Garrisons - Lumber Mill, New Garrison Monument, Blue Posts, Blue Tweets, Blizzard Art

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Warlords of Draenor - Garrisons: Lumber Mill
Today we are taking a look at the Lumber Mill garrison building.

The Lumber Mill takes up a Medium plot which can also be used for a Barn, Gladiator's Sanctum, Trading Post or Inn / Tavern. Once upgraded to Tier 3, your garrison will have two Medium plots available.

Abilities
This building is good for stockpiling garrison resources.

• Level 1 - Allows you to mark small trees in Draenor for harvest. Harvested Timber can be converted to work orders for Garrison supplies.
• Level 2 - Allows you to mark medium trees for additional Timber.
• Level 3 - Allows you to mark large trees for even more Timber.

Work Orders
The Lumber Mill allows you to mark trees in Draenor for lumberjacks to cut down, which gives you Timber. You can then trade 50 Timber for ~100 Garrison Resources and ~45 Apexis Crystal. Each small tree gives ~5 Timber and medium trees give ~10 Timber.

Learning to mark small trees requires the completion of Easing into Lumberjacking, followed by Sharper Blades, Bigger Timber for medium trees.

Achievements

Name	Side	Points	Reward	Category
Choppin' Some Logs Place 10 Work Orders at the Lumber Mill.		5		Buildings
Choppin' Some More Logs Place 50 Work Orders at the Lumber Mill.		5	Title Reward: Lumberjack <Name>	Buildings
Choppin' Even More Logs Place 100 Work Orders at the Lumber Mill.	Alliance	5	Title Reward: <Name> the Commandojack	Buildings
Choppin' Even More Logs Place 100 Work Orders at the Lumber Mill.	Horde	5	Title Reward: Timber Lord <Name>	Buildings
Upgrading the Mill Place 75 Work Orders at the Lumber Mill and complete the quests listed below.		5	Reward: Unlocks Lumber Mill, Level 3 Blueprint	Buildings

Interface Art

Level 1 Alliance Screenshots

Level 1 Horde Screenshots

Level 2 Alliance Screenshots

Level 2 Horde Screenshots

Warlords of Draenor - Garrison Monuments: The King in Green
One of the recent beta builds added a new monument to garrisons, earned from the Time is a Flat Circle achievement. You can see the other garrison monuments here.

Blue Posts

Blood Elf Models
Much like the Draenei, the Blood Elf models are already pretty good. We haven't begun working on the new Blood Elves yet, so I can't comment on the result, but personally I would expect it to be similar to the new Draenei. Of course they'll have higher quality textures and higher polygon counts, overall a big improvement, but not as drastic of an upgrade as the original eight races are seeing with their updates. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Garrison Plot Count
It is intentional that you'll be making some tough decisions on which buildings (and their bonuses) you want. Instead of having a lot of buildings with mediocre bonuses, we reduced the number of plots you have and redesigned the building bonuses to be quite impactful to your gameplay. Overall our design philosophy is that a few meaningful decisions is better than lots of inconsequential ones.

They're all cool in their own way and you'll probably want all of them to varying degrees. You're free to switch buildings if at some point you want to go with something else, but there is of course a cost and time investment to do so to build the new building. Swapping around a lot probably won't be the best way to operate your Garrison (up to you), but the option is definitely there. We're of course keeping an eye on balance of the building bonuses, as well as how the feature could expand in the future, but it is very deliberate that you'll have to make some tough decisions on which buildings you want for the bonuses they provide. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Classes
in general, how happy are you with mechanica/rotations of tanks?They pretty much final? Or a possibility of last minute changes?
.Mechanically, mostly happy. However, tanks are still massively overperforming, and we're planning some significant nerfs. (Celestalon)
Right now we're seeing tanks being alright in dungeons, where they're not chaining cooldowns and using AM well. ... (Celestalon)
But in raids, where they are doing those things, they're nigh-unkillable. Need to bring that back down to sanity. (Celestalon)
Not to mention in a lot of the mythic testing so far, tanks can't just survive forever alone like live, they can get trucked ...
Right. We're having to hit tanks extreeeeeemely hard in order to endanger them at all right now. Going to retune bosses as well. (Celestalon)
Fun fact: Almost every mythic boss currently hits tanks harder than Lei Shen did (proportional to the expansion). That's silly. (Celestalon)

and whats with your obsession over auto attacks and passive damage playing the game for you? ele mastery and searing totem..
Definitely not. It's important that there's some of that, but not too much. Super passive damage in the ~20-40% range is good. (Celestalon)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Now Blood DKs can only choose DeathPact in the Lv75 Tier since DeathSiphon doesnt apply Bloodshield and Conversion new 30RP cost
We chose that number because we think that will balance it, not kill it. We'll see how it turns out; sky-is-falling unhelpful. (Celestalon)

Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
What were the reasons behind removing frostbolt's ability to heal the water elemental?
It was extremely rarely used, and caused a lot of bugs. Very rare that we change something due to bugginess, but happens sometimes (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
sooooo ww monks can't use touch of death on players? Intended? I hope not
It will be usable on players below 10%. Not sure if its in this build or the next one. (holinka)

