Patch 5.0.5 Hotfixes, Dev Interviews, Leaderboard Preview, Blue Posts, Weekly Roundup

Item Affixes and Monster Levels, More on Monster Powers, Status of the PTR, 1.0.5 PTR System Changes

Patch 5.0.5 Hotfixes - September 25
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Battlegrounds
Alterac Valley
  • Boss NPCs in the level 85-89 bracket are now level 90, and their guards are now level 89.
Isle of Conquest
  • Boss NPCs in the level 85-89 bracket are now level 90, and their guards are now level 89.
  • Boss NPCs in the level 90 bracket are new level 91, and their guards are now level 90.

Classes
Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  • Thrash periodic damage has been increased by 60%.

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  • Keg Smash damage has been increased by 50%.
  • Keg Smash can now hit every target in range (was previously a maximum of three).

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

Dungeons and Raids
Bastion of Twilight
Stormstout Brewery
  • Ook-Ook should now suffer impacts from players on barrels who hit him immediately after another barrel does.

Pet Battles
  • Battle pet quests are no longer flagged for Mists of Pandaria only, and can be accepted by players who have not yet upgraded.
  • Slicing Wind can now hit multiple times on pets, regardless of their family type.
  • Crimson Moth and Wharf Rat should appear as expected in the Pet Journal.

Quests
  • Players will now receive AOE credit for sinking both the Bladefist Reaper and Stygian Scar while in proximity of the ships being destroyed during the quest "Unleash Hell".
  • Players no longer remain in the Orgrimmar Gunship phase of "Into the Mists" once the quest is completed.
  • In the quest "Strongarm Tactics", players should now receive credit for killing Gyro-mechanic Lavenderp or Master Engineer Cogswing if the other NPC is slain by a second player.
  • Players should be able to turn in the quest "The Elder's Instruments" and then see and interact with Pearlkeeper Fujin.
  • The quests "Regroup!", "You're Either With Us Or......", and "Face to Face With Consequence" should be offered automatically to characters who enter Honeydew Glade after leaving Thunderhold without receiving them from General Nazgrim and Taren Zhu.
  • In the "Wicked Wikkets" quest, paratroopers how drop the quest item Alliance Service Medallion 100% of the time.
  • The cutscene that plays during the quest "The Jade Serpent" cannot be cancelled by the player. This is intended.

Bug Fixes
  • Players should not receive duplicate messages in chat channels.
  • Crossing a zone boundary on a multi-passenger mount should no longer dismount passengers.

Developer Interviews
Another few interview recaps for you today! Thanks to AusGamers, Twizzcast, and Tankspot.

Ion Hazzikostas - Lead Encounter Designer (AusGamers)
  • Phasing in Cataclysm helpd players feel like they were advancing the story, but at the same time it divided players. It was fun to change the world, but not as fun not being able to quest with friends.
  • Pandaria doesn't have a lot of well known lore or characters compared to previous expansions, but it goes back to the Vanilla WoW style exploration and discovery combined with the more familiar Horde vs Alliance theme.
  • There is a lot of the story told through questing right from your arrival in Pandaria. For example, there was no Silithus in Warcraft 3, but players had a lot of fun going through Silithus and learning about the Qiraji and fighting those threats.
  • Even the daily quests will progress the storyline in Mists of Pandaria.
  • It feels like 10 bosses in a tier is a good number, so don't expect 18 bosses in every upcoming tier.
  • One of the new mechanics is the ability to exert force on a player, such as wind blowing them back or pushing them forward depending on if they are moving against the wind or towards the wind.
  • Another mechanic is a attack pattern that you can actually dodge, giving your raid a boost in damage when successful at avoiding them.
  • The chess event and the Icecrown Gunship battle didn't have enough replay value and were less challenging after you had done them a few times. We might see more if this is improved upon.
  • It is possible that 10 and 25 man raid achievements could be split again in the future to give 25 man raiders more recognition.

Ion Hazzikostas - Lead Encounter Designer (Twizzcast)
  • Encounters make use of the tools of each class, which has been made easier to do with the talent changes in Mists of Pandaria.
  • Scenarios are currently for telling a story, not any kind of a challenge.
  • Only having two difficulties and no scenarios, challenge modes, or LFR made inital Cataclysm content tuning difficult, as there is a very wide range of skill levels.

Ion Hazzikostas - Lead Encounter Designer (Tankspot)
  • Raids with fewer bosses emphasize the imbalance between classes due to fight mechanics more than larger raids.
  • Any progression oriented guild should have a legendary gem for everyone in a few months.
  • Challenge modes should be fun for raiders that don't have the time to raid at a competitive level anymore.
  • Community and Blizzard run timed raid events have been very popular in the past, so that is something worth exploring in the future.
  • There is no ability to scale down character stats yet, just gear. When that feature is added it will open up many other cool things that aren't possible now, such as scaling down to play older challenge modes or raids.
  • Scenarios aren't likely to be a game changer for people that raid, but they are nice for telling a story and avoiding long queue times.
  • Proving Grounds will have some kind of ranking system with scores, allowing you to brag that you are "the best healer on the server". It will also let tanks practice tanking without ruining the dungeon experience of four other players.


