Patch 7.2.5 - Auction House Visuals, Blue Posts, Tweets, StarCrafts

MMO-Champion

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The Un'Goro Volcano has Erupted!

Patch 7.2.5 - Auction House Decor Update
The Stormwind and Orgrimmar auction houses have received slight updates to their decor in Patch 7.2.5.




Patch 7.2.5 - Auction House Dance Studio Decorations
There were a few models added for the Auction House Dance Studio in the recent PTR build.



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Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
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Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Of Brews And Blackouts (7.2.5)
This devalues the BoC talent as we see 33-25=8% fewer BoC's in our rotation. Considering on single target, with BoC, BoS and TP are my number 1 and 2 damaging abilities, are we going to see compensation in damage for this nerf?
We're worried about gameplay and feel right now, and will adjust damage (overall and per-talent) as needed afterward.

This is very useful feedback, thanks.

As you can imagine, the numbers for Blackout Strike's cooldown and the CDR from Tiger Palm are very important to get right on this; we'll tweak them and try a few things. We started out with the 4-beat cycle for PTR; we may also try the 3-beat cycle soon and see how that feels.

One extremely important thing to evaluating the feel of this is what talents you were using. For example, Rushing Jade Wind + Spitfire feel totally different from Eye of the Tiger + Special Delivery, especially when it comes to GCD utilization. Please let us know which talents you're using when giving rotation feel feedback!

Thanks!

I'll be getting on PTR to test the rotation and such later, but I have one question about Spitfire Celestalon. Why was Chi Burst scrapped for it instead of Chi Wave? Nobody uses Chi Wave because of how weak (and random) it is, but Chi Burst currently sees a decent amount of use on live servers for AoE.
Chi Wave and Chi Burst usage are about the same (and both are extremely rare compared to Eye of the Tiger). We chose Chi Burst to replace to start with, because Spitfire is an AoE talent, same as Chi Burst, so would fulfill the same choice. There's still an argument to be made for Chi Wave being replaced, so we're considering that as well, so discussion one way or another (or alternatives) is quite welcome.

The reason I would think most people use eott is that it is the highest dps AND it doesn't intrude on the already tight rotation for BoC, so there is no opportunity cost in using it.
Right; Eye of the Tiger is currently taken primarily because it doesn't take up any GCDs. We're trying to open that up a bit so that you have room to take abilities like Chi Wave and Spitfire (or theoretically Chi Burst), or Rushing Jade Wind, in your rotation.

The common Blackout Combo-driven rotation right now is, in a way, not GCD locked, because it spends a significant amount of its time off GCD, but in practice it feels more like GCD locked, because that time is in between every few GCDs with little empty half-GCDs, adding a stutter to your rotation that we're trying to clean up.

Awesome feedback so far, especially from those who are actively trying a variety of talent builds. That's the most valuable, especially when you consider swapping to the other side of the Blackout Combo / No Blackout Combo line that divides the community playstyles.

Next PTR build, we're going to try a 12sec base CD on Blackout Strike, to speed things up a bit baseline, and hopefully remove the ~1GCD of pause that has been mentioned by several people. (And in fact add a GCD of slush)

The minor stutter has never really felt bad or prevented me from using something that interrupts the rotation a bit since i can always get back into it. Maybe instead of doing something to change our speed to open rotations, you could make it so some of these other underused moves have a modifier on another skill on their own? That could be a theme for brewmaster to have that martial arts feel which simultaneously offers complexity in but also lets us be fast? Honestly i'd rather break my own rotation that have space forcibly added in.

This slower paced feeling just makes me very unhappy and while my experience may not matter much, it seems to be something a lot of other players are feeling. I hate this new slow paced idea for monk and the new mechanic of reducing BoS CD doesn't feel fun or interesting. It just feels like a rock is being tied to legs.

I just don't understand wanting to make so many people unhappy to solve something i've never heard people actually complain about with stutter. It makes me miserable on my favorite class and spec.

I'm not sure this is exactly the valuable feedback that is desired. I'll give a less emotional/fun based approach later...but it's important to me and I hope that enjoyment is truly a factor here.

This is some of the most valuable feedback here, actually. Your experience matters a ton.

