Developer Q&A and Class Questions
Our general feeling has been that classes are not a good topic for one of the 1hr livestream Q&As, because most people ask questions (understandably) that pertain to one spec, or at most a handful. And with 36 specs in the game, a large fraction of people would inevitably come away from a Q&A saying "why weren't there any questions picked about my spec" (and probably conclude that it's because we don't care about their spec). (
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Talent Customization
This is indeed something we talk about a lot, especially as the number of talent rows that are custom to an individual spec's rotation is now up to 4 or 5 on nearly all specs. You might not need 5 ways to customize which aspect of your rotation you'd most like to emphasize, or want to change 5 things to better optimize from one raid boss to the next. The broad question of "how do I want to make talent choices, what do I want them to be based on, and in what situations is it fun to change them?" is good for some open-ending thinking. (
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Artifact Traits in PvP
There are two important points we want to make sure everyone knows:
1. All artifact traits are active in PvP, including Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds.
2. Players always receive 36 points worth of Stamina in their Artifact, including the 10% Stamina received from the first trait on the new Artifact Emblem.
'All traits' means everything, including any and all points placed in Concordance of Legionfall. Nothing is disabled. (
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Death Knight (
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Patch 7.2.5 Unholy Death Knight Changes
We are increasing the cost and damage of Death Coil in 7.2.5. Even with no other changes, that change is likely a pure buff (even though it looks neutral), since the resource it's draining is one that was being wasted anyway.
It's not yet clear whether we'll open up further changes in 7.2.5, since the core rotation is generally working well. Having 3 main buttons (Festering Wound, Scourge Strike, Death Coil) that all have no cooldowns, but instead juggle 3 resources (Runes, Runic Power, Festering Wounds), is a relatively unusual melee rotation that we think has turned out pretty interesting. The biggest thing it needs is space to breathe on the resources, as has been discussed a lot. We'll see how it looks with the Death Coil change in addition to the earlier Runic Corruption change, as well as the loss of T19 set bonuses, and see if there's still a problem.
If we need to make further changes, the goal would likely be to focus on talents that cause a very large swing in resource generation or GCD usage. Because the rotation needs to not be flooded for max-level players with endgame bonuses, but also not too slow for leveling players, as was pointed out. This is an issue we're starting to pay more attention to across all specs (especially melee specs). As we have more rotation-affecting talents in the game than ever before, and we buffed a lot of of them in 7.1.5, many talents (or legendaries or similar bonuses) are trying to effect large DPS increases solely through giving more of a resource or proc. It's becoming a more common problem that specs which initially had good pacing get flooded in certain setups, and we want to start correcting those where we can. (
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[7.2] Balance Druid: Feedback
Wax and Wane: Best we can tell so far, there is no bug, simply a combination of two large multiplicative bonuses (Wax and Wane and Stellar Empowerment). Our goal was to make Wax and Wane, which we understand is weak, as strong as we could without causing any degenerate rotations such as single-target Moonfire spam. That was also the reason for adding Sunfire even though the tooltip will be slightly off until 7.2.5. But even at current tuning of Wax and Wane (post-buff) the incentive for a degenerate Moonfire-spam rotation is too high, as people are observing.
In an upcoming hotfix, we're going to further increase Wax and Wane's bonus, but also make Stellar Empowerment not buff the initial damage of Moonfire, Sunfire, and Stellar Flare. We're doing this not only because it's the most convenient way of solving the new Wax and Wane problem, but also because we actually think it makes the most sense long-term for what Stellar Empowerment should be. The intent of Stellar Empowerment is to buff your ticking DoTs while you AoE with Starfall, not to encourage spamming instant DoT casts during Starfall.
Edited for accuracy
I was glossing over the details--it would be possible in a sufficiently important case (the one you mention was adding a new talent, Cavalier). Wax and Wane not mentioning that it buffs Sunfire is not a huge problem. Anyway, that was an aside--main point was that adding Sunfire to the benefit was meant to double the value of the trait to get it closer to where it should be, and we were fine doing it immediately. (
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Patch 7.2 Windwalker Feedback
Can we talk about how the benefit of master of combinations isn't even consistent with that of similar traits among other classes? It has 2 ppm and lasts for 6 seconds per proc, which is fairly weak
I believe the 2 RPPM visible in datamining is leftover data on Master of Combinations, and the actual proc mechanism will cause it to trigger much more often than that. The intention is for it to have similar average value to the similar traits on other specs. (
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Patch 7.2.5 and Mistweaver Monks
On the initial 7.2.5 PTR, we are trying out a version of Essence Font that is even stronger, but has a cooldown. In addition to some combination of a healing increase and mana cost reduction, the duration of the HoT will be increased.
