Patch 6.1 PTR - Build 19597, Heirloom UI, BRF Tuning, Blue Tweets, AMR BRF Wipe Rates

Dardor's "Crafty Spirits" WD, Underused Skills and Sets, Blizzcon Sets, Wudijo Rank #1 Hardcore Run

Hearthstone Patch 7785, Hearthstone at 25 Million Registered Players

Upcoming Lost Vikings, Nazeebo, Jaina, Anub'arak, and Zeratul Skins

Patch 6.1 PTR - Build 19597
Build 19597 will be deployed to the PTR realms soon. The Mystic Runesaber model is finally in and it has wings. The tooltip only lists ground speed increases though, so we will have to see if Blizzard changes it to a flying mount in a future build.

New Models




New Icons



Achievement Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Feats of Strength
  • Hero of the Storm Owner of the Grave Golem Graves pet from the Heroes of the Storm promotion. Account Wide.

Garrisons

Pet Battles
  • The Longest Day Complete all of the pet battle daily quests listed below in a single day. Reward: Marked Flawless Battle Stone. 10 points. Account Wide.



Spell Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Mounts
  • Mystic Runesaber Summons and dismisses your Trained Snarler. 1.5 sec cast. Mystic Runesaber. Account wide. 1.5 sec cast.

Death Knight (Forums, Talent Calculator)
Talents
  • Breath of Sindragosa: The effect "Mark of Sindragosa causes you to be healed for 10% of spell damage dealt by afflicted enemies" now only works for Blood Death Knights.
  • Defile: The effect "Enemies standing in your Defile deal 10% less damage to you" now only works for Blood Death Knights.
  • Necrotic Plague: The effect "You gain 2 Runic Power whenever a target infected with Necrotic Plague attempts to attack you" now only works for Blood Death Knights.

Priest (Forums, Talent Calculator)

Rogue (Forums, Talent Calculator)
Assassination
  • Assassin's Resolve: Damage dealt while wielding daggers is now increased by 17%, up from 10%. (Tooltip fix.)

Professions
Alchemy
  • Primal Alchemy Alchemy. Instant 1.5 sec cast. Reagents: Primal Spirit, Fireweed x 2, Gorgrond Flytrap x 2, Nagrand Arrowbloom x 2, Starflower x 2, Talador Orchid x 2.

Raid & Dungeon Abilities
  • Crippling Suplex Picks up an enemy and smashes them against his highest threat target, dealing 100 Physical damage Physical damage equal to the maximum health of the picked up enemy. 100 yd range. 3 sec cast.
  • Incendiary Shot Inflicts 5,000 Fire damage, increasing damage taken from the Incendiary Shot by 20%. Stacks. Unlimited range. Instant. 10%. Stacks. Unlimited range. Instant.
  • Massive Shattering Smash The Massive Shattering Smash inflicts 562,500 Fire damage instantly and an additional 90,000 Fire damage every 1 split evenly among all targets within 6 yards, knocking the targets back and creating a Slag Crater. Blackhand will gain Energy if fewer than 4 enemies are hit. Unlimited range. 2 sec cast.
  • Volatile Fire Afflicts random enemies with a seed of Volatile Fire that will explode after 8 sec. When the seed explodes, it inflicts 100,000 Fire damage to all enemies within 8 yards of the explosion. Limited to 2 targets. 100 yd range. Instant. 100 yd range. Instant.



Strings Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
  • VIDEO_OPTIONS_DEPTH_EFFECTS_MEDIUM - Particle depth fading and low-resolution refraction.



Patch 6.0.3 Hotfixes - February 6
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
  • Blackrock Foundry
    • Blackhand
      • [Requires a realm restart.] Siegemaker's Black Iron Plating is now removed by Slag Bomb. Slag Bomb's damage dealt to Siegemakers now scales up based on the number of players in the Raid. To adjust for this change, damage dealt to Siegemakers has been reduced for Impaling Throw by 20% and Slag Bomb by 30% (but damage still scales up based on Raid size).
      • Blackhand's Impaled effect should no longer be incorrectly removed by abilities that remove damage-over-time effects.
      • Shaman's Searing Totem and Liquid Magma should now correctly target Iron Soldiers while on the balcony.
      • Fixed an issue where Exploding Iron Star may sometimes not trigger or deal damage during the transition to Stage Two.
  • Upper Blackrock Spire
    • Sentry Cannons now self-destruct on Heroic difficulty when a player with Engineering uses Safety Protocols.

