World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

We’re making some significant changes to many specializations in Patch 7.1.5, and this has understandably resulted in some concern and confusion, particularly from players who may be less familiar with our PTR and development processes. So, we’d like to take a moment to explain what’s going on and how it pertains to what you’re seeing (or haven’t yet seen) on the PTR.

First, it’s important to understand the role that the PTR plays in our overall development process. At this stage, Patch 7.1.5 is still a work in progress. The PTR is only a snapshot of where we happened to be in development at the time the build was created. There are a lot of people working on WoW, and a lot of projects in various stages of completion. As a result, especially at this early stage of the PTR cycle, you’re going to see a lot of incomplete or unfinished work. Quite often, when something you see doesn’t make sense, it’s simply because we hadn’t finished making it make sense before the latest build was created.

Looking specifically at class design, the changes you’re seeing so far are focused primarily on how each spec plays in terms of mechanics, rotations, ability sets, talent options, etc. As some of these changes are fairly significant, we haven’t been making many adjustments to overall performance just yet. We need each spec to be completely functional before we can start tuning its effectiveness.

Right now, the build currently live on the 7.1.5 PTR is only about halfway through those mechanical changes. We’ve been continuing to work hard on getting those finished, and the next build should give you a clearer picture of what’s happening with your spec. We’ll try to share as much insight as we can into what we’re doing at that point.

In the upcoming Patch 7.1.5 (currently on the PTR for testing), you will be able to purchase ranks of Artifact Knowledge instantly for Order Resources up until a certain rank, at which point you'll have to continue with researching Artifact Knowledge as normal.

As things currently are, if you're only just starting out at 110 right now, the amount of time needed to research the lower ranks of Artifact Knowledge is already a lot shorter than the 5 days needed to research ranks at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Legendary Item Luck
Hey all,

I'd just like to clear up a common misconception I've seen come up a lot in of recent discussions regarding Legendaries.

In short:

Your total time /played and average item level has no bearing on your chances of obtaining a Legendary.

To be a little more specific:

Player A and Player B could both have exactly 10 days of /played at level 110 and neither of them have a Legendary yet.

Player A has spent most of that time idling in Dalaran or their Order Hall, simply kicking it by the water cooler in guild chat or trade chat. Beyond doing their daily Emissary Cache and a Mythic Dungeon here or there, they don't really do that much in the way of Legendary-eligible content. Now, Player A could get very lucky with their next Emissary Cache and get a Legendary, but they'd be a statistical outlier in this scenario.

Player B, on the other hand, has spent the majority of their time doing Legendary-eligible content. They do their daily Emissary Cache, clear Emerald Nightmare each week, do a Random Legion Heroic Dungeon regularly and participate in a lot of Mythic/Mythic Keystone dungeon runs to help out their friends etc.

At this point in time Player B's chance of getting a Legendary will be much higher than that of Player A. As Player B has participated in far more Legendary-eligible content, their bad luck protection will be ramping up and increasing their chances of a getting a Legendary from their next run of Legendary-eligible content. Hence the saying "if you do the content, the Legendaries will come."

Then player A gets BiS legendaries, while Player B gets the !@#$ tier legendaries that are totally useless. Fast forward some time, Player A and Player B both try to get the same spot in a raid. Of course, player A gets picked because he has better legendaries that actually increase his performance.
Well in this scenario as Player B has been helping their guild out more than Player A has, I think most communal focused guilds would prefer to give the spot to someone like Player B who is actually contributing to helping the guild, rather than the person who got lucky and is simply there for the ride.

Also as Player B has spent more time doing current content than Player A, they will arguably know how to adapt and adjust to situations (like where they can squeeze out more DPS for example) more readily than Player A will.

There are plenty of groups and guilds clearing Normal and Heroic Emerald Nightmare & Trial of Valor with most of their roster not even having a BiS Legendary. A Legendary should not going to be the sole determining factor in whether or not a coordinated group is going to beat an encounter. Sure, the Legendary might bring enhancements or utility that may make the process smoother, but they're not a through-and-through substitute for skill and execution.

Only, many of us are doing the content but still aren't getting any or just getting bad once that we'll never use.

