In Patch 5.3: Escalation, players fight back against the aggressive reign of Garrosh Hellscream, once proud War Chief of the Horde. His crimes are many and his allies are dwindling, but he still holds the Horde capital city of Orgrimmar and retains full command of a vast army of loyal Kor’kron elite soldiers, fed by reinforced supply lines running throughout the Barrens.

Toppling the tyrant will not be easy.

To prepare you for this monumental struggle, the Blizzard Insider discussed the content in Escalation with Game Director Tom Chilton.

Blizzard Insider: Before we dive into the details of Patch 5.3, can you tell us about how the previous patch, 5.2: Rise of the Thunder King, has gone?

Tom Chilton: Overall we’re very happy with how the Thunder King raid turned out. I think it ranks among our best ever as far as size, scope, and overall quality of raid mechanics goes. Lei Shen in particular stood out as a great final encounter for the raid, on par with Yogg-Saron or Ragnaros. One of the more experimental aspects of the Thunder King patch that we’re especially happy with is the Determination buff, which gives all Raid Finder group members a 5% boost whenever they wipe. Raid Finder groups tend to have players of all skill levels, so this change has really helped these groups hold together and learn the mechanics of more difficult encounters, which overall has made Raid Finder groups a more viable option for progression.


Blizzard Insider: How does Escalation fit into the larger story arc for Mists of Pandaria®?

Tom Chilton: Patch 5.3 tells the story of what’s been happening on the Kalimdor home front while the continent of Pandaria was being explored across the South Seas. As the name implies, the core conflict revolves around Garrosh Hellscream and his escalating war efforts. Of course, the Alliance opposes Garrosh—for obvious reasons—but now even large factions of the Horde have turned on Garrosh as well. They’ve grown tired of his constant warmongering, and so Vol’jin leads the Darkspear trolls in open rebellion against their former war chief. Garrosh seems to be universally despised, so now players on both sides of the Horde and Alliance will soon get a chance to take a swing at him.


Blizzard Insider: Can you talk about the new features being added with Escalation? What features are you most looking forward to seeing players dig into?

Tom Chilton: The new Scenarios constitute the backbone of the Escalation patch, and we think players are going to have a lot of fun with these. Another big change will be the new events in the Barrens. The main supply lines that feed Garrosh’s war machine in Orgrimmar run throughout the Barrens, so players must win victories there first before they’ll be able to take on Garrosh directly. From the design side, we want to use the Barrens events to experiment with end-game open world content in new ways and try to get away from some of the more repetitive aspects of daily questing. As a result, we shaped the events as a series of dynamic events, rather than a straightforward progression of daily quests. We hope this ends up feeling much more fluid and freeform than previous end-game quests, with players of both the Alliance and Horde rampaging around, raiding Garrosh’s supply lines and spoiling his war efforts. Plus, just having the Horde and Alliance together in the Barrens at the same time will open up a lot of opportunities for world PVP.


Blizzard Insider:Can you talk a little about the changes to PvP combat? In what ways do the mechanics of PvP evolve in Escalation?

Tom Chilton: One of the biggest evolutions in PvP stems from the changes to the Resilience system. Mechanically speaking, Resilience stays much the same as before, but most of it has been removed from gear, and instead players are getting a much higher innate level of Resilience. Gear still matters in PvP, and certain gems and enchants will retain bonuses to Resilience, but the overall survivability difference between players with different sets of gear is narrower after patch 5.3. This means player skill plays a larger role in determining the outcome of a PvP battle than before. Plus, the Resilience change has the secondary benefit of allowing PvE players to cross over more easily into PvP, since they won’t have to first collect a separate set of Resilience gear in order to survive.


Blizzard Insider: How about new PvP content?

Tom Chilton: On the PvP content side, we’re also adding a new Battleground and a new Arena with Patch 5.3. The Battleground is called Deepwind Gorge and it features a “gold grab” mechanic, where both factions race to collect a certain threshold of gold for their side. Players can get gold in two ways, either gradually over time by holding key strategic points around the mining operations, or they can steal a gold cart from the other team’s base and drag it back to their own base. So Deepwind Gorge essentially combines classic “king of the hill” with “capture the flag” PvP mechanics.

The new Arena is called the Tigers’ Peak, and it experiments with the concept of “high ground” in an interesting new way. The Arena geometry includes several raised pillars, the tops of which are ringed with fences. These fences do not block line of site or ranged attacks, but they will catch any player who gets knocked back into them, thus enabling ranged players to hold the high ground and snipe or land heals from on high a bit more easily than they could otherwise with normal un-railed pillars.


Blizzard Insider: Can you go into details on the new Scenarios in Patch 5.3? Has the design philosophy of Scenarios changed much since they were first introduced at the beginning of Mists of Pandaria?

Tom Chilton: One thing we thought that Scenarios lacked after the launch of Mists of Pandaria was a sense of possible failure. Don’t get me wrong, they were always meant to be quick, fun, bite-sized pieces of content, but I think we can offer more of a challenge to players who are ready for it. So we’re introducing Heroic versions of several existing Scenarios, plus all the new Scenarios coming with Patch 5.3.

