Enhancement Artifact Offhands, Blue Posts, Raid Testing, Tracer Hero, Overwatch Short

Currently Unavailable Class Specs
And one final bit of clarification.... When we set out to build 36 artifact acquisition experiences and weapon trait trees, we had to figure out the order in which we wanted to tackle that work. We decided to prioritize development of many of the artifact acquisitions inversely to the amount of change that was being planned for a given specialization.

We specifically wanted to get specializations like Shadow, Discipline, or Outlaw into players' hands as quickly as possible to get feedback and have more time to iterate on what we knew were very large changes. On the other hand, specializations like Frost mage, Assassination, and Destruction didn't experience any sort of fundamental overhaul, so they felt like safer choices to leave until later in the Alpha cycle. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Blood Death Knight Feedback -- Build 21384 -- 30-Mar
The next build will contain a number of changes for Blood's talents. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Balance Druid Feedback -- Build 21384 -- 30-Mar
Datamining Errors: [*]Astral Power costs appear to have a *10 multiplier on them. This is (obviously) not intended.
Not an error, just a data change under the hood. Astral Power now correctly tracks fractional values if you're using, for example, Solar Wrath with Blessing of Elune.

Incarnation causing SW and LS to generate an additional 125% AP.

6 * 2.25 = 13.5 (18.9)
10 * 2.25 = 22.5 (31.5)
That sounds like it's likely double-dipping its 50% buff, which is clearly a bug. We'll look into it for next build.

it grants 1,2 and 4 currently missing the 10x modifier
This is being hotfixed to alpha. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Fire Mage Feedback -- Build 21384 -- 30-Mar
This is a bug--it's intended that Living Bomb detonates if the target dies.

It seemed to be detonating when a target died fine during the raid testing tonight, but it wasn't spreading when the bomb detonated due to the target dying, is that intended or a bug?
Yes, sorry--intended that it detonates and spreads. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Holy Priest Feedback -- Build 21384 -- 30-Mar
Next build should fix a bug where PoM was bouncing too many times. We are also continuing to help shift the playstyle towards what's intended, by somewhat nerfing Renew and buffing various other core spells. That does in fact include a cost reduction on Serenity and Sanctify--while those already are rather efficient spells, we want to make sure using them always feels like a strong upside in your rotation, not a marginal efficiency gain. All this said, I want to note that, regardless of where tuning lands on spells like Heal and Flash Heal, the pace will not be as fast the instant- or 1.5s-cast-spamming on live. If your habit is still to always push spells at that speed, it's intended that mana is what forces you out of that (in other words, that you can't sustain it). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Discipline Priest Feedback -- Build 21384 -- 30-Mar
The intention of the Schism change was actually to make sure you _could_ use it every other Penance. Because it has a cast time, it's cooldown is effectively slightly longer, so it always didn't sync up at 18 seconds.

Nothing is inherently wrong with taking every available non-Atonement-improving talent and varying the playstyle away from the default, modulo correct tuning on the talents. Shadow Covenant is a new mechanic that thus far hadn't gotten much attention in testing, and if the most recent buff turns out to be too strong, that will greatly help narrow down the correct tuning.

Perhaps minor, but when looking at Shadow Covenant note that there's a tooltip bug--the absorb was increased in this build along with the heal (the absorb is still 50% of the heal). We're considering making the absorb based on the effective healing done, to be consistent with Shadow Mend.

The goal is not to have rotations where you don't use Atonement at all (and this seems unlikely since Penance, Smite, and low-count Plea are still very efficient). If Shadow Covenant feels like it can be spammed heavily in place of a normal rotation, then its cost is too low--but in any case it's good if that spell starts getting explored more on alpha.

The change to Shadow Word: Pain was primarily directed at Shadow; separating the durations for Shadow and Disc is an option if it causes problems.

Capping the cost of Plea is an option we'll look into. The goal is to have it be an easy and flexible way to apply Atonements when you don't have a lot of them, but not allow it to be an overly efficient way to spread an unlimited number throughout the raid. Once it becomes less efficient than the other options, the cost might not have to increase further--we understand you shouldn't lose a chunk of mana from one accidental cast.

On that note, it's possible PW:Radiance is a little too prominent right now compared to Plea. Plea should be the natural way to apply your typical average number of Atonements (along with PW:Shield), with PWR being a more expensive investment to get more than usual. We'll look at the costing if their roles are seeming somewhat reversed. PW:Radiance feeling like the main rotational way to maintain "standard" Atonement count will definitely contribute to the problem of Shadow Covenant feeling like it breaks apart your rotation. Shadow Covenant should be replacing one high-cost AoE heal variant with another, without interrupting the ordinary gameplay.

