If you’ve been checking the official forums frequently over the years, you probably would have encountered several threads about rogues complaining about their Vanish ability being broken and that it should be fixed. This isn’t just pointless complaining as even Blizzard acknowledged that it isn’t working properly. Vanish has had several improvements over the years but never truly has been fixed. As it is now Vanish is on a three minute cooldown and instantly puts the rogue into an improved stealth while also removing movement impairing effects. That’s all fine and dandy… if it works all the time.
Ghostcrawler mentioned that …read more

Blizzard featured the many class Q&A’s in the past which highlighted some of the thoughts and plans that the development team had for the many classes at the time and also for the future. But just when it looked like it was doing good time, Blizzard released patch 3.2 and the rogue and priest Q&A’s just barely made it in time. That really did seem odd to me but I guess the release of the awaited patch became the focus of everyone’s attention so all was pretty good.
According to CM Zarhym, we should expect to see another round of class …read more

It’s time to close out the class Q&A feature with the Priest class having the spotlight. This feature is meant to answer questions about the thought the development team has for the class going forward. As usual Ghostcrawler answers the questions for the community. You can find the Priest Q&A here.
Priests are not a jack of all trades, master of none healer. Priests are strong and versatile healers and the only trade off is knowing how to manage the many spells that priests have since a lot of them have these small niches.
Shadow priests used to just a leveling …read more

We’re down to our last two class Q&A’s and it’s time for the rogue class to have the spotlight. As you know these class q&a’s are really more for knowing what the development team has in mind for the classes going forward especially in terms of design philosophy. You can see the whole Rogue Q&A here. As usual it’s Ghostcrawler giving the answers.
Rogues used to be the the class with the best dps but now Blizzard has been pushing them into being more normal and having some utility instead.
Blizzard is very happy with the combo point/finisher system that rogues use. …read more

We’ve seen Q&A’s for both the Crusader’s Coliseum and the Isle of Conquest battleground but here’s a joint one that answer some new questions. Instead of Ghostcrawler, the following people will be answering the questions this time: Game Director Tom Chilton, Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer, and Lead World Designer Alex Afrasiabi.
Crusader’s Coliseum
To be clear, the 5 man encounter is called Trial of the Champion. The raid encounter (both 10 and 25 man) is called Trial of the Crusader while the heroic mode of this encounter is called Trial of the Grand Crusader.
Trial of the Champion should roughly on par …read more

Blizzard is almost done with the Class Q&A feature which started with the Shaman class and now it’s time for Hunters to take the spotlight. As you may know, the Q&A feature is there to find out what the development team is thinking about the classes for patch 3.2 and beyond. They go through things like design philosophy and changes they want to make or are thinking of making.
Hunters are unique in that they are the only ranged damage dealers that rely on the mostly physical damage of their ranged weapon rather than spells. But what also makes them unique …read more

I think that with the PTR being up for quite a while now and with the class Q&A’s coming out faster, it might be a sign that Patch 3.2 is coming soon… at least sooner than I originally thought. It’s the Warrior class’ turn to go under the microscope and see what Ghostcrawler and the development team has to say about the class moving forward.
The devs think that one of the things that make the Warrior class interesting is the Rage mechanic, specifically the way rage can convert into damage which converts to rage and so on. It’s a design …read more

After reading and writing about the class Q&A’s that Blizzard has been releasing, I’ve pretty much noticed that it’s not very very helpful in answering most of the important issues of the different classes. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to read because you get to see what the devs are thinking about the class involved and where it stands now and going forward to the future. If anything it’s these future thoughts and plans that are most intriguing to read about. It’s time to talk about Druids now!
Druids have come a long way since vanilla WoW since back then they were pretty …read more

The Class Q&A feature in the WoW website was been rolling smoothly with quite a number already done. We’ve seen the ones for Shaman, Mage, Death Knight, and Warlock come out already. Now it’s time for us to see what Ghostcrawler and the development team has to say about the Paladin class moving forward. A lot of what they said in this Q&A aren’t really new if you’ve been following the PTR patch notes for patch 3.2 but I guess it’s nice to be able to hear straight from them why some changes were made.
For Holy Paladins, they talked about …read more

Once again it’s time to hear what Ghostcrawler and the rest of the development team have to say about the World of Warcraft classes moving forward. We’ve seen the Q&A feature for the Shaman, Mage and Death Knight in the past. Now it’s time for the Warlock Q&A.
In the mage Q&A, the devs mentioned that they’re planning to make mages and warlocks feel less similar and that since they’re happy with where mages stand right now from a design perspective, warlocks will be the class that would be drifting away. Ghostcrawler said that the soul shard system is the area …read more