Warlords Weapon Enchants, Call to Arms Removed, Beta Stability, Blue Tweets, Tanaris

[chaud]

Thursday Stream Highlights, First Live Season Begins Tomorrow!, Leveling Tips and Tricks, Legendary Gems Guide

Free Arachnid Quarter Ends Sept. 30th, Versus Series: Fire vs Wuaschtsemme, Naxxramas Speedrun

Hero Rotation for August 26th, Kerrigan Hero Week, Into The Nexus #17 - Draft Mode

Warlords of Draenor - Weapon Enchants
Today we are taking a look at the new weapon enchants and Illusions added in Warlords of Draenor. Three of the new effects listed below are Illusions, which are weapon enchant transmogs available to those who have the Enchanter's Study building in their Garrison. This building doesn't appear to function correctly in the current beta build, but it should offer many enchant transmogs. Flames of Ragnaros is unique, as it is an item and not a crafted Illusion.

Name	Description
Mark of the Thunderlord	Enchants a melee weapon to sometimes increase your critical strike by 500 for 6 sec. While active, critical heals and attacks may extend the duration.
Mark of the Shattered Hand	Enchants a melee weapon to sometimes bleed your enemy for 1,500 damage, plus an additional 4,500 damage over 6 sec.
Mark of Warsong	Enchants a melee weapon to sometimes increase haste by 1,000, diminishing by 10% every 2 sec.
Mark of the Frostwolf	Enchants a melee weapon to sometimes increases multistrike by 500 for 6 sec. Effect can stack 2 times.
Mark of Shadowmoon	Enchants a melee weapon to sometimes increase Spirit by 500 for 15 sec.
Mark of Blackrock	Enchants a melee weapon to sometimes increase Bonus Armor by 500 for 12 sec. Effect can only occur when you are below 50% health.
Mark of Bleeding Hollow	Enchants a melee weapon to sometimes increase mastery by 500 for 12 sec.
Illusion: Butterflies	Makes your weapon appear as if it were enchanted with Butterflies.
Illusion: Poisoned	Makes your weapon appear as if it were dripping with Poison.
Illusion: Flames of Ragnaros	Makes your weapon appear as if it were imbued with the Flames of Ragnaros.

Warlords of Draenor - Rare Spawn Mount Drops
Muffinus shared some information about the Warlords versions of the Time-Lost Proto-Drake style mount drops.

Warlords of Draenor - Call to Arms Removed

We've removed Call to Arms in Warlords. Originally, the feature was added to bring some variety to the battleground experience and allow players who like a specific battleground to occassionally binge on it. But, like any feature, we have to weight the benefits with the consequences. Call to Arms has an adverse affect on queue times in a pretty profound way. When certain battlegrounds are up, one faction will tend to queue for Call to Arms while the other tends to avoid it. As a result, we're going to remove it so that the majority of players are queuing through Random Battlegrounds.

Beta Stability Issues - 8/28

We're currently aware of the stability issues you folks are seeing on the beta realms: usually presented as either a difficulty staying online for an extended period of time, or getting disconnected when attempting to login to one or more characters.

These issues are known to us, and we're trying to back up to 100% capability. Our Server Engineers are doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes work to fix things like this. I'll be updating this thread with more info and/or any ETAs as I receive them.

So basically there's a few things going on here: The restarts are issued for a number of reasons, sometimes to pickup some code changes that we push out to improve stability, like fixing a client or server crash.

Another issue that has happened the last few days involves some actual hardware. It gets a bit technical, but the short version is that you may run into disconnects or issues loading anytime you try to access the instance server. This also means garrisons are impacted, since they don't "live" on the Draenor continent.

Anyway, the real thing to take away here is that our server folks are working on this and keeping a very close eye on things.

We've completed our maintenance on the Beta Realms, although we'll keep a close eye on the overall stability of the realms.