Essence Font having no cooldown has held back the spell and the spec in a few ways. It essentially says that three relatively heavy heals (Essence Font, Enveloping Mist, Vivify) have to compete with each other at all times. The texture of using a heavy spell on a short cooldown, then falling back to the decision between spammable spells (selecting based on cost, number of targets, etc.) is common among healers for good reason. And Essence Font's HoT mechanic that improves mastery is meant to specifically enhance that sort of gameplay, and will be more effective on a spell with a cooldown.
As already mentioned, the first change that comes along with it is buffing Essence Font itself. It no longer has to be held back by "if it gets too much stronger than e.g. Vivify, people will only use Essence Font", and can simply be a high-priority spell. We will made other adjustments as needed for gameplay or tuning. (
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Mistweaver Feedback
However, one point that I would like addressed is what are we supposed to do when Essence Font is on cooldown, Uplifting Trance isn't available, Whispers of Shaohao has been used, and the the group still needs to be healed?
The initial version going out has a small buff to baseline Vivify. Also, the changes greatly increase the practical value of mastery, which is a hidden buff to the Vivify, Enveloping Mist, and Effuse casts you'll be making in between Essence Fonts.
Part of it, though, is you should have more of cadence between the high-priority heals that somewhat solve problems on their own, and the spells that don't always do that. You asked what to do when the "best" 3 or 4 things are on cooldown or not available, and that's similar to a Druid falling back to laying down Rejuvenations when she can't use Wild Growth or Swiftmend, or a Paladin using Flash of Light between Light of Dawn and Holy Shock cooldowns. Making use of the no-cooldown spells that are more limited is meant to be a moment when you look forward to the next heavy hitter coming back (even if it's just a few seconds for an Essence Font).
The concerns in feedback seem to mostly reflect tuning--that the "filler" kit of Vivify, Enveloping Mist, Effuse, and Soothing Mist isn't strong enough. Possibly that's true and the problem has been papered over on live by the ability to focus everything on Essence Font. Overall tuning will be something to watch on PTR, as with any spec getting any degree of shakeup. Tuning debates usually aren't too productive in early feedback, but maybe a helpful thing to say is: "if we hadn't been making any changes to Mistweaver, it would probably have gotten a small flat throughput buff before the next raid." (
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Brewmasters in Patch 7.2.5
Hail! First round of Brews is on me, Monks. Shall we talk a bit about Brewmasters?
As Seph talked about in a recent Rogue thread, 7.2.5 will include much more significant class change than 7.2 did, and one of the specs that we're focusing on is Brewmaster. Brewmasters are currently quite strong, performance-wise, but have a few notable issues that we'd like to work out.
Offensive Abilities
Rotationally, Brewmasters are using a mixture of offensive and defensive buttons. Some parts of this worked well, such as Keg Smash and Tiger Palm granting partial charges of your Brews. One part that hasn't worked out well is in Blackout Strike and Breath of Fire. Having no direct defensive value, or interaction with other abilities in your rotation, they end up feeling disconnected, and leave you wondering why you're hitting them. There are a couple minor artifact traits that give them some defensive value, but that's ultimately negligible as far as rotation design goes. One saving grace here is the Blackout Combo talent, which gives a strong reason to care about Blackout Strike, and add a lot of depth (and complexity) to your rotation.
Another problem is that Blackout Strike has a 3.0s/Haste cooldown, which is actually rather bizarre on a class with a 1.0s GCDs. Experienced players have learned that you should get a significant enough amount of Haste to bring that down to something in the 2.2-2.5sec range, and alternate Blackout Strikes with other abilities, with awkward 0.2-0.5sec gaps in between your abilities. This also means that with the forced gaps, you become GCD-capped, and Energy stops functioning. Finally, one last problem we're looking at is that there are rather limited options for customizing the rotation through talents (pretty much just Blackout Combo), and no baseline variability, leading to some people finding it repetitive and predictable.
We'd like to clean this up, and here are our current thoughts on how (not set in stone, very interested in discussion and PTR testing).
