Dev Interviews, Season 13, ToT Progression, RPPM Trinket Changes, Blue Posts, Poll

Blizzard at PAX East, D3 Boss Mechanics, Legendary Item Drop Rates, Monster Affixes, Poll: What's Your Preferred Format for Dev Interviews

Isle of Thunder US - Stage 2 Unlocked

Patch 5.2 Dev Interviews
Let's take a look at one of the dev interviews today, Ghostcrawler speaking with the Call To Auction.

  • There are so many professions that it is hard to give all of them attention that they deserve. Some ideas that were thrown around are making it easier to switch professions, keeping old recipes if you drop and learn a profession again, and allowing characters to learn more than two professions.
  • Managing the WoW economy is not a trivial task, as it needs to be relatively easy for players to keep up with basic necessities like repair bills, but at the same time still adding cool things to spend gold on like the Grand Expedition Yak or BMAH items that remove gold from the game.
  • Patch 5.3 or 5.4 may add catch up mechanisms to Herbalism and Mining, allowing characters to farm nodes in Pandaria for yields that depend on your skill level.
  • Cross-realm Auction Houses are being explored, especially merging the auction house or player trading between groups of lower population and faction imbalanced realms. This would not be region wide, but balanced like cross-realm zones are.
  • There aren't any current plans to add more tradable pets from the Blizzard Store.
  • Sunsong Ranch may not see any more significant updates, but similar features will be explored in the future.
  • Buy orders for more expensive items may be a possibility in the future.
  • Items that players always buy and never bid on, like flasks, could have longer listing times in the future.
  • A longer term feature would be to separate the auction house system from the mail, as it doesn't fit the fantasy of the game as well as it could.
  • Another long term feature would be a UI to allow bulk milling or prospecting.


Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Another day of Heroic difficulty raids and Blood Legion is on top with 6 bosses down, followed by Exodus, Method, and Envy. The 10 player guilds aren't having as much luck, with DREAM Paragon and Moonz having four bosses down, followed by Gag Reflex with three down.

You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.



Oondasta and Nalak Hotfixes
It seems lower population realms may have a chance to kill Oondasta after all! Keep in mind that this is just a possibility and not an announcement.



Scenario and Brawler's Guild Updates
Dave Kosak shared some more possibilities of what we might see in the future with the Brawler's Guild and scenarios.



PvP Season 13 Begins
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
PvP Season 13 for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria has begun! Team and Personal Ratings have been reset and players can once again take to the Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds to test their mettle.

The bid for PvP supremacy continues. Do you have what it takes to climb to the top of the leaderboards?


Real Proc Per Minute (RPPM) Trinket Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Summary:
We added a bit of cheating in the player’s favor to avoid long streaks of bad luck. This change is now live.

Longer explanation:
Traditionally, trinkets and similar proc effects in the game had high proc chances with an internal cooldown (ICD). This made the procs random in theory, but really pretty predictable. You would know that a trinket would proc on the pull and then reliably every 45 sec (or whatever the ICD was).

For 5.2, we made a change to trinkets to make them less predictable and less boring with the RPPM system. Sometimes you can get lucky and get several back to back procs. This feels cool. Sometimes you can also be unlucky, and get long streaks when the trinket just refuses to proc. A trinket that is intended to proc every 1 minute could in theory go 8 minutes or more without activating.

Last night we hotfixed in a change for trinkets that use the RPPM system. Every time your trinket fails to proc, it increases the chance it will proc. Unlucky streaks will be more rare and extremely unlucky streaks should never happen. In addition, we increased the chance for these trinkets to proc on the pull. To top it off, we increased the proc rates of the Agility and Strength trinkets in Throne of Thunder by 10% and the Intellect and Spirit trinkets by 5%.

Painfully detailed explanation for theorycrafting:
As usual, you absolutely do not need to know or understand the following in order to use or best take advantage of these procs. This info is just for theorycrafters who want to understand the exact details of the system, so that they can model and simulate it better.