The system is still the worst idea you ever had and it's completely ruining the experience the game is supposed to deliver. It's no longer fun! Playing the game is NOT fun. Do you not see this?

The legendary system at it's best provides a sense of relief if you manage to get two good ones but at it's worst it just makes you furstrated, angryand disapointed.

That is NOT a good system. Let us target the items that are quickly becoming mandatory (if they aren't already) like you said would be possible.

That small change would make the expantion way better in every way. As it stands now, Legion is by far the worst expantion to date simply becuase of this legendary system.

How do you not see this Blizzard? Why aren't you listening to feedback?
We are listening to, and reading, the feedback and we're regularly forwarding the feedback on. If/when I receive any thoughts or information I can share in regards to feedback received, then I will share it with you as I always have. Not having an answer does not mean you are not being listened too. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

12th Anniversary Event
We gave away a Molten Corgi (a pun on the name of the Molten Core raid) for logging in during the 10th anniversary. We received a lot of positive feedback about how cute the little pup was, so like most pet families in the game, a few more variants have been added.

So, for the 12th anniversary you have the option to buy another cute Corgi pup with the 200 Timewalking Badges you're given simply for logging in during the event. You can also get an extra 25 badges per day just by testing your lore knowledge via the daily quest which is available for the duration of the anniversary event.

Of course, should you prefer, you could instead spend those badges on previous anniversary items like the Inflatable Thunderfury (did someone say....?) or Van Cleef Costume.

Or, you could simply hold onto the badges and put them toward something sold by the Timewalking vendors during a Timewalking Dungeon bonus week.

We've definitely heard that some people were disappointed by the Corgi, the cuteness isn't for everyone, and we'll forward that feedback on.

All that being said:

Happy 12th anniversary everyone! Thanks for being a part of the World of Warcraft! ❤️ (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 7.1.5 Class Changes
I did leave notes in multiple class forums that 7.1.5 is very much in flux, and that's basically what I did in the mage forum. These other comments came later in the day, near to when I was leaving the office, so I didn't have time to dive into conversations with Warlocks, for example.

We have notes for other specs that we will be sharing throughout the length of the 7.1.5 PTR, but we are not necessarily ready to talk about the state of every spec at this time - Fire is just in a more solid place. I do plan on sharing more 7.1.5 information today and tomorrow as stuff comes to me that is more set-in-stone. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Patch 7.1.5 Fire Changes
As a quick example of the "in flux" status of 7.1.5, we are currently testing a change to the Marquee Bindings that would bring the damage down to 250% instead of 200% (down from 300% on live).

With ice flows, that is reasonable[/i]
Noticed. I've passed the feedback along that Ice Flows is one of the the things that player's feel are hurting the spec. As said, we are still iterating, so I'll update you guys as things come to me. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Artifacts
So, when will you guys increase the drop chance of the WW hidden artifact? No drop, running the scenario since launch
A future patch will add a form of bad luck prevention to this and similar "hidden" Artifact Appearances. (WarcraftDevs)

Quests
Kirin Tor WQs popped for EU this evening... without the emissary quest, intended? If not.. better keep the quests?
Intended, yes! Kirin Tor world quests may now appear without the Emissary being active. (WarcraftDevs)

The 12th anniversary celebration of World of Warcraft has begun! Log in between now and November 30 to earn the WoW’s 12th Anniversary achievement, then check your mail for a special Anniversary Gift Package.

This year’s package will include 200 Timewarped Badges, a Celebration Package item to increase experience and reputation gains from kills by 12% for 1 hour, and a “Letter from the Timewalkers” which will start a new quest that will lead you to either Orgrimmar or Stormwind. Questgivers Historian Llore and Historian Ju’pe will have a daily quest for players to earn additional Timewarped Badges by answering World of Warcraft trivia. If you’d like this year’s anniversary gift, the Corgi Pup, you can purchase it from them along with other additional anniversary goodies.


Thank you to all of the heroes of the Horde and the Alliance for your unfaltering dedication to Azeroth. Whether you are a clever night elf, a nimble gnome, a mystical troll, or a stalwart human, we appreciate your continued support, and we’re looking forward to sharing many more adventures with you for years to come.

