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Are we approaching a Solo Raid WoW Experience?
The War Within Alpha - Warbands Feature Overview
So what 4th Alliance race could become a druid?
Wyatt Cheng Playtest With Streamers, More On RoS Beta Invites, Reaper of Souls Fan Art Contest, Happy Valentine's Day!
Jotto's Tournament Review, Legends of Hearthstone - BS3W2Upcoming Siege of Orgrimmar Changes
In the upcoming patch 5.4.7, we will be making a few small adjustments to the 10-player Heroic Garrosh encounter. There a few factors that contribute to a disparity between the difficulty of the encounter in 10-player mode versus 25-player mode, and these changes are intended to help correct for those differences.
We are slightly reducing Garrosh's health in all phases (by roughly 5%).
The fight as a whole is a series of hard DPS checks, where failing to meet certain benchmarks makes things tremendously harder if not impossible, but extra DPS above and beyond that threshold doesn't necessarily help all that much. We're seeing some kills (a minority, but some groups nonetheless) feeling the need to single-heal the fight even at this point, and that has a number of negative gameplay and social issues. We can't really prevent single-healing (other than by increasing the outgoing damage, which isn't an option at this point), but this change should at least make it so that no one feels they need to single-heal in order to meet the various checks, without lessening the coordination requirements of the rest of the fight.
We are reducing the health of Minions of Y'Shaarj (by roughly 10%).
Most 25-player groups are able to kite and otherwise control the Minions thanks to the additional available manpower, while 10-player groups generally have to kill them. This change should improve parity between modes by reducing the difficulty of this particular mechanic for 10-player groups.
We are increasing the clump size required to trigger an Iron Star in the final Heroic-only phase of the fight from 3 to 4.
Iron Star detection previously required 3 players on 10, and 8 on 25 (a standard ratio), but this causes a discrepancy when it comes to the overlap between Bombardment and Malice. Malice requires 2 soakers on 10H and 5 on 25H (again, a standard ratio), but this means that the total clump sizes required to handle Malice are actually 3 and 6 respectively, such that a 25-player group could cover soaking Malice #4 (which fully overlaps with Bombardment) without triggering Iron Stars, whereas a 10-player group generally could not. This change should, like the rest, increase parity when it comes to this mechanic.
"Why did you wait this long to make these changes?"
We're very conservative when it comes to reducing the difficulty of a Heroic final boss, since the entire point of such encounters is to represent the pinnacle of raiding challenge. For most of the initial months of the patch, the sample size of players killing Garrosh on each difficulty was too small to draw meaningful conclusions about the relative difficulty on 10 vs. 25, but now we've reached a point where it's clear that there's a problem, so we're taking the above actions.
"Thanks Blizz, way to nerf the only hard fight left in the game..."
Sorry, we do wish we'd gotten the tuning right in the first place. 10-Heroic Garrosh will still be plenty hard -- this is just bringing the encounter in line with its 25-player counterpart.
We are slightly reducing Garrosh's health in all phases (by roughly 5%).
The fight as a whole is a series of hard DPS checks, where failing to meet certain benchmarks makes things tremendously harder if not impossible, but extra DPS above and beyond that threshold doesn't necessarily help all that much. We're seeing some kills (a minority, but some groups nonetheless) feeling the need to single-heal the fight even at this point, and that has a number of negative gameplay and social issues. We can't really prevent single-healing (other than by increasing the outgoing damage, which isn't an option at this point), but this change should at least make it so that no one feels they need to single-heal in order to meet the various checks, without lessening the coordination requirements of the rest of the fight.
We are reducing the health of Minions of Y'Shaarj (by roughly 10%).
Most 25-player groups are able to kite and otherwise control the Minions thanks to the additional available manpower, while 10-player groups generally have to kill them. This change should improve parity between modes by reducing the difficulty of this particular mechanic for 10-player groups.
We are increasing the clump size required to trigger an Iron Star in the final Heroic-only phase of the fight from 3 to 4.