Priest (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
is shadow word pain spam in WoD intended or not?
Definitely not. (Celestalon)
I hope the solution is fixing Mind Flay's damage, instead of just eliminating SW:P's damage on application.
The solution is a mix. MFlay's damage is being tweaked, and SW:P's direct damage will no longer proc SApps/SInsight. (Celestalon)
But now sw: p on the move will be really really bad if you have Auspicious Spirit.
No, it just won't be any better than normal with Auspicious Spirit. (Celestalon)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Will Reincarnation be my only threat-dump as elemental in Warlords? Why remove the little threat-dump we had from Wind Shear?
Because it muddles the purpose of the ability and was completely pointless. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
"Safeguard no longer removes movement-impairing effects." Does it include roots? If so, good change.
It does. (holinka)

Honest question, did you feel it was overpowered to be able to get out of roots once/30 sec through a talent? (safeguard)
Yes, we felt it gave them a counter they didn't need. Charge and Heroic Leap give them the ability to get on target quickly. (holinka)

Character / Items
>transformation items. 20 sec duration for like 10-30 min CD? Not worth it at all. : |
Lately we're doing 1 hour/10 min and that feels ok to me, might check out some older ones and bump them (Muffinus)
is this your philosophy on all "toys?" If so, just stop wasting your time making them. Long CDs already diminish their fun.
You'd rather have no toys at all, than not be able to look like Mr. Smite all the time? Not sure many would agree with you. (Muffinus)

So what about stuff like Savory Deviate Delight? Sure, consumed and has to be "farmed", but laughable effort, considering AH.
Lots of variables here, sellable and consumable, so affected by gold inflation, takes up bag space, and thus limited (Muffinus)

They won't be usable when we enter raids for the first time in WoD, DM Faire isn't until 7 dec
Well, yes. And that affects everyone equally - you'll be able to make one soon after. (WatcherDev)

PvE
Try to remember this, a good mechanic is hard and can be explained within 4 Minutes to everyone.This will be fun!
Writing the Dungeon Journal Overviews has been a good exercise in whether mechanics can be distilled down to a few words. (WatcherDev)

PvP
random ashran thought. Maybe a small tutorial window pop up explaining the features of ashran. Mage tower,mid lane, side objectives
We use our quest system for this type of thing. Definitely open to how current intro quests fall short. (holinka)
effective than quests. Many pvpers rush threw quests to get to pvp and this will just add more quests to that process IMO
Well, those same people will probably ignore a tutorial. Quests give rewards which provide motivation to complete them. (holinka)

Are you bringing back the Arena Pass? Just curious
We are not. (holinka)
Arena Team Names?
Nothing planned for arena names. (holinka)

Hmm just saw call to arms gone for WoD WIll exp be buffed for leveling on randoms? For example AV IoC BfG exp > rest of bgs
Interesting. We'll take a look at the honor earn rates. We buffed the ones with low earn rate recently. (holinka)

UI / Addons
Will combo point UI ever getting an update for the change? P.S. Cloak and Dagger should switch places with and slow your target.
It's something we're considering for the future. (Celestalon)

Garrisons
If you collect these followers with the inn but get rid of it, do you keep them?
Yep! (Muffinus)
Any chance you could have them not as a permanent loss if dismissed, but a chance to get from the Inn again?
If you dismiss them, there's always the chance they'll show up again at your inn (Muffinus)

Thanks! Do you have the plan to increase the followers cap? 20 and 25 seems not enough.
Closely monitoring feedback on this (Muffinus)

Blizzard Art Update
Blizzard has added more pieces to the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Art gallery.

[moveth]

The lumber mill seems pretty nice but possibly a bit lackluster compared to other buildings.

[Deleted]

Nice i like it

[NMX-]

haha nice reference to true detective

[ZaneBusby]

Character / Items
So what about stuff like Savory Deviate Delight? Sure, consumed and has to be "farmed", but laughable effort, considering AH.
Lots of variables here, sellable and consumable, so affected by gold inflation, takes up bag space, and thus limited (Muffinus)
They won't be usable when we enter raids for the first time in WoD, DM Faire isn't until 7 dec
Well, yes. And that affects everyone equally - you'll be able to make one soon after. (WatcherDev)

I think you forgot to split those 2 up and add the line that they're talking about Darkmoon Cards not being usable the first few weeks, not Savory Deviate Delight. :P

[Kazuchika]

"Will Reincarnation be my only threat-dump as elemental in Warlords? Why remove the little threat-dump we had from Wind Shear?"

Haha what? There's seriously someone complaining about an aspect of a spell that never actually worked in any meaningful capacity being removed? Good lord.

[ZavBE]

Hmm I'm getting a 404 error for http://media.mmo-champion.com/images...Tweets-DLC-450

[Wolfie of Medivh]

"Will Reincarnation be my only threat-dump as elemental in Warlords? Why remove the little threat-dump we had from Wind Shear?"