Calculate the proc frequency as normal. Based on that, you can figure out the expected average proc interval. We also now keep track of time since the last successful proc (this is different from the time since last chance to proc), capped at 1000 sec. Multiply the proc chance by MAX(1, 1+((TimeSinceLastSuccessfulProc/AverageProcInterval)-1.5)*3). For example, if a proc has an average proc interval of 45 sec, and it’s been 72 sec since your last successful proc, you’ll get a 1.3x multiplier to your proc chance. If you’ve been out of combat for a few min, and it’s been 5 min since your last successful proc, you’ll get a whopping 16.5x multiplier to your proc chance.


Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen now has 65% of the normal proc rate for Balance Druids, up from 50%.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Troves of the Thunder King Scenario Confusing
I know all the elite players here have figured it out, but I just ran the treasure room for the second time. This time I headed toward the door at the other end much quicker only to find it locked. How do I open it? No idea, so I run around looking. I even looted the big box in the middle that looked different than the others and it is still locked.
I spent my entire first run in the first room and came out with over 400g, ~24 parchments, around 15 motes of harmony, 3 Shan'ze stones, 15 Elder Charms, and a few greens.

Potentially not the most lucrative strategy, but really cleaning up that first room and then of course finding keys to open the chests at the end after time runs out worked pretty well.

I think a week lockout for a five minute run is excessive.
There's no lockout. You can run it for as many keys as you have, and you can find more than one key per week, although it is suitably rare.

Considering the whole idea is you're heading into a treasure room, and we want it to feel exciting that you're able to come out with a bunch of treasure, yeah of course we're not going to let you chain-run it and just get tons and tons of gold and tons and tons of items. We'd have to reduce the amount of treasure you can find considerably, which really undermines the entire fantasy of being in a treasure room.

The change in drop rate functions as an effective lockout. It's not exactly like other lockout mechanics, and there is a possibility of exception, but I think it's reasonable to consider it just like other lockouts. Once you've gotten one key, you would probably waste tremendous amounts of time if you set your sights on getting a second key each week.

Also, when you said you're not going to let people chain run it to get tons and tons and tons of items, you make it sound like that was what I suggested. My feeling is that the scenario is punishingly short to become familiar with on what is effectively a once a week basis FIVE MINUTE event.
For sure, and that's all reasonable. You can say "once a week" and be mostly correct, my intent was to correct a common misconception that it's literally 1 key per week. You can argue it's close enough, but my goal is accuracy in information.

What I would have done is allow a person to zone into the scenario, but then be able to take a "practice" option where you get no rewards. When Blizzard's people did internal testing on this stuff, I'm sure it felt like a lot more fun. They probably did not wait a week between each time they tested it out. I think it's extremely easy to forget how SHORT five minutes is and how LONG a week is in real time.
I think it's reasonable to expect a tutorial or practice run on everything in the game, because in general we're fairly experience-focused with everything we do. We tend to go away from punishing mechanics, we try to make things clear and concise, and we want the experience to be fun at every moment. That said, this is running into a room of free stuff to pick up, and even if you only open three of four chests, that's three or four chests of free stuff for 5 minutes of just running around. Obviously at the end of that you may be frustrated that you didn't do better, but I don't think that means we need to rush out and make a tutorial. It's ok that you didn't do well your first time. Next time you'll do better. It's free stuff. It's supposed to be high-tension, and everyone that goes in thinks they can do better next time. Letting people discover how something works is OK sometimes, not everything needs a tutorial, especially when it's a piece of content for level-capped characters that's essentially for fun and doesn't directly increase the power of your character.

The fun thing about soloing old instances is that you get to take your time and take in the atmosphere and the artwork. You notice a lot of things that you miss out when you were doing it with a group because in a group it's "gogogogo".

So what did you guys do with the game's very first "solo scenario"? You added a timer ...
But ... it's not supposed to be like soloing old instances. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Challenge Mode Accessibility
What about bring them to LFD where you can get valor points on full completion. (Even without Bronze completion, you will get loads Valor Points for that).
The developers don't have currently any plans to bring Challenge Modes to the Dungeon Finder tool. Also, the difficulty was specifically designed without PuGs in mind. It's very rare you'll be able to meet the level of coordination required on a random group (since it's likely you've never played with anyone else before).

Also, even if you only complete the daily quest for that Challenge Dungeon of the day, it remains as one of the best methods to cap your Valor Points for the week, even if you get just bronze. So it might be a good idea to keep visiting them if you manage to get a stable group going, even if at first it looks like you aren't improving much. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Poll: What is your Brawler's Guild Rank?
How far have you made it through the challenges in the Brawler's Guild? With new gear in 5.2, now might be a good time to take a look at the Brawler's Guild guide and give it another shot if you didn't finish!

