Oct 19 Hotfixes, 7.1 PvP Reward Changes, Blue Posts, BlizzCon Virtual Ticket Hosts

[chaud]

Diablo 4 Hype Postmortem & S7 ended, S8 starts Friday

ShiftCon is This Week's Brawl

This Week's Brawl is Punisher Arena, Heroes Patch Notes

Sombra Recap for October 19th 2016

Patch 7.0.3 Hotfixes - October 19

Classes
Demon Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Demon Hunters should now receive a cache (or mount when lucky) from Pandaria world bosses who previously had no items for Demon Hunters.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Blessing of Sanctuary now has a 30 second cooldown.

Dungeons and Raids
Emerald Nightmare

Cenarius

• Damage immunity such as Divine Shield or Blessing of Protection now prevents damage dealt by Spear of Nightmares.

Il’gynoth

• Rogues will no longer end up inside Il’gynoth’s core when attacking it with Shadowstrike or Killing Spree.

Items

• The effects from Jewelcrafting neck pieces should now scale properly when Timewalking.

Professions
Archaeology

• It should now be easier to obtain Jewels of Aellis for the quest "Sifting Through the Rubble". Angry Highborne Spirits should now have a 100% chance to drop a jewel.

PvP

• Warden Tower captains no longer have a limit on the number of eligible players who can simultaneously tap them.

Quests

• Alliance players are now able to complete "Full Circle" in Vashj'ir.

PvP Rewards in Patch 7.1

With Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan arriving on October 25, we wanted to share some updates on PvP rewards from Battlegrounds, Skirmishes, Arenas, and Rated Battlegrounds. Like many of the players we’ve heard from over the last few weeks, we’ve identified areas where PvP rewards could be more satisfying. Along the way, we made a few changes through hotfixes, but we can do much more in a full content patch.

Artifact Power
Soon after players began exploring the Broken Isles, we recognized the incredible impact that Artifact Power has as a reward mechanism. While PvP already rewards Artifact Power, it isn't clear how much Artifact Power you might get from doing a particular PvP activity, which might have made some players reluctant to participate. To address that, Artifact Power rewards have been increased for PvP in Patch 7.1, and the user interface will now show you exactly how much you'll receive for a victory.

First Victory of the Day Bonus
The Honor reward for your first Random Battleground victory of the day has always been twice that of subsequent victories. In Patch 7.1, we've extended that bonus to all of the other brackets in PvP: Skirmishes, 2v2 Arenas, 3v3 Arenas, and Rated Battlegrounds. Furthermore, in addition to bonus Honor, your first victory of the day will also reward a large Artifact Power bonus. This means big rewards for players who participate in a variety of PvP formats each day.

Here are examples of Honor and Artifact Power rewards for each bracket, including first-of-the-day bonus rewards:

Activity	Honor	Artifact Power	Artifact Power (at Artifact Knowledge 10)
Skirmish Win (First of the Day)	160	100	950
Skirmish Win	80	25	238
Random BG Win (First of the Day)	300	400	3800
Random BG Win	150	200	1900
2v2 Win (First of the Day)	200	120	1150
2v2 Win	100	40	380
3v3 Win (First of the Day)	200	180	1700
3v3 Wins	100	60	570
Rated BG Win (First of the Day)	600	800	7600
Rated BG Win	300	400	3800

Gear from PvP
While the impact of gear in Battlegrounds and Arenas in Legion is different from past expansions, we still believe it’s important for endgame activities to reward items. In Patch 7.1, every Battleground or Rated Battleground victory will reward a piece of gear. Losses will also have a chance to reward gear based on the final score of the match, and Skirmish and Arena victories will have an increased chance to drop gear. This gear will has a chance to roll up with the possible bonuses you’re used to, including Warforged, Titanforged, socketed, and with tertiary stats.

Our initial approach for Legion has been to have the item level of gear rewards from PvP increase with your Honor Level. However, the way this works hasn’t been obvious to players, and it resulted in the unfortunate circumstance where some players tried out PvP only after gearing up elsewhere—and were disappointed by the PvP rewards. In Patch 7.1, we've transitioned PvP gear rewards to more closely mirror the type of item level progression you see from World Quests. This means PvP should feel as rewarding as other parts of the game that offer high replay value.

Weekly Bonus Gear from Rated PvP
Previously, your first victory in each rated bracket of PvP (2v2, 3v3, Rated Battlegrounds) rewarded a piece of gear based on your current PvP rating. This wasn’t ideal. Often, players didn’t know what item level reward gear would offer before participating. Winning a single game represents a fairly insignificant amount of effort for a piece of high item level gear, especially considering this gear has the potential to rival the best items from raids or Mythic Keystone dungeons. The decision to use your current PvP rating also discouraged players from doing anything that might result in their rating going down. For example, if you've just had an amazing run in Arenas, you may decide to stop trying to improve your rating, or you might be reluctant to put your rating on the line with a less-skilled friend who just logged in.

In Patch 7.1, each bracket of rated PvP (2v2, 3v3, Rated Battlegrounds) has a weekly quest that rewards items based on your best rating from the previous week. The quests for Arena brackets will require 10 wins, and the quests for the Rated Battleground bracket require four wins. Below a rating of 2000, these quests will always reward a piece of gear with the current season's Gladiator appearance. Above 2000 rating, these quests will always reward a piece of gear with the current season's Elite appearance. Again, you’ll always see the item level of the gear you’ll receive in the tooltip of the weekly quest.