Battlegrounds and Arenas
  • Eye of the Storm: Fixed an issue where Horde players were unable to capture the flag at Mage Tower.

User Interface 6.1 – New Heirloom System
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
With World of Warcraft patch 6.1, we’re implementing a new system for managing and using your heirloom items.

When we implement patch 6.1, all heirloom items will be automatically added into the new system and you’ll be credited for them across your account. At the time, heirlooms will be modified to obtain maximum levels that fall into one of three groups: 1-60, 61-90, and 91-100. Your heirloom items will all be grandfathered into whichever group is appropriate, with previous maximum levels being upgraded. This means that if you have an heirloom item that previously maxed out at level 85, it will now max out at 90.

Heirlooms with a View
You’ll use this new system much as you use other collections in WoW. After patch 6.1, you’ll log into a character, open your collections screen (default hotkey shift-P) and all of the heirloom items that you’ve previously obtained on any character in your account will appear there. (Please note that you’ll need to log in to every character that currently has heirloom items in their bags or bank or void storage in order to add their heirlooms to the collection. Heirloom items that are currently in the mail will need to be retrieved before they get credited to your master list.)


You can generate a new copy of any of your heirloom items for any of your characters by right-clicking on it, and the newly-generated item will appear in your bags.

A common question we’ve received about this new heirloom system is, “What’s going to happen with heirloom items that I’ve previously enchanted?” Nothing will change with those items. If you have a piece of enchanted heirloom gear on a character today, it will still be there exactly as before. You can still use it and send it to other characters on your account as always. With this new system, you’ll be able to generate additional, unenchanted copies of that item for your characters.

Mounting up at Level 1
We’re also introducing a new achievement and mount reward with Patch 6.1. The Heirloom Hoarder achievement requires 35 different heirloom items obtained on your account, and rewards the new Chauffeured Chopper mount. It’s a mount that can be used by all characters, even brand new level 1 characters. Of course, your new level 1 mage doesn’t know how to operate a mount yet, so he’ll ride passenger while driver Koak Hoburn mans the chopper.
Why drive yourself around when you can hire someone to do it for you?

Blackrock Foundry Boss Tuning
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
At this point, the terms "overtuned" and "undertuned" are mainstays on the forums in the days and weeks following the release of each new raid zone. My best definition for "overtuned" is "harder than it should be"; inversely, "undertuned" means "easier than it should be." But of course everyone has a different idea of should -- of what the tuning target is for a given boss. Some are voicing their own opinion as players, while others are guessing at the developers' intent based on our past history and comments. Unsurprisingly, this lack of context and common ground all too often leads to people talking past each other, accusations of trolling, and other fun forum interactions. To help ground the conversation, I'd like to share a few thoughts and goals about how we approach the difficulty and complexity of our raid bosses.

Tuning in general is a very interesting topic, and one that sees a huge amount of discussion around the office, whether in formal planning meetings early in the design process, or yesterday morning when a coworker stopped by our office to offer a stern glare and some choice words about Oregorger.

As background, Blackrock Foundry itself is a bit of an experiment with a significant split-release initial raid tier. In Cataclysm, the initial 4.0 patch had three raid zones that opened immediately, with a total of 13 bosses (14 on Heroic), and the amount of content felt overwhelming to many. In response, in Mists we partitioned 16 bosses into two separate releases, with Mogu'shan Vaults opening the second week of the expansion, and Heart of Fear and Terrace following a month later. While this helped somewhat, many players still felt rushed, with new bosses unlocking far faster than they could keep up.

And so for Warlords, we added a more significant two-month gap between Highmaul and Foundry, allowing a significant portion of the playerbase to make real headway in Highmaul before we unveiled the remainder of the initial raid content. But that larger gap, while offering what we consider improved pacing, also made Foundry feel like a whole separate tier, which changed expectations slightly. If you quickly cleared half of Normal Highmaul the week of release, would you be able to clear half of Foundry just as quickly? If you had finished working your way through Normal Highmaul and had moved on to Heroic Highmaul when Foundry opened, would Normal Foundry be comparatively easy since you've now been raiding Heroic content?