Blue Tweets

Classes
Mount speed nerfs for DK's/Pala's is this an oversight or legit?
Due to the additive vs multiplicative changes, yes. (Celestalon)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
How did you find your time as an Unholy DK yesterday? Speaking as a casual PvPer, interested in seeing how things look post-NS.
Similar to other classes it is nice to have less buttons. Loss of double grip might make Gorefiend's Grip more attractive. (holinka)

Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Not sure if its been brought to your attention, but resto druid healing seem to be OP-Using only two buttons http://t.co/KsxKgQKAPL
Yes we're bring rampant growth down to 50% perhaps even more if necessary. (holinka)

would it be possible to bring Hibernate back to WoD? It was a pretty fun CC for the druid to have. It definitely was very useful
No we're glad to have removed a lot of those niche use, rarely used CC buttons. (holinka)
Meanwhile: "Think of it as "that niche spell that I sometimes get to use skillfully for great gains"."
Arena players tend to want classes to become increasingly complex, because all arena has for depth is class design. (holinka)
The rest of the game (including PvP parts like battlegrounds and Ashran) does not work this way. (holinka)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Agree, from the looks of it monks were hardly changed. They have way too many ways to disrupt casts.
In comparison to most classes, monks didn't have many abilities. They didn't really need much pruning. (holinka)
Ah ok They have a lot of stuns, disarms and that. I'll keep an eye on notes in case I missed CC changes.
They lost their disarm, their silence & CC break trinkets work better vs fists of fury & ring of peace. (holinka)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
stop that you're going to get us paladins cheesing the beacon macro nerfed. #intended #unfunplaystyle
.Relately, we're going to make a change that skews away from the Beacon macroing: a tiny mana cost. (Celestalon)
Won't be a ton; the intention is that moving your beacon around frequently is still viable and min/maxy. (Celestalon)
Just a bit to nudge away from doing it wastefully. Thinking 1000mana. (Celestalon)

Do the level 90 Holy Paladin talents really need a mana cost(that HIGH)? Similar other class abilities are much cheaper/free.
They should still be very efficient. Cost offsets their high healing, while not being restrictive. (Celestalon)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Rogues will have too many ways to stop casts.Deadly Throw didn't need a buff, it'd be fair if DT replaced Kick.
It wi require 5 pts to interrupt in the next build. (holinka)

Character / Items
there will be *no* Benediction transmog in the 10th MC raid, right?
Nothing Benediction/Anathema-related in the anniversary raid, no. (WatcherDev)

PvE
Is 7min enrage on twin ogron mythic intended as well? We hit that at 30%
Berserk timers are intended; health is artificially high. (WatcherDev)

you said LFR would be smoothing out spikes to make it easier than mists due to not dropping tier - now it’s remaining the same?
Mists LFR wings varied a lot in difficulty. We'll be smoothing out those peaks in Warlords. (WatcherDev)

Will it be possible to go Quest > Normal Dungeon > Heroic Dungeon > Normal Raid in Warlords, or is LFR a required step?
It will not only be possible, but is in fact the expected path for people who want to do organized raiding. (WatcherDev)

PvP
The 'Kick' bonus - how does this help vs. melee? 2pc bonus only valuable vs. casters? I don't understand
PvE bonuses don't work in PvP. Versatility bonuses are all undertuned. (holinka)

small detail in WoD but has a huge impact: being able to take queues while in combat. Queuing arena during Ashran with no worry=win
.Indeed, we think it will be great to participate in Ashran, or the rest of the world for that matter, while you wait in queue. (holinka)

do you envision ashran as something that will be used in future xpaks? Or just WoD
Ashran will be a part of the Warlords of Draenor expansion but much like old raids, it's relevance will diminish afterwards. (holinka)
If it's successful we'd probably do something new based on lessons learned. (holinka)

How long have you invisioned Ashran and why was something like it not made sooner? I'm strictly PvE but not anymore! Thanks #Ashran
A number of reasons. First, some of the technology necessary to pull it off. Second, the design resources to make it. (holinka)
But we think it's great to introduce a new kind of PvP content to the game which we think has broad appeal. (holinka)
I agree. Queing is ok, but jump right in and play is the best! Interesting gameplay I think all PvP/PvE players can enjoy. #Ashran
.A lot of people grinded High Warlord/Grand Marshal back in the day but have no interest in Arena/RBG. So adding Ashran too! (holinka)
What does that mean do we have chance to get those titles from playing ashran?
No those titles are not available from Ashran (holinka)
It means there are people out there who like PvP enough to grind hours for those titles but they don't like instance PvP. (holinka)

