Hunters: Lore mentioned that class tuning hotfixes are coming soon, including for Hunters!

Legion Developer Q&A - Paul Kubit
Paul Kubit talked about Brawlers’ Guild, Micro-Holidays, Timewalking, and Professions today! The next Q&A isn't scheduled yet, but may be in February.



Profession Gear
  • The crafted gear has a limited duration. As more content is added to the game, higher item level loot is added elsewhere.
  • Obliterum upgrades help to keep crafted gear relevant.
  • Crafted gear is still on the radar, so in future patches the team will try to keep adding things.
  • Patch 7.1.5 added some things for Engineering and other professions, new armor may be coming in a future patch.
  • Patch 7.2 and beyond will add new recipes to primary and secondary professions.

Brawler's Guild
  • Bosses are set to a fairly static difficulty, increasing as you progress through.
  • Early bosses should be approachable for most players, with fights becoming more challenging later on.
  • Boss health adjustments based on spec is not something the team did this time. It might diminish the accomplishment of beating the boss.
  • The team thought about ways they could bring healers into the Brawler's Guild, so maybe they could do something in the future, but the Brawler's Guild is about fighting!
  • There aren't any plans to add additional bosses in this expansion, but it isn't out of the question.
  • Almost every idea makes it into Brawler's Guild.
  • A Mario themed fight was started and never finished, as was a Mega Man fight.

Timewalking
  • The team is talking about increasing the item level on Timewalking gear.
  • Scholomance probably won't make it to Mists of Pandaria timewalking. MoP timewalking is about the dungeons found in Pandaria.
  • In the future the team might be able to do Vanilla timewalking, but there are no plans to do it right now.
  • The Vanilla dungeons don't hold up to current dungeon design standards, which is why they didn't start with Vanilla timewalking. They don't feel challenging and aren't tuned for max-level players.
  • Timewalking is designed to cover content from two expansions ago and earlier.
  • Timewalking raids are probably coming at some point. It is a safe bet.

Engineering Goggles
  • The new engineering goggles are the highest tier crafted items right now.
  • The goggles are more powerful, so they take more to craft and have random stats.
  • You can farm or buy Hardened Felglass.
  • The googles are BoE, so you can sell them to someone else if you don't get the stats you want.

Professions
  • The cost of gathered materials comes from the time it takes to collect them.
  • Materials are more expensive in this expansion because you actually have to go and gather, rather than using your garrison.
  • Professions can change a lot between expansions, it is a place to experiment.

Talent Tomes
  • Talent tomes cost a little bit too much right now. This is largely due to the cost of the materials that goes into them.
  • In the near future the team will look at ways to adjust costs of things that are too expensive, including talent tomes.

Obliterum
  • The cost of unlocking the forge worked out pretty well.
  • Players had to interact with each other to make the armor pieces to unlock the forge.
  • It is very likely that the cost of unlocking the forge will be reduced in a future patch.

Skinning
  • Making skinnable mobs multi-tap is still something the team wants to do.

Crafting Material Costs
  • The team has been cracking down on bots, which also contributes to the cost increase of gathered materials.
  • Taking raw materials and using them to make something doesn't have much of a time commitment for the most part, so the profit margins are slim.

Micro-Holidays
  • The rewards from these holidays aren't really collectable items because of their short duration.
  • Extra experience from a leveling micro-holiday is a cool idea.
  • Call of the Scarab is a region wide faction competition, not realm-wide. It also rewards a good amount of experience.

Cooking
  • As the team was building out Legion professions, they wanted to have content for all of them.
  • For all of the primary professions, it ended up being quest lines.
  • For the secondary professions, the team didn't want to overwhelm you with quest lines.
  • Archaeology got a time gated quest line, Fishing got an Artifact fishing pole, First Aid got items that drop out in the world.
  • Cooking had a progression in Warlords with work orders. Cooking felt like a way that the team could flavorfuly incorporate work orders.
  • The randomness with Nomi is probably a little bit too random. You can give him a certain material and he will give you recipes that use that material.
  • Nomi is learning, with every patch he becomes more efficient. In Patch 7.1.5 the chance to get recipes has gone up significantly.

Rank 3 Recipes
  • When the team was designing the profession recipes system, it was a blank slate.
  • The rarity of recipes could be anything from a guaranteed drop to super rare. The team started by making them rare, as it is easier to make them more common in the future if needed.
  • The Rank 3 shoulder recipes were added to a fairly challenging part of the game, making them more rare.
  • It isn't breaking the game to have some RNG on the Rank 3 recipes, you can still make the items.
  • In the case where it does feel bad, such as gathering, adjustments can be made.
  • There isn't a lot of profit margin in crafting, but having the Rank 3 recipes help to give players a little more profit.
  • The team can increase the chance to get the Rank 3 recipes at the end of the expansion.