Happy 12 years of WoW and 22 years of Warcraft, everyone!

Hopefully by now you've picked up the Box in your mail, which will contain an item that will start a short questline, ending at a vendor who will sell you an adorable Corgi pup (sell is maybe not the right word, since you're given the currency for it from the Anniversary Box, and you should always #AdoptNotShop)!

If for some reason you'd rather not adopt a Corgi (who are very much in need good homes), you're welcome to save the tokens and put them towards rewards in any of the time Timewalking events - I'd recommend waiting for Mists of Pandaria TImewalking in 7.1.5 and putting it towards a new Heavenly Jade Cloud Serpent mount!

Let's do our best to ignore trolls who will try to make a mountain out of our small anniversary celebration.

Thanks to our amazing and dedicated community for being with us and creating amazing memories over the last couple of decades.

As for the anniversary thingy it's absolute trash. It's my opinion.
As yes, the mysterious and "rare" shadowy Level 1 troll. A wonder to behold, I'm sure! Let's play nice, okay?

Classes

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Displacement should now work for mages who know Arcane Momentum.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Weaponmaster no longer causes Goremaw's Bite to deal excessive damage when it activates.

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Pristine Proto-Scale Girdle buffs are no longer shared among multiple Shaman.

Dungeons

Return to Karazhan

• Grouped players can now loot Little Red's Cape for "High Stress Hiatus".

Trial of Valor

• There is now a portal to return to the start of the instance in Haustvald, and Odyn will teleport players out of the instance after Helya is defeated.
  
  • Helya
    
  • The difficulty of several aspects of the Helya encounter have been decreased on Raid Finder difficulty.
    
  • Resolved an issue where sometimes Bilewater Breath would cast while Helya is submerging.
    

Quests

• Warriors on "Capturing the Gateway" who aren’t seeing the required missions should return to their Class Hall, abandon the quest, and then re-accept it from Odyn. You will receive credit for missions you already completed and the remaining missions will now be available.
  
• The Burning Crusade quest "Blessing of Incineratus" can now be completed.

Classes
Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Borrowed Time and Muze’s Unwavering Will (legendary wrist item) now properly reduce the global cooldown of Smite, in addition to Smite’s cast time.

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• The Warlock Glyph of the Observer should now summon an Observer that knows Devour Magic.

Dungeons

• The weekly Grand Challenger’s Bounty now contains Item Level 885+ rewards for players who cleared a Mythic Keystone Level 12 or higher dungeon the prior week.

Return to Karazhan

• Burning Bones should no longer sometimes inflict damage to the tank instead of the player with the debuff.

Player versus Player

• End-of-match rewards from Rated Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds now get increased item level based on your current rating in that bracket, instead of your current item level.
  
  • Developers’ Notes: While the Weekly Quests for each bracket were giving rewards based on rating, the rewards given at the conclusion of a Rated Arena or Rated Battleground weren’t aligned with the challenge involved in earning a high rating. This change makes winning high-rated Arena or Rated Battleground matches more analogous to running repeated high-level Mythic Keystone dungeons.
    
• Rated Battleground wins no longer have a guaranteed chance to reward an item.
  
  • Developers’ Notes: RBG wins would’ve been far too lucrative. We’re lowering the base chance of receiving an item, but also applying some aggressive bad luck protection. While you won’t earn an item from every single RBG win any more, they’ll still be very common, and far more valuable at higher ratings.
    

Of course no action will be taken.
Actually, we did just take action against players who went out of their way to take advantage of this bug. We had two main motivations: First, fairness to those who could have taken advantage of this exploit but chose not to; and second, setting/reinforcing a precedent that flagrant abuse of bugs for personal gain will be taken seriously. Even if you're not concerned with fair play on a community level, from a pure selfish perspective, you're better off not taking advantage of loopholes like these as it's very likely that you'll end up worse off than if you'd never done it at all.

Obviously, the existence of a bug like this is our fault. We should have caught this issue (which arose from a a conflict between two world quests, causing credit to not save properly) during testing. But the existence of our mistake doesn't excuse players' deliberate actions to take advantage of it.

