SoO Progression, Heroic Thok Video, Sept 20 Hotfixes, Blue Posts and Tweets, Fan Art

Update (3 PM EST): Method is now 12/14!

More Paragon 2.0 Details, The Future of AH Cards is Unknown, New Wallpaper: Reaper of Souls Logo

Puzzles and Hearthstone 2, Fireside Chat #12

Siege of Orgrimmar Heroic Progression
Method is still leading progress tonight without killing any more bosses, with 11/14 bosses down. There are now 9 guilds at 11/14. Over in the 10 player column, Paragon is currently leading with 10/14 bosses down, followed by Sanitas, also at 10/14.



Heroic Thok the Bloodthirsty Video
Method has released their video of the world first Thok kill, which you can see below. Blood Legion also had some interesting moments and a demonstration of a fun bug in their video.



Patch 5.4 Hotfixes: September 20
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
  • Siege of Orgrimmar
    • Norushen
      • Look Within should now correctly favor selecting characters with higher levels of corruption for trials during the Norushen encounter on Raid Finder difficulty.
    • Sha of Pride
      • Altered the visual effects of Bursting Pride, Swelling Pride, Aura of Pride, and Unstable Corruption to improve their clarity and visibility.
      • Portals to Orgrimmar should now spawn properly after defeating the Sha of Pride and soft resetting the instance.
    • Garrosh Hellscream
      • Garrosh no longer has a chance to critically hit when under the effects of Leader of the Pack or other similar buffs from players that have been mind controlled by Touch of Y'Shaarj.

Battlegrounds and Arenas
  • The Conquest vendors have been restored.
  • Fixed an issue where a number of players had a higher than intended Conquest cap.

Items
  • Toy Windmill should now only summon 1 Windmill Lance.

Brewfest

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
PvP Flagging
Flagging on PvE has always been kind of weird. You can be flagged, I'm not flagged, and I can either spend time on a long-cast nuke, or even sheep you, and you have no way to counter me. Or a flagged person can do all sorts of devious things to try to trick people into getting someone else to flag by clicking on them or whatever. Separately there are a ton of abilities in the game, and some of them just cease to work at all if we tried to fix some of them causing flagging. Lastly (?), someone can be flagged and if you heal them that flags you! (My personal favey fav as a healer.)

We're aware. It's become a more relevant discussion because of the activity on the isle and your feedback, but it's a big discussion and a big change, and probably not something we're going to be able to address while the isle is still relevant for most of you.

Bashiok: If you dont hotfix current content so that all can enjoy it, why waste time making changes after it becomes a ghost town?
Sorry my reply was maybe confusing, we're aware PvE flagging in general is weird regardless of the isle or any other content, and a change to PvE flagging in-general is something we're discussing but is probably a ways away. The problem doesn't start and stop with the Timeless Isle, although that of course seems very relevant at the moment.

in other words once the island becomes an empty deserted wasteland with little or no players then well consider making it where PvP is optional well that would kind of be a moot point then dont you think?
Not at all, PvE flagging is sure to continue to be an issue for many years to come without a change. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Timeless Isle Elites
All of the elites telegraph their attacks, meaning they have cast bars (hit V to turn on nameplates) on directed attacks or literal effects that show where their attack will land. Moving and keeping out of those things (use them Void Tendrils!) makes every elite (on the ground-level at least) definitely soloable as it's about knowing when to move out of an attack more than your health or damage. If you're doing it right you really shouldn't take any damage from them. As you go higher up the hill you'll maybe want to join a group. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Conquest Cap Bug
A fix was made to restore the Conquest cap back to the proper level of 2200. A very small number of players were able to purchase more gear than intended, and we will be addressing those on a case-by-case basis.

We're currently working on implementing a hotfix to bring the Conquest vendors back as soon as possible. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Timeless Isle
I hit level cap yesterday and I'm late to the party as it is, so to be able to catch up with my peers quickly put a real smile on my face.
First of all, I'm really glad that you're enjoying our latest patch.
Now you just need to get a new epic helmet so we can see that gremlin, ahem, I mean... goblin smile!

Plenty of people moaning about it ruining the game making older MoP raids obsolete but I don't see it that way at all. I still want to run all of them to see the story, the mechanics and just all the content.
I must say I respect both sides of the argument and I’m pretty sure devs do as well. Ultimately, catch-up mechanics accelerates the devaluing of gear, and that might have at least a psychological impact on the players’ attachment to their items and/or the effort involved in getting them and ultimately to the game itself. That’s the bad part.

