Legion Alpha Build - 3/30 Design Notes

[chaud]

Legion Alpha Build - 3/30 Design Notes
A new Legion build is on the way! While we wait, design notes have been posted, along with some updates on other topics.

Currently Unavailable Class Specs

Greeting Alpha Testers,

Here are the Classes and Specializations that are currently unavailable to be tested on Alpha realms. Testers can swap between available specializations at any time, but will be unable to swap to a spec on this list.

We will eventually have all specializations available for testing, but as implementation and iteration occurs some classes and specializations will not be in a playable state, and are thus locked out for testing.

Warlock

• Destruction

Figured this would be a lot shorter than the old version.

Sorry Destruction warlocks! Saving the best for last. Just to clarify something that we should've clarified a long time ago, in the vast majority of cases, when a specialization has been unplayable, it's because we've still been working on that spec's artifact acquisition and traits. We need to get feedback and testing of the spec as a functional whole. We're almost there, so thank you for your patience thus far!

3/30 Alpha Build Design Notes

We have another alpha build going up today. Some fairly significant updates are included:

• New Specialization Unlocked – 1 more additional specialization is ready for testing. We’d love any and all feedback about gameplay, artifact quest line, abilities, etc.
  
  • Brewmaster Monk – Note: The designs of the enemies you fight in this questline are still incomplete. Also note, Brewmasters are likely very overpowered in this build; we plan to increase the base recharge time of Ironskin and Purifying Brews substantially in the next build.
• Class Status – We’ve made many iterations based on feedback and testing. Here are some highlights:
  
  • Taunts – Taunt abilities are now once again class-wide, instead of only available on tank specializations.
  • Retribution Paladin – Several talents revised and rearranged.
  • Subtlety Rogue – Level 30 talents adjusted to work with Shadow Dance.
  • Blood Death Knight – Adjusted and clarified how Death and Decay interacts with single target abilities.
  • Unholy Death Knight – Revisions to several rotational abilities, and several talents.
  • Fire Mage – Living Bomb changed; it now spreads automatically on explosion, rather than when you cast Inferno Blast.
  • Feral Druid – Area damage abilities increased in effect significantly.
  • Windwalker Monk – Storm, Earth, and Fire damage increased significantly, making them useful on 2+ targets.
  • Marksmanship Hunter – Lone Wolf has moved back to being a talent, instead of baseline. Several talents rearranged and revised.
  • Balance Druid – Moonfire and Sunfire now generate Astral Power on cast. Couple revisions to talents.
  • Beast Mastery Hunter – Several talents revised. In particular, Exotic Munitions has been replaced with Dire Frenzy, a replacement for Dire Beast for those Hunters that prefer to focus on improving their main pet.
  • Shadow Priest – Void Bolt now refreshes, rather than extends, Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain. Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain now generate Insanity on cast, and their durations have been adjusted. Dominate Mind renamed back to Mind Control, and usable on players. Psychic Horror removed.
  • Vengeance Demon Hunter – Significant rearrangement of the talent tree and some new talents added, including the final level 110 option. Empower Wards, a new baseline ability, added as an active defense against magic damage. Siphon Power replaces Scorched Ground on the artifact, to interact with Empower Wards.
• Artifact Trait Status – Nearly all traits are implemented at this point; only a few remain non-functional, or to-be-redesigned. (Tuning is still yet to come, of course.)
  
  • Havoc Demon Hunter – Several traits revised.
  • Retribution Paladin – Wake of Ashes redesigned.
  • Unholy Death Knight – Apocalypse active ability redesigned. Several traits redesigned.
  • Demonology Warlock – Several traits revised.
  • Windwalker Monk – Several traits revised.
  • Feral Druid – Several traits revised.
  • Restoration Shaman – Several traits revised.
  • Affliction Warlock – Several traits revised.
  • Frost Death Knight – Several traits revised.
  • PvP Talent Status – We’ve also revised several PvP talents:
  • Retribution Paladin – Several talents revised to be more attractive choices.
  • Protection Paladin – Several talents replaced with new ones.
• New Zone: Azsuna! - This zone is now open and ready for testing. Please give it a try and let us know what you think!
• New Feature: Order Hall Campaigns!
  
  • We’ve added the Order Hall Campaigns for all currently available specs of the Monk (including Brewmaster), Shaman, and Warlock.
  • Accessing these new campaigns and missions will require you to create new characters to experience this new content.
  • Feedback on these campaigns and missions would be especially valuable right now!

