Mage and Monk Season 16 Elite Sets, July 21 Beta Raid Testing, Blue Tweets, Wowcraft

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Warlords of Draenor - Mage and Monk Season 16 Elite Armor Sets
Today we are taking a look at the Mage and Monk Season 16 Elite sets that were added in the latest beta build.

Warlords of Draenor Beta Key Giveaway
BlizzardCS is giving away 1,000 beta keys on Facebook, with entries open until July 27th.

Warlords of Draenor Beta - Addons Enabled

Addons are enabled in the current build, though many will need to be updated for 6.0 before they will function properly.

Warlords of Draenor Beta - July 21 Raid Testing Schedule
Warlords of Draenor raid testing will begin this week!

On Monday, July 21, we will begin our Warlords raid testing with one Heroic encounter from Highmaul, and one from Blackrock Foundry. As this is the very first raid test of the beta, it is quite possible that there will be technical or gameplay issues that disrupt the testing. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

Remember that Heroic difficulty scales for any group size between 10 and 30 players, so feel free to assemble and bring a group of any size within that range. Our general plan is to test every encounter on Heroic difficulty first, and then test sections of the raid on Normal and Raid Finder, alongside targeted Mythic tests.

Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below on all Beta servers.

Monday, July 21
The Butcher - Heroic Highmaul
13:30 PDT (16:30 EDT, 22:30 CEST)

Gruul - Heroic Blackrock Foundry
16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the boss being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Important Testing Notes

Q: How do I get into the raid zone?
A: In Stormwind, Orgrimmar, and your garrison, you may speak to Nexus-Lord Donjon Rade in order to teleport into the raid zone while it is open for testing. (The option to teleport into a zone will not be available when the zone is not open for testing.)

Q: What character should I use to test the raid?
A: Whichever you prefer. We will be scaling players' effective level to 100 for raid testing, and their item level to an appropriate threshold for the encounter(s) being tested.

Q: How long does testing last?
A: The primary purpose of testing is to give us the information we need to balance the encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing out in practice, and identify bugs. Once we're satisfied that we've received that information for a given boss, we'll be shutting down testing. Usually this takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, but there are no guarantees.

Blue Tweets

Classes
Problem is, you will want to fill in as many gcds as possible. Playing the #waiting game for resources is bad design.
Your first statement is mostly true, assuming that's optimal DPS. Second is only sometimes true; see Rogues/Ferals. (Celestalon)
Watched energy while waiting, and inevitably was around 40-45 energy when I needed it (sometimes as low as 30-35).
Sounds great. (Celestalon)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
with removal of HS/BS, what are blood DKs spending their blood/death runes on?
Pestilence (which is actually a merger of Pestilence and Blood Boil). (Celestalon)

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
what's supposed to give mana back as boomkin, was doing signle target and went oom? What did I do wrong?
They should never run OOM doing just DPS. Mana regen for them is all passive now. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Don't normally like posting these but http://t.co/TLmiyDCqoa any thoughts on that suggestion?
We're raising Lock and Load's duration to 30sec, and giving Survival an additional 10% baseline multistrike chance to help. (Celestalon)
More charges and a longer duration will be great though. Concern is just that you almost cant hold them without dropping DPS 2/2
It will be a slight *sustained* DPS loss to pool them, in exchange for a significant *burst* DPS gain. (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Ascention and haste are far from solving it. we had the same problem in first tier of MoP with 40 energy jabs
Not being GCD capped is not a problem for an energy class. Energy classes should generally be Energy-capped, not GCD-cap. (Celestalon)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Can we expect any changes to Seraphim soon? Currently it is by far the weakest level 100 talent choice for Ret.
We'll get to it in tuning. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
With you having to cut down a warrior ability for rage dump why was HS dropped and not WS.
Because cutting WS and not HS results in a ton of deadtime in your rotation; feels extremely slow. (Celestalon)

Challenge Modes
How about disabling sockets or at least make gems scale as well ? Raid gear was overpowered for CM b/ce of sockets, vs 463
Yep. The way sockets work in 6.0 (optional bonus property) means that we can solve CM power creep from gems. (WatcherDev)
Is this implying "bonus" sockets will be disabled in CM's? What about other bonuses?
Right, gems won't count towards CM stats (like how the Sha-touched gem didn't in 5.x). (WatcherDev)

