Shane Hughes

@AggrendWoW Hi Aggrend and team, really sad to see mental dex nerf. I hope y’all contemplate on the benefit of buffing other runes / spells rather than nerfing the ones that are working. Now ele shams are doing even less dps. Lightning bolt needs a 100% dmg buff to be competitive

A round of changes are going out tomorrow and after reading some comments I want to clarify that this week's changes were already done and dusted when I posted the feedback thread last week. I posted that thread Thursday and didn't even start parsing the responses in earnest until Saturday. We did not work through the weekend to make those changes in response to that thread. A lot of the adjustments coming this week and in the next few weeks are just that; adjustments. Generally they are not redesigns. We have more adjustments coming, but a lot of the data gathered from that thread is just to help us identify (or confirm what we already knew about) problems as you see them for the future to inform potential redesigns. Really appreciate the replies to that thread, but I didn't want anyone to get the idea that this week's updates were the "grand reveal" of changes to come from that thread. Thanks! us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/seaso…

@Vici0usTruth @AggrendWoW Well said! And @AggrendWoW instead of buffing instant cast spells (or overall dmg) etc for a certain underperforming spec or class, Plz significantly buff the longer casted spells so pvp isn’t just a “who attacked first” one shot fest.

@AggrendWoW This round of changes is not good. You continue to balance this game around dps rankings and bosses you control the health pools of. Damage values need to be cut in half and boss health needs to be cut in half, there are wide ranging other aspects to the game that are unbalanced.

@GingerProblemz @AggrendWoW And that my friend is why I’m making a new character on a PVE realm. If you don’t like getting ganked and wasting time rezzing, (who does) then it’s the smart move.

@AggrendWoW All i want to see are updates to world pvp, tons of guards added to the incursion "PVE EVENT" zone. So that level 50's aren't encouraged to just sit around and snipe level 40's and having to spend 2 minute res timers just to turn in quests that have been nerfed by xp and gold...

@AggrendWoW Instant cast spells for Spriests, boomkins, and ele sham and arcane mage are fine but the problem is the longer casted spells are too weak thus in PvE they don’t stand a chance. Please buff these longer spell casts so the players don’t quit these fun n unique specs :)

The team focused on SoD has spent a good chunk of the last few days chewing on a rather large list of class adjustments coming soon (likely actually soon, not "soon tm" soon). As always we want to prime everyone that it's not going to fix every single thing everyone wanted, but we are continuing to iterate. We've been watching discords and forums for ideas and suggestions as we go, and while that's fine and good, I figured it might be a fun exercise to probe for a few suggestions here to a few targeted questions. Disclaimer; there may be an excellent idea in here that you love that we can't execute on for whatever reason. Game dev isn't easy and sometimes you have to pass on a good idea for a myriad of reasons. It's nothing sinister and its not us being tone deaf. Many things are also too big to hotfix so we have to think about what we do now vs. next phase. So, feel free to post suggestions or links to media with good suggestions in reply. Please do keep it civil though both towards me/the team and each other. I've been increasingly having to mute/block folks with abusive or unhelpful commentary so let's all be chill humans together. Lastly, please try and frame your suggestion with both a) the issue to be addressed, and b) your suggestion--phrased as concisely as possible. We likely won't have time to read super long posts/threads to find the meat of your point, so this will help (he says, while typing a super long post himself). Anyway, here goes: 1. Shadow DPS - We'd like to increase damage while allowing them to still shine in terms of group utility, particularly because their utility/value is likely to increase even further at 60 with some new stuff coming. One thing we also keep coming back to as well is wanting to restore mind flay to having a place in the toolkit. With that in mind, how would you suggest improving Shadow DPS with those goals in mind? 2. Survival Tree for Hunters - We know a lot of melee hunters really want Survival to be a thing and we agree that it really fits that "RPG ranger" class fantasy. Currently, BM tends to outstrip it in terms of raw output. What do you think could be interesting to zhuzh this up and make a deepish survival investment interesting? 3. Holy Paladins - We did you guys a bit dirty by not giving you interesting buttons to push like every other healing class. Viewed through a level 60 vanilla lens holy is great, but in SoD it leaves a lot to be desired. One thing we've been discussing is a group heal or some sort of proactive heal mechanic for Holy, but interested to hear some concise ideas here. 4. Sword Rogues - We have some adjustments coming in the upcoming update but we are open to ideas for how to make Saber Slash and other sword gameplay compelling. Might simply be a "do moar damage" adjustment that fixes this in the end, but we are interested in "feelsy" adjustment ideas too. 5. Warriors - Rage is a problematic mechanic because more damage = more rage = more damage = more rage ad infinitum. This is going to become more problematic at 60 as well. If we had it to do over again, we'd likely have normalized rage (i.e. you don't get extra rage when you do more damage/crit) at the start of the season and focused on major changes to their gameplay to compensate. The way it works now really hamstrings the design options for Warriors as we have to worry about the historically best dps in the game becoming even better later and forcing us to do an absolutely massive nerf which everyone would hate. To you, what would be a good trade for some form of normalized rage at 60 if we had to do such a thing? To close us out--at this point, we are always open to novel ideas for any class, including things that don't just strictly borrow from future expansions. Our philosophy on this has shifted from when we started developing this season and now we'd love to experiment with totally NEW mechanics (that ideally fit somewhat plausibly into the classic ecosystem). Not to say we won't use future expansion spells, but there's a willingness to expand our horizons a bit. Anyway sorry for the length. We've had a lot of fun just trawling discords and forums recently but figured I'd just throw this into the maelstrom and see what we get here as well. Thanks! EDIT: I am not answering questions here, so sorry if you want to ask something. My thoughts are irrelevant to this discussion and we want YOUR ideas.

