Tier 17 Mage and Monk Armor Sets, May 27 Hotfixes, Blue Tweets, Faction Change Update

[chaud]

Warlords of Draenor - Tier 17 Mage and Monk Armor Sets
Today we are taking a look at the Tier 17 Mage and Monk armor sets. No Mythic sets have been added for these classes yet. You can see elements of the Monk set's design in the new Formor creature model!

Warlords of Draenor changes things up slightly by using one set of art for Raid Finder, one set of art for Normal and Heroic, and one set of art for Mythic difficulty. You can find the Raid Finder armor sets in our Raid Finder armor sets preview.

Patch 5.4.8 Hotfixes - May 27

Battlegrounds and Arenas

• Characters in a Tanking specialization in a Rated Battleground now take 50% additional damage (up from 20%) while holding an orb in Temple of Kotmogu or escorting a mine cart in Deepwind Gorge.

Items

• Black Grasp of the Destroyer drain mana effect no longer affects targets above level 73.
• Soul Breaker drain mana effect no longer affects targets above level 63.

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where credit for the achievement: Going To Need A Bigger Bag was not tracking correctly across characters on the account.
• Resolved an issue where a graveyard near wreckage of the Silver Dawn in Darkshore was automatically resurrecting players after releasing.

Blue Tweets
Several of these tweets are referring to the recent alpha build, so be sure to look at those notes for more context.

Classes
PSA: We're currently in the middle of implementing many changes. Damage values that you see in data mining are not nerfs. (Celestalon)

MMO-C shows Distracting Shot as a new spell. Does this mean it's not being removed ?
Yep. Distracting Shot and Soulshatter are back. (Celestalon)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Why do you continue to try and get death siphon to work. Won't ever work unless you can use without dps loss.
That is the intention. (Celestalon)
What about conversion then?
Conversion is not intended to be DPS-neutral. It's intentionally a DPS tradeoff. It does trigger rune regen talents though now. (Celestalon)

understand alpha is alpha and datamined info is datamined, but what's the blood dk mastery change supposed to be?
Blood Mastery is back to what it was before. (Celestalon)
ah ok, tooltip must be off. Says no longer increases absorption of shields, just a flat 50% of healed so I was REALLY confused
You mean exactly like it does on live? That 50% scales with Mastery. (Celestalon)

.Just to clear any confusion- could you please confirm/deny whether Pestilence now spreads Necrotic Plague?
Current plan is that it does, though we're still evaluating whether that's OK. NP spreads on it own, so Pest just speeds it up. (Celestalon)
When spreading NP to an already infected target, does it add a stack?
Currently, no. (Celestalon)

http://t.co/Bclf22UhhO now increase healing done by using pestilence so we need to use it more times than hearth strike?
Heart Strike is gone. You'll use Pestilence (aka Blood Boil) in its place. (Celestalon)
we will have any single target ability for blood runes or pestilence won't break cc?
No single target Blood Rune abilities. You'll want to not Pestilence near CC'd targets that you don't want to break. (Celestalon)

Resolve would still increase Rune Tap shield and what happend with perk Enhanced Rune Strike. How it would grant absorb shield?
Enhanced Rune Strike was changed to Enhanced Death Coil. Yes, Resolve would affect Rune Tap. (Celestalon)
but how would it grant abosrb from Death Coil? Could you write a bit more about it?
Check out Ursa Major for Bears. It's similar, but on Death Coil. Rolling large health increase. (Celestalon)
I have a lot questions but it still scale with attack power or missing hp like new Rune Tap?
Neither. It's a % per Death Coil. (5% for 30sec, rolling, I think.) (Celestalon)

Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Datamaning with a grain of salt ofc, but is bloody thrash really being replaced with current DoC?
Yes. (Celestalon)
Is bloody thrash becoming baseline? I liked the idea of it. And bleh, DoC again. It's alright but not a fan.
No. (Celestalon)

So are pounce and ravage being removed judging by notes? If so will there be a way during Incarn to rake w/o burning stun dr?
Yes, they're being merged with Rake/Shred. No, unfortunately, that's a downside. (Celestalon)

Will night elves be able to make use of the Rake perc of boosted damage in stealth by using Shadow Meld while in combat?
Yes. It's still based on being 'in stealth', not Prowl specifically. (Celestalon)

