"Ask the Devs" Round 2: Itemization - Answers (Part 1)

Isle of Thunder - Stage 3 Unlocked

Heroic Dark Animus 25 Video
We finally have some videos of the Heroic Dark Animus encounter! It took several days for guilds to defeat this encounter, making it the hardest fight so far. Icy Veins has a nice strategy guide if you don't understand what is going on.



Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Blood Legion and Method joined DREAM Paragon at 11/13 today! You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.



Zandalari Warbringers Hotfix Clarification
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Ok, here is clarification from Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas (Watcher) regarding the change to Zandalari Warbringers.

Yes, it’s intentional. Zandalari Warscouts are supposed to be difficult solo encounters; you can use various control mechanics on them.
Zandalari Warbringers, however, are designed for groups of players. They’re immune to snares and other control effects for the same reason that most 5-player dungeon bosses are: those effects would make the encounter easier than intended. Grab some friends, or invite the people camping the spawn to join your group, and you should be just fine.


In summary, it is dangerous to go alone. Bringing friends should make taking down a Warbringer much more manageable.

Was making Horrific Visage uninterruptabale also intended?
Bring a friend with a dispel magic ability to counter Horrific Visage's fear effect.

Oondasta Spawn Rate Increased
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
I'd like to have an elite world boss not a rare world boss
Agreed, this is an amazing fight of epic proportions and really tiny arms. We definitely want players to have more chances to experience it. The epicness should be about fighting it, not about finding when it spawns, even though that can also be somewhat fun as long as the timer is not so long that it gets frustrating.

You should be able to find Mr. “Tiny Hands” Oondasta a bit more often now.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Secrets of the Empire Drops and Raid Difficulty
It seems like these are awarded randomly per person (LFR style) from normal mode raids. Is this intended? The previous tier had legendary items dropping randomly per person from LFR and to the raid as a whole in normal.

Has anyone gotten a secret from LFR and Normal/Heroic? It seems as if just like the rep you can only get a shot at a secret once per boss.

Everyone has a personal chance to receive a Secrets of the Empire drop on Normal/Heroic; the quest loot functions the same way that the Raid Finder version of the Legendary quest did prior to 5.2.

We wanted to have a single shared chance per boss per week because we'd prefer to avoid making raiders who are killing bosses on non-Raid Finder runs to feel obligated to do Raid Finder specifically for Legendary quest drops. If those players want to do it for Valor or off-spec gear, that’s great, but doing Raid Finder shouldn’t be necessary for optimal Legendary acquisition. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mandatory Daily Quests
I think one of the issues is not the amount of dailies, but the feeling that they're mandatory. We don't have any VP items on the new 5.2 daily reps (not technically true there are a couple, but they're low enough ilvl as to not feel mandatory for raiders), and we'll see how that feels for everyone. There's also not a lot of clarity about what you should be doing to progress in the most efficient way. If you hit 90 today you'd be wise to run some Heroics and only do the 5.1 dailies until you have the ilvl to queue for 5.0 LFR's, and then progress to 5.2 LFR, and you can probably ignore pretty much everything else. That is, if getting to 5.2 raids is your goal.

But that's the important question, what is your goal? Why are you doing all of the dailies? What are you looking to accomplish? If it's to see the raid content then certainly working on all of the dailies every day is not going to help get you there, or at least not very quickly. And like you said trying to do all of them every day can really eat up a big chunk of time.

We have a lot of level-cap questing content because there are a lot of people that just like questing, and it's there and gives some reward for doing it, but if you don't like that kind of content we don't want for it to feel mandatory. 5.2 was one step in that direction and if it feels like a good compromise for everyone we can keep going that way. If you want a big shiny dragon, sure you'll have to spend time on dailies, but it won't keep you from being able to progress smoothly, or feeling like you're missing out on an avenue of progression.

The problem is dailies have become Blizz's go-to solo pve content for each new content patch.

5.1, what was the new pve solo content to do? Dailies. 5.2? Dailies. LFD/LFR que's are so long, you can either sit in town, or do the only new content - dailies. People look forward to the content patches for NEW stuff to do, and when the only option for pve solo content is dailies, of course they will be sick of it.