Iron Star detection previously required 3 players on 10, and 8 on 25 (a standard ratio), but this causes a discrepancy when it comes to the overlap between Bombardment and Malice. Malice requires 2 soakers on 10H and 5 on 25H (again, a standard ratio), but this means that the total clump sizes required to handle Malice are actually 3 and 6 respectively, such that a 25-player group could cover soaking Malice #4 (which fully overlaps with Bombardment) without triggering Iron Stars, whereas a 10-player group generally could not. This change should, like the rest, increase parity when it comes to this mechanic.
"Why did you wait this long to make these changes?"
We're very conservative when it comes to reducing the difficulty of a Heroic final boss, since the entire point of such encounters is to represent the pinnacle of raiding challenge. For most of the initial months of the patch, the sample size of players killing Garrosh on each difficulty was too small to draw meaningful conclusions about the relative difficulty on 10 vs. 25, but now we've reached a point where it's clear that there's a problem, so we're taking the above actions.
"Thanks Blizz, way to nerf the only hard fight left in the game..."
Sorry, we do wish we'd gotten the tuning right in the first place. 10-Heroic Garrosh will still be plenty hard -- this is just bringing the encounter in line with its 25-player counterpart.
Challenge Mode End of Season Early Warning
Keep in mind that Challenge Modes are not going away with Patch 5.4.7, but with another patch before Warlords of Draenor.
Countless adventurers continue to brave the most trying versions of Mists of Pandaria dungeons, but the clock is ticking. This “season” of Challenge Modes will be coming to an end with the upcoming release of a patch prior to the expansion’s release.
Challenge Modes are designed to offer as close to a “normalized” difficulty as possible, and they’re tuned to be tough to master. With Warlords of Draenor’s class changes, itemization changes (e.g. the removal of Hit and Expertise), and—of course—increased level cap on the horizon, the difficulty of Mists of Pandaria’s dungeons will no longer be tuned the same as they were. In the spirit of fair play, when the aforementioned patch is released a little while before the new expansion launches, the current slate of Challenge Mode dungeons will no longer be available, and the achievements they award will be converted to Feats of Strength. The reward items will still be available for purchase by those who qualified prior to the end of the season, but it will not be possible for new players to earn those rewards going forward.
If you still need to earn your Undaunted title, Ancestral Phoenix, or class-specific Transmogrification sets, now’s the time to get out there and prove your worth. In Warlords of Draenor, an entirely new set of Challenge Modes will be available . . . and with them an array of new rewards for you to earn. Until then, stay sharp!
Challenge Modes are designed to offer as close to a “normalized” difficulty as possible, and they’re tuned to be tough to master. With Warlords of Draenor’s class changes, itemization changes (e.g. the removal of Hit and Expertise), and—of course—increased level cap on the horizon, the difficulty of Mists of Pandaria’s dungeons will no longer be tuned the same as they were. In the spirit of fair play, when the aforementioned patch is released a little while before the new expansion launches, the current slate of Challenge Mode dungeons will no longer be available, and the achievements they award will be converted to Feats of Strength. The reward items will still be available for purchase by those who qualified prior to the end of the season, but it will not be possible for new players to earn those rewards going forward.
If you still need to earn your Undaunted title, Ancestral Phoenix, or class-specific Transmogrification sets, now’s the time to get out there and prove your worth. In Warlords of Draenor, an entirely new set of Challenge Modes will be available . . . and with them an array of new rewards for you to earn. Until then, stay sharp!
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
PvP
The large conquest cap is great, but it's hard to gear up when fighting fully geared people in the 1200 bracket. any fix in future?
Rating represents your ability to win/lose the match. Gear is a part of that. If you're losing at 1200 regularly, you aren't 1200. (holinka)
Yes, but it sucks gearing up with a large cap when you fight people who tank their rating down to 1200 by spamming leave que
in the future, people who leave queue before entering combat will be unable to queue again for a short time (holinka)
Why is there no 'Valor of the Ancients' buff for conquest when you fully cap a toon?
We don't think it would be good for the game for a number of reasons. First, who has to cap first? Your "main"? Who's that? (holinka)
Does it matter who caps first?
Yes since some characters could have lower caps. (holinka)
sure we get a hp increase with new gear, but first few weeks of the new season we wont have that extra HP.
Neither will the damage dealers, who will be doing less damage due to increase in resilience. (holinka)
why does bandages get affected by battle fatigue when they are a static number?
