Legendary Questline Update
After meeting Wrathion and sharing a drink with him, he gives you a quest that requires you to collect Sigil of Power x 10 and Sigil of Wisdom x 10.
When LFR opened for testing tonight, we found that Sigil of Power drops from every boss 100% of the time. It appears as a quest objective in the tooltips for most bosses in Raid Finder difficulty, but drops from all of the bosses that have been killed so far.
Earlier today, we saw that Sigil of Wisdom appeared as a quest objective on Grand Empress Shek'zeer's tooltip in 25 Man Normal Difficulty Heart of Fear. Unfortunately, no one was able to kill her to confirm that it actually drops. Keep in mind that this is beta and things can change in the future and may not be working as intended.
Once 10 of each Sigil has been collected, Warthion sends you into the Terrace of Endless Spring to defeat the Sha of Fear. Before entering the Terrace of Endless Spring, you must have completed the Heart of Fear raid. Upon defeating the Sha of Fear you will loot a Chimera of Fear from him and bring it back to Wrathion.
When the items that you collected are combined, you will be able to choose from a Crystallized Dread, Crystallized Horror, or Crystallized Terror gem. These gems are unique equipped, and go into a Sha-Touched socket in the weapons below. These weapons drop from bosses in Terrace of the Endless Spring and the last boss of Heart of Fear.
Sha-Touched Weapons
| Level | Type | Spec | Slot | Name | Dropped From | Dropped In |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 509 | Two-handed Axe | Melee | Two Hand | Shin'ka, Execution of Dominion | Sha of Fear | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 509 | Gun | Physical DPS | Ranged | Taoren, the Soul Burner | Lei Shi | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 509 | One-handed Sword | Melee | One Hand | Kilrak, Jaws of Terror | Sha of Fear | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 509 | One-handed Sword | Spell DPS | One Hand | Loshan, Terror Incarnate | Tsulong | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 509 | Staff | Physical DPS | Two Hand | Gao-Rei, Staff of the Legendary Protector | Tsulong | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 509 | Staff | Spell DPS | Two Hand | Jin'ya, Orb of the Waterspeaker | Lei Shi | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 509 | Dagger | Physical DPS | One Hand | Spiritsever | Lei Shi | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 509 | One-handed Mace | Spell DPS | Main Hand | Kri'tak, Imperial Scepter of the Swarm | Grand Empress Shek'zeer | Heart of Fear |
| 509 | Fist Weapon | Physical DPS | One Hand | Claws of Shek'zeer | Grand Empress Shek'zeer | Heart of Fear |
| Level | Type | Spec | Slot | Name | Dropped From | Dropped In |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 496 | Two-handed Axe | Melee | Two Hand | Shin'ka, Execution of Dominion | Sha of Fear | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 496 | Gun | Physical DPS | Ranged | Taoren, the Soul Burner | Lei Shi | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 496 | One-handed Sword | Melee | One Hand | Kilrak, Jaws of Terror | Sha of Fear | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 496 | One-handed Sword | Spell DPS | One Hand | Loshan, Terror Incarnate | Tsulong | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 496 | Staff | Physical DPS | Two Hand | Gao-Rei, Staff of the Legendary Protector | Tsulong | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 496 | Staff | Spell DPS | Two Hand | Jin'ya, Orb of the Waterspeaker | Lei Shi | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 496 | Dagger | Physical DPS | One Hand | Spiritsever | Lei Shi | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 496 | One-handed Mace | Spell DPS | Main Hand | Kri'tak, Imperial Scepter of the Swarm | Grand Empress Shek'zeer | Heart of Fear |
| 496 | Fist Weapon | Physical DPS | One Hand | Claws of Shek'zeer | Grand Empress Shek'zeer | Heart of Fear |