PW:Radiance should already be favoring targets that don't have Atonement on them. Let us know if you're sure you can observe different behavior on alpha, when all targets are players. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Shadow Priest Feedback -- Build 21384 -- 30-Mar
Hey Shadow Priests. Let's talk a bit about utility.

Shadow in Legion currently has a ridiculous amount of utility, way more than any other spec. I talked about that in the previous thread, here:

Re: Utility
Shadow is in a very odd situation when it comes to utility, especially in PvP. The amount of potential utility they offer is astronomical. It’s a staggeringly long list: Body and Soul, Dispel Magic, Dominate Mind, Mass Dispel, Mind Bomb, Power Word: Shield, Psychic Horror, Psychic Scream, Purify Disease, Shackle Undead, Shadow Mend, Silence, Vampiric Embrace… probably something else I’ve forgotten offhand. But at the same time, despite the crazy number of utility spells at their fingertips, it’s actually quite hard for them to actually use many of them. Since their rotation is based on continuously generating Insanity as fast as possible, any time lost to utility is punishing, especially in Voidform, where you’re actually losing Insanity while casting other things. And then on top of that, many of the spells cost huge chunks of Insanity as well. We’re not happy with that situation, and are considering other potential options. They could probably stand to lose at least a couple spells off that list, but we’re also considering bringing back Mana as an additional resource that would just be used for limiting your usage of the many utility spells, with costs proportional to their impact.

The above list also forgot to include[*] the 3rd and 6th rows of PvP talents. As an update on this, we've decided to buff Mind Control baseline (effectively re-adding it to PvP on top of Mind Bomb / Psychic Voice), and remove Psychic Horror instead. That still leaves them with way more utility than anyone else, of course.

Then we have the problem of whether they can actually use all that utility. Currently, you mostly can't, because of the Insanity costs, and how much that negatively impacts your offenses. We've decided to give Shadow (and Elemental and Enhancement) back the small mana bar like Balance currently has. Similar to other mana-using hybrid DPS, mana will be used for utility abilities, which should free you up to be able to use them much more than you can in the current build. (EDIT: To clarify, the switch to mana will hopefully make the NEXT build, not today's build.)

Keep the feedback on this coming, thanks!

* EDIT: I had originally said 'Fade w/ Artifact' here as well. There was, at one point in development, an artifact trait that added damage reduction to Fade, similar to the old glyph, but it has since been changed. Sorry for the mistake. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Elemental Shaman Feedback -- Build 21384 -- 30-Mar
We are indeed planning to add Icefury to Overload, which will help maintain the value of mastery when you take that talent. In general, the way that spenders benefit from Overload is that the increased Maelstrom generation from your Overloads lets you use them more often. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

On Friday, April 1, and Monday, April 4, we will continue our Legion Alpha raid testing of Heroic encounters.

Remember that Heroic difficulty scales for any group size between 10 and 30 players, so feel free to assemble and bring a group of any size within that range. Our general plan is to test every encounter on Heroic difficulty first, and then test sections of the raid on Normal and Raid Finder, alongside targeted Mythic tests.

Friday, April 1

Cenarius - Heroic Emerald Nightmare
13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)

Tichondrius - Heroic Nighthold
14:30 PDT (17:30 EDT, 23:30 CEST)

Monday, April 4

Spellblade Aluriel - Heroic Nighthold
13:30 PDT (16:30 EDT, 22:30 CEST)

Il'gynoth - Heroic Emerald Nightmare
15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 00:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of an alpha environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the boss being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

For feedback purposes, can we get a quick run down of the layout of the raids?

For instance, is Emerald Nightmare linear? Or is it more open ended like BRF? Cenarius is listed as the penultimate boss of EN in the journal, so is he actually supposed to be treated as a boss of that difficulty? Or is he just near the end of the journal randomly and he's just as hard as any other pre-Xavius boss?

Same goes for Nighthold. What difficulty should those bosses be?
Both raids have a linear start, an open-ended middle, and a linear end.

For Nightmare, Nythendra is first. After that, you can tackle the next 4 bosses in any order. That allows access to Cenarius, who is indeed the penultimate boss. And then Xavius is last.

Nighthold starts out with Skorpyron -> Anomaly -> Trilliax, then opens up, allowing you to tackle the next 5 in any order, and then ends with Elisande and Gul'dan in that order.