Unlike most normal Scenarios, the Heroic versions will only be available if you’re already in a premade group with two other players. Since the difficulty will be ramped up, we wanted to be able to tune the Heroic Scenarios around a group of players who know each other and are used to playing together. Plus, since it’s easier to build a group when you only need two other players, rather than the usual five, we figured Scenarios are a good place to experiment with requiring premade groups again.


Blizzard Insider: Let's talk loot. What kinds of items can players expect to find?

Tom Chilton: Players can definitely expect the usual Item Level upgrades. In addition, we’re also tweaking the loot system so players have option to choose which spec they wish to receive gear for [bonus rolls, Raid Finder loot, Heroic Scenarios, and Mists of Pandaria quests]. This means, for example, you can collect gear for your tank spec while you’re DPS-ing, or vice versa, which makes it easier to collect different sets of gear for your off-spec. In addition, on the art side, we’re also reintroducing the old world Dungeon Tier 2 armor sets back into the game as rewards for the revamped Barrens content. This enables new players to collect some of the older gear sets for Transmogrification without having to go back and farm the old world dungeons

Blizzard Insider: Anything else you’d like to share before you go?

Tom Chilton: Yeah, one more thing—another cool feature we’re adding with 5.3 is the ability to see other players’ Pet Battles, so you can conduct Pet Battles with an audience now. Other than that, we just wanted to say thanks again to our all of our play testers who’ve played through the 5.3 content on the Public Test Realm—your time and contributions are always much appreciated.

This one is a bit of an eyeful, so be prepared for a long post. I recommend reading the whole thing, but there is a TL;DR at the end. If my memory serves me well, this will be my biggest post since joining the community team!

Mírion has hit the nail on the head in pretty much all of his posts in this thread so far. Rated PvP has been seeing a decline in participants over time; however this is not because of balance issues as most people assume it to be. It is mostly due to the increased separation and distinction between PvP and PvE gear. As has been said, getting a full set of PvP gear is not really that hard in the sense of difficulty, but it is when you consider the grind and the feeling you get in those first few steps of PvP without the right gear.

I am sure that most, if not all of you here have at least once had the experience of entering into PvP either late in an expansion or season. If you have, then you know how difficult the process of getting your honor set and first few conquest pieces is. You start off by getting hit by trucks and attacking back with the damage of a wet noodle, as your gear gets better though, the experience improves and you start having fun. But you have to remember that it's those first few steps which are the most crucial to people continuing their PvP experience.

This separation of gear has caused a decrease over time in the number of PvP participants because the first few steps into PvP are so daunting for those who try it that the turnover results in a drop rather than an increase. For PvP, because so many people get scared away from it when they first have a go, you have much less "fresh blood", so to say. This ends up resulting in there not being enough new players sticking with PvP to compensate for those that decide to move onto something that is better suited to them.

Let's take two examples of people who are taking their first steps in PvP right now and making their decision if this is something they want to keep doing:

• Player A is an established raider. They’re geared out in some pretty sweet ToT items, but wants to try out something new.
• Players B is a freshly dinged level 90. They’re keen-eyed to try out PvP and has their crafted PvP set.
• And to have them here to be used in the two below examples, Tyrannical, the BiS PvP geared player having a bit of fun in battlegrounds.

Now the below scenarios are extreme cases, you will not always be coming across a BiS person in PvP, and there are ways in which to increase your enjoyment when starting out such as playing with friends. While a lot of players will push through this initial hurdle and start to enjoy their time in PvP, I just want to give you some examples of what a first time experience can be.

Epic storytelling time #1:
Player A:
A enters an Arathi Basin match, bright-eyed and keen to try out this aspect of the game that's entirely new to them. The gates open for A and they charge off to Lumber Mill and engage their new-found foes. They are having a jolly time doing some decent damage and even scoring a kill while no one is attacks them, however then Tyrannical on the opposing side decides to attack A and he dies in an instant. A wonders what happened, but ignores the occurrence the first time.

A resurrects at base and heads out into the battle, but the same thing keeps happening — A goes into battle, gets attacked and dies. They get tired of this happening repeatedly and decide that PvP is not quite their cup of tea.

Epic storytelling time #2:
Player B:
B just got their Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's gear and an okay BoE weapon from the Auction House. They queue up for a battleground and get thrown into Twin Peaks, ready for battle they run out of the gates bearing down on the opponents flag, eager to capture it and bring glory to their team.

Another person manages to grab the flag before B can reach it, but that's okay — B now wants to go take down the enemy flag carrier. Little to B's knowledge, Tyrannical has the flag and is running along to bring it to their base. B intercepts Tyrannical and starts attacking as hard as he can but is doing little to take away from Tyrannical’s health. Tyrannical decides that the damage B is doing, while minimal, is becoming a nuisance, B is attacked and dies in moments. Like A, B ignores this first occurrence and decides to head back in to battle. But after this situation is repeated they become frustrated by doing so little damage and dying so quickly. They give up on PvP and move on to another aspect of the game where they feel they can make a more meaningful contribution.