| Level | Type | Spec | Slot | Name | Dropped From | Dropped In |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 483 | Two-handed Axe | Melee | Two Hand | Shin'ka, Execution of Dominion | Sha of Fear | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 483 | Gun | Physical DPS | Ranged | Taoren, the Soul Burner | Lei Shi | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 483 | One-handed Sword | Melee | One Hand | Kilrak, Jaws of Terror | Sha of Fear | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 483 | One-handed Sword | Spell DPS | One Hand | Loshan, Terror Incarnate | Tsulong | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 483 | Staff | Physical DPS | Two Hand | Gao-Rei, Staff of the Legendary Protector | Tsulong | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 483 | Staff | Spell DPS | Two Hand | Jin'ya, Orb of the Waterspeaker | Lei Shi | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 483 | Dagger | Physical DPS | One Hand | Spiritsever | Lei Shi | Terrace of Endless Spring |
| 483 | One-handed Mace | Spell DPS | Main Hand | Kri'tak, Imperial Scepter of the Swarm | Grand Empress Shek'zeer | Heart of Fear |
| 483 | Fist Weapon | Physical DPS | One Hand | Claws of Shek'zeer | Grand Empress Shek'zeer | Heart of Fear |
New Character Creation Preview Gear
This build finally finished adding the last of the new character creation gear used in the preview. This is not the gear that your character will get when starting the game, but the gear that is used to show you what a higher level character will look like. Keep in mind that this is beta and things can always change!
Beta Class Balance Analysis
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Pretty much this...for some reason devs think most progression guilds are quite happy to bring an underperforming player to a progression fight (Obviously none of them are in progression oriented guilds).
Actually, several designers have been farming Heroic Madness of Deathwing (some on 25, some on 10), for over 6 months. Some of them are in very performance-intensive guilds too, that definitely adjust raid comp based on individual performance above all else. In any event, you don't make a stronger case for yourself by arguing that the designers must lack your experience. And, as has been stated multiple times, this thread is for discussing numbers and mechanics, not making anecdotal accusations.
The point is this: Would your raiding developers ever bring the MoP Affliction Warlock to a unnerfed Heroic Spine-like fight? Desto and Affliction locks did not have competitive burst. Demo lock was there as the buff bot and actually did pretty decent damage as long as the lifts were no often than every 2 minutes.
Current Affliction damage is fairly stable until execute, with no real spikes or troughs. We still cannot bring competitive burst, unless my sims are incorrect. We will be sat for these encounters or respec, just like we were in Cata. Oh and we will be sat for AoE fights as well since things will be dead before we even get going. Spine left some pretty deep scars I must admit.
Heroic Spine is an extremely skewing fight, as it forced you to value 20-second burst damage every 1:30 to 2:00 over just about everything else. It’s no surprise when that does unfortunate things to class/spec balance. We try to balance different specs to do similar sustained damage, but allow them to have different strengths and weaknesses, such as burst potential. One of the class designers (who also happens to be a raid leader in a 25-player raid progression guild) says that if there were a similar encounter in Mists of Pandaria, he would definitely ask his warlocks to switch to Destruction, given that Destruction’s potential 20-second burst is incredibly high. Warlocks would definitely not be sat in that situation.
It seems that Halo and Divine Star have a DR now... is it at "beyond 6", similar to Sanct/Healing Rain?
Yes; we recently did a pass on making sure that new AoEs were appropriately following our standard AoE capping rules (10 targets for damage, 6 targets for heals). There were a number of Monk AoEs and a few other class level 90 talents affected, I believe.
In the current beta build when an unholy death knight uses blood boil (speced into Rolling Blood), blood runes don't turn into death runes (Reaping effect). Just an obvious bug which we can hopefully see fixed in a later build.
Fixed for the next build.
After some discussion with a fellow hunter, I have been questioning the worth of Focus Fire. In its current state, it seems that casting Focus Fire could actually result in a net DPS loss, based on information gained using Zeherah's sim and personal observations.
We did notice this and have buffed it a bit, but that change didn’t make the build you’re just now getting. I believe the amount of haste it grants your character went up to 6% and we might need to increase it further. It should be a significant DPS increase, not just break even.
