Jay Wilson's Insights into Vanilla Development, Diablo Brawl Coming to Hearthstone

Hearthstone Season 33 Begins - Jade Lotus

Patch 7.1 Hotfixes - Trial of Valor
Trial of Valor Normal and Heroic got some nerfs to the Odyn and Helya encounters.



Patch 7.1.5 PTR - Jewelry Secondary Stat Increases
The latest build increases secondary stats scaling with item level on jewelry. You can see one example below and check out the stats of your items on the PTR site.

Don't see a chart? Enable javascript!



Patch 7.1.5 PTR - Secondary Stat Changes
In the latest PTR build, the amount of rating you need per 1% of Critical Strike, Haste, Mastery, and Versatility was changed.

  • Critical Strike - Now requires 400 rating per 1% Critical Strike, up from 350.
  • Haste - Now requires 375 rating per 1% Haste, up from 325.
  • Mastery - Now requires 400 rating per 1 Mastery, up from 350.
  • Versatility - Now requires 475 rating per 1% damage and healing increase, up from 400. Now requires 950 rating per 1% damage taken reduction, up from 800.


Patch 7.1.5 PTR - Artifact Knowledge
Patch 7.1.5 makes catching up on Artifact Knowledge easier for new players and alts!

New Players / Main Character Catch Up

Alt Characters
  • The Artifact Research Compendium items are sold by the Artifact Knowledge researcher in your Order Hall for 1000 x Order Resources.
  • These are BoA items, so you can purchase them on your main character to send to alts.
  • These only allow you to purchase a book with lower Artifact Knowledge than your current Artifact Knowledge level.
  • For example, characters with Artifact Knowledge from 15-19 can purchase Artifact Research Compendium: Volumes I & II, granting their alt Artifact Knowledge 10.


Level Type Name
1Other Artifact Research Synopsis
1Other Artifact Research Compendium: Volumes I-III
1Other Artifact Research Compendium: Volume I
1Other Artifact Research Compendium: Volumes I & II
1Other Artifact Research Compendium: Volumes I-IV


Legion Season 1 Ending Clarifications
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
With today’s announcement of the end of Legion’s first PvP season on December 13, we’d like to clarify a few extra details.

The Elite PvP gear appearance will be the same in Legion Season 2 as it is in Season 1. If you are unable to complete your set in Season 1, you’ll still be able to collect your missing appearances during Season 2.

Additionally, after Legion Season 2 concludes, we’ll be adding the ability to purchase the complete Elite appearance set from a vendor. This will only be made available to players who have earned access to the Elite set by reaching a PvP rating of 2000 or higher in any Rated Battleground or Arena bracket during Legion Season 1 or 2.

Finally, we’d like to clarify that the end of Legion Season 1 and beginning of Legion Season 2 are not tied in any way to the release of Patch 7.1.5. One of our major goals for Rated PvP in Legion is to have PvP seasons change over more regularly, which means we can now transition between seasons without requiring a patch. This transition will occur prior to the release of Patch 7.1.5.

FEEDBACK: Lower Nighthold (Heroic)
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We're opening up the Nighthold raid on PTR, with Skorpyron, Chronomatic Anomaly, Trilliax, and Spellblade Aluriel available on Heroic difficulty. We'll be leaving these bosses up for a couple of days. Please use this thread to for feedback or bug reports on any of the encounters. When providing tuning feedback, please note the nature of your raid group (e.g. Mythic guild group, PUG, etc.).

Nighthold Testing
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Watcher explain why we should test your dungeon you don't listen to feedback
Well, part of the point of opening Nighthold and leaving it open for a longer period of time is to let groups get in and give contextual feedback on class mechanics, as well as to gather data to help with tuning. If we were solely interested in polishing the encounters, we'd be doing short 1-hour tests that could be observed by the encounter design team in their entirety. But this approach lets a lot more people get in and try things out.

Basically no numerical tuning based on 7.1.5 changes has been done yet: in test builds and development, the primary initial focus tends to be on qualitative design changes, both to allow for time to iterate on them, and because there's a much smaller development window during which we can make large changes to text in tooltips (since everything needs to be translated for the game's different regions before a patch can be finalized). Numbers changes are best done when designs are closer to final (there's little point fine-tuning something that may get ripped out entirely next build), and can be done very late in the PTR cycle. Raid tests like this help tremendously with that process.