Here's an awkward real-world analogy:

Let's say you're walking down the street one day, when you look down, and notice a crisp bank note being lifted by a gentle breeze around your feet. You look around, and no one is in sight. Well, guess it's your lucky day!

A few moments later, you come across two or three more bank notes. Definitely strange, and you're a bit suspicious because this obviously isn't normal, but they're just lying there. No one can really blame you if you pick them up, right?

Now, you turn the corner, and you see vast stacks of bank notes sitting on a pallet in the middle of the road. It seems like an unfortunate driver failed to properly secure the rear door of his armored truck, leading to this scene. But if you walked up and grabbed a large handful from the pile, would that be an entirely innocent act? Would you be surprised if a police officer who witnessed you do that thought otherwise?

Finally, if you were to fetch large garbage bags, and call up your friends and tell them to do the same, so you could load up as much of the cash as you all could carry.... Still entirely innocent? Sure, the driver made a big mistake in not locking the door, but would there be any surprise if you were tracked down based on CCTV footage and there were consequences for that act?

(Hey, I said it would be an awkward analogy.)

The account actions taken today were generally in direct proportion to the degree of abuse. Players who may have innocently repeated the quest just a few times were not actioned. But on the other end of the spectrum, some who managed to fit in literally hundreds of completions, forming groups to do so, received far more serious penalties.

We apologize for the existence of the bug in the first place, but once an issue like this is out in the wild, we need to act to preserve the spirit of fair play.

Legendary Item Level Hotfix
This is just a cache issue, your Legendary has been upgraded but it's still displaying the old tooltip locally.

Simply exit WoW, go to the WoW folder on your PC and delete the Cache folder. Then open WoW again and your tooltips should update to reflect the new values. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 7.1.5 - Prydaz Changes
The buff to the item coming in 7.1.5 is looking to make it one of the best tanking legendaries out there, so... soon™.

Well I'm sure glad I just got the best tanking trinket as a healer. Oh boy!As a healer, you may not want to use it but the stats could still be considered decent until you get a better slotted item. Survivability does help everyone, despite what some players may say - not every items can conform to simulations and discrepancies in logs while increasing flat-out throughput damage.

Wishing you luck on your next legendary (the mistweaver one coming in 7.1.5 looks to be pretty good)!

Its always "in a future patch, or it's coming. My question is: Why is it necessary to buff these legendary's, why were they put out in their crap state in the first place?
Not every legendary is meant to be on equal footing - sometimes they are meant to change a play style entirely, and sometimes not. Sometimes we miss the mark on them, as we have with the couple that have been buffed and nerfed.

WoW is a living game, things change over time. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Patch 7.1.5 Hunter Changes
Good to note that we are still iterating on 7.1.5, and we are by no means patch-complete at this point. We aren't ready to share our thoughts here until the changes are fully implemented and players can see them firsthand.

Datamining is not something you should be going by 100% when providing feedback.

Let's be a bit more decent with our conversation here. Forum/text coding has absolutely 0 to do with our game development.

From yesterday: https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/sta...21855439458305
@WarcraftDevs:Class updates for Patch 7.1.5 are still in progress, with much more to come. Please keep that in mind if you're looking at datamining.

Yeah nah, heard that before. Remember that 7.1 talent swap change for Warlocks discussion you responded to, once, and never came back? Will believe it when we see it. Y'all got some work to do to regain our faith.There are (literally) hundreds of moving parts within the greater World of Warcraft machine. Gears don't always turn smoothly - sometimes they need a bit of a push and grease, and sometimes they have to be disassembled entirely which can takes time to retune and repair them.

Not to push off blame here, but there are times where we only have one thing to say on current iterations while we focus on future plans. This is rare and far between, but talent swapping is a good example of this. 7.1.5 is the current focus when it comes to class and talent changes. Let's get these changes out before we start throwing point feedback that ends up changing in a few days time. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Patch 7.1.5 Fire changes
As a long time fire mage player (among other classes, don't pigeonhole me ), I think it's very fair to say the spec needed some adjustments - that's something I've heard in Trade and Guild Chat since Legion day one (even the post above me is a player who boosted a mage for this reason).

