December 13 Hotfixes, Upcoming PTR Legendary Changes, Blue Posts, Tweets

[chaud]

Blizzard Publishing Launches, Rhykker's Unhallowed Grenades DH Build

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Elder Scrolls Sword or Helmet Giveaway

Patch 7.1 Hotfixes - December 13

Dungeons and Raids
Helya

• Resolved an issue where Helya's Taint of the Sea on Mythic difficulty would sometimes cast at incorrect times in Stage One.

Player versus Player

• Players can now reach Prestige level 8.

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

• (Assasination) Agility increased by 5%.
  
• (Outlaw) Agility increased by 5%.

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

• (Affliction) Intellect decreased by 5%.

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• (Frost) Stamina reduced by 10%.

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

• (Windwalker) Strike of the Windlord now deals 60% damage in PvP.
  
• (Windwalker) Fists of Fury now deals 85% damage in PvP.

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

• Atonement effect increased by 10% in PvP.

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

• (Restoration) Fortified Bark (Honor Talent) now increases the damage reduction of Ironbark by 15% (was 30%).

Upcoming PTR Legendary Changes

As we mentioned this during the live Q&A last week, we feel the biggest shortcoming of the current Legendary system is that, for some specs, there are some items that are clearly better than others in nearly all situations. As a result, players who have received a different Legendary item feel unlucky, as they didn’t receive the “best” one.

So, we’re making some fairly substantial changes to Legendary items intended to bring them more in line with each other. Items that give a raw throughput increase (without significant situational restrictions or drawbacks) are having their overall power reduced, and we’re taking another pass at several of the more niche items to make sure that, when they’re usable, they feel powerful.

Essentially, we feel that if a Legendary is only usable in certain situations, it should feel extremely valuable in those situations. Conversely, if a Legendary is nearly always going to increase your overall performance, that increase should be relatively smaller. Up until this point, we’ve made the mistake of allowing several items to be both extremely impactful AND always useful, which has made other Legendaries feel “bad” by comparison. It’s also caused some specs to feel as though they need a particular Legendary in order to compete. Those are the issues we’d like to solve.

We’re actively working on these changes right now and expect to have them ready for the next PTR build. We’ll be doing additional class tuning where necessary as a followup, once these changes are in place.

Instead we are faced with the daunting possibility that we may simply never get a useful legendary. That is not fun, its repeatedly disappointing.
We agree. The problem is that some Legendaries don't feel useful. That's the issue we're looking to solve here.

I really hope you guys learn from the system and the next iteration of legendaries is purely defensive/utility and no outright dps legendary affixes. They would be much more fair/balanced if they were that way.
There's definitely a lot we've learned here. Ion even said pretty much exactly this in the last Q&A - if we did it all over again, we'd probably only make "Utility" Legendaries.

With some, as the instructors fourth lesson for Unholy DKs, it is MANDATORY. This legendary is -required- for us to perform even remotely on par with other DPS classes.
Right. As I said, that's another problem we're trying to fix. If a spec is only competitive with a specific Legendary, then we need to bring up their numbers. To do that, we need to also nerf that Legendary.

Just use a legendary token system. Problem solved.
Disagree. "Just let me pick the best Legendary" doesn't solve this particular problem; there shouldn't be one or two Legendaries that are far and away the best one in all situations. With the way these items are in 7.1, if we add such a system, everyone will just pick the best 2 for their spec and the rest will still suck. We'd rather that none of them sucked.

And just to be clear: something like what you (and others) are describing here is not off the table. Ion even mentioned at BlizzCon that we may end up doing something along those lines in a later patch. It just doesn't solve this problem.

Another problem not mentioned here is being spec-locked because of legendaries. I have X on my spec, so can't freely switch without feeling behind. AP already contributes to this problem but at least can be caught up -- legendaries, with soft caps and what not, just make it impossible to switch.
Yeah, we definitely share your concern here. We don't have a solution yet (and aren't likely to for 7.1.5), but it's something we're talking about.

