We removed the hot dispel effect from Scourge Strike and put it on the base Plague Strike. Scourge Strike will be given something to replace the loss. Even if all it does is Plague Strike but as Shadow damage, that may be sufficient.

A Brief History of Degeneration

I believe the initial version of Degeneration described at the World Wide Invitational was that it removed all hots on the target and did extra damage per hot, and the dot effect of Degen also prevented any additional hots. Wow. While this might sound fun (for the death knight) it was probably ridiculously overpowered, and very punitive towards one type of healer in particular. If you think druids are OP in Arenas, this was probably not the best way to fix that.

The version of Degeneration that existed through most (possibly all) of the alpha and beta was a spell that removed one hot and did bonus damage on its dot effect (it was originally 7x damage then lowered to 3x damage). A potentially confusing tooltip on Degeneration probably didn't help at all.

When we made the recent pass at death knight talents, we gave the Degeneration effect (dispels one hot) to Scourge Strike. Some players were concerned that meant they had to go deep Unholy in order to be effective at PvP. This was not our intent and it's probably debatable whether or not that single ability made Unholy the PvP tree.

Nevertheless, after hearing many concerns, we are giving the ability back to core Plague Strike. It currently does not scale damage if it finds a hot -- it just removes the hot. If we think the damage bonus is necessary we'll add it back, possibly with a talent.

The current Plague Strike's tooltip says something like:

A vicious strike that deals X weapon damage and infects the target with Blood Plague, a disease dealing Shadow damage over time. Will dispel one heal over time effect from the target.

Frigid Dreadplate and Tanking talent changes (src)
Frigid Dreadplate will probably not affect most bosses. It will however stack with things like Thunder Clap. It's not an expensive talent, so it may still be worth it for trash and PvP. If not, we might change it to something else, but we don't want to over stack Frost with too many tanking abilities. It's a little tricky to compare Bone Armor directly to the other two abilities since it is dependent on hits. If you take 4 quick strikes (though there is an internal cooldown) it may not be up as long as Unbreakable Armor. This is entirely dependent on the duration and internal cooldown, which fortunately are easy numbers for us to adjust to try and achieve some approximation of parity.

DK's Role in 5 and 25 players dungeons (src)
A DK of any spec should be able to tank a 5-player non-heroic instance. The same is true for a warrior, and perhaps even a paladin or druid, though those are a little tricky since the gear overlaps different roles even less. A warrior pretty much cannot tank a raid (unless he massively overgears it) without a heavy investment in the Protection tree. The difference is the DK can go into the Blood, Frost or Unholy tree and still tank. But she probably needs as many tanking talents as she can get (which does not have to mean the same number of talents that other classes spend), and definitely needs the tanking gear and player skill that go along with raiding.

Death Coil usage frequency (src)

We found that a lot of DKs were able to spam Death Coils at a pretty steady pace. Part of this was bugs, but part of it was also the Runic Power Mastery talent along with the talents that gave your runic power -- Butchery and talents like Dirge. We made a big pass on all of these numbers to get Death Coil down closer to the frequency we intended -- something more like once a cycle (if you imagine a cycle being something like Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Death Strike). We feel like all of the talents are more interesting choices now without some of them being no-brainers and others being lackluster. For example, Sudden Doom feels meh when you are already tossing Death Coils as fast as you can.

Unholy tree being worked on (src)
With the changes we made, the two diseases last the same amount of time, which is one of the things that makes the DK feel smoother in general. We're still working on Unholy. It has some really interesting talents but it needs to gel a little better. Since AE isn't universally useful and the Ghoul is something of an acquired taste, we'd like you to be able to build a solid Unholy tree even without those talents. Some of the talents also didn't fare well with the conversion. Blood-Caked Blade was a great talent before that didn't survive the transition well. We're still working on it.

