Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas

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Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas
Game Director Ion Hazzikostas is answering your World of Warcraft questions including those on the next content update—Tides of Vengeance.

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Azerite Armor

• An extra outer ring that has two spec specific traits per spec.
• You'll have access to 3 traits of the 6-7 available.
• In Season 2 and the new raid, all of the new gear will have a new outer ring that is spec specific traits only.
• The goal is more customization, more access to traits you want, and more choices.
• Set pieces in past expansions were an exception to the standard rules when it comes to items. It felt odd to need multiple of the exact same item to cover multiple specs with a set bonus.
• If you look at how most items work, if you want to play another spec, you want another item for that slot.
• Azerite armor is more flexible than normal items, as you can change the traits.
• There is value to having a bit of friction when it comes to changing specs.
• Someone that is dedicated to a spec should have a small advantage over someone who is constantly switching.
• If you don't have the perfect gear and traits for another spec and you switch, you'll only be slightly less effective. This matters for the people racing to world first, but doesn't matter nearly as much for everyone else.
• Spec switching is easier in most ways in Battle for Azeroth than it was in Legion.
• When it comes to the cost of changing Azerite traits, if you need to change specs long term, that shouldn't feel punishing or overly restrictive.
• The team didn't want players to have to swap Azerite traits between each fight during a raid.
• Every time you respec, the cost of changing again doubles. Every 3 days, the cost will become half of what it was.
• Unlike a lot of items, which are for a specific spec, you have the ability to change the item, just not endlessly without restriction.
• The team will be able to reset the cost to change traits for Patch 8.1.
• Mythic+ items will get new traits, you won't be stuck with the same ones forever.
• Only getting Azerite armor from the Mythic+ chest isn't great. The team is trying to come up with a solution that is a middle ground.
• There has to be some kind of restriction on how you can get Azerite armor, so it can't just have a chance to drop from every Mythic+.
• Most people only do one or two Mythic+ dungeons each week.
• The team wants to provide some way for you to target items from a specific dungeon, but they don't have a great solution yet.
• If the endgame was just Mythic+ dungeons, the team would just allow drops from the end of run chests.
• You shouldn't have to go and research what traits do, tooltips should explain them.
• The team is adding a number of new traits and retiring/replacing some traits across various specs that haven't been popular or successful. Some of those traits can be fixed with tuning, but some of them just need to be retired.

Tanks

• Tank balance is something that the team is looking at.
• Brewmaster and Death Knight have too much survivability compared to other tanks.
• Protection Warrior and Guardian Druid are lagging behind. Some of that is numerical tuning, some (with Prot Warrior) has to do with rotational flow. Changes coming to the PTR in the not so distant future.
• It's important to remember that tanks bring different things to the fight.
• When evaluating tanks, keep in mind what they are bringing to a fight as part of their toolkit.
• A lot of the elements that make a tank skilled aren't quantifiable in terms of damage taken or mitigated.
• Numerical stuff matters, but at the end of the day tanks shouldn't be in constant danger of death (outside of some exceptions). Feeling like you did everything right but your tank just fell over and died isn't great.
• Bosses could literally two shot a tank in the past if they had a bad avoidance streak. That didn't feel great.
• There are things such as Spirit Link that are desirable that aren't reflected in HPS logs.
• Ancestral Vigor is another thing that just doesn't show up in HPS logs.

PvP Balance

• Unholy DKs and Affliction Lock survivability is on the team's radar.
• The team is looking at the current pace of Arena matches.
• There should be a place for burst comps and slower comps.
• Some recent changes in BfA made Affliction more single target oriented, the team wants to pull them back towards multi-DoT.
• There should be a balance between quick reactions to feedback vs letting the metagame evolve and new comps emerging to counter what is strong.
• If this season is known for a faster pace and more burst, and future seasons shift, that is a valid approach to take rather than trying to change the meta right away.
• Hybrid healing is something the team will continue to address via hotfixes.

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