As you can see, both players entered into PvP, bright-eyed and looking to have some fun, but they were met with a brick wall as they began their journey. Because of this brick wall that they encountered though, their motivation waned until they gave up and eventually decided to move to something else. The changes that we have planned for patch 5.3 are designed to improve the first time PvP’ers experience to try and increase the retention rate of newcomers to the scene.

The change will also ensure that PvP gear remains the best possible choice for PvP, do not fret over this. What we is to improve the experience for those starting out in PvP and as such increase the pool of players and the size of the community; which in-turn makes the experience of current PvP’ers playing the game that much better too.

TL;DR — The changes help increase the size of the PvP community and makes PvP more welcoming to new players, without making PvE gear BiS.

Making PvE gear BiS something I'm a bit scared off, since you nerfed the PvP gems it just seems like the pure stat gems will be better. Hope you're keeping an eye on them.
However any additional gem sockets come at the cost of the Ilvl budget, lowering some other stats. Base stats will be near, if not exactly identical when scaling comes into account. The reason that PvP gear will be stronger is because of the PvP power stat that is not taken into account for the Ilvl budget on items.

In the blog you posted it said that you removed resilience on "most" pvp pieces, are they still on trinkets?
At this time Medallions still have Resilience on them, Insignias, Badges and Emblems do not have resilience. This can possibly change in the future, but right now we will be keeping an eye on trinkets to ensure that they do not become a problem.

what about player C ?
I was giving some examples of situations where players take their first few steps into PvP. The examples I gave were enough to display the point behind the post, any more would have just made it far too big for anyone to read.

anyway... without these double proc, how do you kill a healer?
Coordinating burst and having good CC timings and effective target swaps. I take it from your posts that you are referring to difficulties killing a healer solo, first off — bad idea; it's do-able, but I would definitely recommend going at them with a friend. Healers are built around the concept of being able to, if played well, keep a team of three players alive against another team of three players, generally 2 DPS and a healer. If a healer was designed to be taken down by a single player in a 1v1 situation, then what kind of hope would they have in keeping a group alive in arenas or battlegrounds?

Healers can be killed and are far from being immortal, you just need to apply the appropriate pressure and play your cards right.

begin with ... these trinket should not even exist, or certainly should not be allowed to use them in pvp.

these trinkets currently have a unique function spoil the game.
Those trinkets offer a different playstyle and have received multiple changes to adapt them for PvP. Not only this, but those trinkets will also be susceptible to the same effects of the Ilvl cap as every other piece of gear in patch 5.3.

There is a PLAYER C which you didn't consider in your example. Player C enters a Battleground to get trashed like player A and player B but does not quit.

While a lot of players will push through this initial hurdle and start to enjoy their time in PvP, I just want to give you some examples of what a first time experience can be.
But I do understand where you are going with your post. But if the situation you give is accurate, then once that player reaches full BiS PvP gear, they will just stop until a new season comes around. A better way to entice people like this to play and continue to play is not to just offer them a way to enhance their characters power which is quite limited in how far it can go, but rather to also provide other rewards like those planned for patch 5.3. Some of the rewards we have planned are for when players reach 2500 rating, they can get a special tabard and a cloak. We also are thinking of potentially adding in rewards for accomplishments such as X number of RBG's or Arenas won.

Also, I am not sure where the progression of gear is being halved. The gear progression is no different from what it has been in previous seasons (Elite weapons being the exception), outside of the start of Season 13 where Elite gear was better than the normal one. In all previous seasons the progression was as follows:

• Crafted PvP gear
• Honor Gear
• Conquest Gear
• Elite weapon (Only one that was an upgrade)/cosmetic elite upgrades

Now the progress of gear will be as follows:

• Crafted PvP gear
• Honor Gear
• Conquest Gear
• Cosmetic upgrades

So in the end, the progression of gear has not really changed apart from the Elite weapon just becoming a cosmetic improvement. All this change is doing is leveling out the playing field a bit more to make entry into PvP a lot less daunting to help welcoming more people into the PvP community — this helps the entirety of the PvP community, even the player C you mentioned as they now have more people to play against.

You don't get ilvl 440 gear and go to take on Ra-Den.... that is why there is other raids and LFR to gear up and "progress" to finally take down Ra-Den one day. The point is to grind and get the gear to be able to do so.

Same with PvP. You don't just slap on gear and expect to take down a fully geared PvP player, that is just silly and should not be accomplished by someone with PvE gear.
PvE however has dungeons, heroics, LFR and then raiding in order to ease you into the process, so you are able to participate in gear appropriate content until you are able to enter raids. When a PvP player starts off their journey, they have no equivalent of dungeons where the health and damage of their opponent isn't insurmountable. They are thrown straight into a raid, where they have to overcome a raid boss with the gear you would normally use in a normal dungeon.

Why not make BG with a ilvl cap and pitch players with a certain amount of PvP ilvl against each other and those with better gear against their counterparts.
That's kind of what this change does, without diminishing the overall pool of players. It also accomplishes multiple other tasks as well, such as helping prevent PvE gear in PvP.

