature of healing right now (huge constant swings, unlimited mana, much spamming, little coordination), and the other half of that is making sure a paladin on raid heal duty didn't feel gimped.
Priest
Discipline's role (Source)
Discipline priests specialize in single-target heals and damage prevention. They are nonetheless fairly well rounded and have some fun tools, such as Power Infusion and Pain Suppression.
They are awesome and in some cases borderline overpowered.
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Perhaps I should have said "single-target HEALING" since unglyphed PW:S isn't technically a heal. But any Disc priest who is trying to heal multiple people at once is probably doing it wrong. You can raid heal effectively by targeting one person at a time, and that's what Disc priests do. Shaman and Holy priests can heal several people simultaneously.
Greater Heal vs Flash Heal (Source)
The question was why Greater Heal doesn’t have much of a use and my answer was that Flash Heal does the job well enough that you don’t feel the need to go for Gheal’s longer cast time but larger throughput. If you disagree with that, feel free to point out why, but in this case I think you’ll have a hard time supporting that argument. If tanks had more health, then all healers would care a lot more about HPM as well as the risk of overhealing. If you aren’t using FH or Gheal, then chances are you’re in a role where CoH or Renew spam is keeping everyone alive. But when you want to single-target heal someone quickly, neither of those is going to be very attractive and in fact neither is Gheal.
Ghostcrawler as a Priest in raids (Source)
I won’t give you a video, but I’ll explain to you how I do it.
Disc: PoM on cooldown. PW:S as much as you can (esp. on the Arcane mage until 3.3.3). Use Penance often when you need burst. Resort to PoH if a lot of people need healing at once, especially in 10-player raids where you don’t have a lot of other healers to pick up the slack. Keep Pain Suppression and Divine Hymn for emergencies. Use Power Infusion on a mage or lock if you don’t need it.
Holy: PoM on cooldown. CoH on cooldown if there is any raid damage. Renew to handle the rest of the raid damage. Flash Heal if someone is still low after all of that. Save GS and Divine Hymn for emergencies or timed boss cooldowns. I tend to use Binding Heal a lot more than most priests because it makes me feel smart, especially when globals are in question.
What I like: Feeling smart when I mix the right tool with the right problem. Saving lives when someone thought they were dead. Sitting there at full mana halfway through a fight because I didn’t heal when I didn’t need to. Penance in general. Body and Soul. Borrowed Time. Serendipity.
What I don’t like: Using CoH so much. Dealing with Weakened Soul (esp. as Holy). Lightwell. Seeing priests die. (In all honesty I don’t die a lot, but I see Spirits of Redemption constantly. I guess as a sweeping generalization, priests have the stare-at-Grid syndrome worse than other healers.) Blowing 3 candles every wipe. Looking like a mage if I pick the wrong gear.
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See, I like PoM because at least you are making a choice about who to put it on and sometimes you might even recast if it's sitting on someone that won't take damage again. (Story: Once back on Archimonde, a priest and I had both been doomfired or something and he pulled me aside and said "Just let PoM bounce between the two of us just for a sec." I was impressed.)
CoH is good. It's so good in fact, that it's usually a bad choice not to push it when it's on cooldown. This means playing Holy is really about what you use your other 4 casts or whatever when you can't CoH. I'd rather use CoH less often and other spells more often. I think Holy needs the talent and it's really tree defining. I just want to use some of my other cool toys too.
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