Challenge Modes Leaderboard Preview
Blizzard recently shared a preview of the Challenge Mode leaderboards on Facebook. You can see videos, images, and set procs on our Challenge Mode sets page.



Blizzard vs Blood Legion - Challenge Modes
If you were unable to catch it during the event last night, can can watch Blizzard Testers (left) and Blood Legion (right) try one of the new Challenge Modes.


Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
I don't have to try it out. I watch the video and can actually see what the priest is casting. Like Conductivity, Atonement should allow the priest to DPS during times of light damage. I just watched a video where 90% of a speed run challenge mode dungeon was "light damage"
It's amazing how player synergy goes a long way. Sure, some dungeons Challenges will favor some classes or class combinations over others, but that hardly matters if each class isn't using every tool in their arsenal to benefit the entire group most effectively. Our team had a healer. But they also devised extremely calculated strategies with every pull to take as much of the healing burden off their priest as possible. Their healer would've been in much more trouble had the rest of the group not executed CC with complete efficiency. They min-maxed the dungeon and had it down to a science, which is what groups will have to do if they want to top the Leaderboards.

To speak to both posts below, the main reason I love the design philosophy of Challenge Modes is that they'll still cater to a wide range of endgame players. There isn't a huge barrier to entry in World of Warcraft for manually forming a group of five capable, moderately coordinated players. Once you do, you'll find that bronze is very accessible with decent clears of Challenge dungeons without any major disasters (i.e. repeated wipes on bosses). Perform that way in all nine dungeons in Challenge Mode and you'll unlock the title "Challenge Conqueror."

If your group is well coordinated, or takes the time to gain more experience in bronze-medal clears, you'll probably enjoy the task of hitting silver. Get silver times in all nine and you'll get a sweet mount. And by the way, if you're good enough from the start the awards will be retroactive -- winning silver on your first clear of a Challenge dungeon will count toward the bronze achievement as well.

But gold is going to be quite difficult. It's going to take a lot of practice and coordination for most people. That's how you get the unique Transmogrification sets that have some insane visual effects specific to each class. You can see images of the sets and Leaderboard samples on our Facebook album.

The Leaderboards definitely won't be for everyone. But it's also likely players who work hard toward gold might feel compelled to outdo themselves, or their realm or guild mates. But getting to the top of the Leaderboards will no doubt be for extremely skilled, relatively hardcore players.

The added difficulty in this dungeon setting, requirement to manually create a group, item scaling to prevent out-gearing, and awards/bragging rights that cater to a healthy breadth of players, is what we hope will make it a popular new system in the game.

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
So excited for Challenge Mode competition at USA launch! Makes a great spectator sport because there is so much movement and action.
It would make an even better spectator sport if you could spectate
Yeah. Hopefully someday. We'd love to have a spectator mode.

When will the req to be in a raid group to enter raids be removed? everyone knows work around's anyway so what's the point?
Soon! Maybe next major patch!

Give every class a special area like Peak of Serenity like Monks have. (Paraphrased)
I worry if every class had a special place that they wouldn't feel special any more.

What do you think about the current bandage system? I think it could use a lil revamp, maybe so that DoTs don't interrupt it?
I'm not sure First Aid has much of a role these days. I kind of wish it did.

Any thoughts about making TCG items BOA (such as Fishing chair, fools gold etc)
I agree that would be cool. Is sad to have your toys on the "wrong" character.

Any chance of getting the blacksmith TBC specialization weapons back on a trainer or vendor? E.g Lionheart Executioner.
That's a common request. We want to do more with BS. Look at Cooking in MoP as an example of our new ideas.

Any plans to do anything about the overcrowding of hotbars with skills for some classes. Eventually it will get overwhelming.
It's overwhelming now! We weren't successful in pruning many abilities. Too many player favs.

What about the opposite of CRZ, that tech that allows zones to deal with overpopulation with multiple shards?
We'll see, but we don't want to totally give up on the idea of a realm's community and already much works against that.

Was in Deepholm and saw people from other servers, do you think its fair that we have to compete for rare spawns with them?
They were designed with certain player densities in mind.
I understand bringing some low pop ones together,I was just a little miffed when I ran into Illidan people camping rare spawns
We always wanted there to be competition for rare spawns. That's how the game felt when there were more folks in lower zones.

