Am I missing something? I keep reading the pain supression changes over and over and nowhere do i see anything about the threat reduction being permanent, yet people seem to be doing calculations based around this. Why would the threat reduction last beyond the duration of pain supression?

Yes. People should know better than to assume that we've seen the sum total of the changes being made to any given class, or even once 2.3 PTR goes live, to assume that there won't be further tweaks during the PTR phase.

If it didn't, it'd be OPd. And Neth posted on the priest forums that it is designed to help people survive in PvE -- her example was an AoEing mage.

Besides ... there is (afaik) ONE and ONLY one temporary threat reducer in the game ... and it's Fade, a self-buff. I very much doubt they'll add another one, given that Fade is mostly useless right now except as a 'pray the tank builds 1000 threat on all these mobs in the next 8 seconds, or I'm dead' effect.

And if they make it temporary ... it just becomes that much more insanely OPd. 40%, for 8 seconds, every 2 minutes, with no down side? Welcome to the raid, Mr Discipline Priest; right this way to tank healing.

Any more information as of yet on how exactly the new evocation will work? Restore 30% of base mana or some such thing?

New arena information just came in, and can be found here:
WoW Forums -> Selling Arena Teams?

The cutoff for s3 weapons is 1850 rating, and the shoulders of all things is 2000+ rating. Personal ratings are also being introduced.

One of the bigger changes announced today:

WoW Forums -> Selling Arena Teams?


edit: omg, beaten by a minute.

wow, 2k rating for shoulders. That means on some realmpools players will NEVER get them as their pool doesn't sustain such a high rating.
This is just plain bad.

Sorry Eir, almost!

I wonder if this means (with the introduction of a personal rating system in 2.3) that the third arena season is planned to start with patch 2.3 as well.

Also it will be interesting to see how they tally the "personal ratings", because at first glance it looks like it will be synonymous with the team ratings (a win will give you +rating, a loss will give you -rating) however it only counts for games you play, meaning that if an average PvPer was doing lots of games at 1300 rating they could easily boost their personal rating well over 2000+ by letting their teammates (or alts of theirs) take losses and suffer horrible personal ratings, to jack up their own personal rating.

I really wish they would stop making balance decisions around stuff like this. It's not so much a big deal as it is very, very irritating.

Also paladins are getting undispellable seals and 3% melee/spell crit in lieu of sanctified crusader being folded into imp. socr, for those who missed it.

The change to the Meditation-talent for priests also applies to the Intensity-talent for druids.

WoW Forums -> 2.3 change prediction - Intensity

Rebirth is getting its cooldown reduced to 20 minutes.

WoW Forums -> So sounds like Resurrection got a buff...

Ranged physical attacks cannot be dodged or parried, although they can be blocked in some odd rate. I think I remember a few patches back where they specifically said that they were changing blind to a ranged attack so that it would not be subject to dodge and parry, I don't see why they would revert that change now.

Blind changes: Awesome
Rogue execute at 35%: Awesome

But uh, is anyone else not really sure what the hell they're trying to "fix" with those Shadowstep changes? I understand the increased mobility being able to do it outside of Stealth, but threat reduction? Maybe a few too many rogues died to Gruul's Hurtful Strike and actually got into Blizz's head?

Anyway...

Has anyone heard about the Season 2 gear? Will it have a rating requirement also, or will it somehow be available to those less fortunate? (ie: me)

It also will (in its current implementation) hurt some teams who have oddly balanced pairings. I'm thinking specifically of 2v2 and 3v3 here, where you might have 4 or 6 people on the team.

In 2v2, say you have hunter/warlock/disc priest/paladin. Assuming equal skill, the priest/warlock team is probably going to see a higher win %. And normally, that's fine -- each player plays 20 games, the warlock/priest go 15-5 and the hunter/paladin go 10-10. But in this new system, that means the warlock and priest get shoulders ... and the hunter/paladin never do.

You're going to need to be able to level a team to 2000 yourself to get your score up. Your own personal win rating will have to be 500/(approx 15 points per win) at least a 33+ game differential for wins versus losses to get to 2000 personal rating.

The only question is, as suggested ... what happens at low-ranked games? If I start a new team, I'm at 1500, and I go 10-0 for the week ... but my personal rating was at 1800 to start ... does that mean I'm almost there? Or does it reset to 1500 with every new team?

I thought they implied it reset ... re:
which basically means you need a 1900+ team, and have to win enough games (personally) to get yourself over 2000.

The threat reduction is only after using shadowstep, I believe. This encourages rogues to use it at the beginning of the fights, especially on trash, without pulling aggro immediately.

It might also be because the Shoulders are the biggest relative upgrade for cost.

Just guessing, though.

Crazy number of changes slated for this patch - I'm hoping this is the tip of the iceberg for announcements, though. They've got to have an ace up their sleeve.

This is bad. I get way more than 60% of my total mana with the current Evocation because like almost all smart Mages, have a Spirit Staff - or - 1H + OH and Wand to swap out. I'd say I get about 75% of my total Mana bar non-raid buffed, and practically the whole kit and kaboodle when raid-buffed.

Color me belligerent (I guess that would be dark red).

Who wants to bet this is the firefly that Scarab Lord mounts have been glitching into?

I agree with this rationale completely. However, it is somewhat ironic that the very change that silenced the "nerf shaman" cries of early wow is now being reversed. I will enjoy being able to force anyone on a normal (non-flying) mount to dismount and fight me or die, as it was before

Also, as pure speculation as to arena personal ratings, will this change obviate arena teams as they are now and instead allow you to queue with whoever you want whenever you want? It would seem to be that way, which is both a blessing and a curse. You can't slum with bad friends on their team knowing that the games won't matter, but on the other hand you can play with multiple sets of "good" friends that you have. It will be interesting for sure.

And what if the best PVPers can't buy the shoulders because they don't have a rating of 2000 ?

The Armory
Congratulations, you're top 10. However, only the first 3 teams may purchase these shoulders.
And god knows what will happen to these small realmpools when the "scrubs" that wanted to leech free weapons will no longer play in S3.

A hippogryph would also be appropriate.

This personal rating thing is rather interesting. Could a player end up with a better personal rating by throwing an alt on his team to lose games? Or do you eventually get zero points for wins when your personal ratings are different enough?

Many people throw games on battle.net (wc3). I assume its for some reason like this. Messing with the matching system.

Ok, tristantio is saying the same thing... I'm slow to post.

Here's the source:

WoW Forums -> Blue says healing will = spell dmg