Hearthstone Items, Garrison Missions and Raid Loot, Blue Tweets, DLC #455, News Recap

[chaud]

RoS on Sale at Amazon.es, Reaper of Censorship, Crusader on Patch 2.1, Greater Rifts Tips, Trial Rift and Full Inventories

Weekly News Recap - News, Popular Decks, Community Videos

New Master Skins Preview: Zeratul, Tyrael, Tychus, Raynor, Nova, Brightwing

Warlords of Draenor - Hearthstone Items
The latest Warlords of Draenor beta added some Hearthstone items, sold by Benjamin Brode in your garrison. These items are not consumed on use.

Level	Type	Slot	Name	Cost
1	Consumable		Pack of Hearthstone Cards	10
1	Consumable		Winning Hand	100
1	Consumable		Hearthstone Board	1,000

Garrison Missions and Raid Loot Rewards
Garrison missions that reward raid loot will take time to unlock, as you have to gear up your followers before they can start raiding. These missions reward raid loot from a difficulty one above the one you are currently running. Mythic raiders get mythic loot and 1,000. There are currently 4 missions for each raid difficulty, with a 2 week cooldown on each.

Level	Type	Slot	Name
100	Other		Cache of Highmaul Treasures
100	Other		Cache of Highmaul Treasures
100	Other		Cache of Highmaul Treasures

Garrison Missions and Followers

Off the top of my head, I'm really not sure what can be done to make the level 100 follower endgame more interesting.
Once you have followers at ilvl 615, the second tier of level 100 missions unlocks, at 630 the third tier unlocks (includes missions with ilvl 645 gear for your character), and when you have followers at ilvl 645 the fourth tier unlocks.

The fourth tier is special in that they show up rarely, but they're raid missions for your followers that reward your character with raid quality loot of a tier higher than you're currently running. If you're doing LFR, you'll get normal quality raid loot, if you're running normal raids you'll get heroic quality loot, and heroic raiders will get mythic quality loot. Mythic raiders will get mythic loot and 1k gold.

These missions show up rarely enough that you won't be able to deck out your character in these items before the next raid zone shows up, but having a handful of them will give you a nice edge.

For the love of the Light, if we have a limited size army (the size limit makes no sense in the context of making a fortress in a savage world), can you soften the blow of people who have become attached to their followers by sending them to Stormwind for rest and relaxation, relocating them to an outpost (where they look pretty and don't do much), or something? "Dismiss" sounds very harsh and final (and makes the commander out to be a complete jerk for abandoning loyal followers to the savage enviroment).
Yes we can. We're removing the concept of dismissing followers and instead changing to a limit of 20 active-duty followers that can go on missions. What that means is, if you're over 20 active followers, you won't be able to start a mission until you're down to 20 active-duty followers. Your followers that are on inactive duty still show up in your UI (but marked as inactive), and don't lose any levels, progress, etc. One follower per day can be returned from inactive duty for 250g.

The nature of the tuning here is such that it's absolutely not going to impact any sort of cutting-edge progression racing during the early days/weeks of a new tier. It's more of a helping hand later on. And because the availability of these missions depends on your character's actual raiding progression, they aren't replacing or trivializing the importance of actually going into raids and killing bosses.

Without getting into exact numbers, being classified as a "Heroic raider" or "Mythic raider" or the like requires multiple weeks of experience in a given zone at a given difficulty. And if you're worried about the impact on gearing up for the next tier, an occasional chance at a random Mythic piece pales in comparison to the dozens of Mythic items your farm clears will be bringing in every week, with the ability to trade items around and target specific drops through bonus rolls. This will be a drop in the bucket by comparison.

Garrison missions (or lack thereof) aren't going to impact any sort of world-first or realm-first competitions. But this system does help keep the system relevant to a broader range of players, and as overall gear levels improve over the course of a tier.

