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World Boss - Humongris
Pocket Wizard is up this week, so you can head to Val'sharah to kill Humongris for a chance at item level 860 items and a Iron Relic.
Trial of Valor
Mythic and Raid Finder Trial of Valor open today! Check out the boss pages, short guides, and some lore behind the instance.
BlizzCon 2016 - Celestalon and Hamlet Interview
Slootbag had the opportunity to talk to Celestalon and Hamlet at BlizzCon.
- Patch 7.0 made lots of changes to classes and the team knew it wouldn't all be perfect. Iteration is required to make things better.
- Hibernate is one of the spells that may return.
- Demonology and Survival are almost new specs in Legion after all of the changes.
- This level of iteration on classes probably won't continue throughout the expansion. Things will smooth out over time.
- Emerald Nightmare was not intended to be soul crushingly hard. Xavius was on the easy side, especially with Surrender to Madness.
- The team hasn't made huge changes to Surrender to Madness because it is really good class fantasy and a lot of people love the gameplay.
- For the most part, the team will be buffing the under performing talents. This might just be number tweaks, tweaks to the design, or even replacements. Number tweaks will be the most common, as they are the easiest.
- Fire is on the very strong side, so they nerfed it a little bit. It is still a little strong, but there is no way to get it exactly in line with the other specs.
- The team tries to avoid making class tuning changes for a few weeks after Mythic opens.
- The first week that a raid is open provides lots of data used to adjust tuning.
- Surrender to Madness is probably too strong. The team wants to find a way to fix it that doesn't negatively impact the average or high end player.
- The team doesn't want to make underpowered specs more powerful than the other specs. The team wouldn't want to buff Arcane or Frost so much that players feel like they have to switch to Frost or Arcane. They would bring them up to just a few percent under Fire. This doesn't mean that if you look at logs you will see Fire and Frost equal. Most players already put most of their Artifact Power in Fire and have been gearing for Fire, so they aren't going to switch.
- Survival was a new spec that started off on the weak side, so it didn't attract much attention or playtime. Groups also aren't sure why they would bring a Survival Hunter over the other two specs.
- Traps are something you set out and then lure the target into. One idea is having traps that aren't triggered after a few seconds become empowered, so that when they are next triggered they are much stronger.
- Elemental Shaman should have more balanced talents, allowing them to be more versatile.
- Mages will get some new talents as some are going baseline.
- Brewmasters are the most skill rewarding tank.
- Balance Druids are on the weaker side, but aren't terrible. The gameplay is pretty solid, they just need some number tweaking.
- Mythic+ dungeons are now an important part of class tuning. Previously tuning mostly focused on raids or PvP, with dungeons not getting much focus.
- Tank damage is too high in dungeons but solving that is a challenge, as that is tied to their AoE damage.
- There haven't been many changes to healers since Legion went live as the team is mostly happy with the balance.
- Healer representation in dungeons and raids is good.
- Discipline Priest is the hardest healing spec to play in high level dungeons. You really have to know the dungeon well and what is going to happen next. There is a community of players that finds it rewarding and really enjoys it.
- The team would like to make Discipline easier to perform well with for players that aren't at the high end of the skill level, if it can be done without undermining the cool interactions that make the spec fun to play.
- For the most part the team is happy with the diversity of tools that healers bring to dungeon groups.
- People who are progressing at the edge of Mythic+ generally don't have the healer focusing much on DPS, as healing high end Mythic+ is hard and you need to spend all of your time healing. People have noticed that Holy Paladins can get pretty bursty because they can drop their damage in two GCDs with Judge and Shock. The team looked at this in beta and removed damage from Holy Paladin wings, as they don't want a healing spec to focus too much on contributing DPS at the expense of what healer gameplay is supposed to be. Healers doing DPS is intended for when you are doing content you can handle well and you have excess capacity.
- Legion tried to help players that have been attached to a healing spec for a long time and doesn't want to feel forced to switch to another spec to quest or level. They won't kill things as fast as a DPS spec, but they will do it reasonably well.
- Desperate Prayer will become baseline and a survivability talent will replace it.
- Shadow Covenant didn't work out, so they will be trying a design that doesn't replace Power Word: Radiance.
- There hasn't been a lot of stacking of healer specs in raid comps, there is lots of diversity.