- First, Blackout Strike and Breath of Fire will have a direct defensive value: they'll grant a stack of Elusive Brawler (per target hit, in Breath of Fire's case).
- Second, Blackout Strike will more smoothly fit into the rotation. We're going to try it having a cooldown, but Tiger Palm significantly reducing that cooldown, such that you can Blackout Strike every few GCDs, and not have any forced partial-second pauses. We want to make sure that Energy (and thus Haste) controls the speed of your rotation, so that that's in your control. If you want a more full, button-spammy rotation, you can favor Haste. If you prefer being more tactical with your GCDs, optimizing the timing of each one, you can favor other stats.
- And finally, to let you customize the rotation with both higher GCD utilization and some variance, we're planning to add a talent that gives Tiger Palm a high chance to reset the cooldown of Breath of Fire. (Where exactly to put that talent is unclear; replacing Chi Burst is the current idea, but we're not super thrilled with that.)
Defensive Abilities
Overall, Stagger is working quite well in the general case. Ironskin vs Purify (and in particular when to Purify) is a good choice, though maybe a tad bit skewed toward Ironskin right now. However, it becomes problematic in the extreme case, where Stagger is used to cheese mechanics that aren't intended to be survivable. For example, a Brewmaster may use High Tolerance and Fortifying Brew in order to get 100% Stagger, soak several of some raid mechanic that is intended to be entirely unsurvivable (probably even piercing immunities), Purify twice quickly, and get healed through what little of the damage is remaining.
The key source of this is when Stagger reaches 100% or near-100%, and our planned changes to solve this focus on that:
- We'll be reducing the Stagger gain of Fortifying Brew, and slightly reduce the Stagger gain of Ironskin Brew.
- We'll be raising Brewmaster's base armor to compensate.
- We're going to add a cap on how much damage can be Staggered (high enough that you won't hit it in normal gameplay, but enough to stop cheesing mechanics).
- There is also an artifact trait that increases the Stagger gain of Fortifying Brew that has been mostly-useless since 7.1.5, which we're going to redesign.
Again, the point of this is not at all to be a nerf in intended circumstances, but rather to shift around where the mitigation comes from, such that it can't be used to unintentionally bypass mechanics.
Relatedly, one mechanic that causes imbalance with tanks is that in a tank-swap situation in a raid, tanks can store up a large amount of active mitigation while not actively tanking, both in terms of ability charges, and buff durations. In general, this is fine, but it can be taken to extremes, and Brewmasters are a good example of that, frequently being able to go into their tanking with a 30+sec duration Ironskin Brew rolling. Some amount of this is fine, but to keep it within a reasonable range, we're going to put a cap on how long you can extend tank active mitigation buffs, to a maximum of twice their base duration.
Thanks for reading! We look forward to your feedback.
What are you doing to address the fact that ISB has basically become the new shuffle and requires 100% uptime? That's literally brew gameplay right now -> 100% ISB uptime and anything left goes into purify.
I touched on that a bit, that the decision is skewed a tad bit towards Ironskin right now. There are 3 changes here that will help with that:
- The increase to base armor will help you feel like Ironskin falling off is a death sentence.
- The reduction to Ironskin effectiveness will slightly decrease the difference between Ironskin being up and not.
- Our current plan for the mentioned artifact trait replacement is Purify percentage, which will increase the value of Purifying.
How does a talent like Tiger Palm resetting Breath Fire work when you have the legendary chest? Clearly we wouldn't take it since Keg is resetting breath about every 5 seconds. With both it would be absurd.
Occasional legendaries that push you away from or toward a particular talent are generally OK. If you have the Breath of Fire chest, you likely will want to pick one of the other talents instead of Spitfire (the Tiger Palm resets Breath of Fire one), and that's OK.
Will there be exceptions added to this rule? For example, will this not just completely negate the use of the 'Bastion of Light' talent for Protection Paladins? Gaining the instant charges allows them to go much further beyond the "twice their base duration", essentially throwing away all that additional SotR uptime that comes from the talent during the activation window.
There may be, yes. We don't want to invalidate any existing gameplay, just prevent the "I've been offtanking for a bit and have a crazy long duration buff up when I take over, skewing my priorities."
Without hard numbers, it is difficult to see if this will be a blessing or a curse.
Numbers matter for performance, and I want to reemphasize the fact that the changes I'm talking about are intended to be net-neutral, performance-wise. Of course they will affect performance, but we'll offset them with number tweaks, in whichever direction is necessary.
