Patch 5.4 - Ghostcrawler Interview
Ghostcrawler was in Asia last week and QQ was able to sit down with him for an interview. Keep in mind that things are often lost in translation or mistranslated! Thanks to ngacnlcq for the translation.
- The item level squish might (will?) take place next expansion.
- There is still no timeline for the DotA battleground release.
- The Hearthstone board that was added in a PTR build is just for decoration and there is no plan to add Hearthstone to WoW.
- The Lesser Charms that may be added to the Asian store are there as a convenience item for players that may not have time to do their daily quests that week or players who just want to save time. There are no plans to add items to the store that will increase player stats.
- Patch 5.4 is the last content (raid?) patch, but there will be bugfix and balance patches after it, as well as a pre-expansion patch.
- A class role that provides buffs or support is a possibility in the future, but it would be a big change to the game.
Patch 5.4 - Timeless Isle Armor
The Timeless Isle will allow players to obtain item level 496 and 535 gear through drops found around the island.
The items used to create the 496 armor are found all over the island in chests and dropped by mobs, similar to the items used to create armor in Battlefield: Barrens. The Burden of Eternity is a rare drop from mobs, found in the Blazing Chest, or in one of Kukuru's chests.
The item level 535 version of the gear is called "Timeless" and is obtained by using a Burden of Eternity on an item that creates armor, such as a Timeless Leather Helm.
Patch 5.4 normal difficulty gear has an item level of 553, while flex gear is 540, and raid finder gear is 528. This makes the 535 Timeless gear a nice upgrade for players that will only raid in Raid Finder difficulty and a temporary upgrade for players who will be raiding Flex difficulty. It is also an upgrade for players who are currently raiding Throne of Thunder Normal, as well as any Heroic raiders still missing a slot.
| Type | Role | Normal (496) | Timeless (535) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plate Armor | Strength Tank | Elder Tortoiseshell | Elder Tortoiseshell |
| Plate Armor | Strength DPS | Cliffbreaker | Cliffbreaker |
| Plate Armor | Intellect Healer | Everbright | Everbright |
| Mail Armor | Agility DPS | Crimsonscale | Crimsonscale |
| Mail Armor | Intellect DPS/Healer | Ordon Legend-Keeper | Ordon Legend-Keeper |
| Leather Armor | Agility Tank/DPS | Cranefeather | Cranefeather |
| Leather Armor | Intellect DPS/Healer | Fire-Chanter | Fire-Chanter |
| Cloth Armor | Pure Intellect DPS | Cloudscorcher | Cloudscorcher |
| Cloth Armor | Intellect DPS/Healer | Amaranthine | Amaranthine |
| Timeless Lavalliere | All | Necklaces | Necklaces |
| Timeless Cloak | All | Cloaks | Cloaks |
| Timeless Signet | All | Rings | Rings |
| Timeless Curio | Tank Strength DPS Agility DPS Intellect DPS Healer | 
| 
|
Patch 5.4 PTR Official Patch Notes Update - July 29
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes
- General
- Unholy Presence now grants a flat 10% Haste to all things, up from Haste for melee (attack speed and Rune regeneration) only. The movement speed buff remains unchanged.
- Fixed a bug that caused Improved Blood Presence and Runic Corruption to incorrectly increase activation rates of some trinkets and effects.
- Unholy
- Ghoul's Leap and Gnaw abilities are no longer on a global cooldown, and no longer cost Energy.
- Talents
- Glaive Toss no longer initiates auto-attack.
- Glyphs
- New Major Glyphs
- Glyph of Enduring Deceit: Camouflage also reduces spell damage taken by 10%
- New Major Glyphs
- Talents
- Rune of Power now has an increased effective range. The Mage can remain up to 8 yards away from their Rune of Power and still receive benefits to mana regeneration and spell damage (up from 3 yards).
- Brewmaster
- Fixed a bug that caused the damage of some abilities for Brewmasters with Vengeance to scale incorrectly.
- Holy
- Judgment for Holy Paladins now costs 12% of base mana to cast (up from 5% of base mana).
