Couple issues with the alpha notes

04/04/2014 09:18 AMPosted by Hoflerette

1. Healers lose instants, but what about DPS casters? Will mage still spam Ice Lance instead of nuke with Frostbolt? Will warrior still have 12 sec Charge and 30 sec Heroic Leap? Etc. Where's the disarmament there.

2. There's a lot less CC, but no word on toning down CC breaks. Abilities like Desecrated Ground should get the axe too.

Tell me if I missed something. I'm still reading the more specific bits.

The answer to both of these is that it's a multi-step process, and the changes in the Alpha notes are just one snippet of the first step. Both of those questions are also questions we're asking ourselves, we just need to establish a starting point first. Remember, this is just the first round of Alpha patch notes.

We make heavy use of what game designers call "iteration" in our design process. I know that's a term with a kind of fuzzy definition, so it more or less means we:

1. Make some changes
2. See what that breaks
3. Fix those things
4. See what that breaks
5. Fix those things
6. See what that breaks

and so on and so forth until we're satisfied with the final result. We're on the first "make some changes" step right now. Those changes are going to break things, and as a result, followup changes will need to be made.

04/04/2014 10:20 AMPosted by Helliondrop

Would you give your thoughts on the removal of shadow word death for disc/holy? Is this change pretty definitive, or is it still subject to change ,and if so how much?

Absolutely everything is subject to change at this point. We're just trying ideas, seeing what we like, and going from there.

04/04/2014 10:30 AMPosted by Hoflerette

Glad to hear this stuff is on your radar, but I hope WoD beta has more PvP testing like we see with raids.

So do we. We've been discussing some ideas along those lines to try to encourage players to participate in PvP testing once we're ready for it. Nothing I can share yet, but it's a goal :)

As a followup on the Shadow Word: Death question, Celestalon just tweeted that there will be a Glyph of Holy Fire, which includes a self-damage skillshot for Disc and Holy priests.

I'm continuing to pass along feedback on other changes, but please be aware that we won't have immediate answers for everything.