- There is a trend away from non-healers having healer strength cooldowns. If you look back to Mists of Pandaria, everyone in the raid had a strong raid cooldown, which drowned out the gameplay that the healers were supposed to be having.
- Tranquility is intentionally weaker than it used to be in previous expansions. It isn't the reset button it used to be. The big healer cooldowns are there to help you catch up, not to do your job for you.
- The team didn't want to change talents in the first month so that players could get used to the new playstyle before even more changes happened.
- How much perception affects reality is one of the ongoing challenges. The goal you are trying to achieve is players looking at their options and seeing a compelling choice. Often players are undervaluing a talent, spec, or stat, so they make a small change in order to re-evaluate it.
- The changes that happened to Outlaw in the first balancing pass on live were very minimal, mostly changes to two Artifact Traits. Nothing that could have caused a huge change to the DPS output. The changes caused players that were heavily fixating on Outlaw to start looking at Assassination.
- Frost mage tuning was off at launch, but looking at logs and saying that it is 35% behind another spec is almost never actually the case. It is just a bias in perception that is driving what spec players play.
- Marksmanship Hunters may get some talents moved to baseline skills in Patch 7.1.5. The goal is to avoid upending how you play the spec. The Patient Sniper row is a problem, as everyone feels like they need this talent for the spec to be viable and fun. The baseline gameplay may be changed to be inspired by Patient Sniper so that you don't need that talent for the same feeling.
- There are some changes coming to Warlock talents for all specs in Patch 7.1.5. There are some new talents coming.
- Affliction is tough, as the pace of combat in the game has gotten faster. Many years ago the focus of the spec was to put DoTs on multiple targets, but it has gotten harder for this to work in the modern game.
- Drain Soul is going baseline, with a new single target focused talent that will replace it.
- Frost and Arcane Mage have some talents that have been moved around and maybe some new talents.
Patch 7.1 Hotfixes - November 14
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
Classes
- (Blood) The Hungering Maw now increases the player's Armor by 10%, then increases by 1% for every additional point put into the Infinite Progression Artifact Trait.
- (Restoration) The legendary item Aman'Thul's Wisdom should now work correctly with Rejuvenation and Germination when cast on other players.
- (Beast Mastery) Spiritbound now increases the player's damage, Hati's damage, and the player's pet damage by 5%, then increases by 0.5% for every additional point put into the Infinite Progression Artifact Trait.
- The damage from Greater Blessing of Might will no longer be increased twice by some debuffs on the target.
- (Discipline) Forbidden Flame now increases the player's damage and healing by 4%, then increases by 0.4% for every additional point into the Infinite Progression Artifact Trait.
- Shadow: Voidform’s Insanity drain now begins at 8 Insanity per second (down from 9), but will increase at a 10% faster rate
- Developers’ Notes: We want to reduce the maximum amount of time that Surrender to Madness can be maintained, without significantly impacting Shadow otherwise. Our intent in this hotfix is that it’s still effective to use Surrender similarly to how it is currently used, but that its maximum potential in ideal situations is slightly less extreme.
- Sweet Souls should no longer completely heal the Warlock when an ally uses a healthstone.
Dungeons
- Hellfire Citadel
- LFR Queuing for Archimonde’s Fall at the Black Gate now has Anetheron, Azgalor, Kaz’rogal, and Archimonde spawned once the queue pops.
- Return to Karazhan
- Fixed an issue which could cause Galindre to not reset properly on a failed attempt.
- Trial of Valor
- Helya
- Anchor Slam should now inflict less damage to secondary targets on Normal difficulty.
- Resolved an issue where Fury of the Maw would do drastically more damage than intended on targets recently wounded by an Orb of Corrosion.
- Helya
Items
- All Legion Legendary items have had their item level increased by 15. This change will be applied retroactively.
- All items from the Trial of Valor have had their base item level increased by 5. This change will be applied retroactively.
- The damage from the equip effect of Choker of Barbed Reins should scale down in Timewalking dungeons.
Player versus Player
The following PvP adjustments will take place with the next realm maintenance.
- (Frost) Strength reduced by 10%.
- (Blood) Blood Boil now deals full damage in PvP (was reduced).
