Legion Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas

[Archermit]

Kind of annoyed that Warlocks (while I understand they have their issues) got a full section but nothing was said about the sorry state hunters were left in

[Lasombria]

This is the part I wondered about: "Melee are doing well in dungeons right now, which is a good thing. Historically people wanted to bring lots of ranged casters over melee." That's genuinely not the experience in any guild where I know people and we chat in or out of game about our progress.

[Frozen Death Knight]

I really do not get Blizzard's insistence of not increasing the cap of 25 quests in your Quest Log. We have had a 25 quests cap for what, over 11 years now? They have added thousands upon thousands of quests since then and there are plenty of quests that can not be done in a single day, so you are stuck with a bunch of quests that fill up the Quest Log. That in turn makes it hard to justify having such a low cap.

Seriously, they could easily double the cap to 50, and it would not affect the effectiveness of the Quest Log in a negative way. This is not 2004 where you had to read the quest text to keep track on where you needed to go. You have markers on your map that track the locations of all your quests fairly accurately, which makes keeping a check on your Quest Log very, very easy. The 25 quests cap make little sense with the way the game is currently designed and only poses an annoyance when trying to deal with more than one daily quest hub, especially when you are trying to do old and new content.

[Unholyground]

The problem though is the kite made it through and out of beta. You could forgive the playerbase thinking "Blizzard must be okay with this then" and incorporating it into their play, only to then log in a few days later and see that the CD was gutted. Mixed signals are frustrating as was the nature of the nerf itself; going from a 3m to a 15m CD was way too knee-jerky and really removes the choice in using it in the first place. A 5m CD would have been far more reasonable -or- make the kite into Aviana's Feather 2.0 and keep the 15m CD.

Oh I don't agree with the amount they nerfed it but I agree with the nerf itself, I mean they could make it 5 minutes that seems more reasonable and then reduce the CD on the Goblin Glider to 2 mins.

[Redecle]

Hopefully the tier set comment is not restricting the fact that the team thinks
Emerald Nightmare is tier 1, when it's tier 0,5, cause the actual tier items are in Nighthold.
Tomb of Sargeras is kind of given thing to be the final raid, doof..
Currently the whole Broken Shore just screams final patch progressive daily quest area, much like Isle of Quel'danas. Full of way too powerful demon bosses and elites, no current quests.
But is that going to be tier 2 in Legion?
And 7.1 is supposed to come before Nighthold is opened, that's what was said earlier. Cause the Trial of Valor was to serve as a small mid raid in between EM and Nighthold.
So if EM is tier 0, Trial of Valor is 0,5, Nighthold is tier 1, hopefully Tomb of Sargeras is at least tier 3.
And if the Ulduar and Throne of Thunder model is continued, which i do believe it is as mid expansion raid tier.
Which this time is not legion centric and going to another scenery.
My guess looking at certain zone, certain villain in this expansion making appearance, the fact that Emerald Nightmare has been known to possibly have some links, the location of the Isles and the amount of underwater mounts being handed out all combined. It doesn't take a genius to figure out where this is all going and what is a change from all the demons. We are going to Ny'alotha in tier 2 for Queen Azshara and N'zoth. We are in the middle of the ocean already and some maps (there are variations) show that the sunken city is not that far off from the Tomb. Who knows there might already be something in the surrounding ocean floor in the current map, it's not like a lot of people have probably gone diving around the sea.

[Xentronium]

Nothing on professions and the "joy" of cooking huh?

[Nami]

Nothing about hunters, what a surprise.

[Xenyatta]

The warlocks bitching and complaining is really a joke. They've been insanely good for how long? Forever!? They may have had a bout where they weren't top dog in 11 years but they were always in the top 3 of the best DPS classes. Look how many other classes get punched in the balls constantly and left useless and unwanted in groups and raids. WW monks in WoD were pure trash. You needed machine level perfect play for mediocre results. Who wants to play like that?! Elemental Shaman were completely useless in Cata for a while there and really there was ZERO reason to have one when they did half of everyone else's damage. Melee specs were rarely in the top 3 DPS in as long as I can remember back. People complained but never threw a pissy fit because they weren't top DPS. They changed classes for a while til their class regained it's strength again.

[Fang7986]

I know, they'd never implement something is weird as flying.