Are there any feral changes really planned? We're not seeing too much in the ways of big changes like other specs.
Feral's pretty solid. No major changes planned. (Celestalon)

new genesis says "to the target" is that every target with a rejuv or just funnelling all rejuv healing power to one target?
Each target individually. It replaces all Rejuvs with a Genesist HoT that does the same remaining healing, but over 3sec. (Celestalon)
Is the duration on the genesis fixed, or does it scale with haste?
I think it may reduce the duration (but same total healing) with haste. Will check. (Celestalon)

Why the manacost increase to swiftmend? What's the use of no-cd(rampant growth), if you can’t afford the spell.
Internal balance tuning. Don't worry, we'll get there with Rampant Growth. (Celestalon)

why hasn't force of nature been changed.
Because it's a good talent that we're happy with? Did you have some particular concern with it? (Celestalon)
the treants should be casting starsurge instead of wrath imo. the spellpower percentage can stay the same though.
The kit appropriateness and gameplay it creates is better as is. More interesting. (Celestalon)
its only benefiting from solar eclipse though while the other tier 4 benefit from both lunar and solar.
And yet you can use them all in Solar. That's gameplay. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Can you explain the intent behind removing the damage mitigation portion of deterrence? Hunters already lack defensives...
We didn't. Tooltip bug. (Celestalon)

Also, I know it's alpha, but were minds changed on the 1hr Misdirect? Taking notes with a lot of salt, but wondering.
Yes. Investigating other alternatives instead that don't break tank gameplay. (Celestalon)

"All threat caused by your attacks for the next 6̶0̶ ̶m̶i̶n̶ 8 sec will be transferred to them."((
We soured on the permanent-Misdirection idea for many reasons, that many people have already discussed. Still working on alternative (Celestalon)

Exotic Munitions looks interesting. Will we be able switch between them in combat ?
Undecided. If so, it'll likely be a 3sec cast or something. Should be something you're making a significant commitment to. (Celestalon)

Deterrence damage reduction % bugged? Wondering about the current MMO-C build.
Tooltip bug. It's unchanged. (Celestalon)

Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
I noticed Nether Tempest will no longer cleave, what was the reasoning behind this?
Tooltip bug. I meant to delete the AM proc part, and accidentally deleted that whole paragraph. Its AoE component remains. (Celestalon)
It's now [Arcane DoT that scales with charges and pulses AoE], instead of [Arcane DoT that triggers AM procs and pulses AoE]. (Celestalon)

I played fire for fun the other day and noticed that ignites are still crushed by a subsequent lesser crit. Is that going to...
A common misconception. It's not actually. 100% of the damage of the last ignite is added to the new one. It's just spread out. (Celestalon)
Well, I use CombustionHelper to give an easy-to-read value and I clearly see it go from, say, 30k to 20k ignite, which then...
Yes, and that's still the same total damage. (Celestalon)
CombustionHelper is telling you the damage *per tick*, not the total damage. If you have one 300 tick left, and a new ignite... (Celestalon)
...that should do a total of 300 damage, you end up with 3 more ticks that do 200. Total of 600. (Celestalon)
Maybe I misunderstand Combustion. Isn't its damage per tick literally equal to the current Ignite damage-per-tick when cast?
Yes. If you're dummy testing, remember that your very first Ignite is 2 ticks; all after that are 3 ticks (due to DoT refreshing) (Celestalon)
Gotcha. Even if Ignite damage is preserved, the loss in tick strength lowers Combustion, as I undersatnd it, which is a DPS loss
Well it fairly obviously has to go up and down, otherwise it'd just grow infinitely over the fight. (Celestalon)
Yeah, I remember when ignites rolled (very fun) But as it stands right now, the Ignite + Combustion combo isn't very fun
I really think you must be looking at just a couple casts on a dummy. What you're describing isn't a problem in actual practice. (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Hey, just curious on the design method behind removing sanc of the Ox off the statue? Too many smart absorbs in game?
Yeah, same as removing Bloodworms. That's more raid utility that we can fairly remove from tanks. (Celestalon)
does this mean that there's going to be fights where OX statue will be useful ala Galakras?
Absolutely. (Celestalon)

Why does 3 Chi explosion only split healing, that seems pointless and maybe even harmful
That's what it's balanced around. It's still a gain to use that, it's just not 6x stronger than it should be. (Celestalon)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Another question, is Inner Light gone forever for Prot Pally ?
It's merging back into Seal of Insight. (Celestalon)

Priest (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
can power word: shield no longer crit or is it just off of divine aegis' tool tip?
PW:S can crit, baseline now. (And Multistrike). (Celestalon)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Final numbers will change but from the looks of it you want rupture to finally do real dmg?
Rupture's damage is insanely good currently (6.0); we keep struggling with how to keep it from being *too* strong. (Celestalon)