I was refering to the gear grind through the upgrade system in patch 5.1
This system got a lot of disapproval from the PvP community, from the feedback we received it was deemed best for it not to return in patch 5.2 or 5.3, which I am sure a lot of people here are glad to hear.

and, as you said, the expected elite gear in patch 5.2 which was abandoned during the first few weeks in favor of the 5.3 system.
This was removed because the gear inflation that would have occurred with season 14 would have been immense. Also, the difference between someone starting out in PvP and someone in full elite would have been too big. The new system for 5.3 was developed and deemed more appropriate and better for the community as a whole. (Source)

Patch 5.3 Release Date
Do you know if 5.3 is coming out this month or not for sure. I heard that is what you guys are aiming for but not sure if its a possibility it might not happen.
At current, it won't be much longer. We're hoping to get it out soon (and not the usual soon). I can't confirm more than that for you right now. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Death Knight Changes and CC in PvP
I'm glad they're reverting the nerfs and buffing necrotic strike, I was getting worried.
That's not the case anymore, the developers implemented a different change so that Death Knight diseases will no longer gain benefit from Tricks of the trade:

• Change reverted: Festering Strike reverted to deal 200% weapon damage.
• Change reverted: Scourge Strike reverted to deal 135% weapon damage.
• Change reverted: Unholy Might reverted to 15% Strength increase.
• Frost Fever and Blood Plague: The damage from these two diseases can no longer benefit from the damage increase granted by Tricks of the Trade.

How can one class just flop over the second he makes one tiny mistake, while the other can survive 3 people dpsing him while his healer:

- Runs of to get out of combat and ress
- Sits in multiple full CCs
Speaking of CCs and (burst) damage, which is something that gets mentioned from time to time:

The developers are keeping an eye on both burst and CC. Not being able to play your character for some time isn't fun, and neither is being bursted from 100% to 0.

Crowd Control is an integral part of World of Warcraft PvP. Without it, it would be little more than tunneling down your opponent. CC introduces the opportunities for skill and timing to come to shine in a way that wouldn't be possible in its absence.

What helps developers the most are specific examples. They do see the YouTube videos that the community shares from time to time, and all too often, they're taken against an undergeared opponent, or a player has every conceivable RNG going for them when they post a highlight.

Nonetheless, they're looking at simplifying CC and diminishing returns in the future, and they already recognize that some abilities and combinations of abilities can lend themselves to burst that's higher than what they'd like, such as Incanter's Ward (which was recently modified on the PTR to Incanter's Ward now allows the Mage to gain up to a maximum of 15% increase to spell damage, down from 30%, but the effect now lasts 25 seconds, up from 15 seconds.). That's the kind of ability that they'd likely 'smooth out' a bit, as they did in this case, where its effects get spread out in such a way as to not damage PvE dps, while lessening its burst potential in PvP. (Source)

RPPM and Item Upgrades
Definitely worth confirmation!

Yes. For these special trinkets like RoRO or UVLS the proc rate increases with ilvl.
And here it is. (Source)

Paladins in Throne of Thunder
This is what they've told us: Paladins are quite useful but they feel cases like solo tanking Heroic Megaera (which was mentioned on this thread) has more to do with how encounter mechanics work than the way the class is designed. It's something the developers will work on to be more careful in the future.

Also, with patch 5.3, there'll be some adjustments to certain Paladin abilities, including a nerf to Shield of the Righteous and Glyph of the Battle Healer (which was meant for Retribution Paladins to begin with). (Source)

Character
interesting tweet, what do you mean by this? Like old days where armor/stam values were different based on armor type?
Perhaps. Armor matters much less with so much non-physical damage. (Source)

had 10 85's 5 DS geared in Cata, have 4 90's and 1 ToT geared now. Stopped alt playing completely now. Better? Just curious.
You are comparing the final raid tier to the not-final raid tier.... (Source)
It is irrelevant that they are different tiers GC, you have made alt playing not fun in MoP.
The tons of raid-geared alts didn't happen until Dragon Soul. Then players naturally expected to keep the into 5.0. (Source)
I'm not saying there weren't alts before, but the average player having 4-5 happened in Dragon Soul. (Source)

Lots of discussion lately about gear and its place. Why not simplify? Do away with bracer, belt, boots and 1 trinket?
Would that make loot feel more fun? (Source)

You say you have the best programmers, any chance they can programme the lucky coins to not give you an item you already have?
Trivially. But should they? There are downsides to getting all the gear you want as fast as you want it. (Source)

Looking at the evolution of ilvl of gear in MOP in pvp/pve, do you think it should be done differently next expansion?
We're still trying to solve letting PvE have better upgrades in later tiers without making PvP have huge catchup mechanics. (Source)
In PvE, you can just avoid the harder instances until you have better gear. In PvP, you're going to run into everybody. (Source)

