Legion - Second Artifact and Upgrade Quest
The developers shared some more information about artifacts:
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
- You’ll be able to obtain your second artifact fairly early into your level-up experience. (WarcraftDevs)
- There is an important artifact upgrade quest line that may require some LFG/LFR content to complete. (WarcraftDevs)
- You can unlock all traits through purely solo content, though it may take longer to do it that way. (WarcraftDevs)
Legion - Spider Mount
The Bloodfang Coccoon doesn't have a source yet.
Legion Alpha Realm Stability
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
I'd be a bit more concerned with getting the build stable for more players to come in than getting the raid testing done on a very very limited scale with PUGs and guilds missing players right now, and then test the raid encounters on a stable build where players can actually log in to try the new bosses instead.
Those aren't mutually exclusive though. We gain better knowledge of server capability, crashes, queues, all that stuff, by actually stressing the server.
We've raised the cap a bit just now, and we'll continue to monitor server stability. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Skirmishes
Can you guys turn skirmishes on?
We'll be rotating between battlegrounds, skirmishes and Ashran throughout the beta. We want to focus people on one particular activity during Beta. (Official Forums)
Death Knights and Rune Forging
These are good questions and we will discuss. Currently, no enchants offer any benefit but Rune Forge Enchants are a part of the Death Knight class. Whether we allow them in PvP or not, we will tune the class's PvP stats based on whether those enchants work or not. (Official Forums)
Death Knight Feedback
Festering Wounds just simply do not work in PvP, useless mechanic and so is Death Strike, give us back Siphon, thanks.
Festering Wounds shouldn't be dispellable as it is too central to the spec's functionality. We've already made this change for the next release. (Official Forums)
Protection Paladin Heal Light of the Protector
Light of the Protector currently heals almost like a Lay on hands. Might want to take a look into that.
It will be reduced in PvP. It will be changed to 15% in an upcoming hotfix. (Official Forums)
Retribution Paladin Feedback -- Build 21232 -- 3-Mar
Equality -- This ability needs to go. Degenerate gameplay will only ensue from this. Purposefully forcing a player to take damage & causing heart-attacks for Healers is not cool or interesting. It's infuriating. I can't imagine what Equality encourages and causes to be objectively better than what its setting out to achieve. Neat idea, VERY bad gameplay. I think we have enough of that take-damage-deal-damage paradigm as is via Shield of Vengeance – at least this encourages us to stay alive and simultaneously reward that effort.
I think this talent touches on a handful of topics about class design philosophy. It's a great example of talent design that doesn't fit today's norm, but in a good way - and in a way that we need more of, not less. The topics I see in play here are philosophies about what role talents play, the mechanics of a talent that require a player to take damage, and possibly the location of the talent in the tree.
In a forum discussion, we tend to get lost in the mechanics of an ability. This is true not only because the most well-spoken players on our forums are organized raiders with personalities that lean toward the analytical, but also because the nature of a forum lends itself to considering theoretical use cases more than the actual moment-to-moment experience of playing the game.
In my actual experience of playing a ret paladin in Legion content, I'd say that equality might just be the most fun and gratifying talent in the tree. It's gleefully fun when you end up in a situation that would have resulted in your death to hit the button and watch your enemies go from nearly full to dead. As much as an expert player might imagine that such a situation never applies to them, the reality is that it does (and more so in Legion world content than in the recent past). Beyond that, it's fun to occasionally manufacture exactly that situation.
It's important to recognize that so much of World of Warcraft resides outside the confines of reliably topping a damage meter in a 10 player raid. This is particularly true once again in Legion, where we anticipate that players will spend far more time in non-raid content than they have in recent years due to the role of 5-player dungeons and world quests (fueled by the general possibility of getting an item upgrade from any content in the game), and of course pvp. As such, it's important that we view talent design through the lens of "not everything will or should be the most efficient path to victory in a raid".
As to the mechanics of this talent, many players balk at the group play implications of a talent that assumes you've taken a bunch of damage, comparing that with a variety of other mechanics we've had in the game at one point or another that encouraged a player to take damage. For content that isn't particularly challenging, it tends to be a non-issue (if you want to potentially get yourself killed, have at it). As it relates to challenging content, our experience suggests that frequency is a meaningful part of this equation, and if in challenging content healers are stressed it also implies that the stress is as a result of players taking damage that is out of their control, which also implies that over the course of an encounter a reasonable opportunity to use the ability without deliberately manufacturing the conditions will arise due to its long cooldown.