Thanks, and we look forward to your feedback!

Night Elf Male Disconnect Issue

Hey everyone!

Our latest Legion Alpha build came with a slight issue that you may run into.

The Male Night Elf model is missing it's collision volume. What this means for you all is that players who are currently using a Night Elf male model will experience a disconnect when entering a body of water. Walking ankle deep will not cause a disconnect, but you will experience one if the depth requires the swim animation to trigger.

We hope to have this issue resolved by our next build push to Alpha. Thanks for your patience everyone!

Blue Posts

Old Models and New Animations
Both HD and SD models use the same animation rigs now. We've added a ton of new combat animations in Legion, and it's important that they work for both SD and HD. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Legendary Ring Quest Line Removal
I had a whole post written out but then my computer decided it was going to restart and I lost it all. :'( Let me see if I can come up with all of it again...

Suffice it to say, this shouldn't be coming through as news as this was announced prior to the launch of Warlords. This still stands consistent with our viewpoint on how we will be treating such Legendary items such as these going forward (not to say there won't ever be items that work otherwise... but, you get the point).

On a personal note, I rather enjoy the consistency of the newer Legendaries. With the older items, in their time, a guild would have to devote all of it's resources behind one player who would be the sole owner of any specific legendary. I think it goes without saying that this led to a tiny fraction of the population ever experiencing the stories around these items in their height. The new Legendaries are the complete opposite of this - they are available to any player who is actively playing the game, and there are no boundaries on obtaining the item that would require such a devotion of resources as older Legendaries did.

As the ring will become a permanent point of recognition of all of your character's time and effort in Warlords of Draenor, we want these kind of items to remain as a way to say "I was there!" and to show that you followed along in the content when it was current.

This really isn't necessary, in my opinion, and really, I think it adds more frustration to the game than any sense of accomplishment.
In your opinion, why does this add frustration?

If you want to take the reward away then so be it. But you shouldn't remove the quest entirely considering it's a huge part of the lore and struggle that took place on Draenor. The entire expansion was based off this.
I appreciate the feedback on the questline containing a ton of the story of Warlords. That's something I will pass on and bring up a conversation about. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Ability Pruning
Thank you to those who set the record straight for millennials.

While there is no exact year range, it's generally accepted that millennials were born between the 1980s and around 2000. That means, majority of millennials have hit adulthood and are probably a good chunk of loyal WOW players. I grew up playing MMOs (not WOW necessarily, but others like Ragnarok Online, MapleStory, Runescape, etc).
I'm quoting this post because it's just as relevant to the topic of ability pruning as an out-of-context quote from a Twitch chatroom.

In the quote from the OP, I was specifically asked about a list of hundreds of abilities that have been removed or reworked since 2004. Yes, I imagine it would take a lot of work to re-add (or un-change) hundreds of abilities, not to mention sorting out the massive balance issues that would result from such a thing. No, that doesn't mean we're ignoring feedback about pruning or that we won't make any changes based on that feedback. It just means I think it would be a lot of work to add hundreds of abilities to the game, which I think is a fairly reasonable assumption.

We've been specifically asking for feedback about what abilities you feel are missing and why, and that's because we want to hear it. Often times, our design process involves pulling a bunch of stuff out so that we can directly see what's missing; we do this because, occasionally, there is a better way to provide that same gameplay, it's just hard to see it while the old stuff is still in the way.

At any rate, please do continue to provide that feedback, because we're actively discussing it. There's certainly been no mandate that "ability pruning will not be reverted," and even if there had been, we wouldn't be announcing it in a Twitch chatroom. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

[rcshaggy]

I want that music as my loading screen.
And yay!
Finally!


^ This is me waiting.

[Shraug]

Psychic Horror removed.

It's not even April 1st yet. Why?.... This is such a bad change. So much public outcry from the pvp community yet you continue to take away cool abilities like this. You say you listen to our feedback, but it feels like we're just talking to a wall tbh.

[Eleccybubb]

So uhm all the hyping it up and all it is are some class changes and a new zone? Woooh.

[Adeivus]

So uhm all the hyping it up and all it is are some class changes and a new zone? Woooh.

3 Class campaigns too.

And a spec.

We could have just had a build with only a few tweaks, though...

[m2geek]

I want that music as my loading screen.
And yay!
Finally!


^ This is me waiting.