Druid

Feral DPS - Feral Druids aren't intended to do equal DPS to a Rogue (min/max in similar gear). That said, they should scale as well as you do, which is what that post meant. (src)
Dreamstate - If we deem Moonkins to have mana issues we can change this talent to work with Spirit/improve it, but from what I've seen it's the total opposite right now. If anything we might of gone too far in Moonkin efficiency. (src)
Earth and Moon - I realize that the talent doesn't really justify more than a few points of investment. We'll do some changes here. (src)

Eclipse - Eclipse is intended to be a good DPS upgrade when you utilize it, if it isn't resulting in that then we will change the damage bonus effects it gives you. Your specific results with Eclipse testing would help. It is intended to be a long cooldown, though. Otherwise you'd get fatigue from swapping between Wrath and Starfire too much. (src)

Feral and Raid utility (src)
The best solution is that Ferals bring something great to the raid. Imagine Mark of the Wild was as good as Blessing of Kings, but they didn't stack. Now a druid or a paladin is a great addition. Or imagine the health return from Imp LotP was at the level of Blood death knight or Shadow priest. Now bringing a Feral makes it noticably easier on the healers. These are just examples, not changes I'm announcing. :)

I do think the Feral flexibility will still count for something, as will unique abilities like Innervate. But we'd like the Raid of the Future (tm) to be one where you need various roles filled, but have options for how to fill them. Ferals can fill tank roles or melee roles (or both!) and can also supply the X raid buff. It would be nice if every spec of every class could bring a version of some raid buff.

Lifebloom changes (src)
We have done some toning down of Lifebloom. Lifebloom was unintentionally buffed too much during Burning Crusade when we made the coefficient scaling work on the stack applications. This has caused a lot of problems with balance in the game. Druids are intended -- as healers -- to be able to dish out good throughput heals with very low efficiency, likewise Lifebloom is intended to be rather cheap and efficient, but not to the degree that it is today.

Compare how you healed in dungeons and raids pre-Burning Crusade to today. Before you used nearly every healing spell you had, today you just use Lifebloom and maybe your other HoTs just because they stack with Lifebloom. Not only is this boring to the player, but it pigeon holes the Druid to spamming Lifebloom on the tanks.

We hope to tone down Lifebloom and bring the Druids other healing spells up to speed in this expansion. Part of this is through changes to the Druid class, changes to other healing classes and through encounter design.

Just as a note -- we did intend to change Lifebloom in the Burning Crusade (lower the coefficent), but we ended up delaying that so that we wouldn't hurt the Druids viability in raiding. With Wrath, we're introducing a new heal, a revamped Tree Form, and other mechanics to correctly balance things out.

Hunter


Mobility - Master's Call is a stun/snare break. Instead of having the ability just work on you, we've allowed you to also cast it on other players, making it more interesting and adding group utility. Changed Surefooted to %duration instead of %resist, making it more consistent. If the numbers don't pan out right (as in it should match Fleet footed), then we'll make that change. (src)

Suvivability - We've significantly improved Deterrence, it now works on spells and has a lower cooldown. (src)
Line of Sight - We do plan to introduce two new Hunter abilities that will help combat LoS issues (those we'll announce soon), which we believe plagues Hunters the most out of other classes. We understand this has been an issue throughout Burning Crusade, but we couldn't really address it correctly without introducing new abilities, talents, etc. (which we can do in the expansion) We're also (as funny as it sounds) improving Hunter melee DPS through an improvement to Aspect of the Beast (10% Melee AP buff while this aspect is active), and removed the conditional from Mongoose Bite (so you can use it even if you haven't dodged the opponent). Though you won't be doing as much damage if you were at range, you'll find a pretty significant damage potential while in melee range with these changes. (src)
"Finishing" move - Hunter's do have a powerful front-load combo (Aimed - Multi - Arcane etc.) , but the problem they have is finishing the player off. If the player is still alive after your front load damage, you're left standing there praying for autoshot crits. This should be addressed with the introduction of "Kill Shot." Also with the revamped "Kill Command" coming in a future patch. (src)