It is a heal and so it was affected by all healing modifiers. Considering ignoring BF but not other mods. (holinka)
Hey btw, just saw a bug where ToK game didn't end after hitting 1600 points. Took another 35sec or so to register.
I've seen something similar in EotS. We're doing a lot of work on bgs that will fix these problems...in Warlords. (holinka)
any chance rep gains will be modified(warsong and ab)?
It's on a long long list of things to look at, but not a priority, sorry. (holinka)
PvP very CC frustrating. 1 CC into 2nd then 3rd. When you can do something you're sub 20%hp or dead. Fixes prior to WoD?
No plans before WoD. Seeing how disruptive the changes we have made can be to balance, I'm glad we're waiting. (holinka)
How do you plan to help specs like ret/spriest and dk ams/conversion when you increase battle f atigue
By giving them (and everyone else) gear that is 28 ilevels higher. (holinka)
ret, sp, dk defensive weakens everytime BF getting buffed. unlike warr, rogue, mage, hunter defensives
That's incorrect (holinka)
How is that incorrect? Battle fatigue will bring AMS down while damage goes up meaning it will absorb even less
A lot of classes were named in that tweet. (holinka)
so battle fatigue is shitting disc priest how have they not got anything to compensate to be viable again, holy is so lame
Care to elaborate on why you think battle fatigue affects Disc more than any other healer spec? (holinka)
Misc
will characters still auto learn new abilities? or do u have to go to a trainer and learn them? kinda miss that system
It's an interesting question. Going to the trainer feels more visceral. But going back to a major city is a burden while questing. (Celestalon)
The large conquest cap is great, but it's hard to gear up when fighting fully geared people in the 1200 bracket. any fix in future?
Rating represents your ability to win/lose the match. Gear is a part of that. If you're losing at 1200 regularly, you aren't 1200. (holinka)
Yes, but it sucks gearing up with a large cap when you fight people who tank their rating down to 1200 by spamming leave que
in the future, people who leave queue before entering combat will be unable to queue again for a short time (holinka)
Why is there no 'Valor of the Ancients' buff for conquest when you fully cap a toon?
We don't think it would be good for the game for a number of reasons. First, who has to cap first? Your "main"? Who's that? (holinka)
Does it matter who caps first?
Yes since some characters could have lower caps. (holinka)
sure we get a hp increase with new gear, but first few weeks of the new season we wont have that extra HP.
Neither will the damage dealers, who will be doing less damage due to increase in resilience. (holinka)
why does bandages get affected by battle fatigue when they are a static number?
It is a heal and so it was affected by all healing modifiers. Considering ignoring BF but not other mods. (holinka)
Hey btw, just saw a bug where ToK game didn't end after hitting 1600 points. Took another 35sec or so to register.
I've seen something similar in EotS. We're doing a lot of work on bgs that will fix these problems...in Warlords. (holinka)
any chance rep gains will be modified(warsong and ab)?
It's on a long long list of things to look at, but not a priority, sorry. (holinka)
PvP very CC frustrating. 1 CC into 2nd then 3rd. When you can do something you're sub 20%hp or dead. Fixes prior to WoD?
No plans before WoD. Seeing how disruptive the changes we have made can be to balance, I'm glad we're waiting. (holinka)
How do you plan to help specs like ret/spriest and dk ams/conversion when you increase battle f atigue
By giving them (and everyone else) gear that is 28 ilevels higher. (holinka)
ret, sp, dk defensive weakens everytime BF getting buffed. unlike warr, rogue, mage, hunter defensives
That's incorrect (holinka)
How is that incorrect? Battle fatigue will bring AMS down while damage goes up meaning it will absorb even less
A lot of classes were named in that tweet. (holinka)
so battle fatigue is shitting disc priest how have they not got anything to compensate to be viable again, holy is so lame
Care to elaborate on why you think battle fatigue affects Disc more than any other healer spec? (holinka)
Misc
will characters still auto learn new abilities? or do u have to go to a trainer and learn them? kinda miss that system
It's an interesting question. Going to the trainer feels more visceral. But going back to a major city is a burden while questing. (Celestalon)
Fan Art Update
The World of Warcraft Fan Art Section has been updated with one new piece of fan artwork.
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