In several ways, we intended Foundry to complement, rather than supplant, Highmaul. If we had wanted Foundry to be a fresh start and a clean slate, we would have had it completely obsolete all Highmaul gear, the way Normal Jin'rokh dropped items that were 13 item levels better than loot from Heroic Sha of Fear. But Highmaul remains relevant, and Foundry exists as a direct continuation of that progression. While Normal Highmaul was designed with the expectation that players would arrive with dungeon items, Normal Foundry expects players who are mostly Highmaul geared. Thus the numerical targets, in terms of healing and damage throughput, for even an early boss like Gruul or Beastlord Darmac, are comparable to what Ko'ragh demands in Highmaul. So just because you now find Kargath to be simple, does not mean that Oregorger will be equally easy prey. But players who had success in Highmaul should all be able to continue into Foundry, stake a foothold there, and continue to progress in their difficulty of choice. And those who are still working their way through Highmaul will continue to find invaluable items there, which will help them eventually delve deeper into the Foundry.

As for the structure of the zone, Foundry is a winged instance, in the style of Naxxramas or Icecrown Citadel in the past, and we intend for bosses to become more challenging the deeper into a given wing you go, but for the different wings to be largely equal in overall difficulty. Groups who jumped right into the Blast Furnace encounter after downing Gruul and Oregorger likely found themselves in over their heads, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Furnace encounter is "overtuned" -- rather, in essence, you were skipping from bosses 1-3 all the way to bosses 7-9. The early bosses of other wings will offer a more suitable challenge, and will offer valuable item upgrades to help prepare you for the end bosses of each wing, and of course for Blackhand himself.

Our expectations regarding item progression through a zone also may not be obvious, and may contribute to perceptions of "overtuned" encounters. We generally assume that our target audience for a given piece of content is starting out largely (but not entirely) geared with items from the prior difficulty and/or zone. So Normal Foundry was designed to feel appropriately challenging for a group that enters the zone with a fair amount of Normal Highmaul gear. Heroic Foundry expects some amount of either or both Heroic Highmaul or Normal Foundry items. But that's just for the start of the zone. Guilds that are squarely in the target audience for a given difficulty aren't the ones who blaze a trail to the end of a zone: they progress steadily and surely through it, downing a boss or two each week and accumulating a significant amount of loot along the way. Thus, the deeper into the zone you get, the higher the item level we imagine you are likely to have. This, too, often causes guilds to feel that some bosses are "overtuned."

For example, imagine a guild that had fully cleared Heroic Highmaul and had 2 Mythic bosses down, coming straight into Heroic Foundry with an average item level of 672. This guild, being both skilled and somewhat overgeared (compared to the 665ish item level we might imagine for a typical guild entering Heroic Foundry), might steamroll through the first portions of Foundry. They're getting some item level 680 upgrades along the way, but one partial clear's worth of loot isn't enough to drastically change their overall power. But then, before they know it, they're face to face with wing bosses or even Blackhand, which were designed with the expectation that raids would have acquired a significant amount of ilvl 680 Foundry loot, perhaps with some tier set bonuses in play. And so those encounters might be unexpectedly challenging. But the seemingly sudden jump in difficulty isn't due to a tuning error, but rather because this group of trailblazers cleared so quickly that they went from being overgeared for early bosses to actually undergeared for the later ones!

All of the above said, that doesn't mean that we feel every boss in Foundry is perfectly tuned according to our goals. Blackhand is almost certainly a bit too demanding (though not drastically so - he's supposed to be hard!) and will likely see some adjustments going into the new raid lockout next week. And we're keeping a very close eye on raid-size scaling issues that may make certain fights excessively difficult with too few or too many players, and have adjusted a few such mechanics already. But in general, we're satisfied with how things are shaping up so far.

Thanks for reading through all this, and feel free to return to the tuning debates. It wouldn't be the Raids & Dungeons forum without them. But hopefully this shed some light on how we approach the topic on our end.

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
Does multistrike and crit share the same roll for special attacks?This page makes it seem that way: http://t.co/TC7mqD8ypW
No. (Celestalon)
When Nectrotic Plague is up, Blood Boil delays ticks. Is this intended for DKs?
Nope, bug. (Celestalon)

I'm seeing that cascade can hit the same target multiple times for healing... same for damage?
Yep. That's mentioned in our patch notes, though the wording is a little unclear. (Celestalon)

AskMrRobot - Blackrock Foundry Wipe Rate Stats
Our friends at AskMrRobot are using the data collected for their Blackrock Foundry Infographics feature to provide some stats on wipe rate by group item level. You can see more detailed stats about each boss mechanic and such if you upload your guild's logs.



