Patch notes and stealth adjustments

#1 - March 1, 2015, 11:43 p.m.

What is the reasoning behind stealth 'balancing'? What's the point of having patch notes if they can't be trusted to be comprehensive?

Personally, I'd prefer for all changes to be documented, but I get that this isn't a perfect world. If the undocumented changes thread here is any indication, requests like that are simply too much to ask. I get that.

But when it comes to the hard numbers of class and spec balancing, these are things that above all else must be communicated properly. Maybe it's just me, but I like to think that surely things like changes to damage or mitigation percentages would receive a higher priority for making it into patch/hotfix notes over yet another minor bugfix for a bug that shouldn't have made it to live release in the first place.

Things like Retribution's Hammer of Wrath damage being stealth nerfed in 6.1 (reduced to 240% spellpower from 253% SP) as an example - these are things you need to communicate. Sidenote, I fail to see how that change was warranted, given that ret's aggressively mediocre DPS was only middle of the pack at best.

But that's besides the point. Regardless of whether nerfs or buffs are needed or not, the severity of the adjustments, or which specs they affect: the principle of the matter is that they must be documented. This sort of thing is information your playerbase needs to know, and the fact that you think it's okay to withhold this info offers some rather disturbing insight on your attitude towards transparency and communication.

The discovery of the omitted HoW change begs the question: What else are they keeping from us? I can't help but wonder what other changes they've made to other classes they've decided we don't need to know about, and it calls into question the reliability of their patch notes.

Rygarius

Community Manager

#4 - March 7, 2015, 12:53 a.m.

03/01/2015 03:43 PMPosted by Margorg
Things like Retribution's Hammer of Wrath damage being stealth nerfed in 6.1 (reduced to 240% spellpower from 253% SP) as an example - these are things you need to communicate. Sidenote, I fail to see how that change was warranted, given that ret's aggressively mediocre DPS was only middle of the pack at best.

Could you please provide the source of how you arrived at this conclusion? The last change to the ability was way back from October 14 during Patch 6.0.2.

Version tracking from sites like Wowhead only puts the ability at 240% of spellpower and the ability was dealing 200% of spellpower pre-Patch 6.1(20% increase), which is a tooltip correction and not an actual adjustment to the ability itself.

6.0.2 Hotfixes: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/16370024/#october17
Paladin

General

Hammer of Wrath's damage has been increased by 20%.

Rygarius

Community Manager

#12 - March 7, 2015, 1:42 a.m.

03/06/2015 05:24 PMPosted by Rackfu
03/06/2015 05:20 PMPosted by Nupnups

Well BM Hunters can no longer FF/KC in between two Cobra Shots and still proc Steady Focus after the most recent hotfixes and there was nothing in the notes detailing this.

I'm fairly certain that was never intended behavior and was likely fixed since it was a bug.

I agree though with you though. If it was fixed, it should've been communicated.

The stated behavior you've described for Steady Focus was a bug and the hotfix just went out only several hours ago. The next update to the hotfix blog will be at 6pm PST (<20 minutes).

Rygarius

Community Manager

#14 - March 7, 2015, 1:44 a.m.

03/06/2015 05:28 PMPosted by Kuriail
What about the change to how items with movement speed bonus' works? Many old item, enchants, gems, and even current stuff that gives movement speed bonuses no longer work since 6.1, no notice in patch notes, no forum posts saying this was intended, not in any patch notes, not in any of the known bug reports despite at least several forum threads about it.

Lack of communication about changes is frustrating, even if its just a 2 second post saying "Sorry, bug. Will fix soon" or "Yep, intentional change". But no response whatsoever is the most frustrating thing.

Is this in regards to movement speed changes from Patch 6.0.2 or something else?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/15682579/#movement_speed

Rygarius

Community Manager

#17 - March 7, 2015, 1:53 a.m.

03/06/2015 05:49 PMPosted by Kroozmissile
03/06/2015 04:53 PMPosted by Rygarius
Could you please provide the source of how you arrived at this conclusion?

The more you try to deny the amount of stealth nerfing that is occurring, the more aggressive and reactionary the playerbase who notice these obvious differences will be.

