The reason we increased the proc chance from 5% to 15% is because of the issue where you can lose the proc on an existing Starfire. For a number of technical reasons, we can't apply the proc to a spell already being cast.

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Q u o t e:
Taken from the wording on the actual gear.

4) Set: Each time your Insect Swarm deals damage, it has a chance to make your next Starfire cast within 10 sec instant.

Just to help you out GC, I know you have a lot of stuff on your plate each day.

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The problem is that you can't modify a spell's cast time while the spell is already being cast. The tooltip is accurate... if frustrating.

We just talked about it and we might have a solution. It might not be hotfixable, but it shouldn't take until 3.2. We might lower the proc rate if we got it to work however. I'll try and update when we work it out.

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Q u o t e:
We're not asking for the proc to finish the Starfire cast, we're asking for it simply not remove the buff at the end of it. We want the buff for the starfire after the cast finishes.

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But that isn't your next Starfire. That's the one after the next one. The cast time is determined when the cast begins but the spell itself exists when the casting ends.

Like I said, we might have a solution. The Nightfall one is a little complicated, but that may be what we do.

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Q u o t e:
So this "oops" wasn't know about before you implemented the 4pT8 or was this as it was designed? Either it's shotty design or shotty implementation. Not trying to harp here but as a Software Engineer I try to look at stuff like this as if I was on the other side of the glass wall that is the forums and understand where you are coming from. Most of the time I agree with you ( the general Blizzard 'you' ) as most of the QQ has little experience the complexities to massive scale systems. But this one makes me do a severe double take.

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I’m trying to give you a peek at how things are set up technically so you’ll understand the limitations. Don’t turn that into “Wow, your programmers must be noobs.” I can assure you they are the best in the business, and I’ve been in the business long enough to be able to say that. :)

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Q u o t e:
Apparently the original design is not intended to work like that, but instead make the starfire you are currently casting instant. If I'm understanding GC correctly.

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We knew if the proc-happened mid cast that you might lose the proc. We tried to design the bonus so that wouldn’t happen often. Unfortunately with the way all of the other numbers work out, Moonkin are still chaining Starfire together a lot. We increased the proc rate to compensate, but that may not be enough, which is why we are looking into a technical solution to make the bonus apply to the next Starfire you start casting instead of the next Starfire that does damage. It might take a few days, but it will be long before the next tier of content is released.

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Q u o t e:
With all due respect, can we ditch the semantics?

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You and I can debate semantics. Computers are however largely inflexible. You can’t tell them “Well, that’s what I said but not what I meant.” We can rewrite the combat code. Is that a wise expenditure of our time? Probably not. We think we have a work around however that will produce the intended result.

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Q u o t e:
Everyone assumes if they lower the proc rate, it would be to 5%, GC never mentioned what % they lower it to, lowering it to 10% and fixing the buff to work like nightfall would probably be worthwhile and not OP. Can anyone run the numbers and see how that works out?

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Lowering the proc rate would be fair, but we will probably keep it at something like 7% so that fixing the problem doesn’t feel like such a nerf.

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Q u o t e:
Didn't all the RNG stuns get removed due to the unenjoyable nature that random events that swung fights had on pvp?

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Players like to invoke this argument a lot, that RNG stuns were bad for the game, therefore RNG must be bad for the game. It’s an RPG. RNG is at the core of the combat mechanics. It just can’t dominate the experience, which we don’t feel like it does.

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Q u o t e:
Its pretty crystal clear to everyone who follows the changes in the moonkin spec over time that whoever designed balance T8 is either slightly retarded or did it in about 5 minutes without ever familiarizing himself with the spec first.

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You don’t get to talk like that on our forums. Sorry.

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Q u o t e:
That is terrible coding, terrible game design, and your defense of this is only worse. Your claims in this thread have shown a lack of understanding in these specific game mechanics, GC. I don't expect you to know everything, I certainly don't, but I also don't post information on things I don't know about. Your 'defense' about these alleged technical issues and semantics is in direct contradiction to how game coding has worked since, what, didn't Warlocks have Nightfall at release? A lot of my faith in you has been lost.

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Murmurs, I generally respect your posts a lot, but that still doesn’t give you free reign to break the forum rules.

I know exactly how Nightfall works and how the new set bonus works. They work differently. The reason they work differently is that Nightfall is a talent so it is okay, in our minds, to muck up the spell with a lot of special cases since those cases will largely exist forever. Messing with Starfire to make the tier set work better is unattractive because then the spell is laden with this special-case stuff that will only be relevant for a few months in 2009. Yet we will have to live with the risk of that code breaking or falling out of date forever (or at least as long as WoW endures, which I suspect will be longer than 2009). :)

I make mistakes sometimes, and WoW is a very complex game, but assertions that the players understand the mechanics better than the developers are almost always going to be incorrect.