The good part is, it also allows for a more relaxed and free play style, where you’re not just as good as the time you invest in the game. Time should matter of course, but it shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all in any game. Individual skill, gameplay, “fun”, and game sociability are just as important.

Content is being added and updated all the time, catch-up mechanics are here to help to bridge the gap between old content and new content, else we’d be back to Karazhan alt raiding times (which was a lot of fun I must say! But you have to admit that it was much more repetitive than it is now when you raid with an alt).

What I particularly like about this system is that it helps the new guy a little bit, but it helps the guy with a ton of alts a lot more, as he can loot chests with all his alts and have a much better chance to completely gear up a freshly dinged 90 in 496 gear. This makes sense to me, since a player with a lot of alts has a much higher chance to have already experienced all the content that is being skipped.

Of course, whoever really wanted to skip content, never needed Timeless Isle. Catch-up mechanics have been introduced in 5.3 for Arena and RBGs, and everyone had a chance to grab a full set of 496 tyrannical gear before 5.4 even arrived.

Besides, 496 is below the ilvl from last patch’s LFR gear, so this doesn’t really have a strong devaluing power over recent gear (5.3 gear). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
well isn't that the goal for pve content? for everyone to play whatevers and be super close to dps?
The definition of "super close" changes over time. It was 30-50% in LK. It has shrunk to 1-2% in MoP. (Source)
I don't believe that shrinking definition is healthy for the game, but not sure how to prevent it. (Source)

If solo-healing challenges like on Norushen are easier to deal with by dpsing, why isn't healer dps somewhat normalized, yet?
Because it's one encounter and classes are too similar as it is. (Source)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
why don't Hunter Aspects add personal utility? bat (drain life on shot), spider (root on shot), turtle (dmg reduction), etc?
It's an idea that sounds better on paper. Many grew annoyed at having to twist Aspects frequently for situational benefit. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
any chance arms could be closer than 50k off fury in t16, having one aoe spec and one single target spec isnt fun
We're okay with Arms being ahead of Fury on cleave / AE, but want to make sure the delta between them is not too large. (Source)

remove the GCD lock from Warrior's plz ... its soo bad to be the only class locked to 1.5sec
The design keeps getting pushed that way because so many warrior players don't like any down time. (Source)
I suspect 1 sec GCD warriors would lead to more "I'm standing around waiting for rage" comments again. (Source)
It's one of those tensions between what might be a superior design vs the expectations of a dude who played warrior for 8 years. (Source)

New Character Models
W/ new models, will Nelves get their ferocity back? Nelf females feel like ditzy airheads with some animations, not amazonians
Not entirely up to me, but I miss them being fierce and a little scary from Warcraft 3. (Source)

True, but you also assume this isn't a priority to players (along with better graphics) and that just isn't true.
We made no such assumption. We did however assume that new boss and armor models in SoO were *also* a priority for players. (Source)
Character models, buildings, trees, world, etc > then 3 month armor/weapons. Missing point that game is OLD looking for 2013.
MoP had many brand new buildings and trees. We agree the character models have fallen behind, which is why we're upgrading them. (Source)

PvE
At the very, very high end, there are more Horde guilds. Alliance ones are still quite successful though. (Source)
It's when you let ridiculous imbalances like the 5% troll racial work on 1/3rd of all ToT bosses go live, so easy to avoid
That one doesn't bother us. We don't want to make situational racials irrelevant when one can finally be useful. (Source)
The active abilities for troll and orc are more to blame in our opinion: just another CD to macro with all the others. (Source)

Hardmode raiding and factional imbalance (among raiding pops, not as a whole): What can be done, if anything?
Not sure anything can be done. We'd have to make Alliance racials quite OP to convince Horde to switch until we reached parity. (Source)
And I fully get that you don't make the call on those types of decisions, so I sympathise- it's a real pickle.
Yeah, we haven't given up on the problem for sure. We just don't have a great solution in hand. (Source)

"Convincing horde to switch" is a straw man, right solution is to balance racials and let time heal those wounds
I don't think the time it would take (years?) would be acceptable to the folks with the complaint. (Source)
(By which I meant the time for equilibrium to reassert itself, not the time to balance numbers.) (Source)

