Rygarius Leaving Blizzard, Master Loot Changes, Dungeon and Raid Nerfs, Hotfixes

[chaud]

July 18th PTR 2.4.2 Hotfix, Monk Fix Clarification

Hearthstone Adventure Announcement on July 28th at 11 PM PDT

Body Blocking Issues, Wednesday Balance Q&A Reminder, Imperius Digital 3D Fanart

Ana Patch on Background Downloader, Ana Patch Notes, Lorewatch: Ana Amari

Rygarius Leaving Blizzard
Our favorite patch writing hippogryph is leaving Blizzard. We're sorry to see him go and wish him the best in the future!

Master Loot & Guild Master Loot

Using Master Loot in 7.0 requires that you have a "guild group," which is the same definition that is used for things like Guild Achievements or Guild Challenges: 80% or more of the group must belong to the guild. You can definitely bring a couple (or several, for larger raids) friends along from other servers and the like.

Is the appeal of Master Loot the convenience of only one person needing to check the corpse and then assign everything out? I'm a little perplexed that the reaction has been more "welp, guess we can't bring our friends anymore..." rather than "welp, guess we can't use Master Loot as much now...." I'd imagine there isn't much of a real concern about ninja-looting in a group of guildmembers and friends that raid together on a regular basis, or is there?

I know Personal Loot has been viewed with some skepticism by guild groups over the years. Originally it was due to the drop variance, where you could potentially get 0 or 1 items from a large-raid kill, which felt terrible. We fixed that in Warlords. But even then, being unable to trade loot around to gear up a friend, or pass an item to someone who needs it more, held back its appeal. In Legion, we've made more major improvements to Personal Loot, most importantly including the ability to trade any item that isn't a strict Item Level upgrade to other people who participated in the kill. So if you have (or have ever gotten, post-7.0, even if you no longer have it) an ilvl 720 trinket, any trinket drop you see that's 720 or lower can be traded to others in your raid group. And you still get the benefits of "smart" loot (e.g. never seeing a shield drop if you don't have a shield-user in your raid). Maybe it still isn't the right fit for your group, but I'd encourage people raiding Hellfire this week to give it a try - we've love to hear feedback on how it feels, and what could still be improved. Thanks!

Patch 7.0.3 - Dungeon and Raid Nerfs

We've made a few more tweaks to abilities that were unaffected by Demoralized (e.g. Wrought/Focused Chaos) because they were "friendly-fire" damage. Those hotfixes should now be live, and will be documented in hotfix notes later today.

Raid Finder should also now be receiving a weaker form of the Demoralized debuff (many of the changes that the Normal/Heroic/Mythic version is offsetting involve things like high-end raid trinkets that aren't as commonly present in Raid Finder).

That said, having seen how Normal, Heroic, and Mythic have played out over the course of the first day of the patch, raiding has been easier in some ways (many combat times are a bit faster, even if on-pull burst is slower), but harder in others (healer throughput is more stressed, old methods of handling some mechanics are no longer reproducible, etc.). That's not the intent - were definitely aiming for "slightly easier" across the board. We'll be increasing the magnitude of the Demoralized debuff later today, and will continue to keep an eye on content.

We're also looking at introducing a form of the debuff to Warlords dungeons (Mythic especially).

Patch 7.0.3 Hotfixes - July 19

Here you'll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the recently-released World of Warcraft Pre-expansion Patch. Some of the hotfixes below take effect the moment they were implemented, while others may require scheduled realm restarts to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. This list will be updated as additional hotfixes are applied.
Additional information about the patch could be found below.

Bug Fixes
Account Services

• (Work in progress) Fixed multiple issues affecting WoW Token redemption.
• Level 90 boosts were temporarily disabled, and should be again useable.

Dungeons and Raids

• Players should once again be able to attack Yogg-Saron’s Constrictor Tentacles while in their grasp.

Items

• The Eagletalon Spear can be upgraded using Ancient Heirloom Scabbard, as intended.

Quests

• Corrected an issue that could reset progress on the Shipyard quest “Naval Domination” and restored previous quest progress.
• The Therazane quest “Controlling the Elements” should again be obtainable for characters who are level 80 and up, and have trained Enchanting.
• Characters who have a War Mill should now be able to accept quests for Seals of Inevitable Fate while they already have 10 or more Seals.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing the Worgen quest “Endgame” from being available.
• (Work in progress) Players should again be able to access Ashran and Ashran quests at level 100.

Zones

• Dalaran (Northrend) should again have a Trade Chat channel.

Official Site Theme Updated
The official site has been updated with the Legion logo and a Legion themed background!

[moveth]

The changes to personal loot and master loot honestly shouldnt affect people. Personal loot is perfectly acceptable now that you can trade. Most guilds will still use master loot for progression.