If we could produce unlimited amounts of content we would, of course, but the laws of physics unfortunately prevent it. Having repeatable questing content gives people who enjoy questing something to do. You're being unfair by glossing over LFR and dungeons because of queues. If you don't want to wait for queues you can build your own group and zone into the dungeon, like you did before (and dailies existed then too!), but the fact of the matter is that it's still more convenient despite the queue times. Or, you could play a tank or healer and spend no time in queues. That's always an option.

If you have other solutions I'd be happy to hear them. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
How likely is it you guys will soon take similar steps across classes? Mists offered simplfied talents; are abilities next?
Great question. We tried to prune abilities for MoP without much success. It's tough to simplify classes in a game this old. (Source)
Don't want to give everyone a very simple rotation. Would love less action bar bloat, but which stuff to cut is always tough. (Source)

If you're allowed to say...when you guys test out theroretical dps between specs, what average iLvLs do you use?
All of them. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Hey GC do you have any comment regarding the future of DW frost? Seems the 2h specs are way ahead and aoe has taken a beating
DK DW is pretty good whenever you need to cleave. (Source)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Do you ever see the team overhauling hunter aspects to be more fun and compelling?
Overhaul would be unlikely. Cutting them more likely. Not enough design space to make them fun and equal. (Source)

before you discover/nerfed stampede bug, u nerfed stampede heals, lynx rush, and bestial wrath. Then silenc shot, powershot.
Yes, all of that is true. A lot of different reasons though. BW was more of a philosophical change not a means to "fix hunters." (Source)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Hey Greg, can you please give us some insight into why IB doesnt spread LB anymore? Don't understand it at all...
The synergy between Inferno Blast and Living Bomb was so strong that Fire wouldn't have taken the other bombs seriously. (Source)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Changed my weapon yesterday but my little "sha" miss me. Any plan for a minor glyph of Sha for Priest ?
Probably. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
With Pummel & Disrupting shout being free to use as a Melee DPS what is the justification for the cost on Kick for rogues.
Kick no longer has a cost. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Thanks for the warlock nerfs, I really needed to do even less damage than everyone else. #error112 #occupygregstreet
If you're doing less damage than everyone, I'm not sure it's a warlock issue. Their DPS overall is pretty competitive. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
GC, has the 25% dmg buff to Prot Warrior SS been implemented? The tooltip damage and actual damage it inflicts don't match up!
Tooltips don't always update automatically when we change numbers on the server. Pretty sure that change is live though. (Source)

Hopefully not reposting. Interested in seeming lack of change to Fury warrior for 5.2. Not complaining, just curious.
Pretty happy with Fury overall. We did make slight changes to Bloodsurge. What are your concerns (if any)? (Source)

Oondasta in China
Dave Kosak shared a picture of wipes on Oondasta in China. They use gravestones rather than skeletons to represent corpses.



The Daily Blink - One for the Warriors
The Daily Blink has a better way to handle Void Storage.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Heroic Dark Animus Video, ToT Progression, Oondasta Spawn Rate, Blue Posts, Comic started by chaud View original post
Comments 60 Comments
  1. mmoc6bff638b3f's Avatar
    Here we go MMOChamp aka US-champ strikes again, BL frontpage video which is not even WF when method already released the WF video.
  1. mmocd8f86ed6f0's Avatar
    I really dont get China,
    in a country where they are willing to skin a Dog alive, cook and eat it, not to mention the use of Deer penis and Human Pubic hair in Traditional medicines, and they are squeamish about the use of a skeleton in a video game. Still funny to see all those grave stones
  1. mmoc47b4060ff1's Avatar
    Exorsus makes the video first, US champ posts BL's. Ha.
  1. Ryme's Avatar
    Adhel makes me proud to be a rogue
  1. mmoc27cecdbbd7's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by mugutu View Post
    That mage comment...glad he thinks it's better to have Living Bomb be a waste for all three specs instead of mandatory for one.
    And LB still wouldn't be manadatory on single target fights.
  1. scwasp's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne25uk View Post

    Blood Legion are really sad "im shaking dude" lol get a life honestly
    This comment of yours is much more sad than anything in the Dark Animus video.
  1. Kivimetsan's Avatar
    Grave stones are more depressing than skeletons though... or am I really desensitized? Probably the latter
  1. Tarx's Avatar
    gravestones scks skeletons are better did you see the chines undeads?
  1. Reyzzz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by jimme View Post
    And LB still wouldn't be manadatory on single target fights.
    Thought they were fairly equal vs single target.
  1. mmoc37cfb5e035's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne25uk View Post
    Blood Legion are really sad "im shaking dude" lol get a life honestly
    Everyone give the new MMO generation a warm welcome!
  1. Auxis's Avatar
    I don't understand. The Chinese game had to remove all skeletons and skulls due to culture, correct?