Blue Tweets

Classes
Reminder: It's very hard for you to have much perspective about how under/overpowered your spec is on Beta.Buffs/Nerfs are good, not bad. (Celestalon)

why are unpopular or disliked talents not being removed or made baseline(in a weaker from)? There could be something better ther
Because making them baseline is how we end up with bloat. We'd rather improve them than remove; they can still work. (Celestalon)

what's the point of Resolve?I get Vengeance->Dmg->Threat(glad that's gone btw).But why "getting attacked"->"better at survival"?
So that absolute effects and percentage effects stay competitive (ie Shield Barrier vs Shield Block). (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Seeing notes for increase to 60 focus on Barrage go through but still 30sec cd?
Don't think the 20sec CD made it in yet, but it will. (Celestalon)

Will Steady Focus apply to Focusing Shot as well? It currently doesn't seem to work with Steady Focus.
Yes. (Celestalon)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Seal of Justice is currently doing 2% less direct damage than SoT on beta and doesn't proc damage on Judgment. Intentional?
Intentional that it Judgment doesn't trigger it (see Burden of Guilt). Unintentional that it's less direct damage than Truth. (Celestalon)

Why make empowered seals when you guys got rid of warrior stance dancing? just means Paladins are now going to be Seal dancing.
That's the whole point of it, which is great for an optional talent. (Celestalon)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Totemic Vigor nerfed? Our totems are already a joke to kill...
Just a fix; it was missed in our original squish. (Celestalon)

So yeah, that Lava Burst nerf, and that Earth (and frost) Shock buff. They're in a real odd place now. Any insight?
We likely buffed them too much. Theorycraft (such as what has been doing) is useful. (Celestalon)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Demo just lost 33% dps. Surely in no magical fairy land could anyone ever think that demo is overperforming by 33%.
It was. (Celestalon)

Character / Items
I'm curious to know how much work it would take to make raid tier tokens function like Timeless Isle gear tokens. cc: @WatcherDev
They will work that way in Warlords. No more vendors - you can get your set piece on the spot. (WatcherDev)
So if two warlock tiers drop and there's only one warlock will that other piece go to waste?
It'd still be a Conqueror token that drops. A priest, paladin, or warlock could loot and use it to transform it into their item. (WatcherDev)

for a druid u could do 10hr duration and no cd and still would be worthless.
This should be fixed in 6.0 with the new transform system! (Muffinus)
Does that apply to Shaman & ghost wolf as well? I love my Iron boot flask but losing the effect if I want to GW is no fun.
Yes (Muffinus)

Will SoO gear still be upgradeable after 6.0? message would seem to indicate that.
Yes, your Mists gear will remain upgradeable. Draenor gear won't be. (WatcherDev)

PvP
Yo bruh. is there any new battlegrounds for WoD?
Initially we're focused on making Ashran a great PvP experience at launch (holinka)

there was some horrible fps lag issue in ashran last time I played it
We're doing a lot of optimization work on Ashran (holinka)

chance for a pvp rare in Steel Strongboxes feels too high. Like 40-50% too high.
Do you mean like you're getting gear too fast or too much of the gear you don't want? (holinka)
getting gear too fast. Every second box contains a rare pvp item.
There are two tiers of rare gear. (holinka)

Garrisons
Are Garrisons Faction bound? (Do I keep the Garrison I made on horde if I go Alli? Viseversa)
You keep your garrison, and get the horde's version of the followers you acquired (Muffinus)

yeah it would be nice to know if it is just Beta inflation or if that is the plan for Live
Work orders are currently massively accelerated for Beta purposes. (WatcherDev)

Misc
is Iron Docks' geometry still broken in this build, or will we be able to access it again?
There are (were) two copies of the dungeon present, superimposed. Turns out the game gets really confused when we do that. (WatcherDev)

Dark Legacy Comics - #455
DLC #455 takes a look at some exciting PvP.

Weekly News Recap
Here is your chance to catch up if you missed a day of news this week!

• August 31
  
  • We looked at the Lumber Mill garrison building.
• September 1
  
  • We looked at the Warlock Tier 17 armor sets and a monk solo video of Armsmaster Harlan.
• September 2
  
  • There was a new beta build
    
    • Tier tokens can be used by a player to get the correct item for their spec, similar to Timeless Isle tokens.
    • After Patch 6.0, item upgrades will cost 50 Lesser Charms, items that were sold for Justice Points will be sold for gold, Valor Points will be gone, and Warforged Seals will no longer have a weekly cap.
    • The spacegoat pet (Karabor Kid) will be a Battle.Net Shop item.
• September 3
  
  • The Dark Portal was updated again, we looked at the new Female Gnome faces, and added some more Warlords music.
• September 4
  
  • The Blizzcon 2014 Virtual Ticket was announced.
• September 5
  
  • A developer Q&A session took place, with some new information revealed.
  • Lords of War: Part Two - Grommash was released.