Feel like BoAs take fun away, never replacing gear is lame. Love the XP buff but not trivialized content #toolatetochange
I see where you're coming from, but they're more aimed at people who feel like they're done with the gear w/ leveling thing. (Source)

Working stiff, almost no time to play now, so I don't; dailies too time consuming/no catchup method for gear. Fix next xpac?
Is the issue that you can't get into dungeons or raids, or that you want to be able to do charms, valor and rep in addition? (Source)
I ask because a major problem with Cata (we were told) was that raiders had little to do when they weren't raiding. (Source)
We added other supplemental loot systems for players looking for more to do. But players with less time felt left out. (Source)
(And before anyone suggests it, alts suffer from the same problem. Alts used to be something you could do if you had free time.) (Source)
(But now we hear from folks that they don't have time for their alts. It's tough to solve.) (Source)
It's a Catch 22 being able to provide meaningful content for players with a lot and without a lot of time. (Source)

UI / Addons
Greg, srsly. What kind of answer is that? Nothing in the game itself uses a questhelper either. Still you added it.
The game has quests though and that info wasn't available. Nothing in the game points you to coordinates. They feel optional to me. (Source)

please fix lag on Lei Shen. seems to be tied with stampede
It is, but we can't reproduce it except for players with out of date Recount or Skada. (Source)

not fun having half our 25m get d/c on bosses when a hunter decides to stampede. and this is with recount off. please fix
Are you certain none of the 25 players have recount or skada enabled? We haven't been able to reproduce that case. (Source)
I never used a damage meter and lagged like crazy on Sha of Fear Heroic. Maybe something deeper... DBM? Ace?
It is definitely related to the stabled pets showing up as "unknown" and then flooding the log when the names are realized. (Source)
We're not giving up, but it's definitely one of those holycrapwhatisthisactualbug? moments. (Source)

Official LFGuild forums unusable mess. Like finding a job on craigslist with not categories, just by post date. Discouraging.
We agree with that, and the Guild Finder tool doesn't solve the problem either. (Source)
WE need a good, robust guild finding system, but you can't just throw good, robust systems together. (Source)

You 'could' does not mean you 'should'. Why would you even design abilities for bosses, if they were to be ignored?
An example is a tank swap mechanic relevant to tanks and perhaps healers that doesn't need to be shouted out to the raid. (Source)
Another is when a boss mod yells out a countdown for a minor boss debuff that adds to the healing requirements but isn't urgent. (Source)
Bossmods focus your awareness when used/configured well, but they're never judicious about what's on by default.
They are better about not stealing your raid markers as much as they used to. (Source)

If you could remove 1 addon and all like it from the game, ie: Recount/skada, DBM which would you remove and why?
I'm not sure I'd want to remove any of those. Mods are generally good for the game and players like them. (Source)
Maybe a mod that is cheating (which we tend to block anyway) or something so unstable that it causes players a lot of grief. (Source)

Classes

• Death Knight
  
  • General
    
    • Blood Plague no longer benefits from the damage increase granted by Tricks of the Trade.
    • Frost Fever no longer benefits from the damage increase granted by Tricks of the Trade.
    • Necrotic Strike healing absorption effect has been increased to 225% from attack power, up from 200%.
  • Unholy
    
    • Festering Strike now deals 175% weapon damage, down from 200%.
    • Scourge Strike now deals 165% weapons damage, up from 135%.
    • Unholy Might now increases the Death Knight's Strength by 10%, down from 15%.
• Druid
  
  • Guardian
    
    • Mastery: Nature's Guardian is now 33% stronger (2% per point instead of 1.5%).
• Hunter
  
  • General
    
    • Cooldown on crowd control abilities for several Hunter pet families have changed.
      
      • Basilisk pet family’s Petrifying Gaze cooldown is now 2 minutes (up from 1 minute).
      • Bat pet family’s Sonic Blast cooldown is now 2 minutes (up from 1 minute).
      • Crane pet family’s Lullaby cooldown is now 2 minutes (up from 1 minute).
      • Porcupine pet family’s Paralyzing Quill cooldown is now 2 minutes (up from 1 minute).
      • Shale Spider pet family’s Web Wrap cooldown is now 90 seconds (up from 45 seconds).
      • Worm pet family’s Burrow Attack has had its cooldown reduced to 14 seconds (down from 20 seconds).
    • Scatter Shot now shares diminishing returns with Freezing Trap and Wyvern Sting.
  • Beast Mastery
    
    • Exotic Beasts no longer reduces the cooldown of pet special abilities by 30%.
• Mage
  
  • General
    
    • Mirror Image creates copies that no longer cast Fire Blast, but their Frostbolt do 10% more damage.
  • Talents
    
    • Flameglow now absorbs damage from each attack made against the Mage equal to 15% of their spellpower (down from 20%).
    • Incanter's Ward now allows the Mage to gain up to a maximum of 15% increase to spell damage, down from 30%, but the effect now lasts 25 seconds, up from 15 seconds.
• Paladin
  
  • Protection
    
    • Shield of the Righteous now reduces physical damage taken by 25%, down from 30%.
• Priest
  
  • Shadow
    
    • Vampiric Embrace now has a healing cap of 15 raid members (up from 6) when used in a 25-player instance.
    • Fixed an issue where Glyph of Mind Flay movement speed increase was not stacking correctly.
• Shaman
  
  • General
    
    • Lava Burst now has a 2 second cast time, up from 1.5 seconds, and deals 25% more damage.
• Warrior
  
  • Arms
    
    • Sweeping Strikes no longer causes Resilience to decrease damage to secondary targets incorrectly when the original target's damage has already been decreased by Resilience.