Pets - We always believed that the Pet should be more of a focus for the Hunter in PvP (and PvE). We've revamped Pets in this expansion, giving them all unique abilities, a lot of which will help Hunters in the various arena brackets, battlegrounds, world PvP etc. (src)
Pet Bar - We don't currently have a way to fit every active pet ability on the bar. It's something we're working on, but we didn't want to hold all of the pet changes in the event it wasn't done. Think of the pet bar as shortcuts to their abilities. Just because an ability isn't on the bar doesn't mean it can't be cast or autocast. However, if you turn an ability (on the bar or in the book) to not autocast, and sometimes it turns back on itself then that is a bug. Please let us know. (src)
Mobility issues - Master's call is intended to address mobility issues. Surefooted was also changed to a duration %, which is more consistent than resist %. We also gave pet family a unique ability, so you have the choice of using a pet with a snare or stun or root etc. if you feel the need. (src)

Arcane Shot - We regret creating a dispel mechanic that also did damage, so we're re-designing that mechanic. It didn't fix any of Hunter's issues, anyways, and made them better against classes they were already good against (casters). (src)


Priest


Divine Spirit is one of the incentives to bringing a Discipline Priest to a group. We have no intentions to make this a base spell. (src)

I talked to the designer who does Inscription and was told that if we do a "spirit scroll" it won't exceed ~75% of what Divine Spirit would be. Regarding scrolls similar to other abilities (mark of the wild, arcane intellect, etc.) those are still in design. (src)


Rogue
Issue with SnD and the new smooth filling energy/mana system (src)

We think it's just a bug with Slice and Dice, which we're investigating. I'll update when I know something more. We haven't had any problems with any other spells. If your bar says you can afford it, it goes off as you would expect.

Warlock
Soul Well will have 25 charges in the next patch. (src)

The tanks situation (src)

At the moment (meaning in LK) I think paladins are close to or surpassing warriors. Ferals and DKs need some more attention. I want to stress that we have made virtually NO attempt yet to line up the tanks and compare their abilities, threat, mitigation and dps. We are not yet at that stage. It's coming, and we will get even more data when everyone is at level 80 in the beta.

Achievements


Rare Mobs Achievements - Cool idea. We'll see if we can get to it. (src)
Blade's Edge Bomberman - Providing your best times would be really helpful. It will be tuned around having an epic mount and NOT having Crusader Aura. Also, eventually there will be protection in against doing this grouped. It will be a solo achievement so don't bother testing it in groups. (src)

Eggbert - Eggbert is non-refundable since you can reacquire him through in-game methods (i.e. do the quest again next year and get another Eggbert). (src)
Searing Gorge key - You can get the Searing Gorge key back from the Locksmith once he's in the beta build. (src)
Retro Dungeon Raid Boss Kill Update - We did a pass and checked quests associated with dungeon boss kills. In an upcoming Beta build, you'll see that you'll get some dungeon/raid achievements granted retroactively. Not all dungeons and raids have quests associated with them so some players will still have to re-do the content. For example, there are no quests that validate the boss kills in Slave Pens or Blood Furnace. Also, keep in mind that in cases such as Onyxia or Zul'jin, not every raid member got quest credit for the quest item drop. We figured it was better to try to reward credit wherever possible. (src)

WoW released in Russian

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

We are delighted to announce the release of World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade in Russian, available today. As well as being able to experience the worlds of Azeroth and Outland in Russian, players now also have access to full Russian language support and a range of payment options in roubles.

For existing players, you can convert your account to a Russian account, by following the procedure outlined here. Once your account is converted, you will be able to pay for the account in roubles. Some restrictions apply and you can read all about the distinctions here. A free migration option is available for a limited time for transfers from existing European realms to Russian language realms, to allow you to take immediate advantage of Russian language in-game support.

New players can create a Russian account here, and find out more about the benefits of these accounts here. Two new Russian language realms have been opened today for new character creation only.

A free trial is also available, allowing you to experience the World of Warcraft for ten days, absolutely free.

We extend a warm welcome to all our current and future Russian speaking players, and hope that they will now enjoy World of Warcraft even more.