Archaeology
  • There isn't as much of a reason to go on an endless grind now with how archaeology works. This was intentional.
  • There are less projects you can solve so that you don't get down to the last one and feel like it takes forever to get.
  • There are plans to make archaeology better in Patch 7.2!

Patch 7.2
  • Patch 7.2 should be coming to the PTR pretty soon.

Profession Dungeon Requirements
  • While the team was building the profession quest lines they leaned on dungeons because they could scale. At this point in development the world scaling tech didn't exist.
  • Removing dungeon requirements for professions isn't going to happen, but it could probably be less dungeon heavy in the future.

Gathering Professions
  • The team talks about making gathering professions separate each expansion, but it hasn't happened yet.
  • They could add a third profession slot that is gathering only.
  • Some of the people asking for another profession slot just want something new, but don't want to get rid of their existing professions.

Random Secondary Stats
  • There won't be an item to allow players to reroll secondary stats on crafted items.
  • If you want different stats, make another item.
  • This was taken into account when setting costs for crafting items, so they are a little bit cheaper.

Artifacts and Weapon Crafting
  • With Artifacts, professions that could craft weapons in the past no longer had this choice.
  • The team tried to replace these weapon choices with crafted relics. It didn't completely fill the fantasy of a weaponsmith.
  • The team will look at the quality of the crafted relics and maybe add some more crafted things.

Weekly Events
  • Separating Timewalking from the other events is something not planned right now.
  • The team might remove less relevant events in the future.
  • Keeping Timewalking rare helps to make it special.

Micro-Holiday
  • Maybe there will be a New Year's Eve micro-holiday in the future, but it doesn't feel like the other micro-holidays.
  • Right now the micro-holidays that are being added are Azerothian holidays rather than analogues to real world holidays.

Engineering
  • Reaves having a bank access is something the team looked at. It was considered for Patch 7.1.5 but didn't get put in.
  • The team wants to save some things for later. If Reaves is the best thing right away there would be nothing left to add.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Legion Developer Q&A - Paul Kubit started by chaud View original post
Comments 69 Comments
  1. Colmadero's Avatar
    It's sad that Obliterum got obsolete so fast. seemed like a nice mechanic
  1. Sargiean's Avatar
    I'm not sure I agree with the assessment from the devs that materials are only more expense this expansion because we have to go and gather them, rather than relying only on our garrison. For example, in expansions other than WoD we've seen blue gems become cheap on the market after a few months, and potions and flasks have always been negligibly expensive. Now 1 potion of the old war goes for around 700g on my server - which even accounting for inflation was not the case in Wrath, Cata, or MoP. I've prospected hundreds and hundreds of stacks of ore all this expansion too and the yield of blue gems seems far below what it was in MoP, Cata, or Wrath. It's more than just the garrison.
  1. PewpewNL's Avatar
    Hunters: Lore mentioned that class tuning hotfixes are coming soon, keep an eye out for them hunters.