@Konwizzle @AggrendWoW Boomkin is very strong for PVP (instant cast spells = high dmg) but similar to Ele Sham in PvE their longer cast spells are underwhelming and underperforming.

@Herculeez0 @AggrendWoW I think I'm just gonna make a Boomkin and accept that Shamans will never get the PvP fixes they need.

@Konwizzle @AggrendWoW Really let down by elemental shaman runes in general. Perhaps phase 4 will be different. There should definitely be a rune that allows shamans to cast up to 40 yards and cast an instant CC with a stun. The spell pushback is a nightmare. GL casting any spells against a melee. Sad

@AggrendWoW DPS shamans are awful in PvP right now for two reasons: 1. Enhance has no gap closer 2. Elemental has the shortest range of any caster and no 70% pushback protection talent. EotS is a joke. We need instant ghost wolf for Enh and pushback prot for Ele

@AggrendWoW Ty Aggrend! Please create new stuff rather than re-use from retail xpacs. I really want each spec to have a Brand New spell so players can have that extra power and sentimental feelin for each spec.

@Konwizzle @AggrendWoW The people here complaining clearly haven’t played ele sham. It’s one of the worst classes 1v1 and easily countered by any class with a stun, fear, slow, cc, or silence.

@AggrendWoW Novel shaman 2hand spell idea - Shaman leaps to a target location and executes a despicable strike, dealing high damage and disarming enemies in 5yds of him for 3s. In wolf form, player can leap much further. With damage that ticks three times over 3s and Stuns the enemy for 2s

@AggrendWoW Novel spell idea for Shamans - wolf execute ability, caster grabs a single target, damaging and knocking them into the air. If the target is below a Health threshold, shaman will also reveal his true form, becoming an airborne wolf and executing them restoring Health.

@AggrendWoW Hi Aggrend please consider taking a closer look at elemental shaman as well, the single target dps is much lower than shadow priest and warlock (recently buffed) and other classes mentioned above. It feels really bad that there’s no new spell for 2hand weapon rune as well. :( Thx

@seb_ferraro @AggrendWoW Shamans aren’t dominating. Warlock, paladin, boomkin, rogue, several classes one shot shamans.

@AggrendWoW I think you might need to reevaluate shamans at a top level anyway. They dominate in pve and pvp right now and are extremely overtuned. I'm not saying everything has to be the same but there's a significant discrepancy right now

Another quick note for this week's adjustments - Buffs coming for Seal of Martyrdom's mana return. This is a bit of a stopgap adjustments to bring alliance more in line with horde without nerfing Sham Rage, and we are going to re-evaluate mana return mechanics in general at 60. us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/seaso…

@AggrendWoW The 2hand rune is already useless… BUFF 2hand shammy PLEASE. (It’s dog poop now and back to meme spec) Really hope to see buffs to elemental shamans, and casters overall. Can’t even play ele because it’s damage is too low. Warlocks are still OP in pvp and gettin buffed?