World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Throughout the discussions regarding Azerite Armor, there’s been a lot of talk about how you earn Azerite pieces from Mythic+ dungeons. Players have told us – and we agree – that the process of earning Azerite Armor through Mythic+ feels overly based on luck, and that there isn’t enough control in the players’ hands. Even with our bad luck protection systems in place, the sheer number of potential Azerite pieces you can get from the weekly chest means that trying to get ahold of a specific piece feels hopeless.

That’s a problem we want to solve, and give you some control over the Azerite gear you earn through Mythic+. So here’s what we’re working on for Tides of Vengeance:

First, we’re adding a new (as yet unnamed) currency, which you’ll earn from your weekly Mythic+ chest as well as from scrapping (or disenchanting) epic-quality Azerite Armor. This currency is rewarded in addition to the item in the chest (which can no longer be an Azerite piece), and the amount you earn will scale up based on the highest level Keystone you’ve completed. For example, completing a level 10 Keystone will reward you with about three times as much as clearing a level 7. Similarly, scrapping higher-item-level Azerite pieces will give you significantly higher amounts of this currency than lower-level pieces.

To spend that currency, we’re bringing back an old friend: Thaumaturge Vashreen. He’ll have two main types of items for sale. The first are caches that reward a random dungeon Azerite Armor piece for a given slot (helm, shoulders, or chest). They’ll be separated out by item level as well (at 355, 370, and 385), with higher item level caches requiring significantly more currency to purchase.

But we recognize that with six or more options per slot, this may still not be enough control for high-end players who want to be able to work towards a specific piece that perfectly complements their build. Thus, Vashreen will also offer Item Level 385 versions of the specific dungeon Azerite Armor pieces for each class, sold at a premium.

We’re still nailing down the exact numbers, but our goal for tuning this new currency is that you’ll be able to purchase one of the Azerite caches that lines up roughly with the item level of the gear you’re getting from your Mythic+ runs every two or three weeks, with the specific 385 pieces as long-term goals for top players.

Overall, we believe that this change will improve things in a lot of different ways:

• Mythic+ players of all skill levels will now have a clear path to upgrading their Azerite slots
• High-end Mythic+ players will have a way to target specific Azerite pieces to optimize their setups
• Duplicate or unwanted Azerite pieces from other sources (such as raiding) now have some additional value
• The piece of gear in your weekly chest will have a more reliable item level

You should see all of this hitting the Tides of Vengeance PTR sometime in the next week or so. We really do appreciate your feedback, and believe that this, in addition to the new traits and other improvements coming to the Azerite system in Tides of Vengeance, will help ease a lot of the concerns about Azerite Armor in Mythic+ and as a whole.

Couple quick clarifications based on feedback so far:

• Only Azerite Armor that drops after Tides of Vengeance is released will scrap/disenchant into the new currency. Don't worry about hoarding the Azerite pieces you're earning now.
• When the next Mythic+ season starts, and item levels increase, the item levels of Thaumaturge Vashreen's wares will increase accordingly.
• We recognize that PvPers want more options and choice too. We're talking about that separately.

Quick update: the buff will have a longer duration in the next build. It is intended to be less of a "press button when it lights up" proc, and more something you can plan to use. This also should take stress off of knowing exactly when it will trigger (which is not something we want the talent to be about micromanaging).

What do Community Managers do?
Just curious. 9 to 5. What does their day look like?
I would encourage everyone here to read Bashiok's original "A Day In The Life" as its still very relevant to some of the things I do. The Office Spade reference he makes to describe CMing is too real that its painful.

My day to day differs a little bit since this was a few years back so it might be a refreshing thing to do a new one of these. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

But it turns out Blizzard literally has a dedicated timeslot for people to play video games.
This differs from team to team, so some do it and some don't. It's mainly done as team building exercises. Wouldn't you rather play games with your coworkers and bond that way? It's also only when we have the time to play, my team for example has ours scheduled on Fridays after our last team meeting for the week for the last 2 hours of our typical "workday". This often gets cancelled though as we might have projects that we're working on. We haven't had ours for a few weeks so we've been playing on the weekends or after work. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Anyway, I am fascinated by some of the responses here. You have a job description, an anecdotal account by Bashiok, and further clarification from Ythisens and many of you persist in acting like they get paid to do nothing. Unbelievable.
In their defense its understandable since most of what we do is behind the scenes. When you see a drop off in blue posts and all you know us from is that then you can be left wondering "Wait I thought you do this? Why are you not doing this?". I think that's fair but I'd rather establish why that might be the case for that moment as the activity of blue posts comes in waves based on what we have to communicate as well as our extra time to do it.

Right now for example a lot of my week has been taken up by BlizzCon tasks and projects versus not anything I have at the moment to communicate, so I delay the posting to take care of those things. That also means that by writing this post now I'm procrastinating that a little >.>

We obviously have things in the pipe communication wise to get to you but just not ready to be fired out to you guys yet. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)