[TheSecretArts]

The only thing I see the master loot changes effecting are weekly ad-hoc raid groups where members come from different guilds but still raid regularly together. Honestly, ML sucks for pugging anyways in the scheme of things.

[Varly]

The ML change is great. No more lazy people doing "ML [insert spec] gear on res". Get out there and earn your shit

[Asotcha]

NO! Rygarius!! : (....

We'll miss you. Wish you the best <3

[rcshaggy]

So the Coffee Bird has left the nest...

I shall salute you, and damn anymore GMs going to leave Blizzard?

[kamuimac]

The changes to personal loot and master loot honestly shouldnt affect people. Personal loot is perfectly acceptable now that you can trade. Most guilds will still use master loot for progression.

and yet its not due to its nature - yes you can trade loot but ONLY if it has lower itlv then the piece you ALREADY have - for gearing up purposes its still complete garbage as you cant gear up people that you want to gear

its a disaster for pugging scene very few decent players will do raids now that they have alternative of mythic + dungeons where they dont have to carry scrubs just for sake of creating group.

[Shearkahn]

Not entirely true considering if blizzard keeps the tier only in raids and trinkets are stat sticks in dungeons. They will do the raids for the chance of the warforged/titan warforged.

[Generical]

Love the ML change. No more of this bullcrap where someone forms a group so everyone will carry them and they reserve half the drops for themselves.

[Zephre]

I liked coffee bird will be sad to see him go but then again that's life, we all got to branch out at some point.

Also in before some stupid obligatory sinking ship comment.

[Rotted]

Just checking, but am I understanding this right, we can't use ML outside of guilds group any more? That seems pretty naft to me tbh. Sure you get some people which abuse the system, and bare face lie when they say only one thing reserved. But at the same blizzard already acknowledged in a blue post a while ago that they didn't realise players liked seeing a epic drop on a corpse even if they cant use it, opposed to nothing. I think this is a step backwards tbh,

And I can't resist, but calling it now, we're going to see tweets from Rygarius nearly daily with the usual message " no longer represents blizz etc...." GC 2.0

[soulkeeperx]

Still no comment on the terrible camera change?

[Pull My Finger]

Still no comment on the terrible camera change?

What do you mean, no comment? There was a fairly lengthy blue post on that particular topic days ago. What is it that you feel wasn't addressed?

[Deleted]

Just checking, but am I understanding this right, we can't use ML outside of guilds group any more? That seems pretty naft to me tbh. Sure you get some people which abuse the system, and bare face lie when they say only one thing reserved. But at the same blizzard already acknowledged in a blue post a while ago that they didn't realise players liked seeing a epic drop on a corpse even if they cant use it, opposed to nothing. I think this is a step backwards tbh,

And I can't resist, but calling it now, we're going to see tweets from Rygarius nearly daily with the usual message " no longer represents blizz etc...." GC 2.0

If you haven't done any pugging then you'd notice every fucking group would be like "Tier tokens reserved, weapons reserved, trinkets reserved" and all that shit.

[Wolfie of Medivh]

and yet its not due to its nature - yes you can trade loot but ONLY if it has lower itlv then the piece you ALREADY have - for gearing up purposes its still complete garbage as you cant gear up people that you want to gear

its a disaster for pugging scene very few decent players will do raids now that they have alternative of mythic + dungeons where they dont have to carry scrubs just for sake of creating group.

So the small chance that someone gets an upgrade that isn't ideal and would pass it off is somehow worse than the small chance of, say, a raid with no shield users getting shields, thus ensuring a shard?

I'm sorry, that seems like a very minor concern.

[Xenocidal]

Maybe that's why the patch notes have sucked lately, maybe the new guy already took over.

[soulkeeperx]

If you haven't done any pugging then you'd notice every fucking group would be like "Tier tokens reserved, weapons reserved, trinkets reserved" and all that shit.

That comment you referred to was just a very bad justification of the camera change, since then we've had one post capped thread on the beta forums and several on the general wow forums, and since that first blue post there hasn't been a single comment about the feedback

[ColgaWoW]

Just checking, but am I understanding this right, we can't use ML outside of guilds group any more? That seems pretty naft to me tbh. Sure you get some people which abuse the system, and bare face lie when they say only one thing reserved. But at the same blizzard already acknowledged in a blue post a while ago that they didn't realise players liked seeing a epic drop on a corpse even if they cant use it, opposed to nothing. I think this is a step backwards tbh,

And I can't resist, but calling it now, we're going to see tweets from Rygarius nearly daily with the usual message " no longer represents blizz etc...." GC 2.0

I suspect the Master Loot change was a way for them to combat paid gearing services rather than just simply abuses of the system. A lot of the gearing services would be just a handful of people, and they would fill out the raid in the pre-made finder to 30 people then funnel gear to their carries.

[Eleccybubb]

Insert "rat fleeing the sinking ship" comment.

[Cynical Person]

Well another one jumps ship...