[moveth]

Im actually really interested in Garrison Missions. Yaknow. Because Loot.

[snackfeat]

those hearthstone items seem completely pointless

[DarkPhoenix]

those hearthstone items seem completely pointless

Thats because theyre vanity items....

[Terahertz]

The most epic thing blizzard could do (even though I dont even play hearthstone) if they managed to add hearthstone into WoW in a manner so you can challenge a friend/guildy to a hearthstone match like you can do with pet battles.

[kamuimac]

so much for garrisons not being madatory for hc raiders - im so pissed at blizzard atm just god f,,,,damit :/

[MakeMeLaugh]

Thats because theyre vanity items....

Still, other than the table(which isn't even worth the cost of 1k), the others are extremely lame. Expected more really.

[adynn]

The most epic thing blizzard could do (even though I dont even play hearthstone) if they managed to add hearthstone into WoW in a manner so you can challenge a friend/guildy to a hearthstone match like you can do with pet battles.

I was thinking about how awesome it'd be if you could earn an actual pack of hearthstone cards from WoW, say like having a weekly quest or something.

[Dawnshadow]

so much for garrisons not being madatory for hc raiders - im so pissed at blizzard atm just god f,,,,damit :/

You can get a CHANCE at single random piece of mythic loot (and a bit of gold) every two weeks starting a couple of months into the tier. Unless you're one of those "if there's a .05% chance that it will give me an upgrade it's mandatory!" people, you're better off just raiding if you're in hc. It's actually -least- useful for mythic mode raiders in terms of upgrades, because chances are good you'll have already filled that slot in your actual raid.

It'll be more useful for the casual raiders, who can get a piece from a raid a level higher than they're currently running and will be much more likely to find the piece to actually be an upgrade, and not the same item level as what they have.

[Pacster]

I was thinking about how awesome it'd be if you could earn an actual pack of hearthstone cards from WoW, say like having a weekly quest or something.

It's one of Blizzards biggest mistakes of the last years(aside from that bad Diablo release and the slow reaction on ghost servers) to not have transformed WoW into a games platform. Hearthstone, a Plants vs. Zombies-clone(or license), the LoL-clone, Warcraft 3....all of them directly playable right from WoW. They could even have built a new town called "Azeroth's Vas Legas" where you can play all of Blizz games(Starcraft, Diablo) on gnomish machines....all of that without of having a large impact on WoW as a game or lore. Essentially WoW could have been a MMORPG and Steam in one platform(sure you would still have to be able to get into these games without of playing WoW. It would just have been a bonus and you'd be able to play and chat with the guild etc.).
Then they could have made discount prices for WoW-players on those games cause they anyway pay a monthly fee...and that in turn would have encouraged more players to keep playing WoW.

I don't know if they have been not smart enough or just been too coward to make that move...but that's how it is when a company gets too big and is looking more at the money they can make in the next 6 months than the next 10 years.

[somnif]

I'm really curious what set of circumstances they were looking at to think that demo locks were overperforming. It felt slow and whimpy compared to destro/aff, and now its just painful to play.

Seriously, what scenario lead to them feeling it needed a one third reduction in damage. Am I missing something that significant?

[lakhesis]

You can get a CHANCE at single random piece of mythic loot (and a bit of gold) every two weeks starting a couple of months into the tier. Unless you're one of those "if there's a .05% chance that it will give me an upgrade it's mandatory!" people, you're better off just raiding if you're in hc. It's actually -least- useful for mythic mode raiders in terms of upgrades, because chances are good you'll have already filled that slot in your actual raid.

It'll be more useful for the casual raiders, who can get a piece from a raid a level higher than they're currently running and will be much more likely to find the piece to actually be an upgrade, and not the same item level as what they have.

The blue post says "you won't be able to deck out your character in these items before the next raid zone shows up, but having a handful of them will give you a nice edge"

So this isn't intended to be some 0.5% droprate. This is intended to be something where grinding Garrisons will get you at least one or two pieces.

Now multiply that up by a 20 person Mythic team, plus bench.

That'd be at least 20-40 pieces of gear from Garrisons, and from the way Kalgan is talking it could be much more.

If you're at the top end of Mythic progression, you're not going to be able to risk not getting an upgrade. If you're scraping to clear on Mythic you definitely won't be able to risk missing out on that much raid loot.

I doubt Bliz is aiming for "don't worry, you'll never get loot & if you do it won't be useful".