Quests

• Flames of the Void: Fixed an issue where players were unable to mount the War Serpents.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
Scenarios

• Crypt of the Forgotten Kings
  
  • Fixed an issue where Uncontrolled Anger was improperly causing characters to drop out of stealth.

PvP
PvP Items

• The amount of PvP Power and Resilience on gems and Mystic Cogwheel have been reduced by 50%.

Items

• Eye of the Black Prince can now be used to apply a prismatic socket on Reborn weapons.

Transmogrification UI Keeps Breaking
Usually when UI stops working it's due to an addon interfering. You can do some troubleshooting by unchecking all your addons before logging in, if transmog works you know it was one of your addons. You can then go through and add them back one at a time.

Personally I might just go and make sure everything is up to date first. If you have some wildly outdated addons that seem to have been dropped by the creator (no updates within the last couple patches), it may be best to seek out alternatives.

Otherwise you can do a full interface reset. (Source)

Lore
You guy's kinda lied about Mists not having a villian. To some extent Garrosh seems to be filling that role.
Yeah, that was always the plan but we talked about it sooner when we realized "no big villain" was confusing or unattractive. (Source)

could explain again what's the point of solo scenario in an mmo game? why can't you ask help from friends what guilds are for?
They let us tell stories in a way normally impossible in an MMO. We can change the environment and make you feel special. (Source)
We agree in an ideal world that a few friends could run them with you though. (Source)

Pet Battles
Whats the logic adding battle pet spectator mod and not for arena/rbg? why you so hate PvP community? @Ghostcrawler
They are completely different systems. You're comparing a 4 day task to a 4 month task. (Source)

Pet Battle Spectating being released before Arena Spectating is an atrocity.
Hours of work versus months of work I'm afraid. Still, we'd like to add it. We know there is a lot of support among players. (Source)

Why Pet Battle Spectating? Im still trying to understand the need for it Was it causing performance issues?
I don't know that there was a *need.* Before, players would just stop and appear idle, which is a bit odd. (Source)
Usually characters doing something appear to be doing something. (Source)

Hey Gc. i know this has bin asked alot but since blizz might be introducing Petbattle Spectating,will we se thesame arena/rbg?
Unfortunately, it's an apple vs. orange comparison. Pet battles take place in the world. Arenas are on a separate server. (Source)
The programming needs aren't remotely similar. That doesn't mean we've given up on PvP spectator. But it is very not simple. (Source)

Mage PvP Burst
We are aware that there are many players who have issues dealing with Mage burst capabilities, however we feel that the main problem right now isn't simply Deep Freeze or Frozen orb directly, but rather the damage increase caused by Incanter's Ward. When stacked with other damage increasing effects such as procs and Frost Mage mastery, it can add up to an additional 30% damage multiplier, which can be quite devastating against many opponents. Because Incanter's Ward is one of the bigger reasons for high Mage burst, we have plans to make changes to it in patch 5.3.

In an upcoming change to the patch 5.3 patch notes you will see that we are looking to change the maximum spell damage increase from 30% to 15% but have the effect duration increased to 25 seconds, up from 15 seconds. This will lower the damage coming from Frozen Orb, Frost Bomb and other skills during a Mages burst window, but that damage multiplier will just last for a bit longer. (Source)

PvE
I'd love to have your opinion on the way to bring back Raid Attunements
We've talked about them a lot. Like many features, we went from one extreme to another. Might be a sweet spot. (Source)

means 10-15 people have dropped)And it means about a hour on a single boss.
I'm not sure we can deliver an epic raid experience if wiping 5-7 times is off the table. (Source)

even simply boss fights are a way too long this days.
How long do you think a boss fight should last? 2 min? 6? (Source)

By which I mean, we were trying to "fix" the ICC model, but maybe it was okay in retrospect. (Source)
ICC model was great, it take this long to see that equalizing 10/25 might've been a bad call or just this long to admit it? :P
But we know some players liked having two lockouts and it certainly propped up 25s better. So who knows. It's complicated. (Source)

Yeah, to get a drop is fun. To never get a drop isnt fun. Thats why i thought its an idea to remove RNG from looting.
To get a drop *sometimes* is even more fun. It's ultimately why slot machines can be so addictive. (Source)
I adore the PVP model w/ Nalak. Consistent progression w/ points AND opportunity for drop. Feels productive/exciting
Do you think Nalak should have been available sooner, like Anger was? (Source)