- Developers’ Notes: Frost Death Knight damage continues to be higher than we’d like following the changes in Patch 7.1. For Blood, we no longer feel the damage reduction on Blood Boil is necessary. We plan to make a broader set of changes for them (and other tanks) in Patch 7.1.5.
- (Feral) Rake now deals 20% less damage to players.
- Developers’ Notes: We like that Feral Druids can apply a lot of spread pressure through their bleeds, but Rake’s damage feels out of line.
- (Fire) Intellect increased by 10%.
- Developers’ Notes: Fire Mages have simply fallen behind in terms of damage output, and we felt they needed an increase.
- (Holy) Mana regeneration has been reduced.
- (Holy) Avenging Crusader now costs 110,000 mana.
- Developers’ Notes: Holy Paladins are too mana efficient in current PvP gameplay. We’re reducing their overall regeneration, as well as adding a mana cost to Avenging Crusader, since it was essentially mana-free healing.
- Feint reduces damage taken from player cast area-of-effect spells by 30% (was 50%).
- (All specs) Stamina has been increased by 5%.
- Developers’ Notes: Feint’s AoE damage reduction is intended to protect Rogues during dungeon and raid encounters, but many class abilities that feel like single target spells in PvP are treated as AoE effects (e.g. Lunar Strike, Ice Nova). This makes Rogues unintentionally resistant to those abilities. We’re reducing Feint’s AoE damage reduction in PvP, but increasing Stamina to compensate.
- (Elemental) Stormkeeper now increases damage of Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lava Beam by 100% against players (was 200%)
- (Elemental) Intellect increased by 5%.
- Developers' Notes: Stormkeeper is at the center of a combination of cooldowns and procs that can cause extraordinarily high damage in a very short time. We're reducing its impact but increasing Elemental's damage overall to compensate.
- (Affliction) Unstable Affliction's dispel damage has been doubled.
- (Destruction) Chaos Bolt now deal an additional 35% damage against players (was 20%).
- Developers’ Notes: Patch 7.1 changed the design of Unstable Affliction, and our initial tuning on the dispel damage was simply too low. For Destruction, we want spending Soul Shards on Chaos Bolt to feel rewarding when weighed against the alternatives.
Quests
- The weekly event quest “The Very Best” should no longer be cleared from the quest log when logging in on a low-level character.
- Kirin Tor world quests can now appear when the Kirin Tor emissary is not active.
Sound
- Players no longer receive any sound following the Quick Join notifications when friends or guild members queue.
Weekly Event - Arena Skirmishes
Head over to Archmage Timear in Dalaran to pick up The Arena Calls, which rewards Artifact Power, Badge of Honor, and Champion's Strongbox.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Pet Battle World Quests
World Quests are aimed to provide a variety of content for a variety playstyles. This can range from your standard kill/collect quests, to more PvP orientated ones right through to Pet Battles or even the absolutely nuts one with squirrels in Val'Sharah...
If you don't enjoy doing a certain type of World Quest you can just leave them, focus on the ones you do enjoy and eventually the ones you've ignored will de-pop and new ones will cycle in.
Is the word "eventually" being adopted as blizzards new version of soon™ just with a more vague timeframe?
Until there are a decent amount of dailies the game can pull from a list people are being pushed into the ones they don't enjoy as much if they want to get the chest of RNG'd junk. Or for folk like myself who tend to skip the ones that give gold as a reward because we don't need more gold put into in an overinflated economy.
I used the word "eventually" because World Quests have variable durations. In most cases an Emissary Cache can be obtained without touching the PvP or Pet Battle World Quests.
What the map really needs is a filter so we can simply hide the PVP or pet ones that we have zero interest in. Although that seems a solution thats a bit too close to being soon™ over eventually™
The map lets you filter by reward types? PvP and Pet Battle World Quests also have different icons, so it's immediately obvious what type of World Quests they are. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Lore
You know... since Baine has been afk for a very long time?
Baine will have his day in the sun. Eventually. (Alex_Afrasiabi)
Pets and Pet Battles
Ion clarified Battle Pet Dungeons a bit today by likening them to the Celestial Tourney. What would you want to see changed/improved? (Muffinus)
Making Murloc Costumes for BlizzCon 2016
Tested worked on building two Murlocs for the new Hearthstone expansion at BlizzCon.
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