I'm guessing we're missing the details on why we'd want Death from Above now? (50 energy evis/env)
It does the initial AoE damage as well, and the Eviscerate/Envenom do 1.5x their normal damage. (Celestalon)

is Assassination back to daggers only or are those tooltip errors?I'm sick of daggers so I hope fist/sword Mut makes it
We never were planning on non-daggers being viable for Mutilate. See patch notes for description of that. (Celestalon)
We took back out the ability for them to even use Daggers to prevent confusion, and because we found a better way to solve it (Celestalon)
I recall you guys saying sword/fist Mut wouldn't be optimal but it would be playable or something?
It would be possible, so that you could try out the gameplay without daggers, but far from optimal. (Celestalon)
is that staying or being reverted to daggers-only? The notes on mmo are confusing; also looks like Combat CT is a bleed again?
That's all being reverted. Combat CT is indeed back to a bleed again. (Celestalon)
Why if I may ask? What changed your minds? Both the DoT and the non-dags for mut.
The non-daggers change was really confusing to people; was expected to be viable. Found a better solution instead. (Celestalon)
The Combat CT change was so that you still use SnD in AoE, I believe. (Celestalon)
What's the better solution? And why not dagger main-hand and let us use whatever in the off?
Better solution is to make it much more reliable for you to have daggers available. (Celestalon)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
6.0 talents one could drop 4 healing rains at once? If not which HR is overwritten? Or is it blocked?
You can have multiple HRs at once, yes. Conductivity only affects the most recent one. (Celestalon)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Specifically afflic, we have no instants/procs to cast between movement. No class just does nothing while moving.
I think you may be forgetting about Corruption and Agony. (Celestalon)
Corr and agony last so long with pandemic so u don't prss them more than every 20s. I wouldn't consider that a viable filler.
A) Pandemic is gone, and a reduced version of it is baseline. B) There's a large window to press them in; use it. (Celestalon)

New KJC is useless. CD is too big. Bring back OLD Fel Flame for destro, current KJC for affli, smth new for Demo.
So you want to continue being overpowered? Understandable... (Celestalon)
Why KJC got such a nerf. Btw, what is the point of changing passive ability to active, what happened with reducing key bloating?
KJC was nerfed because it was overpowered in 6.0. While we want to reduce button bloat overall, this was worth it. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Fury Execute: 30 Rage, only below 20%.Arms Execute: 60 Rage, always usable. (But you get tons of rage at <20%) (Celestalon)

So Arms is going to be weaving in Executes above 20% as a rage dump/burst with more rage for them below 20%? Interesting.
That's the idea, yep. (Celestalon)
Wording seems kind of funky though, is execute going to cost 120rage always, or only when target above 20%?
From how I see it, Execute always costs 60 rage , but double rage generation below 20% for more Executing
I believe it's significantly more than 'double' rage gen below 20%. Depends on haste, but more like 2.5-3.5x. (Celestalon)
Last quick question, ignoring tuning passes, are the t-tip numbers pre-draenor perks or post? I'd assume pre?
Pre. (Though once you learn the Perk in-game, the affected spell's tooltip will reflect that.) (Celestalon)

Sorry to be a pain, but overpower, gone or just not in latest data mining?
Gone. New Arms rotation is in. May be hard to see the intent from just datamining. Patch notes later this week, hopefully. (Celestalon)

Art
OH MY GOD MYTHIC GETS UNIQUE ARMOUR? Thank you Devs! #ManlyTears
Same goes for Elite PvP gear (holinka)

saw you said elite PvP gear would have special models. Will elite gear have rating requirement or just conq. pts earned req.?
Elite gear will have a rating requirement. (holinka)

Warlords of Draenor Stats
Will "amplify" increase absorbs as well or will it be just as unrewarding as multistrike and cleave stats for disc priests?
Amplify is gone (at least for 6.0). (Celestalon)
And besides, Multistrike and Cleave are definitely not unrewarding for Disc. For example, PW:S can Multistrike. (Celestalon)

PvP
will going to Ashran flag players for PVP on PVE servers?
Yes everyone in Ashran is flagged for PvP even on PvE servers (holinka)

Free Faction Changes for Select Realms - Updated
The start date for these faction transfers has been delayed for one day, until Wednesday.

