Legion Alpha - Build 21215

Hey all,
We have another alpha build going up today, with some exciting updates:

• New Specialization Unlocked – We have 1 additional specialization ready for testing. We’d love any and all feedback about gameplay, artifact quest line, abilities, etc.
  
  • Feral Druid
• Class Status – We’re continuing to iterate on our class abilities and talents, based on testing and feedback. This build has many revisions scattered around the classes, but here are some highlights:
  
  • Retribution Paladins – More talent revisions have been made, their Mastery has been tweaked, along with a variety of bugfixes to Haste affecting rotational abilities. Conviction has also been turned into a talent.
  • Marksmanship Hunters – A few significant talent changes have occurred.
  • Subtlety Rogues – Many changes to talents and base abilities to adjust rotational speed.
  • Destruction Warlocks – Mastery tweaked.
  • Outlaw Rogues – Roll the Bones has received some additional new changes.
  • Demonology Warlocks – Infernals’ and Doomguards’ damage has been significantly increased (warning: they’re likely *too* strong now, and will be toned back soon).
• Level 110 PvP Realm – A new alpha realm has opened up, which includes:
  
  • Level 110 Character Templates: Fully upgraded artifacts and ilvl 810 PvP Gear.
  • No access to Legion outdoor zones except for Dalaran.
  • Full access to the new Honor System at level 110, including PvP talents and prestiging. You’ll be able to earn honor, increase honor level, and unlock PvP talents. No PvP gear will be rewarded yet.
  • Battlegrounds are available for queuing, with the exception of Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest. Skirmishes, Ashran, Rated Battlegrounds, War Games, and all Arenas are unavailable.
  • Secondary Stats on Level 110 Gear – We've modified how Secondary Stats are itemized on gear at level 110, to get players up to the levels of secondary stats that feel good, earlier on. Full mathy details for the theorycrafters here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20742704730

Thanks, and we look forward to your feedback!

Also, check out the design notes from the previous build, if you haven't already as well: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20742774078

Outlaw Rogues – Roll the Bones has received some additional new changes

Is it possible you can elaborate on what has changed? Testing RtB buff proc rates and breakdowns is a pretty substantial undertaking[/i]

Nothing changed with the proc rate. Just the effects, and some visuals changed.

Warning, this post is mathy. You do not need to know/understand any of this to succeed in Legion. This is purely for the curious math-oriented players who want to know how things work.

Secondary stats are going to scale a little differently in Legion. There are a few goals here.

• Get players to the 'feels good' level of secondary stats sooner. (A Fire Mage doesn't feel so good with 5% crit.)
• Reduce the feeling of being nerfed as you level up.
• Reduce the degree that players scale exponentially, especially at high gear levels.
• Don't reduce the degree of stat customization that players have.
• Ensure that players still can't get to crazy levels of stats that break the game, or reduce fun.

Using purely ballpark numbers, players in Warlords started their endgame experience with about 15% of their favorite stat, and 7.5% of the other stats, resulting in a total multiplier from secondary stats of about 1.54. By the end of the expansion, they had something like 50% of their favorite stat, and 20% of the other stats, resulting in a total multiplier from secondary stats of about 3.11. This effect is even more pronounced for tanks and healers, due to Bonus Armor and Spirit being an additional extra-strong multiplier. And since stats on gear scale exponentially with ilvl, that transition started off slow, then ramped up quickly near the end, spending very little time in the sweet spot in the middle.

For Legion, we'll be making some changes to these systems, in order to improve this situation. Here's what we've done in the latest Alpha build:

• Conversion rates of Rating->% for secondary stats will not go up as much as they otherwise would, by a huge margin. The conversion rates will end up at 110 at less than half of what they otherwise would have, resulting in Legion dungeon blue gear providing over double the total secondary stat %s, as the it did in prior expansions.
• Starting at ilvl 800, the exponential curve for secondary stats will be significantly reduced, nearly to being linear (this is per-item, not related to the character's average item level). Primary stats and Stamina will continue to scale exponentially with ilvl at the same rate as before. This will mean that players retain all of the same customization they had, but with secondary stat %s not scaling higher than they had before, by the end of the expansion.