This article was originally published in forum thread: Dev Interviews, Season 13, ToT Progression, RPPM Trinket Changes, Blue Posts, Poll started by chaud View original post
Published on 2013-03-14 06:47 AM
47 Comments
Comments 47 Comments
  1. Farora's Avatar
    I havent even tried the brawler guild, tbh I have no idea what it even is. I went from an active wow player for years to one that just fucks around in the game, to cancelling my account. Guess thats normal though.
  1. Granyala's Avatar
    Brawlers Guild sucks. Waiting half an hour to try again killed the feature for me. (Did 2 bosses)
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xihuitl View Post
    Nearly 40% of respondants have not even tried brawlers guild! And thats from a sample of players more likly to engage in stuff.

    I'd say thats pretty damning on the invite system.
    It would not be so bad if it was tried and not liked, but nearly 40% have not even tried it.

    Invite system fail.
    eh.. try actually reading. Only one person said they haven´t joined because the invite was too expensive, which is laughable if you are lvl 90.

    The biggest reason most people aren´t doing it is because of the wait.. 15-30 minute wait for a 1 minute fight isn´t worth it in MoP because there are so many other things to do right now. In a way, this shows the success of MoP at entertaining us that I still haven´t run out of things to do, and waiting in BG for 15mins is just wasted time right now when the Isle of Thunder has so much more going on.
  1. Fenril's Avatar
    I gave up not even finishing the first round. The game is not balance, just like PVP. You have melee with 500-600K HP hitting these mobs for 50-200K a second and you have us casters that sometimes takes a few seconds to cast something that if we are lucky maybe do 75-100K. So why the melee is moving and hitting it is not as easy as a caster as you need to be standing still to cast.

    I know it might just be me, but this is the same thing as in duels, some classes you can beat and some you can never beat and blizzard has said it themselve that this game is not balance for 1 on 1, so why even have a brawler's guild? I wasted 8k for a invite, but live and learn.
  1. Pacster's Avatar
    Well, if you don't know about the lever(and all the other mechanics) and do the thing without a video then you will likely need 4 or 5 runs to even get to the last room. I did a speed run through the scenario and reached the finish line at the second try only opening the three big chests with the final boss...and I can say the loot was NOT worth it(compared to what the blue guy says he got in the first room). I had 3 keys for the treasure room at the end...but those chests didn't drop well.

    I think most players will just stay in the first 2 rooms in the future.
  1. mmoc65ba707d63's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fenril View Post
    I gave up not even finishing the first round. The game is not balance, just like PVP. You have melee with 500-600K HP hitting these mobs for 50-200K a second and you have us casters that sometimes takes a few seconds to cast something that if we are lucky maybe do 75-100K. So why the melee is moving and hitting it is not as easy as a caster as you need to be standing still to cast.

    I know it might just be me, but this is the same thing as in duels, some classes you can beat and some you can never beat and blizzard has said it themselve that this game is not balance for 1 on 1, so why even have a brawler's guild? I wasted 8k for a invite, but live and learn.
    The only classes I've seen beating rank 8 within the first 2 weeks were mage, lock and spriest.... So, nope.
  1. Freia's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fenril View Post
    I gave up not even finishing the first round. The game is not balance, just like PVP. You have melee with 500-600K HP hitting these mobs for 50-200K a second and you have us casters that sometimes takes a few seconds to cast something that if we are lucky maybe do 75-100K. So why the melee is moving and hitting it is not as easy as a caster as you need to be standing still to cast.

    I know it might just be me, but this is the same thing as in duels, some classes you can beat and some you can never beat and blizzard has said it themselve that this game is not balance for 1 on 1, so why even have a brawler's guild? I wasted 8k for a invite, but live and learn.

    Its ok for range to be able to gimmick mechanics though by standing in areas immune to ground affects that the melee have to run around? Plenty of casters do well in brawlers guild, especially the rank 8 bosses for the above reason. They literally will stand in 1 spot while melee have to run around avoiding beams. And even while getting rank there are several fights that are very melee unfriendly and that range just get by easily.