Blue Posts

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Upcoming Unholy Death Knight Changes
Quick note on a small upcoming change: in the next PTR build, Apocalypse will burst up to 6 Festering Wounds (instead of 8). However, the damage of the summoned ghouls will be increased by 33% (which will not be obvious from data), keeping the total the same. This is also a large buff to the damage of Army of the Dead. Finally, in a separate change, the damage of the summoned Gargoyle and Val'kyr will be increased.

However, will apocalypse continue to burst 4 wounds in pvp?
Yes. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Any consideration for a pet battle related tint to the new artifact appearance tied to solo content?
What would a "pet battle related artifact appearance" even look like? Accepting all ideas. (Muffinus)

[chaos61988]

oh here we go with the sweeping changes! prepare to get nerfed boys!

[Deleted]

Good.

10char

[extinction1337]

Yet another incompetent spell change that nerfs unholy more than it buffs it, oh yeah they are really listening to our feedback and makes me think playing an unholy dk wasn't the biggest !@#$ing mistake of my life.

2 less ghouls means 2 less portal to the underworld, 2 less chances to proc the armies of the damned debuff or stack it fully, 2 less festering wounds bursts means less effect from bursting sores, yet all of this does nothing to stop festering strikes god awful RNG.

Clearly not one Dev gives two !@#$s about DK's.

[Silverhustle]

Yet another incompetent spell change that nerfs unholy more than it buffs it, oh yeah they are really listening to our feedback and makes me think playing an unholy dk wasn't the biggest !@#$ing mistake of my life.

2 less ghouls means 2 less portal to the underworld, 2 less chances to proc the armies of the damned debuff or stack it fully, 2 less festering wounds bursts means less effect from bursting sores, yet all of this does nothing to stop festering strikes god awful RNG.

Clearly not one Dev gives two !@#$s about DK's.

It's just for PvP, read carefully.

[klaps_05]

On legendaries topic:

They acknowledge having DPS legendaries was a mistake. Then they refuse to correct their mistake with the token system. YOU NEED TO SWALLOW BLIZZARD. If you fucked up due to whatever reason, SWALLOW YOUR DAMN PRIDE and give people legendary token vendor. Either that or remove all DPS legendaries that people have and give them utility ones and remove DPS legs from drop list.

[socialmaker]

I don't even find monk WW that strong. Super squeeshy and pales vs Demon hunters in my opinion. Meanwhile mongo Retadins and DKs are ruling the world (of azeroth).

[Crunkey]

It's just for PvP, read carefully.

You have to read carefully. Its clearly PVE related.

[lylarise]

Just use a legendary token system. Problem solved.
Disagree. "Just let me pick the best Legendary" doesn't solve this particular problem

How about this? Actually do use token system for legendaries with a slight tweak. When I'm able to get two legendaries, make me get at least one legendary with utility/defense one. Let's say I'm a Destruction Warlock. I completed a Mythic+ dungeon, I got lucky and got a token for legendary. I, of course, want to get one that will boost my damage. However, the next time I get a token, the game will actually tell me that I can't get a legendary for another DPS increasing one, instead it will make me choose, let's say, Prydaz or Pillars of The Dark Portal or Sephuz, even. I'll gladly buy my utility/defense legendary and won't even complain about my RNG. Right now, me waiting for my DPS legendary is just miserable to watch.

[Shirofune]

What they don't understand is that nobody will pick an utility legendary over a DPS one, no matter how small the DPS increase is.

Provided that every class has at least 2-3 legendaries that increases their DPS, this is never going to happen. What are they going to do, remove all DPS legendaries? Prepare to see the community rage to them, with good reason.

Blizzard HAS to swallow, if they don't want even more shit coming their way. Just admit the system is a failure.

[Rylalai]

What they don't understand is that nobody will pick an utility legendary over a DPS one, no matter how small the DPS increase is.