I feel your pain

[Baelic]

The Male Night Elf model is missing it's collision volume. What this means for you all is that players who are currently using a Night Elf male model will experience a disconnect when entering a body of water. Walking ankle deep will not cause a disconnect, but you will experience one if the depth requires the swim animation to trigger.

This, to me, is absolutely unacceptable even by Alpha/Beta standards. Even more so since they know about it, collision is such a trivial thing to setup.

[Seramore]

Psychic Horror removed.

It's not even April 1st yet. Why?.... This is such a bad change. So much public outcry from the pvp community yet you continue to take away cool abilities like this. You say you listen to our feedback, but it feels like we're just talking to a wall tbh.

Because Blizzard said they would be pruning abilities. Do you think they're just going to randomly stop doing it?

Who gives a shit about the outcry, let the developers do their thing. People need to stop being babies about this whole thing.

This, to me, is absolutely unacceptable even by Alpha/Beta standards. Even more so since they know about it, collision is such a trivial thing to setup.

I agree, completely unacceptable to have something be broken in the Alpha. Wake the fuck up Blizzard, it's getting real old.

[Adeivus]

Build is nearly 6 gigs. As I recall, past few have been around 1.79 gigs or so each. So that seems...quite large.

[Seramore]

Considering how an entire zone was just added, I would imagine that has something to do with the large influx of data.

[Adeivus]

Considering how an entire zone was just added, I would imagine that has something to do with the large influx of data.

Good point. Forgot we've gone without a new zone for a while. That'd explain the difference.

[Seramore]

I could also imagine Suramar being more complete, wasn't that whole palace area pretty much untextured? I'd imagine that's a good amount of data for the build as well. I'm sure there's also some more models and all that other good stuff to be datamined as well, I'm excited to see what they put in.

[Adeivus]

I could also imagine Suramar being more complete, wasn't that whole palace area pretty much untextured? I'd imagine that's a good amount of data for the build as well. I'm sure there's also some more models and all that other good stuff to be datamined as well, I'm excited to see what they put in.

The city itself was untextured but much of the zone seemed to be done, texture-wise anyway, but the city's been receiving textures with some regularity in previous builds, so I don't think it suddenly got a bunch out of the blue.

Apparently there's some voice files in the build too so maybe some more of that.

[Deklol]

I just want shadowflame back. Best cone ability ever.

[Craaazyyy]

Because Blizzard said they would be pruning abilities. Do you think they're just going to randomly stop doing it?

Who gives a shit about the outcry, let the developers do their thing. People need to stop being babies about this whole thing.

go cuck yourself

[Seramore]

go cuck yourself

I would but I think you guys are taking all this cucking away from me with this pruning

[Wolfrick]

Hallo my dear Whiners and screamers.

Blizzard does a cool move, and you do nothing else then Cry and scream.

Try to think about this, the LEGION! IS INVADING AZEROTH! we have to give everthing we have to fight them back.... so everyone is doing there best to figuer out ways to fight the Legion.

Raising Tirion, that is not a strange thing... the Death Knights have a history of ressing dead paladins... so why would they even think twice about ressing tirion, btw, in Northrend, The Kniths of the ebon blade where fighting side by side with tirion, so they want him at there side again.

Let Blizzard do there thing and Keep quiet!

Example: IN World war 2, America was the good guys....but they ended up using the Worst weapon man kind have ever created "Atom bom", so some times Extream times need Extrem measures.

PS: lets give Blizzard some work space and stop going at them for every move they make, do as I do, send then New Ideas or Suggestions for how they can make something right, not just "SCREAM/CRY.... end post" that is not constructive at all....

My best Regards,
Wolfrick

[Deleted]

Because Blizzard said they would be pruning abilities. Do you think they're just going to randomly stop doing it?

Who gives a shit about the outcry, let the developers do their thing. People need to stop being babies about this whole thing.

I agree, completely unacceptable to have something be broken in the Alpha. Wake the fuck up Blizzard, it's getting real old.

So you bought a game of chess, but when you open the box, there are only checker's pieces in there. How would you feel?

[Aucald]

Wait - there'll be a Fel Hodir? Holy Dreadlords? This is like some kind of bizarre fractured fairy-tale.

[QuiksLE]

So you bought a game of chess, but when you open the box, there are only checker's pieces in there. How would you feel?

So you buy a box, on it it says "CHECKERS INSIDE"

You think to yourself "Oh boy I wish i could be home and play this game of chess"

You arive home, open the box and you find checkers inside. And then you start to complain that you got scammed?