Blizzcon in a Box Contest, Patch 5.4 Hotfixes: October 21

The Gothic Feeling in RoS, Paladins and Crusaders, Blue Posts

Hearthstone Innkeeper's Invitational: Player Spotlight

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

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.

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
We're currently evaluating further realm connections and will provide updates as they're available.

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.

This article was originally published in forum thread: SoO Raid Schedule, Arena Popularity, Oct 22 Hotfixes, Next Connected Realms, Fan Art started by chaud View original post
Comments 33 Comments
  1. Azahel's Avatar
    Garrosh was hell of a fight on LFR. Last Night I was about to leave after out 4th wipe, but gladly most of my group left instead.
    The new tank wasn't as awesome as the previous (with his 1million hp) BUT he had a better time taunting multiple adds and get them to iron star.
    The 5th attempt went so smoothly it looked easy.

    I think that the hardest part though was that people were still figuring out strategy.
    All in all, it was a good one.
  1. Synstir's Avatar
    Eeeehhh I like those mounts!
    How to get them?
  1. Yriel's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dahr View Post
    Err.. My server is merged with at least 3 others... What server are you playing on?
    Thats interesting because there still hasn't been an official announcement if any EU realms are merged yet. The only thing we got from the CMs is the old soon™ routine.
    Are you sure you don't confuse that with cross-realms ?
  1. Darmalus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cronnix View Post
    Hey, they gotta make money somehow. That being said, it is a bit sad to see the game getting this automated. Not that I didn't see it coming, but still..
    It's a natural result of the value of any stat to a player being complete opaque in-game. If you couldn't use out-of-game sources, 99.9% of the players would have no idea what stats to use, what their soft caps are, etc. Sure, some people would guess, and guess right, but most would have no idea. I'd be back to the days of warriors stacking spirit, because being a "spirited warrior" sounds like something good.
  1. markdall's Avatar
    The only hotfix note I want to see is:

    * Fixed the mouse bug where you're suddenly looking in and facing another direction which existed in Windows 7 and Windows 8 but which happens about every 15 mouse clicks in Windows 8.1.

    Please??
  1. Primaryjane's Avatar
    Chaud, that spread sheet is awesome! Thanks! Where'd the data come from though?
  1. Skorkin's Avatar
    For those complaining about AskMrRobot's "wise" coin usage feature you can use other sites to get the same information. GuildOx comes to mind for coins.
  1. Every Pwny's Avatar
    The mounts are also not account wide so if you get it on one character you can't use it on others...unless you get the achievement again on another character.
  1. sidelsky18's Avatar
    Wow that 75% mage tier bonus nerf
  1. imkrazy182's Avatar
    It would be nice to have a button of sort to pause your queue. Let you go do what you need to (food/drink/bio) then un-pause the queue, without losing your spot. Of course, there should be a limit (15 mins or so) to prevent abuse.
  1. MrExcelion's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by imkrazy182 View Post
    It would be nice to have a button of sort to pause your queue. Let you go do what you need to (food/drink/bio) then un-pause the queue, without losing your spot. Of course, there should be a limit (15 mins or so) to prevent abuse.
    You can delay queues with Proving Grounds
  1. ayian's Avatar
    Much needed Blood DK change. Maybe we will start seeing less of them in arena.
  1. gbingham93's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by frozenembers View Post
    I strongly disagree with this. That fight is pretty easy in LFR. My group had some horrid healers and we still downed him after a few wipes, that shouldn't have happened anyway as one pull a tank left 1 min after the pull. And that's on day one... now think about 3 weeks out... will start to be one shot like the rest of the raid.
    Because paying that 1$ monthly fee is so much

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