The World of Warcraft Twitter Dev Chat took place earlier this evening and Blizzard staff did their best to answer a wide variety of questions pertaining primarily to class balance and the new talent trees.
I won't repost everything due to the massive amount of questions answered. It would cover several pages!
I'll show some of the most relevant ones, however:
Zarhym Q. How do the mastery bonuses work now that they don't show up on the talent interface anymore?
A. The mastery bonuses will be trainable passive bonuses somewhere around level 75. Each talent specialization will have a different Mastery available on the trainer with a base potency and 0 Mastery Rating. The character sheet interface will have additional information on the additional potency gained from Mastery Rating.
Q. With each expansion boss mechanics become more and more complex. Don't you think that bosses will be overcomplicated soon?
A. We have a lot of players who have been killing bosses for nearly six years now. We think we need to keep it fresh for them. Having normal vs. hard modes is our way of making sure the complexity doesnt make those fights inaccessible for some players.
Q. Have some of the old talents been made into new glyphs?
A. Usually when we cut a talent its because we thought it was a bad talent, but we might bring some talents that were so situational to fit in the new model back as glyphs. We are still designing glyphs. Players shouldnt necessarily assume that any of their current glyphs are going to still be around. Some will, but many are changing.
Q: What class are you currently most happy with how the talents are currently set up? Is there one you feel needs more work?
A. They all need more work!
Q: What is the goal when re-designing the paladin class? How do you plan to change rotations, talents, etc?
A. All of the paladin specializations will make use of a new resource called Holy Power. Holy Power accumulates from using Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and some other talents. Holy Power can be consumed to augment a variety of abilities, including:
- An instant mana-free heal: Word of Glory
- A buff to increase holy damage done: Inquisition
- A massive physical melee attack for Retribution paladins: Templars Verdict
- Holy Shields duration is now extended by Holy Power
- Divine Storms damage is now increased by Holy Power
We also introduced several new heals for Holy Paladins including Healing Hands (an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin), Light of Dawn (a cone heal with a 30-yard range), as well as a new heal called Divine Light, which is similar to a priest's Greater Heal, and the new instant heal mentioned above, Word of Glory.
This far from the whole of it, but some of these were too interesting to pass over. Holy Power for Paladins will apparently act similarly to how Runic Power currently works for Death Knights. You'll charge it up and then be able to use it as you choose, this is certainly a drastic departure from how Paladin's have worked in the past and is surprising to say the least.
The mastery system is still fairly unclear, but it seems as though it will be a semi-linear progression of bonuses as you develop a certain tree and level up. I'm not sure what the benefit of the new system is as opposed to the old one where your bonuses were purely determined by which talent trees you invested points in, but we shall see when it's implemented.
As of now nearly a quarter of the existing glyphs are completely obsolete given the changes in talents and gameplay, so obviously they'll need to add new ones. There's no new news on that front yet though.
The main theme of the Dev Chat was that things are still in a very early stage and it's too early to speculate or to judge the existing situation as if it were ready to launch. There's still a long way to go.
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