PvE
Is the buff for soloing old raids coming in the Pre-Patch 6.0? #Warlords
Yeah, it's not a "buff" so much as a core change to the combat ruleset for fighting lower-level creatures. (WatcherDev)
Will Mists lvl 93 bosses be effected by this when we are lvl 100? So we can solo Mists raids?
No, Mists endgame wasn't squished. Some will likely be able to solo Mists raids at 100, the way some can solo Cata raids now. (WatcherDev)
I expect the solo ability to remain consistent: harder the closer you are to current cap, easier the older it is
Yes, goal is for everything to feel exactly as if no squish ever happened. (WatcherDev)

PvP
The CC damage threshold on beta is much smaller than live. It reminds me of Wrath which I enjoyed. Is it going to stay this way?
Yes it should (holinka)

Lore
-game lore is often debated, but can this be cleared up? Tides of War=No prisoners/civies is wrong or was it lvl designer choice?
The Theramore civilians may not have come from that battle. They may have been captured in S. Barrens or Dustwallow. (DaveKosak)

Will we find out what made Khadgar de-age and have Atiesh? Is he “our” Khadgar?
Not de-aged. Just freshly-shaved. (DaveKosak)
Amazing how much better Azeroth razors are than Outland! I guess Fel Iron can’t get that close
Haha "First blade lifts hair, second blade cuts it, third blade sears and cauterizes flesh for an incredibly close shave." (DaveKosak)

Wowcraft - Warsong Gulch
The latest two Wowcraft episodes take a look at Warsong Gulch.

[moveth]

Those are both pretty nice looking sets. Too bad I don't PVP

[Kazuchika]

Haha beta servers are already unstable lag ridden messes.

I know! Let's invite MORE people so even LESS testing is able to be done! GENIUS!

[CheeseSandwich]

Lawl FB beta key giveaway.

Sorry to those peeps who had hopes for 6.0 ptr or live.

[Deleted]

The Mage PVP armor video says "Monk" in the thumbnail icon

[lunchbox2042]

So much for it be a more closed test than Mists was. It seems they're inviting everyone and their mother to this one.

[Deleted]

The animations are epic! love them.

[Zka]

If addons are enabled, where is the Addons button in my beta client? It's up to date.
edit: looks like Addons button does not show up until you actually have 3rd party addons in the folder I never knew.

[Deleted]

for me that mage season elite is sooo much worse than the non elite. WTF with the crystal earings? God bless transmog.

[Deleted]

Oh god, please dont invite more people into beta! Its too laggy atm already!

Monk set looks decent, but i dont like that the gloves and the headpiece looks more like plate than leather.

Mage armor looks like theyre wearing a headset, but looks decent.

[derpkitteh]

when do the keys go out?

[Runeweaver]

Damn that Mage headpiece looks horrible.

Monk set is alright though.

[InfusOnWoW]

Interesting they are starting raid testing. That's a significant step.

[GAFFiO]

Haha beta servers are already unstable lag ridden messes.

I know! Let's invite MORE people so even LESS testing is able to be done! GENIUS!

Complaining about a beta product that's only been in beta a few weeks being unstable and lag ridden. GENIUS!

[Baluki]

So do the special animations on the armor only activate at certain times, like in combat? Or do they just activate at random? I'd rather see them activate in combat - and maybe certain actions like /roar, /flex, etc.

[Debased]

There is hardly anything elite about the mage set.

[valcrist]

I just love seeing all this armor that most players probably never get.

[Kazuchika]

Complaining about a beta product that's only been in beta a few weeks being unstable and lag ridden. GENIUS!

It's not a complaint. It's a fact. The beta servers are unstable and lag ridden. Adding more people does nothing but add more issues.

Common sense is obviously not your strong suit but I do find it amusing you made an account just to reply to my post.

[vipers]

monk gear looks more like plate than leather gear

[Magistrate]

I never noticed the design variation between male and female models for armor before. Derp. Adds cleavage, front/back.