Hunter level 90 talents (glaive shot, etc.) appear not to be triggering Marksman mastery. Is that intended?
Murder of crows benefits from BM mastery, but Dire Beast does not. What's the intent here (e.g., presumably Lynx Rush benefits from it)?
The Hunter level 90 talents should trigger Wild Quiver, with the exception that Barrage has 1/6th the normal proc rate (so that it isn’t overwhelmingly dominant for Marksmanship).
The next build will include a new version of Murder of Crows. It’s mostly a mechanic and visual change; the damage should remain roughly the same, including being affected by Master of Beasts. Dire Beast will also be affected by Master of Beasts in the next build (so that the entire talent row is consistently affected by it).
Latest finds from doing hitting dummies for an hour.
- Judgment can be dodge/parried from 30 yds away
- Hammer of the Righteous is really bugged.
- Nova is doing only 1-2 damage at several AP levels
- It really only hits for 0 yds.
Another bug which may confuse Affliction warlocks in the current beta build is Malefic Grasp’s interaction with spell haste. It is appropriately getting its period reduced by haste, but the channel bar is incorrectly still 4 seconds long. The debuff it applies is the accurate duration. It should not gain additional ticks with additional haste. The channel bar will be fixed in the next build.
Sorry but I am confused. Can you please explain this a little better? Are you saying that the MG ticks benefit from haste but the extra dot damage is still every 1 second? Or are you saying something else?
No, the extra DoT ticks are directly tied to the MG damage ticks. The bug is simply that the channel bar UI is not being affected by haste. The gameplay functionality is correct.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
World Boss Availability
I understand that Mogushan Vaults is going to be out a week after the xpac drops, but what about the 2 world bosses? Will those be spawning and killable the week of the xpac?
Yes, world bosses will be available on day 1. Oh, the days of trying to down Azuregos. September 25 is going to be epic! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Teleports Rewarded by Gold Medal Challenge Modes
They share a cooldown with each other, but not with the hearthstone or other player spells like shaman Astral Recall or mage Teleport. Whenever you complete a challenge mode, this shared cooldown is reset. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
LFR Rewards and Difficulty
While LFR difficulty requires less coordination and organization than normal raids, it still generally takes more effort than completing a heroic. Therefore, shouldn't the rewards be greater?
Also, I think people generally like the normal dungeon>heroic>LFR>normal raid setup. Removing a step would give people less diversity. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Content Difficulty and Consumption Speed
As my son (Lambey) pointed out a number of times, releasing LFR this early into a patch means content gets done on week 2 its out.
personally me AND my son feel the schedule needs to be adjusted to the following:
September 25: MoP launches
October 2: Mogu'shan Vaults (normal) opens
October 7: those who cleared normal Vaults can access heroic mode
October 30: Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring (normal) open, with Terrace only accessible by clearing Heart. LFR difficulty for Mogu'shan Vaults opens.
November 6: Those who cleared normal Heart can access heroic Heart, same for Terrace.
November 27: Lfr for Heart Opens.
December 11: Lfr for Terrace Opens.
This means that even a month later, the content has NOT been burnt out by the casual gamers. it also allows raiders to feel somewhat superior as they are seeing content others arent, while also providing incentive for players to at least TRY normal mode raids!
If others want to try and burn the content in two weeks through LFR. How is your gaming experience diminished by it? I can't honestly understand what's the big deal on people that isn't you doing something that you don't want to do. I mean, what could you possibly do when someone that is not you storms Mogu'shan Vaults on the LFR...
it also allows raiders to feel somewhat superior as they are seeing content others arent
Perhaps we should just tell the devs that we should close all raids until the Top 10 guilds clear them on heroic, so that they can feel superior to everyone else as they are seeing content that you, the raiders not-as-good-as-them aren't seeing. Does it make sense?
Again you come back to a frankly stupid and absurd statement about locking content till the top 10 guilds kill it....I mean why do you have such a problem with players doing stuff that others cannot?