    Then why does Oondasta still have his giant skull battering ram on his shoulder in that picture?
    Yes, you can say that it's meant to be a troll head, but that is clearly the hole in the skull where the nose sits.
  1. Swizzle's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by spyke View Post
    Here we go MMOChamp aka US-champ strikes again, BL frontpage video which is not even WF when method already released the WF video.
    MMO-Champ was started by Europeans...also, it's because of guild sponsorship and site advertisement, nothing to do with EU or US hate/bias.
  1. mmoc6bff638b3f's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by I-Swizzle-I View Post
    MMO-Champ was started by Europeans...also, it's because of guild sponsorship and site advertisement, nothing to do with EU or US hate/bias.
    MMOChamp was started by EU but due to it's success it was later bought by US (curse) now you are saying that curse is officially supporting BL? If that is really the case then it's really sad to see the legacy of MMOChamp go down hill with a pro us guild campaign. MMOChamp was THE site to go back then, it had a reputation and neutral view of all things, I was sure the problem was chaud, with Boubouille this would never happen.
  1. IIamaKing's Avatar
    Any one remember when Daily Blink was funny? Nither do I.
  1. Swizzle's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by spyke View Post
    MMOChamp was started by EU but due to it's success it was later bought by US (curse) now you are saying that curse is officially supporting BL? If that is really the case then it's really sad to see the legacy of MMOChamp go down hill with a pro us guild campaign. MMOChamp was THE site to go back then, it had a reputation and neutral view of all things, I was sure the problem was chaud, with Boubouille this would never happen.
    No we are not, it's that certain other websites support certain other guilds. Also, Boub is still here...there really is no region bias, just business.
  1. apepi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Count Zero View Post
    That sea of tombstones is way damn creepier than a bunch of bones on the ground.
    I thought so too:/
  1. ejpaints's Avatar
    Does it really matter who's video was first? It was a cool vid and I'm happy for BL. Most of them are good peeps from my experience on beta with them. And it's kinda awesome seeing how excited they get when they get that kill down.

    As for the "sad" comment. They're competing to do something in a race to world first. I'd be shaking too. Video game or not.
  1. mmocced9c7d33d's Avatar
    dailyblink promoting a new movie? Ok, sell outs, screw them.

    Quote Originally Posted by Freia View Post
    Oondasta is not fun. It is not an epic fight. On high pop servers, it is a laggy mess. You will die a ton of times because the tank will die due to lack of heals because of lag and then run around killing loads of people at a time with his frontal cone.

    He is a failure on the part of blizzard.
    This.

    Quote Originally Posted by ejpaints View Post
    Does it really matter who's video was first?
    Yes, it does matter, the truth always matters.
  1. mmoc6bff638b3f's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by I-Swizzle-I View Post
    No we are not, it's that certain other websites support certain other guilds. Also, Boub is still here...there really is no region bias, just business.
    So basically MMOChamp is a busine$$ thus one might achieve the front page 'news' not by merit but by other channel$. It's like a newspaper that only talks good things about a politician because he just made a donation to the paper or because the paper can profit with him regardless of being the most important news of the day or not. K gotcha.

    to sum it up impartial news on MMOChamp...? not so much these days.
  1. Swizzle's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by spyke View Post
    So basically MMOChamp is a busine$$ thus one might achieve the front page 'news' not by merit but by other channel$. It's like a newspaper that only talks good things about a politician because he just made a donation to the paper or because the paper can profit with him regardless of being the most important news of the day or not. K gotcha.

    to sum it up impartial news on MMOChamp...? not so much these days.
    What? Do you see McDonald's advertising Burger King? Honda advertising Toyota? The BBC advertising CNN? No...that just doesn't happen in the world. We still report the world's firsts and give recognition to the guilds that got them. We're not saying that BL was the first to release the video, it's just the video we choose to put on our site, since the other site does the same. We still report things as they happen how they happen, but a video is just a nice addition, but it's not news that needs impartiality, it's a freaking video after all.

Site Navigation