- Talents
- Sacred Shield for Holy Paladins can now be active on more than one target at a time, but the talent now costs mana, and has 3 charges with a 10-second recharge. cooldown.
- Talents
- Talents
- Totemic Restoration has been replaced with a new talent, Totemic Persistence.
- New talent: Totemic Persistence. Summoning a second totem of the same element no longer causes the first totem to be destroyed. Only one non-Fire totem can benefit from this effect at a time.
- Totemic Restoration has been replaced with a new talent, Totemic Persistence.
- General
- Demonic Gateway are no longer attackable once more. The debuff from using a Demonic Gateway has been increased to 60 seconds (up from 15 seconds).
- The Codex of Xerrath now infuses additional spells with fel magic (green fire effect).
- Summon Felsteed, Summon Dreadsteed, Summon Abyssal, Demonic Fury, Dark Apotheosis, and Demonic Leap.
- Affliction
- Drain Soul no longer energizes Soul Shards from the pets and guardians of players, and now deals 40% less damage. If other periodic Affliction damage effects are triggered by Drain Soul, they now deal 60% of their normal damage (down from 100%).
- Haunt now deals 50% more damage, and increases damage done by all of the Warlock's damage-over-time other spells against the target by 45%.
- Talents
- Grimoire of Sacrifice no longer affects Drain Life.
- For Affliction Warlocks, Grimoire of Sacrifice now increases the power of various single target spells by 20% (down from 30%).
- Grimoire of Sacrifice no longer affects Drain Life.
- Class Armor
- Warlock Tier-14 4-piece set bonus now reduces the cooldown of Unending Resolve by 20 seconds. increases all damage dealt by the Warlock by 10% while Dark Soul is active.
Items
- Indomitable Primal Diamond's chance for the meta-gem effect to activate is no longer affected by the wearer’s haste. Additionally, the chance to activate the effect has been increased by 50%.
- [PTR]: For testing purposes, Glyphataur, Ph.D (He's a doctor!) will be available near the Alliance/Horde shrines in Vale of Eternal Blossoms selling new glyphs.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Past Legendary Items for Patch 5.4
The legendary meta gem will still function, but Sha-touched gems and sockets will not be applicable to new 5.4 items.
No extra sockets in 5.4? Then why the hell did you update the 5.2 weapons from ToT to be able to use them? This is incredibly stupid and seems like a total oversight. 1750g for a new weapon socket is SO not that expensive.
We updated the 5.2 weapons to allow the additional socket (but not the Sha-touched gems) because a very large number of players were getting their extra sockets just in time for the patch to drop (and thus, would only be able to use their reward for a week or two). That's not the case with 5.4. The 5.2 legendary meta gem will continue to function, and the 5.3 epic cloak will upgrade into the 5.4 legendary.
We feel that, at this point, the Sha-Touched gem and socket have had plenty of time to be useful and it's time for them to go. As Lothrik mentioned, we'll be balancing content assuming that they're not present anyway. That said, nothing on the PTR is final, and we are still open to discussion on the topic. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Proving Grounds Feedback
Just a quick note that we're still doing a lot of tuning for Proving Grounds, and your feedback has been (and continues to be) invaluable. There will be a bunch more bug fixes and tweaks in the next build for testing.
In particular, the next build has a lot of work done on the AI for the friendly party members in the Healer trials. Once it hits the PTR, we'd really appreciate any feedback on how they're acting, especially specific examples of things they do that seem "dumb." I don't have an exact timeframe on when that build will go up, but it should be within the next few days (UPDATE: should be today!) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
RPPMScaling with Rune Regeneration Mechanics
After some investigation, we found that rune regeneration mechanics were, indeed, giving an unintended increase to RPPM proc rates. Unholy in particular gains a significant performance boost from this bug. We're going to fix the bug, but we'll also be compensating Unholy.
In the next build, Unholy Presence will give pure haste, rather than just attack speed. This will allow it to (legitimately) increase proc rates for RPPM mechanics. Runic Corruption and Improved Blood Presence, however, will no longer have an effect on RPPM proc rates. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
TCG Art Update
Blizzard has updated the Trading Card Game art gallery to feature ten new pieces.
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