Here is an example listing of the rating-to-item level breakdown for Season 1:

Last Week's Rating	Base Item Level	Appearance
0 - 1399	840	Gladiator
1400 - 1599	850	Gladiator
1600 - 1799	860	Gladiator
1800 - 1999	865	Gladiator
2000 - 2199	870	Elite
2200 - 2399	875	Elite
2400+	880	Elite

We hope you'll find all of this information useful as we head into Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan. We want PvP to be a compelling activity for all World of Warcraft players, and we want to make sure it rewards those who commit extra time and effort to the competitive side of the game.

Blue Posts

Bonus Roll Gold
We're aware that it's not a great feeling to receive a small amount of gold when a bonus roll doesn't give loot. However, this system was added back in Mists of Pandaria and it was only designed to give either an item from the boss loot table, or gold as a consolation prize.

We're looking into adding other sorts of consolation prizes, such as Artifact Power, in the future. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Overwatch - 1 Million Twitter Followers
Overwatch recently hit 1 million Twitter followers and released a nice video to thank players.

Words alone aren't enough to express how incredibly thankful we are to our 1 MILLION+ followers, but hopefully this remix comes close... pic.twitter.com/IJeuIXanoe

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) October 19, 2016

BlizzCon 2016 Virtual Ticket Hosts
Blizzard shared the list of Virtual Ticket Hosts today. Michele Morrow, Alex Albrecht, and Malik Forté are all back again!

[Holycrap1]

finally they fixed captains in PvP Wq.

[Zka]

finally they fixed captains in PvP Wq.

What was wrong with them?

[Railander]

What was wrong with them?

limit 5 player tag

[Twistedelmo]

i'm guessing blizzard is satisfied with Holy paladins, I've only seen the nerf to Sanctified so far.

[aeuhe4yxzhds]

limit 5 player tag

Was only a problem though when it rewarded good gear, plebs flooded the area

[Zka]

limit 5 player tag

Ah OK. Usually I'm alone against them, sometimes 1 or 2 people joins up, but never more. I guess I was lucky?

[nomnom]

Why can't we have developers like Jeff working on wow.

[Laylriana]

How hard would it be to increase the gold award on world bosses as a stop-gap while they figure out what else to offer.

[Fang7986]

How hard would it be to increase the gold award on world bosses as a stop-gap while they figure out what else to offer.

How hard would it be to just accept that sometimes you kill stuff and don't get anything?

[furydeath]

haven't seen Alex Albrecht since project lore ...that's like what TBC?

[off3nc3]

Well the PvP changes seem to improve but "we're not there yet" , they really need to remove the rating tied in ilvls for the highest rewards. We just need to QQ a bit more for it to happen !

[Spl4sh3r]

With how they word the Elite/Gladiator gear, I hope that Elite automatically grants the transmog for the non-elite set as well. Otherwise you lose out on transmog if you want to stay on top.

[Lumidar]

WTF is Blessing of Sanctuary? that was an old TBC Prot skill but not in game anymore as far as i know...

[Adramelch]

Ah OK. Usually I'm alone against them, sometimes 1 or 2 people joins up, but never more. I guess I was lucky?

You were just late to the party (possibly also playing on a smaller server?). It was a major problem the first few weeks which makes this fix so late, it's not even funny. At least they fixed it.

[Mazzic518]

The hosts are the most annoying thing of the virtual ticket, especially during the stream before the opening ceremonies...

[Chetti]

How hard would it be to just accept that sometimes you kill stuff and don't get anything?

Exactly this. At least you get gold, its something. If you loot a boss (on kill) and get gold it feels slightly better than if the body lights up and you loot it and get nothing. The same could be said for bonus rolls, you roll the dice and hope for something good, but if you don't get loot getting some amount of gold is better than getting nothing at all. Switching it up, including artifact power in the consolation prize list could be nice, but you know that people will complain about that too. "Oh I bonus rolled this thing for AP.. uselss" Even though AP really isn't useless, someone would there will complain about it being used as a loot consolation prize.

[Total Crica]

How hard would it be to just accept that sometimes you kill stuff and don't get anything?

Why would anyone accept something from entertainment that doesn't entertain them? That would be quite silly.

[kroniks]

Hah.

I knew it would not take long to kill PVP again.

[Zoldor]

Exactly this. At least you get gold, its something. If you loot a boss (on kill) and get gold it feels slightly better than if the body lights up and you loot it and get nothing. The same could be said for bonus rolls, you roll the dice and hope for something good, but if you don't get loot getting some amount of gold is better than getting nothing at all. Switching it up, including artifact power in the consolation prize list could be nice, but you know that people will complain about that too. "Oh I bonus rolled this thing for AP.. uselss" Even though AP really isn't useless, someone would there will complain about it being used as a loot consolation prize.

Eh, more gold would be nice since the price increase for coins to bonus roll. Since your option is 1k, 2k, and 4k or Resources (which soon will be the best way to go). But a step up to 3 digit gold value hurts no one and makes the risk reward slightly more balanced. Agreed, it is a gamble, but the cost to play is pretty high. I've been playing long enough to not be concerned, but I don't see the reason for hating on a larger gold increase. 10% of the value to play doesn't seem awful compared to 2% or less. I do wish they would add another way of achieving them back into the game instead of just a raw resource buy. But I usually prefer some sort of do this to get this than just buy it option. More ways is nice and doesn't really hurt anyone.