It's no different from having top-end PVE upgrades available through PVP (or vice versa). When they brought in Pet Battles, Pet Battling content rewarded you with Pet Battle related items. Why are Garrisons the special flower that have to shove their tentacles into everything else?

[Taninsam]

Those demo tweets are old. Celest admitted they overnerfed it.

[somnif]

Those demo tweets are old. Celest admitted they overnerfed it.

Thanks for that, I was starting to get worried.

[Pool of the Dead]

so much for garrisons not being madatory for hc raiders - im so pissed at blizzard atm just god f,,,,damit :/

Chances are if you require Garrisons to get you gear for Mythic/Heroic a few months into a current tier, You aren't a Mythic/Heroic raider. Thus your anger towards it is completely fucking retarded and you should stop whinging like a child.

- - - Updated - - -

The blue post says "you won't be able to deck out your character in these items before the next raid zone shows up, but having a handful of them will give you a nice edge"

So this isn't intended to be some 0.5% droprate. This is intended to be something where grinding Garrisons will get you at least one or two pieces.

Now multiply that up by a 20 person Mythic team, plus bench.

That'd be at least 20-40 pieces of gear from Garrisons, and from the way Kalgan is talking it could be much more.

If you're at the top end of Mythic progression, you're not going to be able to risk not getting an upgrade. If you're scraping to clear on Mythic you definitely won't be able to risk missing out on that much raid loot.

I doubt Bliz is aiming for "don't worry, you'll never get loot & if you do it won't be useful".

It's no different from having top-end PVE upgrades available through PVP (or vice versa). When they brought in Pet Battles, Pet Battling content rewarded you with Pet Battle related items. Why are Garrisons the special flower that have to shove their tentacles into everything else?

People that are actual MYTHIC RAIDERS should have content down by the time you can even get pieces from Garrisons. If not, well bad news you aren't a Mythic player.

- - - Updated - - -

Still, other than the table(which isn't even worth the cost of 1k), the others are extremely lame. Expected more really.

It's a VANITY Item. Much like the Ruby Glasses you could buy for 10000gold that do nothing.

[Queen of Hamsters]

so much for garrisons not being madatory for hc raiders - im so pissed at blizzard atm just god f,,,,damit :/

...I'm sure that if you are a proper HC raider, you will have that gear long before those missions become available to everyone else. But, as usual, people gotta complain.

[kamuimac]

Chances are if you require Garrisons to get you gear for Mythic/Heroic a few months into a current tier, You aren't a Mythic/Heroic raider. Thus your anger towards it is completely fucking retarded and you should stop whinging like a child.

- - - Updated - - -

.

rng can screw up anyone - i know a hunter who got his hc sha trinket after 8 months of farming hc sha long after we killed garosh hc (granted main cause was 10 man loot ) - so by your definition he is not hc raider cause rng screwed him and he actually needed that pieces of loot ? same can happen with any slot for anyone -rng is a biatch

[BigWeather]

A couple of things I wonder about the missions:

1) Will they "drop" tier gear? As a LFR raider with no intention of going to Normal it'd be great if I could get a shot at tier gear again for transmog purposes
2) Once the next raid zone is out can I still send my followers on missions in the prior zone (to eventually fill out that tier transmog set)?

[Azrile]

That is too funny about Iron Docks... I spent an hour this afternoon in my game trying to fix a bug where a light kept flickering where it shouldn´t have been.. after an hour of moving dozens of lights and a ton of items.. turns out I had accidentally duped a piece of terrain, and the second copy was catching some light at a bad angle.

As soon as I read the dev post about garrison loot, I knew someone would immediately ´cry´ about garrisons being mandatory for heroic progression. People just have no concept of percentages or timing.. Please stop crying about bring forced to do garrisons or LFR for mythic raiding... if you can get an upgrade from garrisons or LFR before you have stuff on farm... you are not a mythic raider.

[Pool of the Dead]

rng can screw up anyone - i know a hunter who got his hc sha trinket after 8 months of farming hc sha long after we killed garosh hc (granted main cause was 10 man loot ) - so by your definition he is not hc raider cause rng screwed him and he actually needed that pieces of loot ? same can happen with any slot for anyone -rng is a biatch

If you managed to down HC Garrosh without the Trinket from 8 months prior, how would that gear be necessary, since when is gear for Farming mandatory.

hurr.