We consistently watch queue times for all areas of the game to try to identify problem areas where we can step in and make an improvement. Battleground queue times specifically tend to be a direct result of how many people are entering the queue at any given time from both the Horde and Alliance, within an entire region. While a number of factors can lead to longer queue times, faction interest in queuing for PvP tends to be the primary influence. For that reason we're going to be trying something new. For a limited time, and only for select realms (for this first test just a single realm), we'll be opening faction changes for Horde characters to change to Alliance for free.

These changes will be provided on a limited basis to realms where we see the greatest potential for changes to occur. Guild leaders who want to Faction Change their guild for free will first need to pay for the initial transaction, but will be granted a refund* if they change to the eligible faction within the free change time frame.

This first test of free faction changes will only initially be available to players on Barthilas. Eligible characters will be able to faction change from Horde to Alliance for approximately** one week beginning on Wednesday, May 28 at 10:00 a.m. PDT. If you're looking to faction change--and especially for any Guild leaders looking to initiate a Guild Master Faction Change--we highly recommend taking advantage of this offer as soon as possible to avoid leaving anyone behind. For more information on Faction Change eligibility and limitations, please visit the support site here.

We'll be providing updates on availability--as well as if this offer is extended to additional realms--here on the front page, so keep checking back. We look forward to your feedback on these faction changes, and ensuring you spend less time in a queue and more time slaughtering your enemies in glorious team-combat.

* Eligible Guild Master Faction Change refunds will be automatically processed within 72 hours.
**Faction Change availability may either be shortened or extended depending on ongoing evaluation during the faction change period.

[XanderGryphon]

Dat mage set. So much win.

[Sinister Knight]

I like how they've decided to equip Monks in Plate armor now.

[Ltsmash]

That mage set. So much win.

FTFY. Enjoy.

[Ikkarus]

I like how they've decided to equip Monks in Plate armor now.

And Mages, and shamans too..

[Gallahadd]

Am I the only one that thinks the Mage set looks more "Monk" than the monk set?

All I'm saying is thank god for transmogs...

[Tenjen]

I like how they've decided to equip Monks in Plate armor now.

It's based on the Fomor gron-like creatures and it's obviously Rock/granite covering their arms.

the entire clothing down the middle is leather with rock for thigh plates.

[Solomodex]

A really SAVAGE mage set this

[Synros]

Yet another Mage set with no special animations, or defining characteristics to it. Looks like a slightly modified version of Tier 8 for Shamans. Pretty disappointed, but not surprised.

[Teebone]

Good god that looks awful.

[Niight9]

Why did they nerf those crafted gloves (Black Grasp of the Destroyer drain mana effect no longer affects targets above level 73.) ? Was there some kind of game abuse ?

[scryed2007]

I love when blizz answers two different tweets that have the exact same answer,we know deterrence is a tooltip bug no need to answer everyone who thinks its real lol

[Bathory]

Drool mage set. So awesome. I really hope there's an off tier set for my lock to xmog. In purple. Ohhh I'd be in love.

Not too into the monk though. Maybe if the helm matched the rest of the set. Looks like that current SoO plate set.

[XanderGryphon]

Dat mage set. So much win.

I agree.

FTFY. Enjoy.

[Deleted]

mage set is cool although really hate mask/faceplate type helms so hope all the gnomes hide their helms

[Bawl]

That monk helm really clashes with the shoulders. The top and back sort of fit, but from the frontal view it looks really bad between the shoulders.

[Snes]

Fists of stone is a theme that goes well with Monks; not bad for a first raid set of an expansion. The first tier has historically been the most boring, so I can't wait to see what the next tiers bring monks.

Also, I hope Blizzard stands their ground on the Mythic sets being unique. I won't raid Mythic, but it'll be nice to see some diversity and it's a nice tip of the cap to those putting in the extra time/effort.

Entitled people will still whine as usual. They'll throw around the "OH U WANT TO BE SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE" claim, when it's actually them who feel entitled to it. Casuals are the new elitists (for the most part).

[Cathbadh]

Why did they nerf those crafted gloves (Black Grasp of the Destroyer drain mana effect no longer affects targets above level 73.) ? Was there some kind of game abuse ?

It worked on some raid bossses such as (heroic) Nazgrim, draining their main resource. Fight becomes pretty easy when its just tank/spank boss and adds.

[Nexxius]

The sets look great. Though the priest set must be ace for making us wait so long... Well it better be after an expansion of disappointing gear.

[Thallidomaniac]

It worked on some raid bossses such as (heroic) Nazgrim, draining their main resource. Fight becomes pretty easy when its just tank/spank boss and adds.

Blizzard also doesn't want people to use old items for current level content. It has always been the case, i.e. Blue Dragon, Nightfall, Drums.