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Q u o t e:
I'm gonna go out on a limb here that the spell description and the actual code used to implement the are not the same and therefore not of much use when it comes to discussing the technical implementations. If the guy says its more than a copy-paste of Nightfall and said guy actually has access to the source code, it seems reasonable to believe him. On the other hand, your access to the inner workings of the spell is limited to tooltips.

Let the devs do their job. They recognize the issue and they are working on a solution that works within their framework. Be it bad or lazy or whatever misguided insult you want to throw their way, they need to live in the reality of their codebase. They don't need us armchair quarterbacking their programming. If you think you can do better, untold riches await you when you release 1.0 of your MMORPG. =)

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Yep.

My take home from this thread is not to respond next time. My trying to share some information did nothing to improve the conversation. We could have fixed the bonus and players would have eventually noticed. When we spend time to moderate a thread, that is less time we have to work on the game. If your purpose here is to post garbage about how we don’t care about your class, please please please just spare us.

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Q u o t e:
If you are getting unusually angry and disappointed responses from people who are normally reasonable, productive posters, and who you respect and who are normally respectful, perhaps you should look back at your own posts with a more critical eye, to see what provoked them?

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"Blizzard made me post an angry message" is not an acceptable excuse. If I can't engage in the name-calling than neither can you.

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Q u o t e:
It's understandable that you would not want a lot of complicated coding to make a set bonus work. But you are the one who designed the set bonus. If you want to replace it with one that provides the same kind of DPS boost, but has a much simpler mechanic, I don't think anyone will mind.

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That was certainly one possible soultion. I was not trying to say "our hands are tied." I was just attempting to explain some of the "Blizzard so dumb when they could easily fix this" gibberish. Perhaps next time it will occur to some players that there might be a good reason why we haven't made an "obvious" fix.

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Q u o t e:
There are lots of places that this thread went wrong. To start on our side - had the posters here been mindful of our words then perhaps we would not have come across as spiteful as we were. Sometimes it's easy to forget that Blizzard wants the same things we do - a game that is functional, balanced, and most important fun.

For the development side, I think had full disclosure been given from the start, the community reaction would not have been so grave. Had your first post stated what was in your last, then I doubt there would have been as much of an issue. Yes some would have been upset, but it seems unlikely that it would have been as strong as it was.

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No harm done, amigo. I constantly learn on these forums that quick answers are seldom sufficient.

I do continually try to stress that logical arguments will win out over fiery emotions on these forums every time. As often happens, people at Blizzard were reading the thread and so we started discussing the issue until we came up with a solution. The system worked in this case, but it would have worked without responses like the following.

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Q u o t e:
They never intended to fix the issue instead they want us to stop playing moonkins. I really dont see why we are in the game anymore.

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We do not need silly stuff like this on the forums. Please do not make us ban our way towards that goal.

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Q u o t e:
Any updates would be greatly appreciated GC.

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We have a fix for the current set bonus to make it work the way you imagine it should at a 7 or 8% proc chance. It's our policy not to announce patch dates ahead of time, but it will be long before 3.2.

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Q u o t e:
But to try and bully us is not very professional. And I dont appreciate it at all. I dont intend to say things over the top as you stated out of a partial sentence but I do intend to get moonkins voice heard.

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We listen to Murmurs and other Moonkins because with rare exceptions they argue logically and back up their numbers. When players are overly emotional they already start at a disadvantage because we assume they probably aren't thinking logically or objectively.

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Q u o t e:
And today is my birthday so you can say happy birthday to me if u wish I am probably twice your age now not cause you are young but boy am I getting old.

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Happy birthday. ;)

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Q u o t e:
We jumped on him with good reason. We were lead to believe that the buff from 5% to 15% was compensation for the fact that a bug wasn't yet fixed, and then he tells us that the 5% to 15% buff was the fix. Not only were they content to leave a bug with a very half-assed fix, but they deceived us about it. We had every right to be upset. And apparently, this thread was the impetus for them to make another effort in doing something about it.

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Ah... no. Nobody was deceiving anyone. I have explained the way it works the way it does technically -- you can label it what you want. Most of all, I would definitely *not* attribute getting upset here to getting anything accomplished. Your getting upset, emotional, insulting or going over the top is never justified and will never persuade us. This was not a "we showed them" moment, and if such is your conclusion then I fear you will continue to be frustrated when trying to get us to see your way.

Blogs like Graylo's had a lot more influence than this thead (even if I did piss him off). :)