Do you mean that the argument of locking "casuals" from LFR so that raiders can feel superior because they aren't doing that content is fine, but that same example applied in a higher level is wrong? Both situations are the same, just applied at a different scale.
I don't have a problem with players doing stuff that others cannot, I have a problem with proclaiming that locking others so someone can feel superior is a good thing (and regardless, what I may have problems with is irrelevant to this discussion, is not me who decides what's wrong and what's not).
Have you never looked at a player in full gear beyond your skill levels or content and thought wow I want to look like that someday.
No, never. Back in the old days I remember looking at a T1 geared player, and my reaction was something along the lines of "that armor is cool, I wonder how long it'll take me before getting to reach the place where I can get that". And the only reason that particular player caught my attention was because he was playing the same class than me.
For a lot of people clearing things on a higher difficulty is not content.
The developers consider the Normal-Heroic transition to be part of the raiding progression. Of course, it's your choice to decide if you want to go and deal with Heroic content or not.
What most are advocating in this thread is not to remove content from casuals, it’s to ensure that their content lasts longer and that they will learn and become better from their gaming experience.
I'm quite sure that the "casuals" can handle themselves in what they want and how they want it, and they don't need parenting from "hardcore" players. And what I mean is, the goal, probably, is having fun, right?
If that's the goal, then it's probably best to worry about how you can have fun yourself, and point out the flaws there, point out what doesn't let you have fun, without factoring in what other players do. That's something we can send to the developers. But judging how others should have fun is certainly not going to get us anywhere.
But parently by nerfing is different somehow?
The debuff is a design decission made by the developers based on the data they have. In the other hand, the players that say how the game should be for others only have their opinion. And opinions are great, as long as you don't try to turn them into facts.
Loads of people are trying here, including me, but somehow you seem hellbent on telling me that I play for gear, status and titles.
That you're playing for gear, status and titles is not a bad thing (if that is your case), the issue comes from saying that the only way those things are worth it is preventing others from getting it.
I'm not having fun by the highest tier of raiding being watered down. I'm telling you, since you are our relay to the devs and designers. Please take note of it, since your arguements are based on some kind of assumpion of pride, while it really isn't. In fact, that shows only your personal view of the matter. Take one step back and look at it more objectively.
Hopefully the Cutting Edge FoS will give a reason to you and your guildmates (if they don't share that view with you) to go and tackle the content without any debuffs.
We post because we care (I hope). Just look at how (relatively) civil this 200 page thread still is. People take it serious. Perhaps you should to. Think. Reread, and only then post.
I take it seriously, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here anymore. Actually, from this thread we've gathered useful feedback, and questions, that were forwarded to the developers.
One thing, just as an example, was that some players here pointed out they feel the Power of the Aspects kicked in too early for them. The developers are happy with the point in time at which it was introduced. The timing of each increment of the debuff is completely driven by data. When they see participation and progress declining across the board because of "brick walls" on some bosses, they introduce the nerf to encourage those players to come back and keep trying. And every time they've done it they've seen the participation in Dragon Soul increase exponentially in comparison to previous weeks.
So, with that in mind, it might be an aswer you like or one you don't. But, it is an answer (along with others we've shared) that came due to threads like this (and, as you remarked, its mostly civil tone). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Tabard Reputation Rewards
The point is some people like how their character looks, and gaining rep with x factions forces you to wear different tabards you might not like (if you choose to gain rep via dungeons).
Just as an update, we're going to change the whole tabard system with MoP, so this shouldn't be an issue any longer.
We're fixing this in Mists of Pandaria by removing the whole concept of tabards providing reputation bonuses.
Of course we're still in beta and things can always change... (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Spells in PvE vs PvP
I think some of you are making big assumptions about how the spell data work. I realize that the mechanics behind our data can quite obtuse, but you'll just have to trust me that having two sets of numbers is just more risk than one. It is a risk worth taking sometimes, but it is a risk. Set bonuses, talents, tooltips, basically everything that can modify a spell need to modify two spells instead. There are opportunities for bugs to creep in, and long term players know how many strange bugs or quirks show up in character spells already.