- - - Updated - - -



No you're being ridiculous and dense on purpose. I enumerated why that's not the case.

and you are arguing that there is a right way to play which is completely false

- - - Updated - - -

that because of 1 reason - mythic crybabies - if it wasnt for that crowd we would have mythic + dungeons already on launch , rep vendors would have gear equal to hc raiding just like they did in past , world bosses would be out , proffesions wouldnt be pointless - but because of mythic crybabies eveyrthing has some artificial cellign of 850 itlv for 3 weeks for no reason whatsoever

once again everythign in game is a mere shadow to raiding - yes there is a ton of stuff but it all rewards shit rewards because blizzard knwo that next to nobody want to do raids. and htey have to herd people there somehow

would be amazing to see what would happen if dungeons and raids only dropped cosmetic gear and everyone was on equal footing gear wise.

[Gadzooks]

short time? You mean YEARS?

and why should they abandon class balance when they literally fixed it with PvE and PvP division? Its not that its hard, there are companies out there with far more complex stuff to balance out and do it just fine by fine-tuning regularly. Its blizzards own decision not to fine-tune, they are used to "good-ol-days" when any change made huge impact on everything so they invented extremely rare but also extremely powerful nerfhammer. They just forgot that times change. They always did it in WoW and they keep doing that in hearthstone as well. One problematic card? Okay, wait about 6-12 months and then nerf it to the ground, making it totally unplayable.

As they did in WoD, nerfed demo locks to the ground and openly said "Fuck off, we dont want you to play demo only." Is that fine? At that time yeah, now when they can tune PvE and PvP separately? Hell no. When shit is standardized in PvP I see no reason to wait with PvP template fixes and there are huge problems (from tanks being useless in BGs to healers dying in seconds to stunlocks', this is rly not going to change with better gear or whatever. Also if a certain spec just sucks balls in dungeons and nobody wants to take it its unlikely that will change on its own as well

Why should they abandon balance? Because they've never been in balance, and never will be. And, the entire WoW community spends an inordinate amount of time wringing their hands about it, and ranting, like you just did. In fact, you proved part of my point, thanks. The WoW universe can use a lot less rants like the one you just spewed.

[madcowcancer]

i wanna know why they still let ion costifuckus talk to the public at all. put that snide, snarky, rude, bitch-voiced asshole in the blizzard basement and never let him see a camera or microphone again. everything he says pisses me off. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY ISNT CHRIS METZEN THE PUBLIC RELATIONS FACE OF BLIZZARD??????

[Morath]

The warlocks bitching and complaining is really a joke. They've been insanely good for how long? Forever!? They may have had a bout where they weren't top dog in 11 years but they were always in the top 3 of the best DPS classes. Look how many other classes get punched in the balls constantly and left useless and unwanted in groups and raids. WW monks in WoD were pure trash. You needed machine level perfect play for mediocre results. Who wants to play like that?! Elemental Shaman were completely useless in Cata for a while there and really there was ZERO reason to have one when they did half of everyone else's damage. Melee specs were rarely in the top 3 DPS in as long as I can remember back. People complained but never threw a pissy fit because they weren't top DPS. They changed classes for a while til their class regained it's strength again.

1st of all, it is not just about DPS output, but how spec feels like. Now I cant say, that any of specs is nejoyable.
2nd, top dogs 11 years? Really? From pure DPS classes who should literally excell on most fights (at least with one of specs) were stable Mage and Hunter. But Warlock was always up and down (similar it was with Rogue), huge changes in rotations and playstyle between patches etc. So lock had bright moments (like Pandaria or Blackrock Foundry patch with Demo) but mostly sucked playstyle or damage... or both.
3rd why exactly are you pointing that WW sucked part of last expansion and Ele Shaman in Cata? Also difference in Warlock (pure DPS) and for example Monk or Shaman (Hybrids) is fact... that if Warlock like CLASS sux in DPS or feeling from combat, it is bigger problem that ONE spec of hybrid is not allright.

[Heladys]

I don't mind it too much really. It really isn't too bad if you think about it. I unlocked it the other day, a little over a week after launch, and I didn't do anything special. I just did the world quests in Suramar when they popped up, and the scenario when it showed up every few days (which I messed up pretty hard once).

People are just making the grind look harder than it actually is.

Yeah, the pace of Nightfallen rep is just fine, the xpac's been out a week and a half and I'm revered.

