Q: When kill Ele/Enh Shamans get the rework we deserve? Totems are so outdated and irrelevant. - @STVN214 A: Totems could definitely use some love. I’m not sure the core rotations of either spec need an outright “rework,” though there are certainly some issues (Ele Ascendance being numerically underwhelming, Enhance having so many different sources of damage that few individual button presses feel rewarding). Totems historically provided irreplaceable benefits (e.g. Windfury providing extra attacks) that were balanced by the spatial constraint of being tied to a killable totem in a fixed location. Now that drawback often feels unwarranted. There isn’t much that’s cool about an ability like Searing Totem. Powerful area effects like Earthgrab, Windwalk, or Healing Tide fare better, but that isn’t a very long list. We agree that totems need to either be overhauled as a mechanic or that their importance to the shaman class needs to be reduced.
Q: What do Fire and Frost Mages, Ele Shamans… have mana bars for? Will mana matter again at some point? - @Crowvyn A: For many hybrid casters, mana is little more than a constraint on ability to heal, allowing for hybrid offheals to be potent, but limiting their sustainability so that they clearly fall short of a dedicated healer. Beyond that, we agree, there isn’t much point to the resource for several specs. Mana works well as a healer resource, where mana management and efficiency are designed to be a core part of every healer’s gameplay (some specs’ current situation notwithstanding), but we moved away from having it as a meaningful constraint on DPS output because it generally served as a frustrating constraint in a world where many if not most other DPS specs were not similarly constrained. Arcane mages stand as the exception, but they have a toolkit specifically designed around controlling their mana pools. I don’t think we’re likely to return to a world where Elemental shamans can run themselves out of mana and end up unable to cast Lightning Bolt, but perhaps there are more interesting things that could be done with DPS resource bars in place of mana.
Q: Complex encounter design (positioning) is being trivialized by player-created tools (See: Kromog) Are there plans to curb this? - @jsutan A: Clever players have been using add-ons to assist with raid coordination since the earliest days of WoW raiding. When these add-ons have crossed a line and approached automating player activity or decisionmaking entirely, we have stepped in to disable or limit the underlying functionality that made that possible. Beyond that, players’ ability to use mods to help keep track of non-random abilities isn’t particularly concerning – as a raider myself, I downloaded Thogar Assist as a reference, but found that by the time my guild defeated the encounter I had long since memorized the train schedule. It is something for us to keep in mind, however, and we do occasionally alter our designs when we realize that a mod would completely trivialize the intended gameplay. Kromog, for example, could have had another dozen or so hand spawn points, and randomly picked a subset of them each phase, preventing any sort of fixed 1-to-1 assignment.
Q: Legacy buff for MoP content, When? - Vert A: Never. (Or at least not until next time we do a stat squish, technically.) The “legacy buff” that applies to enemies below level 90 once you exceed that level was designed specifically and solely to offset the 6.0 “stat squish,” which compressed the exponential scaling in the items available from level 61 to 90, into linear scaling. Pre-squish, a level 90 player with Pandaria raid gear was literally a dozen times more powerful than they had been at level 80 with Wrath gear. Post-squish that is no longer the case, so we have a special combat modifier in place to preserve the expected gameplay, so that soloing old content does not become harder. Gear higher than item level 463 wasn’t squished, so endgame Mists content designed to be tackled by players of that power level wasn’t affected and no combat scalar is needed. Mists content will increasingly become doable with fewer players than intended, as player power continues to rise, as has always been the case. People already are soloing large chunks of Mists content, and that goal will only become more and more attainable as time goes on and gear continues to improve.
Q: Will hunters and mages get a new raid utility in 6.2? - @Garfurion A: No. At this point, while we may still be making numerical adjustments, I wouldn’t expect new abilities or class functionality in 6.2. We removed Aspect of the Fox from hunters because they simply did not need it to be unique, viable, and in fact highly desired. It also contributed to elevating ranged classes above melee in many cases, by offsetting one of most casters’ main weaknesses. One of the strengths of melee classes is that they can move along with their target and continue to deal full damage while on the move, while most casters’ throughput suffers if they can’t stand still. In encounter design, we create mechanics and phases with this constraint in mind, with the expectation that a ranged-heavy raid will have its throughput suffer during something like Hans’gar and Franzok’s Stamping Presses phase, or Blackhand’s Massive Demolitions. Each additional Aspect of the Fox eroded this natural melee advantage, and contributed to raid composition and balance issues.
Even without Fox, Hunters are unique in that they are the only ranged DPS that can do nearly everything while on the move, which naturally makes them well-suited to specialized roles on a number of encounters, aside from naturally thriving in high-movement environments. On top of that, Deterrence, Feign Death, Misdirection, and Disengage all allow them to assist with handling mechanics in ways that many other classes cannot. As for Mages, Amplify was not nearly as impactful, but neither was it necessary to justify the inclusion of a class that already brings a versatile toolset, burst damage, control, and useful immunities. A particularly odd feature of both Aspect of the Fox and Amplify Magic is that neither ability had any apparent use whatsoever when solo, which contributed to their awkwardness.
In short, we added those abilities in 6.0 because we were concerned that mages and hunters might not be well-represented without some new and unique raid cooldown, but having observed how they have played out in practice, those concerns were likely unfounded, leaving us with two new niche abilities at a time where we have otherwise been trying to streamline the contents of class spellbooks. Thus, we’re removing them in 6.2.