    More lies / promises or actual fixing
  1. sololux's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sargiean View Post
    I'm not sure I agree with the assessment from the devs that materials are only more expense this expansion because we have to go and gather them, rather than relying only on our garrison. For example, in expansions other than WoD we've seen blue gems become cheap on the market after a few months, and potions and flasks have always been negligibly expensive. Now 1 potion of the old war goes for around 700g on my server - which even accounting for inflation was not the case in Wrath, Cata, or MoP. I've prospected hundreds and hundreds of stacks of ore all this expansion too and the yield of blue gems seems far below what it was in MoP, Cata, or Wrath. It's more than just the garrison.
    It's because of all the gold people stacked during wod and previous expansions. Mostly the gold during wod was thrown at us so people have huge stockpiles of it. That in turn has caused everything to be more expensive.
  1. Roar-Powah's Avatar
    Getting rank 3 recipes from RBG is so asinine, Blizzard logic is fucking ridiculous. Trying to force people into any part of the game is silly, or did Blizzard forget the backlash in MoP with the Ring forcing you to PvP. Blizzard is so out of touch with their own game it's a great /popcorn show at times.
  1. Tock20's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by sololux View Post
    It's because of all the gold people stacked during wod and previous expansions. Mostly the gold during wod was thrown at us so people have huge stockpiles of it. That in turn has caused everything to be more expensive.
    I disagree. While gold was easy to get in WoD, most people didn't bother. Many people don't have millions of gold, if even totaling 1 million across multiple toons. I agree with the person you quoted, blue gems drop to rarely (yes, yes, I know, blue = rare).
  1. Bronsin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by addlemanc View Post
    I disagree. While gold was easy to get in WoD, most people didn't bother. Many people don't have millions of gold, if even totaling 1 million across multiple toons. I agree with the person you quoted, blue gems drop to rarely (yes, yes, I know, blue = rare).
    Yup, getting a rank 3 str flask is now taking me past 700 crafts. While the int one i proced rank 3 in about 10 crafts... agi flask took 4 crafts... something is wrong with this.
  1. Twistedelmo's Avatar
    I think it would be pretty cool if professions could craft Artifact appearances or materials needed to unlock them.
  1. Noctus78's Avatar
    i still want my brimstone rank 2 for starters
  1. Abyssal's Avatar
    Obliterum upgrades help to keep crafted gear relevant.
    In what game? Because it certainly isn't WoW....
  1. Wretchedmist's Avatar
    In the future the team might be able to do Vanilla timewalking, but there are no plans to do it right now. The Vanilla dungeons don't hold up to current dungeon design standards, which is why they didn't start with Vanilla timewalking. They don't feel challenging and aren't tuned for max-level players.
    Alright, so redesign them like you did with other things. Also, the most challenging dungeons I've ever done were probably during Vanilla. The group's "control" was more important than any other expansion - position, crowd control, threat, pulling, damage priority, etc. TBC dungeons were tough for a while, too, along with those three ICC ones in Wrath. Those are the first that come to mind.
  1. Kellorion's Avatar
    Anyone else think this guy was a bit of an ass?
  1. roguetank's Avatar
    Oh good, hotfixes are coming! Lets see who they overnerf and overbuff now. $20.00 says hunters end up with all 3 top dps spots, and all the top 5 dps end up in the bottom.

    WTF is the point of the PTR if you change everything the night before and have to immediately implement untested hotfixes you fucking morons.
  1. Savara's Avatar
    So, when are them pets that get stuck on everything going to be fixed so i can actually cross a bridge without having to re-summon?
  1. Fudal's Avatar
    What I get from this is Blizzard is basically saying " Yes, we screwed up all of the professions, you are no longer allowed to make useful items. We aren't going to fix it, too bad" Does that sum it up pretty well?
  1. Soulfròst's Avatar
    I don't see why they can't allow Blacksmiths to craft an item that modifies the traits attached to the different artifact relics. It feels terrible to lose your best trait due to a 5 ilvl relic upgrade, knowing how rare it is to get a decently rolled relic for that trait again. It'd make the profession relevant even when the obliterum and crafted armor isn't.
  1. Beazy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Soulfròst View Post
    I don't see why they can't allow Blacksmiths to craft an item that modifies the traits attached to the different artifact relics. It feels terrible to lose your best trait due to a 5 ilvl relic upgrade, knowing how rare it is to get a decently rolled relic for that trait again. It'd make the profession relevant even when the obliterum and crafted armor isn't.
    Then you'd be missing out on all of legions RNG. . . I mean content.
  1. Encenoa's Avatar
    Hunters: Lore mentioned that class tuning hotfixes are coming soon, keep an eye out for them hunters.
    Who is Lore?
  1. rogoth's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bronsin View Post
    Yup, getting a rank 3 str flask is now taking me past 700 crafts. While the int one i proced rank 3 in about 10 crafts... agi flask took 4 crafts... something is wrong with this.

    it took me over 1500 crafts to get the rank 3 int flask, it took me just under 600 crafts for the rank 3 agility flask, it took more than 2000 crafts for the rank 3 strength flask, i still don't have the stamina one at rank 3 yet and i'm approaching 1200 crafts for that flask type (i'm the guild alchemist hence my large numbers), and even considering my role, i have still spent millions on herbs myself to try and get these recipes faster, i have all the potions at rank 3, don't yet have spirit cauldron at rank 3, even after crafting ~100 of them since they were added, and i haven't bothered wasting any mats on making the "flavour" potions cos they are simply not worth the gold to craft at all, and certainly not worth the time to farm the mats needed, the only useful one of those is saggldrynk, and even then is very niche due to being used for M+ and not really anywhere outside that.
  1. Sastank's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Encenoa View Post
    Who is Lore?
    Poofy hair

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