A question that you, and others, have asked here is basically, "Why change this, I didn't mind the hiccup/stutter/awkardness/whatever?". I empathize with that sentiment, and I'd like to try my best to answer that.

Brewmaster is not a particularly popular spec, and the awkwardness of their offensive abilities is one of the prime reasons why. That sort of thing is shrugged off by some people, really bugs some other people, and contributes to a general discomfort with a spec to most (and is usually hard for them to describe exactly why, falling back to works like 'doesn't flow' or 'clunky').

Most of the people here actively discussing this are people who have stuck with Brewmaster, and play it extensively, probably because you fall into that first bucket; the 'clunkiness' doesn't bother you, and you're used to it. So we're not surprised at all that many people here have this reaction of "it was fine, why change?".

The goal of these rotational changes is to find something that flows well to the non-dedicated Brewmasters, while still feeling 'fine' (or better) to all of you currently-dedicated Brewmasters. That second part is more important than the first, and we're going to keep iterating on this until we achieve it.

We hear you that we're not there yet; we're not surprised at all that our first build of it wasn't perfect. We'll keep working on it, and appreciate your constructive feedback and experimentation with different builds, to help us get there.

Thanks!

P.S. Just to further pull back the curtain on potential versions of this rotation that we're thinking about:
- Current PTR build: At least (2 TP + 1 AnythingElse) between Blackout Strikes
- Next PTR build: At least (2 TP) between Blackout Strikes
- Another potential option we're considering: At least (1 TP + 1 AnythingElse) between Blackout Strikes. This would probably mean a 8sec CD on BoS, and a 5sec CDR on TP. It's very hard to truly imagine how rotations will feel without playing them, but some may be interested in thinking about it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

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Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Fenryr Hotfix
Why allow some of the playerbase to cheese this tame, and others have to solo a boss meant for 5 players?
I don't really think 'fun' is the word you're looking for here - people love to scream that we've removed 'fun' from the game when there's a bug that's fixed and then things take a bit of effort, and this really just perpetuates negativity in the community.

Doing a 5-man dungeon and then taking advantage of a broken spawn doesn't really scream 'fun'. It was a cool way around the challenge, sure, but on both sides it wasn't exciting - getting Fenryr was the point of excitement, and that is still possible, so let's try to be sensible.

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For clarification - the soft reset method was a bug, which has now been fixed, and the intended method of taming Fenryr is to complete this challenge solo.

As others have said, it would be silly to remove those who already obtained the pet, especially when early adopters didn't necessarily realize that the method was unintended, so we have no plans to do so.

Best of luck to all those trying to obtain Fenryr!

For those who haven't tried it yet, could you clarify whether we need to solo the whole dungeon, or just Hymdall / Fenryr?
Just through Hymdall and Fenryr, from my understanding. I can double check on this. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
I know your an advocate for player-dev communication but when would you feel radio silence would be the best course of action.
Great question. Overall, I think radio silence tends to do more harm than good. Even if your answer is “We don’t know,” I feel you’re better off saying that than saying nothing. Even if things are super heated, I feel like you’re better off saying “I care enough to try and engage” than to try and wait it out and hope it cools off.

Here’s where I would advocate it:

1) You’re trying to build hype for something or let players try and figure something out. This has to be done deliberately though.

2) Someone could get hurt. If players ask me why someone got fired, or even if they got fired, I’m going to take the Fifth. I won’t talk about a candidate who is interviewing for fear of their current employer retaliating against them.

3) You make the situation objectively worse. I say objectively here, because it’s too easy to argue “Well we might just fan the flames.” I’m talking about things like players want details for how a sever got compromised by malware, but if you share too many details, you’re just making life easier for the hackers.

4) There are pretty serious legal ramifications. Specifically if you settle a lawsuit and the lawyers say not to say anything. This applies to insider trading stuff. I wouldn’t talk about a studio we were thinking of acquiring or a software package we’re thinking of licensing.

Overall I can’t think of too many other situations though. Radio silence is different from not responding because of lack of bandwidth or because you feel like you’ve beaten a topic to death. (Source)



StarCrafts - Season 5 Ep 17: InCharge
Another episode of StarCrafts has been released.

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