All Artifact Weapon Traits Complete
Congratulations to Cerli (EU-The Maelstrom) for being the first to finish earning all of the Artifact Weapon traits! This was accomplished by chain running Mythic+ dungeons, allowing Cerli to farm up the 65,256,330 Artifact Power required.
Patch 7.1.5 - Hatching of the Hippogryphs
Hatching of the Hippogryphs is a micro-holiday that allows players to witness the hatching of hippogryphs in Feralas.
- This event takes place in the Frayfeather Highlands in Feralas.
- You can stand near an egg for a short while to keep it warm so that it hatches.
- Once an egg hatches, you have a baby hippogryph on your shoulder for one day.
- You can kill Lorthalium to obtain a Spectral Feather, which will keep your hippogryph around for five days.
Patch 7.1.5 - March of the Tadpoles
March of the Tadpoles is a micro-holiday that sends you to Borean Tundra to an area with baby murlocs.
- Head to Winterfin Retreat and talk to King Mrgl-Mrgl
- The Adopt a Tadpole quest allows you to pick one of the nearby tadpoles to have follow you.
- A Tadpole's Request will send you to collect 10 x Winterfin Clams from the nearby water
- The tadpole gives you a gift, which contains a vendor trash item
Patch 7.1.5 - Love is in the Air Updates
Patch 7.1.5 brings updates to the Love is in the Air holiday!
- You can now queue for the Crown Chemical Co. encounter on any Level 16 or higher character!
- This means that you will get gear scaled to your level and the ability to try for Big Love Rocket on lower level characters.
- Decorations around the world have been updated with higher resolution textures and models.
- The Love Boat is sold for 270 x Love Token
- The Sturdy Love Fool might be sold for 200 x Love Token
- There are two new quests: Follow the Recipe and Crushing the Crown
- Follow the Recipe rewards Crown Co. "Kure-Everything" Tonic, which transforms you into a Zombie.
Upcoming Raid Testing - December 13
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker
/ Official Forums
)
On Tuesday, December 13, we will be conducting focused raid tests of Heroic Nighthold bosses.
Remember that Heroic difficulty scales for groups between 10 and 30 players, so feel free to assemble and bring a group of any size within that range.
Tuesday, December 13
Elisande – Heroic Nighthold
13:30 PST (16:30 EST, 22:30 CET)
Gul'dan – Heroic Nighthold
15:00 PST (18:00 EST, 24:00 CET)
As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a PTR environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
We definitely understand that Marksmanship Hunters were used to a version of Vulnerable on live that was, for all practical purposes, full uptime (i.e. it could be up for every or virtually every Aimed Shot). Skilled players will still be able to have a great majority of their Aimed Shots affected by Vulnerable even in 7.1.5, albeit with a higher demand on focus management and good use of Windburst. That is intended, even if it involves losing a degree of comfort in essentially never being without a Vulnerable when you want it. The debuff is less diluted and has more significance when it requires that sort of attention, and it is not without payoff: the damage of an Aimed Shot with Vulnerable is significantly higher than in 7.1, and can be further increased with the new Patient Sniper. The ability to use Piercing Shot with Vulnerable (and potentially Patient Sniper) is an example of a new option allowing a very strong burst.
While the fundamental mechanic driving it is a proc, the proc rate is quite high, and our goal is to make sure it is the sort of randomness that provides variation to a rotation while allowing responsive gameplay and room for mastery. The ability to wait on a Hunter's Mark while pooling focus to get full value from the Vulnerable will be more important than before. Windburst, as well as the talent options Sidewinders and Sentinel, allow on-demand Vulnerables as a resource to deal with situations where you have focus but not a Mark (or simply to make sure you have one for a key burst moment without having to react to a proc). Finally, removing the Vulnerable requirement for Marked Shot to do strong damage removes a reliance on multiple rapid procs and/or Sidewinders in order to use consistent buffed Marked Shots.
As the PTR goes on, we welcome feedback on what problems turn up when you try to put this into practice, but I wanted to explain a bit more what our expectation was. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Cheat Death at 6 minutes is ridiculous... At the very least they need to make it reset on death, or no one is going to use it.
It does.
To say a bit more on the 7.1.5 changes to various “cheat death” effects, including Cheat Death, Cauterize, Purgatory, and Last Resort: firstly, the cooldown increase is not the only change—the cooldowns (specifically, the cooldown-enforcing debuffs) will now clear on death. So if you Cheat Death early in a dungeon, yes, you should avoid dying again for the next 6 minutes. However, in the event you do die (or the group wipes), you will return to combat with Cheat Death once again available.
More broadly, we examined the value of these effects as a whole and concluded they are too easily available. When Cheat Death was first added as a deep Subtlety talent (before the change to modern talent rows), its power and cooldown reflected the significant investment into that tree. In the current game, not only is its opportunity cost much lower, but, taking a look at the gameplay of healing and survivability challenges, the power level of such a frequent extra life is very high. For example, Rebirth has a 10 minute cooldown, and is a distinctively powerful ability that significantly contributes to a class’s perceived power in dungeons. Reincarnation has a 30 minute cooldown, and is far from being meaningless or forgotten. If we were adding Cheat Death and its ilk today and evaluating its power, there would be little justification for a cooldown as short as 2 minutes. Preventing a death that might otherwise have scuttled the entire current attempt at a dungeon or raid boss has more value than that.
On Last Resort in particular, we are aware that Vengeance Demon Hunters felt somewhat reliant on this to avoid deaths to unexpected burst damage, and we will be monitoring whether they need other changes to compensate (for example, they have increased health on PTR, increased baseline damage reduction, and a stronger Metamorphosis effect). And on Purgatory, its cooldown was increased the least because it conditional, and it was also made more reliable: the effect will now always last for 3 seconds regardless of whether you momentarily go above 0 HP during that window. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
One problem that Destruction Warlock had was a number of talent rows with very obvious "single-target" vs. "AoE" talent picks. This has clear downsides--a requirement to swap talents often (and as a corollary, a feeling of being significantly crippled when not using the ideal talent loadout for a given situation). Clearly, it's a DPS loss single-target to say you can no longer have both Eradication and Reverse Entropy, and a DPS loss in some AoE situations to say you can no longer have both Cataclysm and Fire and Brimstone. But making that swap, and then making sure throughout PTR that Destruction DPS remains reasonably consistent with live, will leave the spec more well-rounded and not as pigeonholed by talent choices in a given situation. PTR already has buffs to Doomguard and Imp damage that help with numbers in all situations, as well as buffs to various talents to help futher improve flexibility. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Sword or Helmet Giveaway
Our friends over at Gamepedia are giving away a Sword of Helmet prop, along with a Elder Scroll! These props will be created by Volpin Props, a company that brings things like Doomhammer to life.
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