Why did u opt to have the ILvl difference between LFR and normal 20 for this tier of content instead of 13 like previously???
Couple reasons. Helps LFR feel less important to N raiders. Also keeps some prestige for N gear. (Source)

Would you say all the steps taken in MOP to protect the egos of raiders has been worth the cost of alienating casual players?
Worry the opposite is true. When you can see most of the content and get epics from LFR, it lessens motivations to raid. (Source)
Historically, if your guild broke up, you'd look for a new one. Now folks can just play WoW solo using LFR. Not the same experience. (Source)
Again, this doesn't mean we're going to remove LFR. It just means it shouldn't replace other content for all. (Source)

So far there is nothing in mop that I feel makes the loss of 5-mans a fair trade. Especially LFR which IMO is the worst
We know some like dungeons. But players burn out on a couple of new dungeons in a week or two. Raids keep them engaged for months. (Source)
We'd like to figure out some way to do both, but that means a dungeon that doesn't get stale after 20+ runs. (Source)
A raid boss might also get stale after 20 kills, but that's 20 weeks with weekly locks. Dungeons encourage faster burn out. (Source)
Again I am talking about trends overall. I understand players are individuals with their own desires. (Source)

I think getting more skillful is a longterm investment. Getting better ilevel is a more "realistic" goal.
Mmm. Not so sure. Noticing you're standing in a fire can be an aha moment. (Source)
Put another way, I can wipe on a boss 30 times and get better every time until we score a kill. That's short term skill. (Source)
YOU can tell players to improve skills, but the game doesn't. The game teachers players to get better gear, but not practice.
How so? Standing in fire is not a gear issue. Having whole raid alive is more DPS than a few ilevels and is pretty apparent. (Source)

The current raid tuning is almost perfect in my opinion (started raiding in WotLK). ToT is a great raid!
It is good on 25. It came out the door a little too hard on 10s. (Source)
Is that really a problem trading easier organisation with harder content ?
Would be different if we came out and said that 10s were intended to be very hard or very easy. (Source)
Are 10s largely defined by an inability to invest the amount of time that 25s do? Hence the lack of high end 10s?
It could also be that there are virtually no N 25 guilds. Most 25s have heroic intentions. (Source)

Are 10s even balanced around having every buff?
It's tough. We made the call because 10s felt like second class citizens with their lower ilevels. (Source)
No. Ten heroic might be a different story, but there aren't all that many 10 heroic guilds either. (Source)

Uld, ICC, & Nax had various progression paths to complete. But ToT is strictly linear, is this the direction of future raids?
Ideally we'd prefer the raid path have some choices. (Source)
Yup. Strict linearity is my only issue w/ ToT layout. Raid gets tired of approaching "the burnout boss".
Yeah, we agree. It's nice to have a few options to switch focus from one boss to another. (Source)
ICC wings were good, but creatively very bad I thought. 3 boxes off of a middle box room, where were the twists and turns?
Is there a raid whose layout you thought really nailed it -- that felt like a place? (Source)

Any way to keep two healing specs from zoning into same scenario? Not able to complete several runs as disc w/ atonement
You should be fine for normal scenarios even with 3 healers. They aren't tuned on a razor's edge. (Source)

Why can we not at least do old raids on separate lockouts? No harm in 10 and 25 ICC still is there?
No probably no harm. The system isn't set up to support that easily, but I don't know that it's a major design concern. (Source)

Idea behind Challenge Modes is sound I give you that, but how you did it, and how it works and the rewards behind it = garbage I'm sorry
Why are the rewards garbage? Because they have no player power? They are for prestige. And yes, we like them. (Source)

Classes

• Fixed an issue where healing reduction effects from Mortal Wounds, Wound Poison, and Widow Venom were stacking.
• Druid
  
  • Guardian
    
    • Growl should now properly transfer Vengeance to the casting Druid when taunting off of another tank character.
• Warlock
  
  • Item Sets
    
    • Tier-15 Warlock 4-piece set bonus should now properly increase the damage of Malefic Grasp and bonus periodic damage for Drain Soul.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

• Throne of Thunder
  
  • Primordius
    
    • Viscous Horror can now be seen from farther away.
  • Twin Consorts
    
    • Tanks under the Beast of Nightmares debuff should no longer receive stacks of Corrupted Healing from self-heal mechanics.

They're talking about the reputation needed to purchase the valor gear. Not getting the valor itself. All of my alts are valor capped but you know what I can't do? SPEND IT. Why? Because I refuse to do xmillion dailies, or farm a million warscouts on all of my alts.
Shado-Pan Assault rep is gained by killing bosses, not doing dailies. But whatever, item upgrades are coming back in 5.3 (and they're cheaper) so that'll be a nice way to dump some VP.

And you recommend that people get the 480 ilvl required to get into T15's LFR... how exactly? You can't rely on LFR drop rates even after the increase that was provided, and the majority of players don't have 50k in gold to dump on every alt that they hit max lvl with to buy crafted items.
You can't discount the entire idea of running 5.0 LFR to gear up because drops are random. Sure you could still get some bad rolls and it may take you a bit longer, but there are many who (with a bunch of Elder Charms, aka bonus rolls) are able to completely gear up for ToT within two weeks.