World
True story: the original farm supports different outcomes based on weather and seasons, but I cut them to reduce complexity (_DonAdams)
did you just say you dumbed down the farm too? Thanks, Blizz! That would have been awesome!
It *supports* those things, but they were never implemented. That is not dumbing down. (_DonAdams)
I should also point out that the original farm was 6 plots at best. So it's actually way bigger than planned. (_DonAdams)
Not doing a thing you originally wanted to do is the day to day reality of game dev. You cut and trim. (_DonAdams)
In the end I'm very proud of the farm, even if I wanted to do more with it. That's most of our content. (_DonAdams)

Misc
Random question, but do you know why there's such an absence of blue responses on the WoD beta forums? It's very discouraging.
Simply because it's extremely time consuming to do, and there's none of us dedicated to doing it, so only in spare time. (Celestalon)
... monitoring and providing feedback then what the hell is the point? Might as well bury your head in the sand
Reading and Responding are two *extremely* different things. We do read all the feedback, with dedicated people. (Celestalon)

Warlords of Draenor - Tanaris Changes
Forum users CosmicGuitars and Reignac noticed some interesting changes in Tanaris. A new Infinite Vanguard NPC has appeared outside of the Caverns of Time, along with a Black Morass style portal a little bit farther out. A total of 7 new Infinite NPCs were added in Warlords.

[Msi]

Awesome enchants!

[Queen of Hamsters]

Ooooh, the mount clarification makes me happeh! I have had enough of rare world spawn camping with the Aeonaxx and TLPD mounts...*phew*.

Also, dem enchants! Very nice.

[Deztru]

The poison illusion makes me wonder why they haven't implemented an actual poison enchant.

Would be cool to coat your weapon with poison and have it DoT everything you hit.

[Dian Keto the Cure Master]

The poison illusion makes me wonder why they haven't implemented an actual poison enchant.

Would be cool to coat your weapon with poison and have it DoT everything you hit.

Used to be a thing. Back when poisons were items rogues made and added to their weapons. Had the dripping effect and everything.

[Shauni]

I know you can guess what celestalon's answer was, but I chuckled at
"- Player : the change about mount speed is on purpose or an accident ?
- Celestalon : yes."

[Deleted]

Meh, I liked Call to Arms..

Even if i mostly play PvE it was nice to have sometimes on the weekends when you were bored.

[Deleted]

Those swords indeed looks like a DK starting zone swords.. but cooler

[Grimalkin of Old]

Butterflies

[OreoLover]

Very curious about all the new CoT bits.

Enchants are looking beautiful--still want more. :P

[Deleted]

Shadowmoon enchant looks stunning!

[Kazlofski]

7 Time losts yay just don't make them as lousy to obtain as Huolon!

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

I don't understand why people would want them to be like Huolon rather than TLPD/Aeonaxx. I've probably killed Huolon one million times by now and I still don't have the mount.
I spent a long, loooong time camping both TLPD and Aeonaxx, but I still enjoyed camping them more.

[OmniSkribe]

Ahh, enchants are so 2001. Good textures don't help.

[cuafpr]

need a felfire enchant for lock plz

[DrakeWurrum]

Wait, does this mean we really will finally deal with Zuromond?

If so, why in the hell did we need such a convoluted storyline for WHY we're fighting the Iron Horde, when you could have just said "The Infinite Dragonflight helped Garrosh escape to the past, and if you don't do something, the Horde as you know it will be completely undone!"
No, instead we have all this nonsense with an alternate timeline connecting the Dark Portal to our timeline and invading us.

[Xentronium]

It should be noted there were "five" Chromies added as well.

http://beta.wowhead.com/npc=88191#modelviewer:10+0

[Daws001]

Lol, butterflies! I love it.

[CosmicGuitars]

It should be noted there were "five" Chromies added as well.

http://beta.wowhead.com/npc=88191#modelviewer:10+0

She is an NPC in the legendary arc.

[Rehija]

Nice enchants, but once again not for range weapons *cry*