    And you gave up after the first round? So you were getting hit by the crocodile's frontal cone attack that has a long cast time and gives you plenty of time to get out of. That has nothing to do with you being a caster, that is you not knowing/ignoring mechanics.
  1. F-Minus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pacster View Post
    Well, if you don't know about the lever(and all the other mechanics) and do the thing without a video then you will likely need 4 or 5 runs to even get to the last room. I did a speed run through the scenario and reached the finish line at the second try only opening the three big chests with the final boss...and I can say the loot was NOT worth it(compared to what the blue guy says he got in the first room). I had 3 keys for the treasure room at the end...but those chests didn't drop well.

    I think most players will just stay in the first 2 rooms in the future.
    I actually killed about 10 mobs (effigies, qillen, and those that spawn from chest) and got stuck at the 2nd door cause I looted some chest which acted as stairs (dumb of me), so I had to even get a long way around. I managed to get to the last guy and actually kill right as the time expired, but he counted in the achivement. I explored every room for the lever, since I didn't know where it is, on the first door i actually tried clickin it instead of the lever.

    and all of this on my first try without ever seeing the place before. I haven't used any consumables that you can buy to help you with it. I got about 4 keys, tons of elder chars of good fortune and gold and of course tons of the towell looking thingis for which you can buy the reputation charms.

    All that as a ilvl 496 warrior, so really, no it's not hard and there is enough time to finish it, with all the achivement criteria in one run, altho the achivement counts all runs.

    ---------- Post added 2013-03-14 at 03:23 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Fenril View Post
    I gave up not even finishing the first round. The game is not balance, just like PVP. You have melee with 500-600K HP hitting these mobs for 50-200K a second and you have us casters that sometimes takes a few seconds to cast something that if we are lucky maybe do 75-100K. So why the melee is moving and hitting it is not as easy as a caster as you need to be standing still to cast.

    I know it might just be me, but this is the same thing as in duels, some classes you can beat and some you can never beat and blizzard has said it themselve that this game is not balance for 1 on 1, so why even have a brawler's guild? I wasted 8k for a invite, but live and learn.

    Casters have it a ton easier thanks to their self healing abilities, if anything the fights stink for melee not the other way around, try being a warrior on the last bosses, so much fun.
  1. Primaryjane's Avatar
    All of the best things they "want to do" over the years are the reason I no longer play. There are plenty of games now that already offer what they "want to do" so I play them instead. After playing WoW for 6 years, I no longer find it worth $15 a month when there are better F2Ps out there.
  1. usiris's Avatar
    If anyone is interested in the full write up of the interview it can be found here
  1. Fenril's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Freia View Post
    Its ok for range to be able to gimmick mechanics though by standing in areas immune to ground affects that the melee have to run around? Plenty of casters do well in brawlers guild, especially the rank 8 bosses for the above reason. They literally will stand in 1 spot while melee have to run around avoiding beams. And even while getting rank there are several fights that are very melee unfriendly and that range just get by easily.

    And you gave up after the first round? So you were getting hit by the crocodile's frontal cone attack that has a long cast time and gives you plenty of time to get out of. That has nothing to do with you being a caster, that is you not knowing/ignoring mechanics.
    Did you notice that the classes that you listed are over powered. Please tell me when in the history of world of warcraft have you seen a boomkin over power? It has always been just about every class, Druid Restro, Mages, Hunters, Locks, DKs, Warriors.... but the one class that I want to play isn't or never have been. Notice how much a frost DK spams and what he hits for? Notice 95% of those other classes has a good instance cast spell? Oh what does a boomkin have again? Moonfire, Sunfire and Starfall one a minute.

    How about you taking Wild Mushroom and have to stand there and cast it three button pushes and then another to pop it, while popping it takes about a full second to actually Detonate.

    Oh wait what about Symbiosis. What was your class spell for 86-90? Can you use it to solo? Why can't druids use the Symbiosis lvl 86-90 spell to solo, OH WE CAN'T, the person needs to be in a GROUP.

    Don't forget the Solar Beam (Silence), how many classes do you know that needs to cast a root before that spell so they don't move out of the range (solar light over an enemy target's location). So once again we are casting 2 spells for the price of one that ever other class can cast.