Provided that every class has at least 2-3 legendaries that increases their DPS, this is never going to happen. What are they going to do, remove all DPS legendaries? Prepare to see the community rage to them, with good reason.

Blizzard HAS to swallow, if they don't want even more shit coming their way. Just admit the system is a failure.

And even if the would remove all DPS legendaries, the people would just go for the legendaries with the best secondary stats for their class in order to increase their DPS, reducing them to glorified, orange stat items..

[PowerOfTwo]

I can't believe i'm praising this but, what about something similar to the Relic system in warframe? Basicaly each relic has a droptable of 5 items, in 3 tiers, 3 bronze items (most likely to drop) 2 silver (50-50) and rare (unlikely to drop). You can "refine" these relics with resources to increase the rare chance drop and descrease bronze and silver (i belive rare can be refined up to 33% chance to drop).

So how about tying legendaries to .... M+ keystones? Like say you have a NL Keystone , it has a "high" chance to drop prydaz, pillars and... socrolash's dark strike, a medium chance to drop Wilfred's Signet or Odr's Shawl and a low chance to drop feratory (replace utility / ok / bis legendaries in your mind as you see fit). And this key can be pumped with some kind of resources (Garrison resources, special little "shards" your champions bring back from missions, "souls" gathered from 5 man WQ's , wtv) and now at the end of that run, you have an "ok" chance to get feratory, you still have a higher chance to get say prydaz, but lower than an "unrefined" key, or you could just get nothing...

[demonyaa]

How about this? Actually do use token system for legendaries with a slight tweak. When I'm able to get two legendaries, make me get at least one legendary with utility/defense one. Let's say I'm a Destruction Warlock. I completed a Mythic+ dungeon, I got lucky and got a token for legendary. I, of course, want to get one that will boost my damage. However, the next time I get a token, the game will actually tell me that I can't get a legendary for another DPS increasing one, instead it will make me choose, let's say, Prydaz or Pillars of The Dark Portal or Sephuz, even. I'll gladly buy my utility/defense legendary and won't even complain about my RNG. Right now, me waiting for my DPS legendary is just miserable to watch.

That works for Diablo because legendaries are easy to acquire. As you know everyone is going to gravitate to whichever spec is stronger for the intended meta role in each class. Balancing is more or less easy since the content difficulty is infinitely scalable automatically. For wow this would be extremely hard to balance, not to say impossible. Proper raid tuning would be impossible as legendaries would in practice multiply the number of available specs from 36 to whichever stupidly high number of "sub specs" would be made viable by such game changing legendaries.

The way I see it blizzard has three choices and all seem easy to implement in a PTR cycle:
1) Increase the drop rate of legendaries or at least remove the diminishing returns necessary to acquire legendaries. Each legendary would take as much effort as the second legendary now takes to acquire. In roughly 6 months everyone could have all the legendaries for their class.

2) Replace future legendary drops with a legendary token to purchase any legendary at a vendor

3) (hardest and least plausibly) Remove all legendary from players, give each character a token for each removed legendary and implement 2).

[Deleted]

Simple legendary class lock solution: make legendaries mirrored. I.e. BM apex ring equals Survival Belt etc etc. Minor issues then with stats / enchants But would solve forced spec locking. Easy to fix at 7.1.5. stop slacking :P

[mysticx]

The legendary changes are pretty lame, no matter how much they nerf DPS-legendaries, there will _always_ be a best legendary, be it due to better secondaries (the value-rift between secondaries is ridiculous for some specs) or due to not all "utility" being equal, and people will _always_ be upset if they get another one instead.

The only thing Blizz can do besides just scrapping legiondaries altogether is to in some way let players "pursue" a particular legendary, gathering tokens and buying them (although easiest to do and make suitable for all content) is a bit meh lorewise, maybe a questline (Involving collect-quests, mission items, whatever) with at the end as reward a legendary of the player's choice would be decent?