While there are some (what I personally feel) valid concerns with how adjustments affect investment into Artifacts, our adjustments aren't of the caliber that should warrant "FIRE IS DEAD" being screamed from the mountaintops. We want players to play the spec they want, and not focus on switching in an out of the FotM every patch cycle.

Anyways, it's good to note that we are still iterating on 7.1.5, and we are by no means patch-complete at this point. We are not currently in a state where we are ready to share detailed thoughts on Fire until the changes are fully implemented.

Datamining is not always something you should be going by 100% when providing feedback - just something to keep in mind.

It's concerning that you are trying to justify nerfs with things you hear from guild chat and trade chat. Fact of the matter is, fire is just fine at the moment. It's not too strong, it's not too weak. Just fine. Every logging metric in the world corroborates this, the only people screaming fire is OP are daily dungeon heroes and trolls. Thanks for communicating at least.
There's really no difference between trying to justify nerfs with conversation on the forums than with chats with players in game than with players on Social Media. Every voice matters, and channel with a voice is just as valid as the next.

Nerfs aren't "justified" through conversation alone - in fact I think "justified" is a dangerous word to use here. The developers are looking at tons of information when they make these adjustments. I'm not saying conversation didn't impact changes at all (the previous were my notes, and I'm not a developer), but there are more than enough cases where people laugh and tell their fellow mages to be quiet or they will get them nerfed to cause a bit of an eyebrow raise for myself.

Ion went over why the Bracers are being changed during BlizzCon. You can find information on that elsewhere, as I don't have it readily available to repeat. But every pack should be what you consider "middle of the pack" in an ideal world. Raid vs Mythic environments adjust this, of course, but I don't see Fire falling off the deep end because of this.

In fact, with future secondary stat changes (talked about in the post BlizzCon Q&A) I think gear scaling will improve ten fold, and I foresee that these changes will actually be better long term.

Let's have a deeper discussion on this once 7.1.5 changes are finalized on the PTR, but I'll gather the feedback here for now and send it over.

Thank you again for a quick response! Yesterday felt very grim, but after thinking about it, I have absolutely no reason to believe this iteration of the PTR is final (and I am one of the people who lived through the "jaw dropping damage" of Burning Crusade). I don't necessarily agree with the every voice matters, but, again, how do you weigh the voice of these opinions to what happens in practice? Mages aren't exactly crushing it in Emerald Nightmare or Trial of Valor, they have their strong fights and their weak fights, they aren't shadow priests. By every metric, they are just okay, middle of the pack. This is underscored by the fact that the legendary wrists are indeed too powerful and is largely what props up mage performance.

On a side note for the legendary wrists. I know they were slated for a nerf this patch. I get it, they absolutely were too strong. I would just like to bring up the fact that their current iteration on the ptr makes the proc useless. The nerf they received is incomparable to the nerfs other over the top legendaries received (unholy wrists, havoc ring, etc.), they are simply on a differing order of magnitude. As of right now, in a vacuum, the proc is almost not worth using. This is further exacerbated by the removal of ice floes, which, for all intents and purposes, makes what once was the BIS legendary for fire mages absolutely worthless. Now, it is possible there are further changes that mitigate this nerf (for example, making pyroblast only take 3 seconds to cast, as an example), but as of right now, the bracers are just a glorified stat stick in 7.1.5.Appreciate the feedback on the bracers. I'm not sure of the state of the legendary item changes, they could very well be in flux, too. I've taken note that you guys are not so happy with the change, and I'll get that over the the development team to get some more appropriate feedback both ways.

As for the every voice matters thing, that is one of Blizzard's core values, and something we, as a company, hold very dearly. Every piece of feedback matters as much as the next - great ideas can come from anywhere. It is indeed difficult to weigh the conversation on both sides, but that's part of my job and so I take it seriously!

As a quick example of the "in flux" status of 7.1.5, we are currently testing a change to the Marquee Bindings of the Sun King that would bring the damage down to 250% instead of 200% (down from 300% on live).

Keep in mind that the PTR is NOT FINAL and we are still testing numerous changes to various specs and items.(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)