In addition, from a purely mathematical perspective the ability does (or at least should) hold up if you use it around every 7 minutes or so, enough to provide some slush to account for the situational nature of the spell. In addition, the talent nets meaningful damage over time and should/does hold up against the other talents in the tier.
Equality is not a fun ability to use in any practical sense outside of PvP or solo content.
Many players will likely not agree with this statement. Fortunately, there doesn't need to be universal or widespread agreement.
I can't imagine any practical sense where I'm going to request my healers let me drop horrendously low to optimize my damage with this ability, and I know I'm not going to be the only one in high end raiding guilds feeling the same way.
Great, that's why it's a talent. Choose a different talent.
The alternatives on the tier simply aren't that great either from a gameplay stance, as Gomak elaborated on, as none of them change up how you play and simply add passive benefits..
Totally fair, and while it isn't possible to get every talent in a tier to be interesting to every individual, we certainly do want there to be a choice on any given tier that you find cool. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
[Feedback: Warriors]
Philosophically we're okay if some of the core talents aren't super nail biting choices all the time for PvP. I think in an ideal world every core talent and honor talent is an interesting choice in all aspects of the game, but if talents such as War Paint become the de facto talent in PvP (not saying it is or isn't right now) it's not that big of deal to us. It's challenging to create core talents that are competitive, interesting choices in PvE let alone both PvE and PvP.
Our design direction with Arms vs Fury is that Arms should have more burst or "frontload" damage, while Fury is stronger at sustained and has better mobility. While Fury does take more damage while enraged, that's being factored into the balance of the spec overall. You'll have higher health and self-healing. (Note: Tuning is still in progress)
Regarding mobility, it's very much a hot topic with us currently. Arcane Mages and Sub Rogues are engineered by us to have some of the highest escape tools out of the specs, but they're intended to be glass cannons and countered by specs that can dampen their burst damage (Tank specs, Paladins) or where their escape tools aren't as strong (Warlocks, Hunters). That said, their mobility/escape may be too out of line right now and may need changes. If we're going to do mobility changes it's likely going to be us toning down the stronger specs rather than buffing the weaker ones. (Official Forums)
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Character / Items
The Ring of the Kiring Tor as Jaina's Locket will keep teleporting the player to the "old" Dalaran?
Any teleport items that took you to Northrend's Dalaran will still take you to Northrend's Dalaran. (WarcraftDevs)
Get ready for more of this from . I mean, restrict striders but not shaman water walking? Made no sense.
If the goal were to limit the availability of water-walking, that'd be true. But this really was just about mount choice. (WatcherDev)
How is it about mount choice? From what I understand, it was limiting the water walking ability on the mount itself?
My posts tried to explain - the concern was people "forced" to use striders for WW even if they preferred the look of other mounts (WatcherDev)
PvE
Stick to your guns, Ion! You decide what's best for the game!
In a sense that's the role of a game designer, yes, but stubbornness in the face of valid concerns doesn't benefit anyone. (WatcherDev)
Lore
old god hearts make you go a little crazy (Muffinus)
That better be a joke. Then again yet another twitter retcon wouldn't be a surprise anymore. #GarroshWasInControl
he wasn't corrupted or controlled, yes, but his personality flaws (e.g. xenophobia) certainly came out at 110% (Muffinus)
Transmogrification
Or would I need to obtain the lookalike option in order to other classes to be able to use given look?
Lookalike unlocks are not automatic; you're still transmogging to an item, and must be able to meet its equip requirements. (WarcraftDevs)
Since the special boost gear sets doen't have a class requirements, will they be unlocked account wide in Legion's transmog?
Items like Character Boost or Salvage Yard gear intended for a specific class or race will have requirements added. (WarcraftDevs)
Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
We hardly saw Deathwing's human form used. Were there more plans for that model, perhaps during the last fight?
I think it was something about him seeing so small and fragile in his human form. (OccupyGStreet)
The official Hearthstone site has been updated with different cards that may be hints about the upcoming expansion.
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