Siege of Orgrimmar Raid Schedule
Don't forget that Siege of Orgrimmar Raid Finder Wing 4 opens this week! The raid is now open on all difficulty levels.
Arena Popularity
Holinka shared some information about how the new region wide arena pools and new mounts are working out.
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
How are queues 3 times as long now that there's 10 times as many people with 1 big pool?
To be quite honest, the bottleneck is spinning up games fast enough. A lot of people are queuing. We're working on a fix right now.
This is utter music to my ears. Thank you so much! I was starting to worry WoW PvP was dying, but far from it!
Just to bang the "people love rewards" drum a bit more, 3v3 has seen a big jump (probably do to the mount achievement).
It's mainly due to the 2s experience being so bad, imo- people cap in 3s instead.
2s is doing better than usual as well
Patch 5.4 Hotfixes: October 22
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes
- Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- Class Armor
- Tier-15 4-piece set bonus now increases the effects of Arcane Charges by 5% per stack (down from 20% per stack).
- Class Armor
- Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- General
- Tigereye Brew and Mana Tea gains from Chi Brew now correctly benefit from Mastery: Bottled Fury and Brewing: Mana Tea.
- General
- Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- General
- Damage from Soul Link should no longer incorrectly activate the Voidlord's Void Shield effect.
- General
Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
- The number of guild members needed to be considered a guild Group in Flexible difficulty has been reduced. Previously, the number of guild members required in Flexible difficulty didn’t account for the scaling group size. It now requires 80% of the current group size, rounded down.
- Siege of Orgrimmar
- Garrosh Hellscream
- Hellscream's Warsong now grants a 75% increase to Physical damage dealt and health (down from 125%) on Raid Finder difficulty.
- Touch of Y'Shaarj now has a 4-second cast time for players (up from 3 seconds) on Raid Finder difficulty.
- Reduced the health of Minions of Y'shaarj on Raid Finder difficulty.
- Garrosh Hellscream
Battlegrounds and Arenas
- Arenas
- Players who pick up a Shadow Sight orb will be unable to stealth for the duration of the effect.
Next Connected Realms
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As a part of our ongoing Connected Realms implementation, we will be connecting additional realms as listed below. We don’t have a specific date yet on when these connections will occur, but we’ll provide another update once we do. Please be aware that as a part of the connection process realm times may change to match each other.
Next Realm Connections:
- Dethecus and Detheroc
- Auchindoun and Laughing Skull
- Hakkar and Aegwynn / Gurubashi
- Rivendare and Firetree
- Dunemaul and Bloodscalp/ Maiev/Boulderfist
For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.
I am on Bloodscalp any way of a having one communal forum for recruiting guild info etc. instead of 4 individual ones.
It's something we're discussing. We haven't decided anything as of yet though. It may be something that we will need to wait and do after we've determined all of the connections. We'll keep you all informed as much as possible..
Dampening and Necrotic Strike
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Ultimately it will be more difficult to heal through necrotic strike with dampening present, just like it will be more difficult to heal through ALL kinds of damage. That is the explicit purpose of the effect, and it will not benefit necrotic strike any more or less than any other attack.
Precisely. After some discussion, we came to the same conclusion. Necrotic Strike's healing absorb is no more or less difficult to heal through than actual damage. You deal with it in the exact same way: by healing the target. To put it another way, Dampening is intended to slowly lower healing output, while the amount of healing needed stays the same. To that end, we think leaving Necrotic Strike unaffected by Dampening is the right call.
I think it's also probably important to note that we're keeping an extremely close eye on how Dampening works out, not only in regard to specific concerns like Necrotic Strike but to its effect on gameplay as a whole. We feel pretty confident that Dampening will do what we'd like it to, but we'll be monitoring it closely until we're sure.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Queue System
I've noticed that the queue always pops right after you leave the computer to get something to drink.
Devs have been experimenting with sentient “troll” code from some time now…
Seriously though, adding such an option would only cause more issues than it would solve.
Imagine entering a raid and everyone is AFK
No one likes queues right? We're always trying to improve the queue times by adjusting anything that might influence players’ behaviour in positive ways. In the end though, queues are something really simple, and unless we completely revamp standard raid requirements for heal/damage/tank slots, there’s only so much that devs can do…
The system has improved quite a lot since early days though. We’ve dynamically added goodie bags to the most “needed” class specializations, added the option to queue with one specialization and loot with another, and tweaked around with the goodie bags loot in order to make it more enticing. But, at the end of the day, queues are made up of players and player choices, and this is very tricky thing to solve, it begins with getting the right answers to the right questions.
For example, if you try to find out why are tanks always in high demand you’ll probably get very mixed responses.
-Is it less exciting to play a tank than other specs?
-Do they gear up faster than other specs? If so, why? (might lead to circular argument)
-Is it the “higher” responsibility of tanking/leading?
-Is it because they only have a few slots and that makes players afraid they won’t get guild spots?
If you have any other questions and/or answers please do share them with us, this could actually make an interesting discussion. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
AskMrRobot Update
Now that Siege of Orgrimmar is fully open, AskMrRobot has a helpful blog post on the best ways to get more gear! Keep in mind that there is a free trial available for any premium features.
Fan Art Update
The World of Warcraft Fan Art Section has been updated with new fan artwork.
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