Mists of Pandaria Beta

[guartz]

How have the healing mechanics changed?

I felt it was pretty rewarding to heal in cata.

[Correction]

Yeah. Given that Meta form essentially maxes out armor right now (-75% physical damage from base attack), plus Soul Link (-25%), plus whatever reduction Meta Form gives, may include Fury Ward (channeled -30% damage), but still, for health pools as high as we have them atm, hits for sub 100 damage is way undertuned

Jaina's trash was hitting for quite a bit more. Tyrande's trash has always hit like a pack of sedated babies.

I wonder if this will encourage terrible players to try to tank at level 70 or whenever the glyph becomes first available. This reminds me of TBC beta, when you'd get 5-DK groups death striking their way through dungeons.

[Clemz]

Holy shit dat warlock tanking. If it isn't completely gutted I may make warlock my main this time around.

[fantasticdan]

Kind of bizarre thou that they condense dk tanking into one tree, separate feral tank from dps, but than make the warlock tank spec defined by a glyph.

[Kaylia]

Kind of bizarre thou that they condense dk tanking into one tree, separate feral tank from dps, but than make the warlock tank spec defined by a glyph.

I thought the same, but there is probably going to be 10 billions iterations if they actually want to do this. It might end up on its own tree.

[Siniroth]

http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=114091

http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=104045

http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=115422 <-- Seems to be what Fel Flame becomes in Meta form, even though there's nothing listed for that.

[fantasticdan]

Sleep is interesting. I guess it replaces fear? Have all the wc3 dreadlord abilities now except vampiric aura.

I thought the same, but there is probably going to be 10 billions iterations if they actually want to do this. It might end up on its own tree.

I guess the difference is a dk/feral under the old design could swap between dps/tank during combat with just a stance change, while a lock using this glyph would be stick doing bad dps (and 600% threat in meta form) until he can reglyph. Still thou, it goes against the retard proof design they've been working towards. How many dps locks do you think you'd see in lfg groups using this glyph just for permanent meta and/or that's how they leveled? Maybe it's just a placeholder for an actual tree while they test the waters with it.

[Gulkeeva]

warlock's beholder minion is fucking HUGE. wow. wonder if that will get shrunk.

theirs a pet bug (for hunter, that may affect warlocks) , that if you dismiss/call pet constamntly, the next pet you gets larger and larger, some guy had a devilsaur the size of stormwind Auctionhouse building.

[Correction]

I don't think the bug affects warlocks, just rolled one on beta and dismissed/summoned over and over again and the little bastard never got larger.

[Siniroth]

[Correction]

Yeah they're going to have to nerf perma-meta warlock DPS.

[Siniroth]

I'm 99% sure that the damage bonus from Meta isn't being removed with the Glyph active, leading to the super high dps it provides in perma form

[Katlan]

warlock sure looks completely broken

[fantasticdan]

I'm 99% sure that the damage bonus from Meta isn't being removed with the Glyph active, leading to the super high dps it provides in perma form

It isn't, so the tanking glyph is actually a huge dps increase.

[Siniroth]

Just to make our intent clear, the Glyph of Demon Hunting isn't intended to turn Demonology warlocks into a tanking spec. You won't be able to queue as a tank for Dungeon Finder for instance and won't have the survivability or tools of say a Protection paladin.

Historically, warlocks felt tankier than other casters and could even off-tank some encounters. We have made an effort in Mists to recapture some of that flavor. A warlock with this glyph should feel like they are about as effective tanking as an Arms warrior who pulls out a shield and swaps to Defensive Stance, or a Feral druid who goes into Bear form. You might be able to off-tank adds or pick up an actual boss for a short period of time if the tank goes down.

To make warlocks an actual tank would take more significant changes. For example, we want tanks to have to pick up separate tanking gear than their DPS gear (this is even true of druids) and want tanks to have to give up some of their DPS potential in exchange for their survivability. In short, it needs to be a commitment, and that's the sort of thing that needs larger gameplay changes than just a glyph.

That shouldn't stop the glyph of Demon Hunting from being fun though. As you can probably tell, we are trying to make even the major glyphs more about character customization and fun.

As some of you have pointed out, the glyph of Demon Hunting in your beta build doesn't deliver on what I described above as the design. The newer version of the glyph, hopefully available in the next beta build, allows a warlock to toggle in and out of the off-tank / survival mode, more like the druid going Bear or the warrior going Defensive.

The new shapeshift granted by the glyph is called Threatening Presence (PH) and adds Taunt and Fury Ward to the normal Metamorphosis toolkit. You still get the damage reduction from mastery instead of the damage boost from mastery while in this form. You can also choose to go into normal Metamorphosis even if you have the glyph. Let us know how it feels.

We appreciate all the feedback and passion on this topic. We expected this glyph would serve a pretty niche community and were surprised at how many players were excited about it. We are still in beta and are still very much experimenting with what kind of gamplay we can deliver in glyphs.

Well, we'll still be massively more effective at soloing than we were before.

[fantasticdan]

You might be able to off-tank adds or pick up an actual boss for a short period of time if the tank goes down.

That doesn't really make any sense. Using the glyph at all would make you a completely ineffective dps in the first place (all of the damage bonus associated with meta form gone, +500% threat bonus), so it's not like you could just use it in a pinch.

Oh well, interest in wow gone again.

[Siniroth]

The amount of QQ and 'I told you so' on official and mmo forums is amazing. While I'm unhappy they took all weekend to tell us these tidbits, it at least nice to know. Wonder how it'll pan out when things go live. If we're close enough to balanced I wonder if they'll just give up and let us be tanks proper, or just nerf us to the ground.

Added second Ghostcrawler post to my above post

[fantasticdan]

Well they'd need to add avoidance from spirit/int/haste/something, there's no way they could properly balance a full mitigation tank vs high avoidance tanks, it would always be overpowered or underpowered in comparison. Than change fury ward into a non-channeled 30-60s~ish cooldown, and everything from there is just number tweaking. It has all the framework; defensive cooldowns, interrupt, taunts, a tanking mastery, etc.

Leaving it as a toggaleble stance presents the exact problems that the old feral spec created thou, they would need to make it a seperate spec, or make the glyph seriously hamper your dps in some way if they wanted it to be a full powered tanking spec. My guess is thou they'll just nerf the shit out of this glyph and eventually remove it, and implement an actual tanking spec next expansion. Hopefully all the flak they're catching will put some fire under their ass to actually do it now, but I doubt it.

I really wonder thou what possessed them to dangle something people have been waiting for for years in their faces, but than just say no it's only for gimmicky off-tanking/soloing old content (which warlock was already one of the best classes for anyway), despite already putting in most of the work for it. Great PR.

[Siniroth]

I doubt they'll remove it at this point. But forced attempted usage of it to tank (if possible) will put them into a position where they have to either finish the job and balance it, or nerf it just enough that it's enough of a pain to use in a raid that no one will, but it could be done in a pinch, somewhat like deliberately using lower ilvl gear to tank a raid (might be possible, especially with geared healers, but why would you?).

[fantasticdan]

If it's good enough to actually be useful in current content, IE: use a demo lock to tank certain phases of fights that require an extra tank, than go back to doing full DPS in other phases, than it's a balance problem (probably in pvp as well). The only options I can see happening with this are:

1. it's nerfed to the point of uselessness, or close to it. taunt and high threat modifier probably removed for retard-proofing lfd/lfr groups.

2. removed completely.

3. made into it's own spec.

and 3 seems the least likely judging by the dev response, and the fact that it's already beta.