Haha what? There's seriously someone complaining about an aspect of a spell that never actually worked in any meaningful capacity being removed? Good lord.

What's even stranger to me is why'd he need it... neither of the DPS shaman specs are nearly bursty enough to pull threat unless they make a big error.

[Azahel]

Hmm I'm getting a 404 error for http://media.mmo-champion.com/images...Tweets-DLC-450

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...Tweets-DLC-450
there you go

[Malvenue]

It's important to note the level 3 lumber mill also rewards the level 100 epic follower Phylarch the Evergreen http://wod.wowhead.com/follower=194 who can work in both your lumber mill and herb garden.

[Kazuchika]

What's even stranger to me is why'd he need it... neither of the DPS shaman specs are nearly bursty enough to pull threat unless they make a big error.

It was poor design from the start. A threat dump tied to an interrupt? But yeah when I played my ele sham the only times I'd ever really get into issues is retarded burst like the first wave galakras adds with all my trinkets popped/Ascendance/SLash and that's my fault generally because our tanks were assholes :P

But yeah complaining about this is ridiculous.

[Prothall]

Question - are garrisons per character, or per server? I don't remember them ever saying anything about that. So could one character have a totally different garrison than another on the same server, or are you locked in?

[Narshe]

Question - are garrisons per character, or per server? I don't remember them ever saying anything about that. So could one character have a totally different garrison than another on the same server, or are you locked in?

Pretty sure its per character.

[Archmage Alodi]

True Detective!!!!

[TwoShoedLou]

Yay for True Detective reference! Very cool looking monument. Kinda getting more excited for garrisons with each of these previews. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint.

[Salech]

"Will Reincarnation be my only threat-dump as elemental in Warlords? Why remove the little threat-dump we had from Wind Shear?"

Haha what? There's seriously someone complaining about an aspect of a spell that never actually worked in any meaningful capacity being removed? Good lord.

I think it's because, you know, people actually like the uniquness of spells maybe? making everything the same is freaking awfull game design, also Wind Shear threat "dump" it was very little, have saved me a few times as elemental.

[Deleted]

haha nice reference to true detective

I know they mention it a couple of times on the show, but is it really? If it is, it is a cheap one imo, because time being a flat circle repeating itself is actually something that about 1/5 of the earths population believes to be true. (Probably not literally, at least not most of them)

[Deleted]

Wouldn't it be fantastic if followers kept sitting around at the Inn complaining about how your Garrison is not like it used to. "I remember before the upgrades - it was more challenging", "Yeah, [InsertCharacterNameHere] is clueless, and only cares about money - building a Lumber Mill WTF?", "Yeah GG [Character] *eyeroll*". And then another one comes and start talking about how much more fun life at the Garrison was when the Trading Post was level 1, or whatever.", and then they will start whinign about how the community at the Inn has gone down the drain.

[Deleted]

The lumber mill seems pretty nice but possibly a bit lackluster compared to other buildings.

The Lumber Mill currently has one aspect no other building has: Apexis Crystal generation.
The current sources for Apexis Crystals are:

- Daily quest = 800
- Weekly Garrison invasion Gold / Silver / Bronze = 75 / 50 / 25 (Winning at gold gives you all 3 rewards for a total of 150)
- A bunch of rares/rare elites which drop ~30 Apexis crystals the first time you kill them
- Lumber Mill = 45 per work order. At level 3 you have 5 work orders / day. With Storehouse you have another 3(?) extra so 8x45 = 360 per day if you keep it up.

Last time I checked you can only carry 250 wood and it costs 50 for each work order, so you'll have to make at least 2 trips per day. And wood isn't that fast to gather.

Lumber Mill is probably the best of the mid buildings to get early for raiders. You can build Apexis Crystals fast for a few epics by the time raids hit. After a week or two of raiding and you don't need Apexis gear anymore just switch to another mid building, which is easily doable with all the Garrison resources you have gotten from the Lumber Mill.

Note: second most useful building for raiders is probably the Barn for the bloods which are needed for epic crafting upgrades. The Inn is fun, but the follower missions are useless for gear or raid advantages in any way. Just grab the Inn after the Lumber Mill becomes useless imho.

[Stormykitten]

Lumber mill is annoying :P It's obviously an effective building for getting early to build resources, but it's also the most boring building that tier. So it's gonna be a tough choice, efficiency vs earlier fun.

Regarding wind shear, funny how perception changes everything. To me it was one of the smoothest threat reducers, simply because it actually had another purpose, whereas just a threat dump is too situational today except for pet classes. Also, if you actually used it for threat only to miss an interrupt window, that's totally on you not knowing what you were doing. Shaman dps specs are extremely bursty early on, which is why the tiny reduction -sometimes- were nice. I won't like, cry tears over missing it but I thought it was an excellent flavour to the ability. And to be honest, there's enough removal of actual buttons that it feels un-fun to remove features from abilities actually staying, too.