So you acknowledge theyre imbalanced, but do nothing?
Players focus too much on the balance, which likely doesn't even affect them. (Source)
Bemoaning "players care about stuff they shouldn't", is that productive? Maybe attend to feedback, rather than dismissing it?
Part of being a game designer is appreciating all feedback but knowing on which you should act and on which you should file away. (Source)

Have you found that raidbots is inconsistent with your internal testing? If so, to how great a degree?
I've talked about this a few times. It's a good source of data if you understand and respect its limitations. (Source)
For example, comparing the means of populations with very different sample sizes can lead you to bad conclusions. (Source)
Also, numbers change dramatically as players learn the fights and gear up. N numbers might go down when guilds go H. (Source)


PvP
Why aren't there ever legendaries for pvp? I can't raid for hours at a time. I thought MoP was "play it your way"?
Wouldn't a PvP legendary just feel mandatory for every player before they could realistically compete in PvP? (Source)

Why exactly is PW:S nerfed by Battle Fatigue and yet not buffed by Twist of Fate? Same question on Prayer of Mending.
We felt that Battle Fatigue needed to affect absorbs or PvP healing strategy would skew towards using them. (Source)
Was more confused about ToF not affecting PW:S/PoM, not so much the reasoning behind Battle Fatigue affecting absorbs.
We use "heal" to mean literal heals (vs. absorbs) but also the general notion of keeping folks alive. For ToF, we mean the former. (Source)

Fan Art Update
Blizzard updated the art gallery to feature ten new pieces.


This article was originally published in forum thread: SoO Progression, Heroic Thok Video, Sept 20 Hotfixes, Blue Posts and Tweets, Fan Art started by chaud View original post
Published on 2013-09-21 07:07 AM
29 Comments
Comments 29 Comments
  1. mmoc65ba707d63's Avatar
    Ok... my guild will never kill Thok on heroic, now I know.
  1. mmoc1babaee008's Avatar
    To all those people always claiming that 10m is easier : it's clear that that is bullshit. So many 25m guilds on 11/14hc already and none of the 10m guilds yet.
  1. Enlightned's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Silverspark View Post
    To all those people always claiming that 10m is easier : it's clear that that is bullshit. So many 25m guilds on 11/14hc already and none of the 10m guilds yet.
    Only because hardcore 25m guilds actually a) raid more, b) have more raiders and/or alts to min/max their raiding potential and c) the more experienced with world first races raiders are there and not in 10m groups, which while an objective opinion, is very much truth and I think we can all agree to that.
  1. mmocb78ce50268's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Enlightned View Post
    Only because hardcore 25m guilds actually a) raid more, b) have more raiders and/or alts to min/max their raiding potential and c) the more experienced with world first races raiders are there and not in 10m groups, which while an objective opinion, is very much truth and I think we can all agree to that.
    Imho, Paragon is the best guild with the best players if they don't finish first 10 is harder than 25.
  1. mmoc355bd9c6c7's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Enlightned View Post
    Only because hardcore 25m guilds actually a) raid more, b) have more raiders and/or alts to min/max their raiding potential and c) the more experienced with world first races raiders are there and not in 10m groups, which while an objective opinion, is very much truth and I think we can all agree to that.
    dude paragon was the world first most of the time till the end of cata exept tier 13 where spine of deathwing crushed everyone for a while, it was from tier 14 that they went 10 man so they have plenty experience with world first race and i'm pretty sure they have plenty of alts fully geared
    but then again some bosses are harder on 10 and some are harder on 25 , while the 25's got trough thok without too much problems in 10man the top guilds are struggeling and 10man may even not have so much trouble on siegecrafter blackfuse and progress trough that much faster
    soo conclusion is there are waaaaay too many factors to say 25man is harder then 10

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by noskillz View Post
    Ok... my guild will never kill Thok on heroic, now I know.
    dont worry it will probably be nerfed after top 100 or so are done with progress
  1. Dextar's Avatar
    Racial imbalance doesn't bother them but it's clearly an issue, out of the top 20 guilds on both 10 and 25m only 20% (4) are Alliance the other 80% (16) are horde. Horde have always had better racials and now that the game has gotten even more technical every single piece of min-max is important, they don't care because they pocket tons of money from people faction and race changing.