If you want an absolutely reliable way to see an item, do something, and get that item no questions asked, you can do dailies to gain rep and get them for VP, but it's not going to be the quickest way.

This isn't a question of what you can and can't do, the only question is how you want to do it. The Catching Up to 5.3 blog assumes you want to gear up as quickly as possible.

Valor gear should not be gated by rep. And what I want to do in many cases is gain rep... but you've left me with no options other than dailies to get rep reliably in virtually every case.
Yeah I think that's something we learned from and agree with to a point. The Shado-Pan Assault is technically a rep, but the limit is determined by boss kills. VP items are intended to fill gaps when your boss kills don't give you the items you need. Instead of implementing yet another currency and 'boss kill tracking system' to allow you to fill in the gaps, your access to items is determined purely by killing bosses. Plus tying it to a faction helps make it feel like it's a part of the world and not just a static tracking system.

Most of the good SPA rep rewards are frontloaded at Neutral to Honored at least. You hit Friendly week 1, and Honored shortly after that. Getting to Exalted is almost purely vanity, since it's just a tabard and some shoulders that don't even have a socket. You also don't have to do dailies to unlock those 522s, just a week or two of LFR.
Right!

Unless you're waiting for a helm, in which case, HAHA! Jokes on you! Seriously though, is there some reason for not putting helms/boots on SPA?
We tend to not want everything to be super formulaic. It gets tiresome when every tier of every expansion the same items are available in the same ways. Mix it up, etc. etc.

We like that people enjoy having alts. It's been a personal hobby of mine to continually level characters, and it's of course something a lot of people do. However, in some ways it works against some game systems that are intended to be a part of the MMO experience. Professions are one such system.

The intent with professions is that you can only have two, and for all the other professions you don't have you have to work with others within the game to get what you need. Say you're a blacksmith, and you can make an item another player or even that player's profession needs, and that interplay creates interpersonal interactions and even those small interactions feed into the larger social experience. Over the years a number of things have changed and lessened those interactions based around professions, but probably none more impactful than alts. With good intentions to help people catch up to the end-game, it of course allows for people to have more alts with more professions, which in turn reduces reliance on others and shrinks the reasons you have to interact with others.

Most people don't keep tons of alts geared up for end-game, but quite a few do have alts that are there to help 'feed' their one or two main characters. Which is where the binding comes in. You're playing on one character, getting motes/spirits, and wanting to transfer those to alts to make stuff, which then feeds back to your main in either the items made, or the gold from selling them. That's totally understandable, but really fundamentally goes against the intent of profession limits. It can also lessen the personal value of playing and connecting with a character. When you have everything, your personal connection to any one of those things is diluted, and you naturally care a little less about each.

I understand that may be a hard sell because it's a limitation and not letting people do whatever they want, but it's at least logical. I think it is, anyway. Maybe one solution is we could say you can only have two professions per Battle.net account! And really strong arm people into it, but of course that'd be a pretty negative change in taking so much away. Instead saying here's an item that we really want you to earn and use on the character you're playing and obtained it with to reinforce the value in playing that character (and not just shipping items off to crafting alts). People still have crafting alts, of course, and some choose to play them a little just to seek out the motes/spirits, and that's ok. What we don't want is to encourage the notion that you can just play one character and keep a cadre of alts that ensure you have everything you'll ever need. Working with others to achieve great things is by and large the overarching point of these kinds of games.

All that said we have tended to remove the soulbinding of these types of crafting materials as the expansion that introduced them draws to an end.

Feedback and Development
Back in BC developers created an entire new raid that was never meant to come to fruition because players surprisingly began clearing Black Temple and were screaming they were bored.
Sunwell Plateau was absolutely in development from the start. Black Temple was supposed to be in the game when BC launched. To keep from delaying it any further quite a few things didn't make the launch game that were supposed to, and were then added in major content patches. Sunwell was always on the feature list from before the expansion was released, and was always an intended raid.

We've gotten a lot tighter with our dev cycles, obviously, but that doesn't change that the vast majority of content you see throughout the life of an expansion is in some stage of development before an expansion ships - or in some cases just couldn't make the initial release. This go around I'd say the one big exception is the Battlefield Barrens event coming in 5.3, which wasn't something that was concepted until around 5.2 when we thought we really needed a bigger story lead up and tie-in to 5.4 as we didn't have one planned. Quests and Scenarios that use existing locations are pretty quick to turn around. (Source)

Flameglow
What about smaller hits like melee rogue damage? 30% of that gets absorbed too.
We recently made a change on the 5.3 PTR to make it so that the max absorb value equals to 15% of the mages spellpower, but no more than 30% of the total damage of the incoming attack.

So let's say a mage has 21000 spell power, Flameglow will absorb no more than 30% of the incoming attack up to the amount of 3150 damage . We hope that this change will make it so the talent continues to be attractive, but not so powerful against characters who hit more often but for less damage. Please feel free to provide us with any feedback you have about this change. (Source)