This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 6.1 PTR - Build 19597, Heirloom UI, BRF Tuning, Blue Tweets, AMR BRF Wipe Rates started by chaud View original post
Published on 2015-02-07 12:14 AM
55 Comments
Comments 55 Comments
  1. Shiroh's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Moogled View Post
    Last one I've found was 100% deaf guild with 3/7 Mythic progress in Highmaul. There's a reason voice comm programs are important part of raiding.
    There's a guild with 1/7 Mythic progress that has one 100% blind player that's being helped by audio cues and some target-of-target macros etc.
    These are guilds with MYTHIC progress!
    Really? This is awesome if true. Where can I follow their progress?
  1. Traveler Voltin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by cuppycake View Post
    "Your heirloom items will all be grandfathered into whichever group is appropriate, with previous maximum levels being upgraded. This means that if you have an heirloom item that previously maxed out at level 85, it will now max out at 90."

    Items grandfathered in will get a boost not a nerf.
    Of course you miss it. The 1-85 heirlooms unlock the 1-90 upgrades. The 1-80 only unlock the 1-60
  1. Anonymous Coward's Avatar
    I gave it a fair shot but overall things are just too complex now, nothing really enjoyable about wiping 20 times for 3 hours on Oregorger in normal mode. I have to assume I'm just a bad player, but in a weird way it's freed me from the yoke of raiding. I understand and support the challenge that real raiders deserve. I accept Blizzard's vision for their game. It's just way, way too much for me, so I'll be personally bowing out of it and the game. Take care everyone.
  1. Alopex Major's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lockula View Post
    The golem might be in the similar style as the hearthstone mount. Hopefully it will be to complete x number of games, and not be required to win them all.
    Yeah I hope so. As a total Hearthstone noob, getting eaten alive by experienced players with tons of expensive cards was about the most un-fun thing I've ever played.
  1. aeuhe4yxzhds's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shiroh View Post
    Really? This is awesome if true. Where can I follow their progress?
    100% legally blind?
  1. MasterHamster's Avatar
    People has forgotten how it was to have more than one raid relevant at a time it seems.
  1. Jasper Kazai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kamuimac View Post
    numberwise those fights are very similiar - at least for healers - dmg incoming is very similiar on both - i facerolled it too on 675+ toons in main raid but thats not the gear u should be doin normal in - it should be tuned for 650 max - but blizzard went away from it for whatever reason.

    maybe because they know that there is nothing else in game to do expet for raiding and thats why they are forcing players to "progress" who were never interested in progression - those players for whom flex was designed for and so prudly bragged how much succes it was - how come that it could work perfeckly in SoO and cant work at all in WoD - what caused devs to change their mind - what was the cause of 180 degree turn toward what was pre SoO. that is what interest me most.
    Do you realize that Flex is now baseline? Both Normal and Heroic are capable of flexing. And current normal difficulty is the same as the original flex difficulty when they introduced it - they moved everything down one. Heroic is technically the old normal difficulty. So normal raiding is actually easier now. Also, the players who "have no interest in progression" are not raiding to begin with. Raiding is progression. There is no way around it. Someone who is sincerely "not interested in progression" is going to do LFR and nothing above it, since that is just a tour of the content.
    And Gruul is incredibly easy. He is definitely the loot piñata of BRF. He is maybe harder than Heroic Kargath, but even that is a bit of a stretch. There's no way he's harder than any other Heroic Highmaul boss, though. Now, Oregorger is definitely a stupid boss, but that is due to dumb mechanics, not numbers.
  1. mmoc59b5827c7e's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    People has forgotten how it was to have more than one raid relevant at a time it seems.
    Most people didnt even play during this time, let alone raiding.
  1. Magemaer's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Arvandor View Post
    pseudo content (garrison)..

    no-functional pvp (ashran)..

    overtuned pve (brf)..