The past couple of weeks have been full of distractions, with a long holiday weekend in the middle, and we haven't done a great job of communicating regarding the 7.1.5 class and systems changes. We'll be working to correct some of that in the coming days, but I understand that there's more than a little frustration and distrust to overcome.

In the meantime, I'll rename this thread, and make a new one for Nighthold. Please try to keep that one clear for feedback and logs from the instance, so that everyone can have a more polished experience in the long run. Thanks.

Patch 7.1.5 Warlock Feedback
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Feedback: you're leaving the warlock community out in the cold. Please communicate with us. We are extremely desperate.
We agree with a number of the core concerns raised, but don't have immediate solutions (or those solutions will take more time to design, implement, and test than the 7.1.5 PTR cycle affords). A couple of examples off the top of my head:

  • Steady/predictable Ember generation suited the Destruction rotation well, and something important was lost in the course of unifying the class to use a single shared resource, but fixing that at this point isn't just as simple as rolling everything back to Embers.
  • Mechanics like Demonic Empowerment and Soul Effigy are cumbersome to manage and while they have strong spec-specific theming, the actual gameplay of using them drags down their respective specs.

We're probably too reluctant to acknowledge problems for which we don't yet have a solution to present. But the fact that we haven't yet changed something doesn't mean that we think it's perfect as-is.

Dark Legacy Comics #561
DLC #561 has been released!

This article was originally published in forum thread: Trial of Valor Hotfixes, Secondary Stat Changes, Artifact Knowledge, DLC #561 started by chaud View original post
Comments 107 Comments
  1. MagisterReilos's Avatar
    Burning embers and the bonfire gameplay was my favorite spec / play style in 10 years and I was devastated to see it suddenly gone SO SOON.. It actually deterred me from buying legion. I worked so hard on my warlock and the felfire quest because I finally LOVED the aesthetic and energy behind playing destro, I still can't understand why it was dismissed so casually without a vote from the players. Not even a glyph to get the fiery aura back with shards, come onnnn... ������������������
  1. anon5123's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by hunterakos View Post
    The fact that you need a macro or an addon just to buy something faster from a vendor is just comical. Don't you think?
    You need addons and macros to speed up lots of things in the game.

    /shrug
  1. Karit's Avatar
    Complete bullshit mid-xpac item level reset. Fuck you blizzard why can't you get this shit right?
  1. Timberwind's Avatar

    All you warlocks are completely full of shit, They are the highest FPS class in the game as Demo, and only truest start to lose out in extreme displacement or movement. Destro isn't in a fantastic place and Add is middle of the pack, but seriously, if you're getting declines groups, it's because you aren't a good fit. I have 2 Locks in our Heroic Clears that fight for first, while the rest of ius sit 5% behind them.
  1. kirblar's Avatar
    Adorable kitty
  1. mmoc3514689de5's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by caervek View Post
    Prob Paladins reflecting too much DPS.
    "People daring to turn a strong and potentially punishing mechanic against the boss" that is... yep, it does now sound like Blizzard alright to nerf that.
  1. mmoccb5d489e7c's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Timberwind View Post

    All you warlocks are completely full of shit, They are the highest FPS class in the game as Demo, and only truest start to lose out in extreme displacement or movement. Destro isn't in a fantastic place and Add is middle of the pack, but seriously, if you're getting declines groups, it's because you aren't a good fit. I have 2 Locks in our Heroic Clears that fight for first, while the rest of ius sit 5% behind them.
    Sorry but you are full of it, not the fellow warlocks. Devs acknowledged that there is a problem where warlocks are at at the moment, in terms of mechanics and numbers but they haven't got a solution for it.

    Just because some sims showing demo in the top 3 dps, which doesn't apply for 99% of the fights, which requires movement, doesn't mean the class is in a good place. Even a split second of movement for demo will break the build up for the artifact ability therefore make you lose 15 secs or so for the next round.

    Just because your dps team is low or undergeared than your warlocks, doesn't mean, the class is not broken. Blizzard Devs acknowledged it so if you don't know the class, stop sharing crap and look like a fool.

Site Navigation