    It makes me sad that they are so dismissive that there is a clear faction imbalance but just choose to disregard it.
  1. Darkhallows's Avatar
    Man, Blackfuse must be a wrecking machine!
  1. Phookah's Avatar
    Maybe I'm missing something, but what was the trash bug in the blood legion video?
  1. velinart's Avatar
    I don't understand the bug too
  1. mmocf94708a214's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dextar View Post
    Racial imbalance doesn't bother them but it's clearly an issue, out of the top 20 guilds on both 10 and 25m only 20% (4) are Alliance the other 80% (16) are horde. Horde have always had better racials and now that the game has gotten even more technical every single piece of min-max is important, they don't care because they pocket tons of money from people faction and race changing.

    It makes me sad that they are so dismissive that there is a clear faction imbalance but just choose to disregard it.
    Or you can just make the choice and change faction, if you think that little racial makes such a difference.
  1. shaak's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Phookah View Post
    Maybe I'm missing something, but what was the trash bug in the blood legion video?
    It wasn't a bug, the mob casts a spell on the ground (the brown stuff in the video) that increases haste and damage by 50% (i believe).
    For whatever reason, they did not use it on their kill.
  1. Grannos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dextar View Post
    Racial imbalance doesn't bother them but it's clearly an issue, out of the top 20 guilds on both 10 and 25m only 20% (4) are Alliance the other 80% (16) are horde. Horde have always had better racials and now that the game has gotten even more technical every single piece of min-max is important, they don't care because they pocket tons of money from people faction and race changing.

    It makes me sad that they are so dismissive that there is a clear faction imbalance but just choose to disregard it.
    You complain that horde has better racials for raiding..'tis true at times, I cannot argue the fact that horde racials are pretty good, however, alliance have ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS had better racials for PVP but I don't see you saying anything about that...
  1. Phookah's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by shaak View Post
    It wasn't a bug, the mob casts a spell on the ground (the brown stuff in the video) that increases haste and damage by 50% (i believe).
    For whatever reason, they did not use it on their kill.
    Ahh, okay. They didn't use it in their video because I'm sure they are aware it isn't intended, and didn't want to get the kill taken away.
  1. Dextar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Grannos View Post
    You complain that horde has better racials for raiding..'tis true at times, I cannot argue the fact that horde racials are pretty good, however, alliance have ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS had better racials for PVP but I don't see you saying anything about that...
    It wasn't a discussion about PvP, it was about PvE imbalances. Your issue is something I agree with as well, IMO racials should just go away, only cosmetic racials should stay, that way people can just play the race they think looks the best. Removes the imbalances completely.
  1. JookyJam's Avatar
    Dang!! People still play this game?
  1. BatteredSausage's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by blaxter View Post
    Imho, Paragon is the best guild with the best players if they don't finish first 10 is harder than 25.
    Dam,maybe you should retract your tongue out of paragons ass a little.
  1. Shudder's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by blaxter View Post
    Imho, Paragon is the best guild with the best players if they don't finish first 10 is harder than 25.
    Agree.

    As for racials and balance, either remove racials or remove factions. I'd prefer if we could all play together and be in the same guilds and that faction only came in to play when doing pvp. Other mmo's handle this by letting you go into a raid or dungeon together with people from the other faction in your guild but you can't join a bg together.
  1. jazzyy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dextar View Post
    Racial imbalance doesn't bother them but it's clearly an issue, out of the top 20 guilds on both 10 and 25m only 20% (4) are Alliance the other 80% (16) are horde. Horde have always had better racials and now that the game has gotten even more technical every single piece of min-max is important, they don't care because they pocket tons of money from people faction and race changing.

    It makes me sad that they are so dismissive that there is a clear faction imbalance but just choose to disregard it.
    because there's no reason to change it, if anything they're actually earning less money. if they buff alliance racials, or nerf horde racials, and the alliance racials end up being just a ONE PERCENT DPS INCREASE, then it could warrant an entire guild wide faction change. that 1% is a huge difference.

    if anything, they're not money grubbing at all, but rather saving top raiders money.
  1. Primaryjane's Avatar
    I feel like Blizz has many more important things to worry about that PvE racial imbalances. Once the world first races stop, no one will give a shit about it again until the world first races start again.
  1. Sajakain's Avatar
    Method is now 12/14 H.
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