If DS closes after Mists, how will rogues be able to get the Fangs of the Father? And will the clusters be available in LFR?
DS isn't closing. You just can't use Raid Finder for lvl 85 raids when you fare 90.

With acct wide achievements, if you gold all challenges on one character, do you get xmog set on all?
Just that character.

Since Vanilla it's bugged me the Eviscerate icon looks like some one is getting stabbed in the back. Does it bug you?
Yes, it bugs me too. We started to change some of these icons, but decided they were... um... iconic and let them stay.

Why, in an xpac so aimed at playing the toon you want, did you chose to make SoH BoP in stead of BoA? Please make boa!
We probably will eventually. At first we want your prof choice to be meaningful, not a problem you solve by having many alts.

Any plans to address the players on your own forums, or are they effectively abandoned?
I post on the forums frequently. Just perhaps not as much as players would like.

You don't want players to feel forced into LFR, so you give them a chance to get legendaries there? Wheres the logic there?
If you're the kind of player who completes set bonuses by running LFR, then maybe.
no. EVERYONE wants legendaries. saying "if you do LFR you get an extra chance for it" is OBVIOUSLY gonna push them into LFR.
You are probably thinking of them like Dragonwrath drops. I'd be surprised if N/H raiders are in Raid Finder after a week or two.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
If you had a chance to redo the class specs with out consequence, would you keep Beast Mastery in the game?
Yes. It has a strong kit. Players "get" it.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
One of your tweets said Volley was boring. "Channel, snooze, repeat". Can we have a change to Mind Sear then? etc..
Shadow dots are worth using for AE on many targets unless they will die really quickly. Mind Sear is better for fast kills.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
May I ask the reasons for the warrior nerfs? Just curious... Would like to understand the developers views on this.
Damage was too high at 90. Players were able to improve a little more on the rotation and gear than we anticipated. We don't like the risk of WW going into single-target rotation though, so we might tweak numbers some more.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Questing the Only Way to Level
The point of this thread was to ask the question why is questing the only way to level? If I want to bg or dungeon grind, why should I be penalized for choosing to play the game a different way? Why should I be forced to quest? Why is Blizzard forcing me to play the game a certain way?
Questing is hardly the only way to level, and while it’s easy to toss around imaginary numbers on how many people are interested in quest text, I can assure you that a rather large number of people do care. I actually think you’re missing out on quite a lot of great story nuggets if you ignore the text entirely, but you know what they say: different strokes for different folks.

With that being said, if your aim is to simply reach max-level as quickly as possible, there are a number of different ways to do so. I know of several people that have rotated between running dungeons, questing, running BGs, and grinding mobs as the mood strikes them. I’d definitely encourage people to experience the game the way they would like to experience it. Battle some pets, work on some professions, explore exotic new places, and just, well, enjoy the journey. There’s an awful lot to see and do beyond those bubbles on your XP bar.
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria Cross Realm Zones
Just saw a player from different server in Jade Forest. Again Blizz, you seem to say one thing and do another. Guildmate reported it.
While we aren't sharing zones in Pandaria, this doesn't preclude people from grouping with friends and bringing them over to play via Real ID or Battle Tag. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mists of Pandaria Initial Impressions
It's still 30 seconds.. most choices are no brainers.
I suspect that what constitutes a 'no-brainer' for you might not be so clear to another player. Personally, I've already thought of several different talent load-outs I'd like to experiment with for different circumstances on the characters I play.

Perhaps they're worthy of more thought than first impressions provide?