The removal of multistrike also affects this, reducing how multiplicative the total system is, while further concentrating stats into the other 4. That will mean that in dungeon blues, a player may have 30% of their favorite stat, and 15% of the other stats, resulting in a multiplier of 1.78. By the end of the expansion, they may have 50% of their favorite stat, and 20% of the other stats, same as before, for a total multiplier of 2.59. The net result is that the multiplier difference between start and end is drastically reduced, and players spend the vast majority of the expansion in the ranges that feel best, while primary stats still scaling exponentially ensures that player power grows as needed to feel rewarding.

Feedback on how this feels once you get to start playing with a variety of gear levels will be especially valuable. Thanks!

EDIT: Clarified one part.

Is this something already implemented that we will be able to get a feel for in lvl 110 dungeons or raid testing without lvl 110 being open yet in Alpha?
Yes, this is implemented in today's Alpha build.

Has the way Armor increases with item level changed?
There were some tweaks in this build to armor coefficient by level, mostly to smooth out the 100 to 103 range, where there was previously a sharp drop in armor effectiveness.

How will this be implemented for trinkets with scaling procs? Will this be implemented as a change to the prop point table above level 110 dungeon blues ilvl or something else?
The trinket's item level will determine the rate at which the secondary stat is scaled. Essentially, the proc will be subject to the same rules as if it passively existed on the item for its duration.

How exactly is the ilvl relationship with secondaries changing post ilvl 800? Feel free to post actual math.
I believe dataminers will find a new gametable with the exact coefficients for each ilvl.

EDIT: Yep, that's the one (see immediately following post).

A large enough ilvl difference has always been enough to beat different secondary stats, and that will only be a little moreso the case than before.

This change doesn't make higher ilvl gear less rewarding, just skews that reward toward the primary stats, so that the value of primaries (additive) and secondary (multiplicative) stay in sync, and secondaries don't scale out of control. It doesn't take much; the skewing is on the order of 0.66% per ilvl difference. But that exponential factor adds up over the course of an expansion, which this avoids.

With this change, will the ilevel difference before secondary stats don't matter be significantly smaller compared to live, or will it only be maybe one or two less than currently? (I know this is really general since is different for different specs)
It's small. Something like 5-15% less than it was before. So if that threshold for you was 10-15ilvls, it may be 9-13ilvls in Legion.

Players typically compare items within a relatively tight slice (probably within 20ilvls), where this change has a relatively minor impact. This change only has a large impact on a grand scale like over the course of a whole expansion.

In the upcoming Patch 6.2.4, we're moving to a new Battle.net infrastructure. There are changes to many of the Battle.net-related Lua APIs, including Battle.net friends and Battle.net chat. If you maintain an AddOn that makes use of those features, you may want to log in to the PTR and test that your AddOn still functions correctly. To help AddOn authors troubleshoot potential compatibility issues, we’ve highlighted a few of the big changes to help direct you to areas that may need your attention.

Conversations
Support for conversations has been removed. This includes all C-functions (BNCreateConversation, BNGetConversationInfo, etc.) as well as all Lua/XML references to conversations.

Toons
The new Battle.net architecture doesn’t have the concept of “Toons”. Instead, we refer to “GameAccounts”. As a result, many functions with “Toon” in the name now refer to “GameAccount”
Examples:
BNGetToonInfo -> BNGetGameAccountInfo
BNGetFriendToonInfo -> BNGetFriendGameAccountInfo
BNGetNumFriendToons -> BNGetNumFriendGameAccounts

Presence IDs
Previously, “Presence IDs” could refer to either Battle.net accounts or individual toons. Most functions were able to accept either type of presence ID and, when passed the wrong type, tried to guess at what you were trying to do.

Presence IDs have been replaced with bnetIDAccount and bnetIDGameAccount. With this change, we’ve made all functions strict about whether they accept Account IDs or Game Account IDs. In order to make this easier, all Lua variables have been updated to specify which type of ID they are.

You can translate from a bnetIDGameAccount to a bnetIDAccount as follows:
bnetIDAccount = select(17, BNGetGameAccountInfo(bnetIDGameAccount));
You can find a player’s active bnetIDGameAccount from a bnetIDAccount as follows:
bnetIDGameAccount = select(6, BNGetFriendInfoByID(bnetIDAccount));

Current Realm Name
The “realmName” CVar no longer exists. You can get the name of the current realm using GetRealmName().

Do you mean GetRealmName(), the already-existing function? Or is this a new function that can (or must?) replace GetRealmName()?
The "realmName" CVar is no longer there, but the function to get the name of the current realm is still GetRealmName. Correction made to the post, thanks for asking.