[Deleted]

I don't even find monk WW that strong. Super squeeshy and pales vs Demon hunters in my opinion. Meanwhile mongo Retadins and DKs are ruling the world (of azeroth).

In which alternate timeline does DK rule anything atm? Frost is mediocre, Unholy is mediocre with Fourth Lesson, subpar without it.

[uaemaster]

I read the comments here and it seems there are two polar sides to the issue of legendaries. On one end, people like the idea of farming for a rewarding legendary and the DPS increase reflects the effort placed in obtaining it. On the other end, people don't like the idea that the piece is tied heavily to luck, and depending on your luck, your dps can be comparable to others.

So I have come up with a solution that will satisfy all sides, including blizzards idea behind the legendary being a bonus of sorts.

Take the example of my main Retri paladin. Right now, I need to farm the back and ring to be able to compete, as they are pure dps increases. This means any other legendary will be a passive stat increase until I get those two. Why not bring in an element of set bonuses where people can use 4 items of a 5 piece set to be able to gain the benefits while still maintaining a control factor, where they choose to opt out of the 5th item in order to choose an off-set item that might have better secondary stats.

How can this be used with the current legendary system? (Back to my retri example) take the affixes that are tied to the back and ring, create one affix as a one piece set bonus, and the other affix as a two piece set bonus. Meaning any of the current legendaries combined will give me those benefits. The back and ring can be converted into other utility benefits, and people will focus on min-maxing with the correct secondry stats, and the added benefit of some sort of utility (like the movement speed with the boots.)

Blizz can take it one step further and have the legendary 1 and 2 piece bonuses convert with spec (similar to class trinkets in HFC.)

I wanted to post this on the official forums but it wont allow an EU account to post it in the US forums.(Feel free to post it yourselves if you can)

[Deleted]

Upcoming PTR Legendary Changes

There's definitely a lot we've learned here. Ion even said pretty much exactly this in the last Q&A - if we did it all over again, we'd probably only make "Utility" Legendaries.

Funny, sounds exactly like something I suggested even though others on this site insisted that legendaries have always been about damage.

I really hope Blizzard learned something from this one, never ever give players a choice between damage and something else, they will always choose damage, and throw a tantrum if they can't do so.

[Deleted]

Unless DPS legenderies are completely removed (which they won't be) there will ALWAYS be some far superior to the rest, so you can say all you want there shouldn't be 1-2 best ones but there always is and will be, you Blizzard just need to bite the bullet and accept you fucked up and add a vendor or ver specific targeting system for them just like with secondery stats you just wnat to dance around the issue and say "this shouldn't be the case" well it is and will be so just add in Reforgeing and solve the problem the simple way instead of fucking everyone's stats up and going "Nonononononono we are right you are wrong" with your hands on your ears and under your asses.

[Deleted]

-3 groups of Legendaries.
From a Retperspective:
Damage (Cape, Liandrins, changed Belt) ;Utility (Prydaz, Plateboots, Bracers) ;conditional Damage (Sephuz, Helm)
-You can only wear one of each Tier.
-Researching "Legends of the Fallen"(?) instead of allowing to wear 2 Legendaries, gives you a Token. Research is repeatable.
-The Token turns 1 Legendary of your choice to goo. Said goo can be turned into a random Legendary of a certain group of your choice, no duplicates.

This still keeps randomness while also allowing to aim for a certain Legendary if you have enough Tokens. The rare cases of duplicates gets solved. It would allow to change Specs easier and alleviate the Problem of wanting Loot for one Spec but a Legendary for another. Those who have 2 BiS Legendaries and more, get compensated by being allowed to wear 3 overall while gaining utility.
Those who only have one Legendary are fucked anyways but they may gain some Damage. The only ones left out in the cold are people who have only 2 BiS Legendaries since they would not be ably to fully make up for the damageloss. With that being said, if Blizz would implement this it would take time to the Patch release, so another Month or so.