    You know if you want to know how much a class sucks and been screwed over since WOLK, just play a boomkin and try out all those spells that I have listed above. And go back and pick each class that got new spells in CATA and MoP and see who really has it made.
  1. Ferrouswheel's Avatar
    It's safe to say brawlers guild and challenge modes were a slight failure based purely on the lack of interest. Maybe they could have taken those resources and put them elsewhere, like more 5m dungeons. People actually do that content.
  1. Shanseala's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fenril View Post
    Did you notice that the classes that you listed are over powered. Please tell me when in the history of world of warcraft have you seen a boomkin over power? It has always been just about every class, Druid Restro, Mages, Hunters, Locks, DKs, Warriors.... but the one class that I want to play isn't or never have been. Notice how much a frost DK spams and what he hits for? Notice 95% of those other classes has a good instance cast spell? Oh what does a boomkin have again? Moonfire, Sunfire and Starfall one a minute.

    How about you taking Wild Mushroom and have to stand there and cast it three button pushes and then another to pop it, while popping it takes about a full second to actually Detonate.

    Oh wait what about Symbiosis. What was your class spell for 86-90? Can you use it to solo? Why can't druids use the Symbiosis lvl 86-90 spell to solo, OH WE CAN'T, the person needs to be in a GROUP.

    Don't forget the Solar Beam (Silence), how many classes do you know that needs to cast a root before that spell so they don't move out of the range (solar light over an enemy target's location). So once again we are casting 2 spells for the price of one that ever other class can cast.

    You know if you want to know how much a class sucks and been screwed over since WOLK, just play a boomkin and try out all those spells that I have listed above. And go back and pick each class that got new spells in CATA and MoP and see who really has it made.
    I've seen plenty of boomies do well in Brawlers Guild. Sounds like a lot of L2P qq.
  1. lanerios's Avatar
    Brawlers guild, fun fun.. ow wait..

    Argent Dawn EU, alliance side:

    AH -> 13k for an invite, how about no
    BMAH -> 9k for invites, how about no

    Time to camp that BMAH rare.
  1. ProfessorTjc's Avatar
    Go Blood Legion. YOU CAN DO IT!
  1. mmoc65ba707d63's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ferrouswheel View Post
    It's safe to say brawlers guild and challenge modes were a slight failure based purely on the lack of interest. Maybe they could have taken those resources and put them elsewhere, like more 5m dungeons. People actually do that content.
    I guess challenge were not supposed to be for everyone, and they didn't expect a huge partecipation. It's something to bring back that TBC flavor of heroic dungeons a lot of people have been asking since wotlk.
    I didn't have interest in doing challenge mode, because the effort (finding a group, going to the dungeon, countless wipes) is not worth the reward (horrible title and "meh" trasmo set). Last sunday i decided to give it a go with some friends and guildies, and I can easily say it's been one of funniest day of my long wow career.

    Brawler is pretty much a failure in terms of fun. Dps requirements more than "skillcheck", long queues, invite system... these are all things that keep people away.
  1. mmocd950f823e3's Avatar
    Blood Legion, Method and DREAM Paragon reach 7/13 now.
    Let's continue the ride !
  1. Spellweaver's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by lanerios View Post
    Brawlers guild, fun fun.. ow wait..

    Argent Dawn EU, alliance side:

    AH -> 13k for an invite, how about no
    BMAH -> 9k for invites, how about no

    Time to camp that BMAH rare.
    I must be on a different Argent Dawn EU then.
    There's 4 invites on the BMAH, two on ''Long'' (3850g and 1623g) and two on ''Medium'' (1789g and 1704g)
  1. schwarzkopf's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Amerissis View Post
    A That is not true, a high percentage of players do have 5k.
    The problem is - you can't buy you can only bid.

    ---------- Post added 2013-03-14 at 05:38 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Spellweaver View Post
    There's 4 invites on the BMAH, two on ''Long'' (3850g and 1623g) and two on ''Medium'' (1789g and 1704g)
    And you can't just buy any of them... I tried several times, and was always outbid - upwards of 10k+ for some of them.
  1. lanerios's Avatar
    Spellweaver, you are probably on a different AD

    Alliance AH:

    3 for Buyout, 12k.

    BMAH Haven't checked yet.



    Where is your few k exactly?
    @Schwarz, exactly. Bids spiral out of control really fast.
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