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Downranking
I've addressed the downranking issue enough that you can probably find a good explanation for why we nerfed it.
The big problem with downranking was it propped up coefficients at the expense of everything else. It wasn't just that the lower ranked heals were cheaper. It was that the higher ranked heals just didn't have much to offer because the coefficients so completely trumped the flat points of the spell. The part of downranking that was choosing the cheap, small spell over the big, expensive spell was compelling, I'll grant you. But the part of it that was ignoring new spells because high spell power (or + healing back in the day) gave the lower ranks such great legs was just problematic for many reasons.
I agree that we need to make sure every class feels like they have the choice between big and small heals, and that may mean adding new heals to Cataclysm. On the other hand, priests have say Flash Heal and Greater Heal now but don't necessarily use them equally.
About Lightwell and Replenishement
I don't think Lightwell means non-healers don't care about their health. Lightwell means they aren't willing to take a huge dps hit (including losing targeting) to get it. Most players will use Healthstones in my experience. They just don't feel like they offer that much currently because the healers will be able to cover them.
..I know Replenishment is a popular bogeyman, but we don't think Replenishment itself is the problem. It's just a generous source of regen at a time when there are many generous sources of regen. We'd more likely to nerf everything than just Replenishment, because we like having player power grow so much when you're in a group.
..I'm not sure Replenishment even makes sense in its current incarnation in Cataclysm. Once all healers like Spirit, then Replenishment could just boost Spirit-based regen. But this is something we haven't worked completely through yet.
Hunter
Are pets going to scale for 3.3?
If we can get it in. On a technical side, the implementation just ends up being a little different for every stat.
Keep in mind that pet scaling isn't essential to good damage. It's only essential for keeping your pet's damage growing at the same rate as your damage, and by extension keeping your total damage growing at the same rate as other classes. There aren't going to be 3 more tiers of content for Lich King, so it only gets to be an issue if other classes scale so much better that they leapfrog you in Icecrown / the final PvP season.
Are you going to remove crafting requirements from the ammo for 3.3?
No.
Warlock
Is it a technical limitation that makes shard stacking difficult to implement as it was not planned to stack initially or if it is a design decision?
It's a little of both. Technically we have trouble altering inventory space in existing characters, and that would especially be true for the shard bag. We can do it, but it's a pretty high risk change when you consider all of the things that can go wrong. For that reason, we'd prefer to do it during an expansion when we have plenty of time to solve any unforeseen problems that arise.
On the design side, we'd prefer to unveil new mechanics that all work well together rather than make changes now that we'd just turn around and undo. What I mean is that we don't want to sideline soul shards even more for the next few months to the point where locks, especially newer ones, sort of forget about them only to bring them back in a big way for Cataclysm.