Unless you want to move to the argument that you think WoW players are so stupid that they shouldn't be able to identify stealth changes to things that they use constantly.

Without a source, I can't begin to track down if it's an actual issue. The scenario of "This ability was doing 2000% more damage and don't know where or how I arrived at this conclusion." is going to slow the process down considerably.

Rygarius

Community Manager

#23 - March 7, 2015, 2:03 a.m.

03/06/2015 05:44 PMPosted by Margorg
@ Rygarius: some paladin community members have tweeted this to WarcraftDevs and Celeston a few times in recent days, so I'll admit it's a little surprising that this remains unknown.

I'm not actually clear on the specifics myself so I'll leave it to the more knowledgeable folks I've passed this thread on to give you a more useful and in-depth response, but from what little I've been able to glean the following MMO-C posts represents my understanding at present. I'd paraphrase, but due to the nature of the subject - and my admittedly incomplete knowledge - it would likely be best for you to read them yourself.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1607924-6-0-PvE-Ret-Paladin-Theorycraft-amp-Discussion?p=32497726&viewfull=1#post32497726
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1607924-6-0-PvE-Ret-Paladin-Theorycraft-amp-Discussion?p=32497460&viewfull=1#post32497460
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1607924-6-0-PvE-Ret-Paladin-Theorycraft-amp-Discussion?p=32497097&viewfull=1#post32497097

Beta: 211.2%SP(SoL included in sum) > Live 169%SP (SoL removed from tooltip sum, but still 211.2%SP) > Hotfix applied to tooltip, now 202.8%SP, but SoL still factored in damage making it 253.5%SP > patch 6.1 and subsequent hotfix removal, rounding off HoW scaling to 200%SP but then buffed by 20% to 'compensate' the hotfixes removal, landing us with 240%SP.

While I'm also aware of the insufficiency of log data for various reasons to be of any use here, I believe it still might help to point out that recent parses do indicate HoW took a hit of some sort - and the reduction is significant enough warrant a further look. Certainly it seemed large enough to some people not to attribute it to fight variance and RNG.

Thanks for the info Margorg. Taking a quick look, it appears to be discussing Warlords Beta changes to now. During the Beta, a substantial number of abilities received damage adjustments in addition to the hitpoint squish. It wouldn't make any sense to list those changes because the frame of reference to compare it vs pre-squish wouldn't make much sense.

Post Patch 6.0.2, the changes for the ability is being tracked correctly and the change observed in Patch 6.1 appears to be a tooltip update based on an earlier hotfix.

Rygarius

Community Manager

#27 - March 7, 2015, 2:11 a.m.

03/06/2015 06:04 PMPosted by Digerati
Players were using old items to get super movement speed sets, which sounds unintended and they could have changed it for that reason (but that could very well be a bug)

It's generally not intended for much lower level items to somehow be more powerful than max level items.

<span class="truncated">...</span>
Without a source, I can't begin to track down if it's an actual issue. The scenario of "This ability was doing 2000% more damage and don't know where or how I arrived at this conclusion." is going to slow the process down considerably.

I provided you with the sources for Hammer of Wrath. It's reflected in player logs in the threads I linked, and the adjustment are documented on mmo-champion.

This was a separate issue not directed at you but more to the concern that I shouldn't be asking for clarification to help determine if a report is credible.

Rygarius

Community Manager

#29 - March 7, 2015, 2:17 a.m.

03/06/2015 06:02 PMPosted by Astynaxx
Gladiator's sanctum work orders got stealth nerfed to be 20 bones per order instead of 10 when WoD launched

Show me your patch notes on that

The scenario you've described does not apply to content that had not been released/available yet (Beta).

Rygarius

Community Manager

#32 - March 7, 2015, 2:35 a.m.

03/06/2015 06:29 PMPosted by Berith
03/06/2015 06:17 PMPosted by Rygarius
The scenario you've described does not apply to content that had not been released/available yet (Beta).

The 10 -> 20 bones happened between 6.0.3 and 6.1. It's actually a 6.1 change, it seems to have been implemented on patch day.