[Deleted]

Why should they abandon balance? Because they've never been in balance, and never will be. And, the entire WoW community spends an inordinate amount of time wringing their hands about it, and ranting, like you just did. In fact, you proved part of my point, thanks. The WoW universe can use a lot less rants like the one you just spewed.

what rant? are you blind? Balance does not mean 0 difference, 5-10% is doable no problem, the problem is there are 20-30% differences and the reason, as you wrote, they never adressed that, was it would create problems either in PvP or PvE, which is no longer the case. So I have no idea what the hell are you talking about, you either missed whole PvP template system or you are just a troll.

[Cerus]

1st of all, it is not just about DPS output, but how spec feels like. Now I cant say, that any of specs is nejoyable.
2nd, top dogs 11 years? Really? From pure DPS classes who should literally excell on most fights (at least with one of specs) were stable Mage and Hunter. But Warlock was always up and down (similar it was with Rogue), huge changes in rotations and playstyle between patches etc. So lock had bright moments (like Pandaria or Blackrock Foundry patch with Demo) but mostly sucked playstyle or damage... or both.
3rd why exactly are you pointing that WW sucked part of last expansion and Ele Shaman in Cata? Also difference in Warlock (pure DPS) and for example Monk or Shaman (Hybrids) is fact... that if Warlock like CLASS sux in DPS or feeling from combat, it is bigger problem that ONE spec of hybrid is not allright.

All DPS specs are pure DPS - especially now. Mages, rogues etc should not automatically be better than Druids, Paladins etc.

A monk only has one DPS spec and so do pallies. They shouldn't be gimped just because you think "pures" should be better. The hybrid tax never really existed and hasn't for a long time.

[Xenyatta]

1st of all, it is not just about DPS output, but how spec feels like. Now I cant say, that any of specs is nejoyable.
2nd, top dogs 11 years? Really? From pure DPS classes who should literally excell on most fights (at least with one of specs) were stable Mage and Hunter. But Warlock was always up and down (similar it was with Rogue), huge changes in rotations and playstyle between patches etc. So lock had bright moments (like Pandaria or Blackrock Foundry patch with Demo) but mostly sucked playstyle or damage... or both.
3rd why exactly are you pointing that WW sucked part of last expansion and Ele Shaman in Cata? Also difference in Warlock (pure DPS) and for example Monk or Shaman (Hybrids) is fact... that if Warlock like CLASS sux in DPS or feeling from combat, it is bigger problem that ONE spec of hybrid is not allright.

When the only DPS spec available to monks was WWer. It's not like shaman where they can go enhancement if they wanted to. There was only one choice and right after MOP it was destroyed and left many people stuck having to reroll because no one wanted to play it because of these changes. This was a character that was brand new to the game and it was a failure for 2 years. Still goes on to state that casters were always top and melee fell somewhere in between mages, warlocks and moonkin and their shittiest version of those classes. At least it was acknowledged that your class is boned. I know many hunters who hate how their class plays but they play it. Ride out the storm like most other classes have... but classes that are used to being good don't know how to handle not being good for a little while.

[Morath]

When the only DPS spec available to monks was WWer. It's not like shaman where they can go enhancement if they wanted to. There was only one choice and right after MOP it was destroyed and left many people stuck having to reroll because no one wanted to play it because of these changes. This was a character that was brand new to the game and it was a failure for 2 years. Still goes on to state that casters were always top and melee fell somewhere in between mages, warlocks and moonkin and their shittiest version of those classes. At least it was acknowledged that your class is boned. I know many hunters who hate how their class plays but they play it. Ride out the storm like most other classes have... but classes that are used to being good don't know how to handle not being good for a little while.

So from your POV is smaller problem that PURE DPS class sux overall in doing damage, than HYBRID class sux in doing damage, when it have still two other specs which if I remember correctly were very good at least in WoD. Also melee sucked? Melee were very often top DPS classes, combats are now splitted into anti-melee abilities and anti-caster abilities so movement necessary is very similar for both of them. DK, Paladin also Warriors were very good DPS last few datadiscs (again I cant say same about another pure DPS - Rogue). Hunters are very good for long time, how I know it? Well... most of guilds had like 2-3 hunters in raid, same with mages (they were literally good in every situation and enjoyable to play). I cant tell same about locks for example. Plenty of guilds had none or one.

[Deleted]

I know, they'd never implement something is weird as flying.

For Lazy whiners like you.

[Arvandor]

underbelly.. fucking force to pvp!

90% on a pve server dont like this and avoided this zone complete!

and then this answer.. FUCK YOU IDIOTS!

[Kriterion]

They should really change that barrage skill. I hate the way it is used. Instead they can give our glaives back "best skill ever made".