This is the expansion that Cataclysm should have been. You know that feeling you got when you walked through the dark portal or into Northrend? That sense of "wonder" and "anticipation" for what is to come? Mists of Pandaria has that.
This captures the feeling I'm getting from Mists very nicely. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Gyrocopters Quest Bug
We're aware of the issues players are having with this quest. We're monitoring the situation closely and looking to see what we can do to ease the burden. As the introductory Alliance quest for Pandaria, we know it's a big deal. In the meantime we ask only for your patience. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Realm Queues and Free Character Transfers
We're watching realm populations very closely. For those on high-population realms, your patience is appreciated. The fact is it's not wise for us to be incredibly hasty with free transfers. The game has been out less than a day. We're also in peak play times in the evenings. It's something we have to evaluate carefully as the number of concurrent players stabilizes over the week so that, if free transfer are needed, we can provide the service in the most effective way possible to/from the realms that need it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Curse Weekly Roundup
The Curse Weekly Roundup is here with news about Slender, Minecon 2012, the PS3 Slim, Planetside 2, and more.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 5.0.5 Hotfixes, Dev Interviews, Leaderboard Preview, Blue Posts, Weekly Roundup started by chaud View original post
Published on 2012-09-26 06:44 AM
24 Comments
Comments 24 Comments
  1. moveth's Avatar
    It was nice to watch Blood Legion get their asses destroyed.
  1. alexday14's Avatar
    Finally, that strongarm quest is fixed.. So many 'trolls' were AoEing that crap out of their spawn.. >_<
  1. thekubolicious's Avatar
    i wish i could play MoP... Buy Yet i don't have the money to pay for the expansion or game time.
  1. Azgraal's Avatar
    Wait... removing things again? i thought "i can't hear you over the sound of how awesome i am" would be staying as a FoS, still obtainable...
  1. Domiku's Avatar
    Please don't say Pico is back
  1. mmocb929a4635a's Avatar
    LOL - Blood Legion proved, that they are noobz.
  1. Granyala's Avatar
    Wait... removing things again? i thought "i can't hear you over the sound of how awesome i am" would be staying as a FoS, still obtainable...
    Would be BS if you could faceroll it at 90. And no I don't have it either. My Guild never managed 25HC Chogall and I wasn't around for the 10 man runs. ._.
  1. Azgraal's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Would be BS if you could faceroll it at 90. And no I don't have it either. My Guild never managed 25HC Chogall and I wasn't around for the 10 man runs. ._.
    Well it's not about it being facerollable or not. Frankly i wasn't planing on doing it in the near future, never gave it a real thought, but, for example, meta achievements from that same tier and later ones and their mounts are still ingame for everyone to get. It's a matter of consistency (or in this case, inconsistency).
  1. mmoca8ead0a25c's Avatar
    So, still no word on the quest Simulacrumble?
  1. BRO90X's Avatar
    yay brewmaster buff
  1. Funky303's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by johanruda View Post
    So, still no word on the quest Simulacrumble?
    Yeah, that quest sucks ass at the moment.. I was there for over an hour.. NO STATUE at all... absolute open pvp killfest since even at 4:30am there were like 50 people waiting for the statues to respawn
  1. mmoc24665d4db5's Avatar
    NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Very, very BAD!!

    Blizzard, please ..you need to nerf monks, not increase damage !!! They was too much OP allready and now you increased them... They too 2 times better dps, then the anothers. It will see on damage meter. PLEASE, nerf monks at next time!!!!!!!!

    At battelgrounds almost immpossible to kill the monk...
  1. mmoc0f233d9eb1's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Quakefan View Post
    NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Very, very BAD!!

    Blizzard, please ..you need to nerf monks, not increase damage !!! They was too much OP allready and now you increased them... They too 2 times better dps, then the anothers. It will see on damage meter. PLEASE, nerf monks at next time!!!!!!!!

    At battelgrounds almost immpossible to kill the monk...
    Uh....how about no.
  1. mmoc24665d4db5's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Celltrex View Post
    Uh....how about no.
    No the monks need to get nerfet!!!
  1. Sirfailalot's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Quakefan View Post
    No the monks need to get nerfet!!!
    How about shut up and stop calling for nerfs. Call for buffs for the junk classes instead.
  1. TrueProphecy22's Avatar
    I loved chess and the battleship no matter how many times I did them. Maybe they became simple after a few times, but they were a couple of events that never bored me.
  1. Chouzan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Quakefan View Post
    NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Very, very BAD!!

    Blizzard, please ..you need to nerf monks, not increase damage !!! They was too much OP allready and now you increased them... They too 2 times better dps, then the anothers. It will see on damage meter. PLEASE, nerf monks at next time!!!!!!!!

    At battelgrounds almost immpossible to kill the monk...
    Those are quality of life improvements to Monk tanking, not necessarily damage. Only Brewmasters get Keg Smash and it's their number one method of applying the 10% Damage Debuff to enemies. Even at low levels one could see that it only hitting 3 targets was going to not work out, given that it has a short cooldown and couldn't be just spammed.

    Monk damage is average to fine overall, however. If you're getting thrashed by a Monk, step up your game.
  1. zrankfappa's Avatar
    oh man .. Wikked Wikkets took forever last night. They need to do something about the Pandaren Prisoners quest too, the cages were all open and I never saw a single prisoner while I was there doing the other quests. The Vials of tiger blood need a drop boost also ... lots of competition for spawns. Those were probably the worst three I can remember.
  1. Leonard McCoy's Avatar
    Sadly as much as I am currently enjoying mists it doesn't in anyway remotely give me the WOW feeling that I got from going through the Dark Portal and looking down the Stair of Destiny. That was awesome.
  1. Illfaded's Avatar
    Anyone else notice the 2nd team on the realm challenge list? Warlock/Priest/Rogue x2/Mage?

    It's probably just a placeholder, or did they manage to steamroll that challenge run without a real tank?

    ---------- Post added 2012-09-26 at 01:56 PM ----------

    Just noticed #8 and #14 are the same set up.

    Rogue evasion tanking? Or maybe lock pet tanking?

    (I play neither class, so I'm not sure about either of those)
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