I cannot find it in the 6.1 patch notes.

Thanks for the timeframe. I'll look into it.

Rygarius

Community Manager

#36 - March 7, 2015, 2:53 a.m.

03/06/2015 06:48 PMPosted by Maegore
Honestly, for clarity's sake on ability performance, it would be nice if Blizzard maintained a space listing ability tooltips with coefficients and showed change logs. This would certainly lead to less *sky is falling* when something like HoW receives a change and allow more thorough testing by the community to ensure what is listed is what is happening in game.

It honestly isn't fair to say there are resources for theory crafters to find this information in one breath, and then in the other say that datamined information isn't always correct.

There's a change log in the hotfix blog and the ability hasn't received any additional changes to the best of my knowledge. I'll double-check next week (everyone's gone for the weekend) when everyone's back to be through.

Rygarius

Community Manager

#80 - March 9, 2015, 9:45 p.m.

Offloading some of the information I've been tracking down in no particular order.

Regarding Paladin's Hammer of Wrath concerns, I've verified that it was only a tooltip update in Patch 6.1 and there were no further changes to the ability. Also, the ability does not and should not be benefiting from Sword of Light as it's not a melee attack.

03/08/2015 06:16 PMPosted by Neiyo
I noticed that Find Weakness for sub rogues has been nerfed in pvp for 6.1. Before the patch It was at 100% armor bypass now its at 50%, this change has only affected pvp. This was not posted in the patch notes.

Tooltip for the ability Find Weakness stated that it "Bypasses less armor on players.". Additionally, the ability itself no longer exists as of Patch 6.0.2 back on October 15, 2014.

Rogue - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/15682579#rogue

Find Weakness’ effects have been merged into baseline Ambush, Garrote, and Cheap Shot for Subtlety Rogues.

03/08/2015 08:56 AMPosted by Akïråh
I Understand we want blizzard to be more open about stuff. But lets be honest it might sometimes be hard or insane to document every single little tweak ever. So trying to nitpick every little bit of something even with something that doesnt really affect gameplay in anyway other than aesthetics. lets not try to be too nit picky and just help blizzard understand where were coming from.

Thanks, I've been trying to investigate credible claims. A number of purported inaccuracies were actually noted in the patch notes or hotfix blog.

03/07/2015 02:49 PMPosted by Digerati
Re: Shadowmeld, Cretch appears to be referring to this:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/16528042667

Looks like it doesn't drop combat in 6.1. Is that just PVP Cretch or everywhere?

The Shadowmeld's (Night Elf racial) functionality received a bug fix to address a number of issues with the ability that wound up affecting its behavior in PvP combat. We're working on a hotfix that's undergoing testing but not ready to be implemented yet that will restore Shadowmeld back to the way it worked (while keeping the bug fixes intact).

03/06/2015 06:02 PMPosted by Astynaxx
Gladiator's sanctum work orders got stealth nerfed to be 20 bones per order instead of 10 when WoD launched

Show me your patch notes on that

Got clarification on that one, thanks for bringing it to my attention. The change has been updated in the 6.1 Patch Notes.

Gladiator's Sanctum

Work Orders for Gladiator's Sanctum shipments now cost 20 Broken Bones (up from 10). Additionally, shipments now award less gold but increased the chance of receiving an item or bonus Honor Points.

Rygarius

Community Manager

#83 - March 9, 2015, 11:59 p.m.

03/09/2015 04:33 PMPosted by Liandroa
03/09/2015 02:45 PMPosted by Rygarius
Also, the ability does not and should not be benefiting from Sword of Light as it's not a melee attack.

Wait, what? Now I'm a little confused. It seemed to be before 6.1.

And this tweet - https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/status/559867653964058624 - implies that losing the Sword of Light modifier on the PTR was unintentional. Miscommunication somewhere I guess.

Regardless, appreciate you looking into it, Rygarius.

There was a bug that only occurred during the 6.1 PTR. Clarification for that was posted later in the conversation chain.

To clarify, it's currently a bug on the PTR which will be fixed in the next build.
- https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/status/559871282720669696