(Armchair programmers at thIs point can argue how our data structure *should* be set up, but you'll also just have to trust me that it's probably a more complex problem than you give it credit for.)
In any case, I'm also not convinced at all that even if we could easily manage two different sets of numbers that it would really solve the problem. I think sometimes in players' minds, they say "Man, I just can't kill anyone in PvP. It is a truth universally acknowledged that my dude's PvP damage is too low, but Blizzard can't buff it because I do well in PvE." The shortcoming in that logic of course is that the truth is rarely universally acknowledged, and in the case of PvP there aren't even logs or target dummies to look at. In some cases your damage is just fine and it's not the game rules holding you back. In some cases you lost not because the deck was stacked against you, but because you got outplayed.
I'm not saying there aren't PvP balance issues. There are and there may always be. But I also don't think players would suddenly become much more objective about their own personal skill just because we adjusted more numbers independently. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Class Changes Discussion
I know it may come as a shock, but this forum is not our sole conduit though which to monitor player feedback. The twin strategies of "shh, don't admit we're overpowered" and "shh, don't let them know we're happy" are about as transparent as you would imagine. I would suggest leaving the psychological warfare at home and just be honest about how you feel (and as I said above, backing it up with evidence of some kind is vastly more helpful to us).
We had just been discussing whether it would be better to warn players that some nerfs were coming and let them worry themselves to death, or to just make the changes and have players be surprised. Conveniently, this thread came along.... (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
New Enrage Graphic
It was an experiment. We're not crazy about it and the player response has been negative overall, so we're going to revert it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Pet Battle Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Weakened by Capture
We have made a few adjustments to the both the weakened by capture pets and the overall XP curve. Details below!
- Catching any pet level 15 or under retains its current level.
- Catching a level 16-20 pet will lose 1 level.
- Catching a level 21-25 pet will lose 2 levels.
- We have dramatically reduced the XP required to level for pets after level 10.
Thanks for all of your feedback on this stuff guys. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Healing Pets is Getting Old
We have reduced the cool down to 10m in the next build. Don't forget you can get single use heals in the Sack of Pet Supplies from the Tamer dailies as an alternative to using the Stable Master or your Revive spell. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Northrend Tamer
When can we expect this achievement to be fixed? as it stands right now, there are still no battle pets in Crystalsong Forest so this achievement is currently unobtainable.
Good catch! This is fixed in the next build. Thanks for the report. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Microscopic crabs.
Is there a specific reason as to why every wild crab that I run into is almost microscopic? I wouldn't mind capturing one, but I would at least like to see the pet that I'm using.
This is fixed in the next build. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Revive Battle Pets Exploit?
This is a good thread, here are a few of our thoughts:
Healing pets to full after every battle is not a change we are interested in making. We want to encourage players to not only win a battle, but to win by taking the least amount of damage or by using pet heals in a smart way. Attrition is a driving part of the gameplay and it won't be going away anytime soon. We do have tunable factors that we will continue to watch though. (Battle Recovery, Revive spell cooldown & pet bandages)
In regards to the Revive Pets spell, we have just reduced the cooldown to 10m for the next build. (Down from 15m) We will keep a close eye on the feedback and continue to monitor how often players are using the Stable Master to heal. The Stable Master should be a fallback, not a requirement. We know the pet bandages are a bit too sparse right now too, we are going to amp that up as well to help fill in the gaps.
Finally, the cool-up's that we added to the heal spells (both the player and stable master) are to deal with exploit cases of players using multiple characters/accounts to avoid cooldowns. We used 3 minutes as a baseline since most players can fly to one in that amount of time from pretty much anywhere on a full speed mount.
Thanks for all the feedback, we are listening! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Curse Weekly Roundup
Pico is back with the Curse Weekly Round Up. She covers Dragons Dogma, SWTOR going free to play, Battlefield, EA, Mists of Pandaria, Minecraft, and our indie highlight Awesomenauts
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