The point of all of these is gameplay, mechanics, and particularly rotational flow.
My first concern on hearing that there is a stagger cap is what does that mean for damage intake: once you're at stagger cap, do you take full damage from hits? How do you anticipate this working on mobs like The Demon Within, which is already hitting for approximately 5 million white damage per auto set? Extrapolating further to future mythic tiers, it's not necessarily unreasonable to anticipate mobs that will be hitting a monk in excess of 7+ million white damage (for example) every 1-1.5s. Given brew generation in your most favorable circumstances, it seems there is a real possibility of brewmasters essentially hitting some upper limit of mob they're able to tank before they're essentially as squishy as a dps, save dodging, due to having capped stagger.
To be clear, the stagger cap is not on the amount you can stagger per-hit, but on the total amount you can have delayed in your "stagger bar" at once. As stated, it's mainly a limit to avoid abusive cases, similar to how spells like Guardian Spirit have a point where they stop working. If you're about to try to soak something that will do a few times your maximum health in damage (even after cooldowns), you should expect to die immediately. This should come into play only in relatively extreme cases. (
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Holy Priest - Prayer of Healing
Prayer of Healing has been a bit of a puzzle to decide the right approach for in recent expansions. We always appreciate feedback on where it currently is, but for a few thoughts on it:
We definitively wanted to get rid of the version based on raid subgroups in Legion. At this point, it was the only spell left in the game that relied on that, and required raid leaders to rearrange groups at the behest of one player to make one of their spells work correctly. Furthermore, with an increasing amount of raiding being done in the "flexible" framework, raid sizes are not even reliably a multiple of 5 anymore.
We also want to be careful with heals that are too smart. A PoH with a large radius, smart targeting, and no cooldown would essentially be a self-working raid healing spell/rotation. As long as 5 people are damaged (which is frequently), you can spam that spell to the get best efficiency from your mana, not overheal, and not have to worry about targeting. That's a direction we don't like for healing gameplay in general and have been paring back on in recent years.
One other thing that felt bad about the 7.0 version (20 yard radius) was that it didn't hit the whole party in 5-player content. That's a role that Prayer of Healing has always had and that it should keep having.
Oh and since we're here to complain, Cosmic Ripple costing 5% base mana is the cherry on top of the cake atm. Way to destroy one's gameplay
This is a bug.
Talking about bugs; are you guys aware of discipline priest mastery currently being bugged?
Actual transfer % from Mastery to Atonement is being "locked in" upon log-in, spec swap and zone change.
Yes, a fix for this is incoming as well. (
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Rogue Class Fantasy and Upcoming Changes
I dont think the first point of one rtb buff will ever be possible. There will always be a buff sought after more than the others, and if you were to somehow put a CD on rtb for the duration of the buff to lockout rerolls it will simply feel punishing to play the class.
The second idea I think has a lot more merit, taking out one of the buffs will greatly improve getting a good combo. I enjoy outlaw as a playstyle for the most part, the only time I ever feel punished for playing the spec is when I'm trying to fish for TB and continue to get any one buff besides that. So I am all for your second idea here. Personally I think Grand Melee wont be missed.
To be clear, the (tentative) proposal is to reduce the number of dice, not the number of possible buffs (the dice remain d6's).
Players finding certain cases where rerolling has some use is not the end of the world. But the goal is similar to what we expressed way back in beta--rerolling, and especially very frequent rerolling, aren't a major part of standard gameplay. That's still the goal, and it wasn't borne out on live so far, and the feedback has been very consistent with the notion that we should still try to get there.
Some variance in Roll the Bones buff values is inevitable, not necessarily a problem. It doesn't even lead to rerolling, if the difference isn't large enough to be worth giving up high-damage Run Throughs. But as Seph said, in our estimation the bigger issue isn't the variance between buffs, but the variance in the number of buffs and the fact that a single buff is so far below the average outcome.
Hoooooooooooold up. Really? Because this is the first time a dev has said that they want SND to equal RTB. To this point, we've been told that SND was "an option," but intentionally not as strong as RTB. That's a huge about-face. But one I approve of.
There's probably some miscommunication here. S&D is a level 100 talent and should of course have positive DPS value. Therefore it should be stronger, on its own, than RTB. That was always the intention, although it may not have turned out consistently true so far. S&D will, however, likely be less strong than RTB plus Marked for Death (for example). (
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