    WELCOME TO CATA!
    we still need patches containing only recycled dungeons; and a very disapointing endboss/endraid.
  1. Dome Fossil's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shiroh View Post
    Really? This is awesome if true. Where can I follow their progress?
    I know there was one blind guy who raided, his friend guiding him on where to move and whatnot. That might be the same guy. He even has an item named after him (or his friend?) in the game, Davidian's All-Seeing Eyes, with the flavor text, "Sharp enough to see for two men."

    EDIT: I went and checked, that was the friend's item. The blind guy's is Hexu's Amplifying Helm, with the flavor text, "A man with a friend is never without vision."
  1. Duster505's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Moogled View Post
    You're saying "players that can't play" will leave. So from the tone of your comment it seems Blizzard should be the one fixing the situation by making content too easy, and chasing away the other part of the population who seek challenging content, instead of "players who can't play" putting some effort in the game they play.

    Something that I've wanted to say for a long time, there are guilds with disabled people in them.
    Last one I've found was 100% deaf guild with 3/7 Mythic progress in Highmaul. There's a reason voice comm programs are important part of raiding.
    There's a guild with 1/7 Mythic progress that has one 100% blind player that's being helped by audio cues and some target-of-target macros etc.
    These are guilds with MYTHIC progress!
    And then there's people who are whining they can't do Normal, or that LFR is their "end game progress". How someone isn't deeply ashamed to say he, as a fully functioning person, can't do what someone who is more or less heavily impaired, is beyond me.
    This has nothing to do about a blind guy. This has to do with ppl that couldn't play from start of this expansion for many different reasons. It has nothing to do with being good or bad players - but the simple fact of decent item curve. Most players don't want to be carried trough content. And neither do they want to have to play many tiers of outdated content that most are bored of death with.
  1. mmoc14a888ba76's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Moogled View Post
    You're mistaking *progress* for *faceroll*. If you have 7/7 Normal with mostly Normal gear, you should also have a HC piece or two from garrison, then you can go into BRF Normal without any major problems, but you'll PROGRESS on those fights. Expect 10-20-30 pulls to get the mechanics down and maybe a lucky break.
    My guild has ~660 average ilvl and we killed most of bosses in 1-3 tries, except Thogar and Furnace which were 9 and 12. That's NOT progress. That's faceroll.

    So blue explanation is nowhere near idiotic. If you're HM normal geared you'll be killing wing starter bosses for a week or two to get some gear, including maybe HC HM if that's your thing, and then after few weeks you'll be able to snatch a few wing end bosses. That's what it means to progress.

    Buy you want to walk in there with ilvl655 and just stroll through wings? Nope. And that's how it should be. Because again, progress. If you want to walk through wings, there's LFR.
    That's the first time I saw Flex being qualified as progress.. 10-30 attempts per boss? If that's true, what they did this expansion was destroy not one, but both difficulties that existed for casuals/ pugs.

    Not to mention, those 'heroic' gear pieces are very heavily timegated and take some investment in the table-clicking game. Same with making money for covering the repair costs for those whose guild doesn't cover those.

    Where does one queue for this LFR version of BRF though? I'd welcome something new to see.

    Most players don't want to be carried trough content. And neither do they want to have to play many tiers of outdated content that most are bored of death with.
    Basically. Especially not if the content is thematically the serving of oat porridge that Highmaul feels like, although opinions may vary on that.
  1. MrGrimord's Avatar
    Why does Blood dk get all the fun stuff from all lvl 100 talents??? Wtf? They're not enought blood tank already?!
  1. Jasper Kazai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eat Milk View Post
    Where does one queue for this LFR version of BRF though? I'd welcome something new to see.
    I imagine you're being sarcastic, but LFR is coming later. They are staggering the releases. Highmaul's LFR was released later too, but it didn't seem that way since a lot of people were still in the process of leveling.
  1. mmocfd328e0b6e's Avatar
    I really like how you fight eachother, but the facts are facts....

    above 80% kill on hc is at 680 gear
    above 80% kill on normal is at 672 gear

    and the bosses drop 665 items on normal.
    So why the f. I go there if already have got the same itemlevel...

    BRF is a fail, beacuse this is not a new tier... the min. itemlevel for flex raids need to be 636-640....
    Becuase Blizzard said at the end of MoP: flex mode will be optinal... SO WTF is this now?

    Nowadays people think normal raids are the base and heroic is the big progress... and they don't even think about Mythic...
    It's like most of the people just gave up the real heroic content... LFR-N-HC-My are just time sink, N-HC is the way...
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