WoD:Equipping for Battle, WoD Crafted Armor, Apr 28 Hotfixes, Blue Posts, Ashran

War looms on the horizon, and although the Iron Horde poses a substantial threat to all of Azeroth, old grudges between the Alliance and the Horde are not so easily set aside. As Warlords of Draenor development continues, we wanted to share some exciting changes coming to PvP gear and how you’ll earn it in the expansion.

I’ve Got the Power!
In Mists of Pandaria we introduced the PvP Power stat, which allowed PvP gear to be functionally superior to raid and dungeon gear in PvP combat without exceeding the value of its equivalent PvE gear in PvE content. That was largely a success in instanced PvP Arenas and Battlegrounds, but we think we can do better—while also granting players those same benefits in outdoor world PvP. So, in Warlords of Draenor, we’re taking a different approach.

PvP gear in Warlords will no longer have PvP-specific stats. Instead, it will scale up to a higher item level as soon as you enter a designated PvP area, such as an Arena or Battleground, or as soon as you enter PvP combat anywhere else in the world. If you’re out questing with PvP gear, your items’ base item level will be used while fighting back the Iron Horde, but the second that raiding Druid tries to gank you, your higher PvP item level kicks in and you’ll have the upper hand. Each piece of PvP gear will have its PvP item level displayed clearly on its tooltip, so there’s no guesswork involved.

On top of that, all gear—even gear found in PvE content—will be scaled up to a certain minimum item level in any designated PvP area. That minimum is still lower than any of the actual PvP gear, but a fresh level-100 character who’s just wearing some dungeon gear, or even whatever they picked up while questing, will not be at quite as severe a disadvantage should they choose to step into a Skirmish or Random Battleground.

One added benefit of this new system is that most PvE gear will no longer need to be downscaled in PvP areas, as the equivalent PvP gear is already a higher item level in PvP situations. Instead of making players wearing PvE gear feel weaker in PvP, this makes it so players wearing PvP gear feel stronger. The only exception is Mythic raid gear. Mythic’s PvE item level and Conquest’s PvP item level are very close, so we’ll be downscaling Mythic gear slightly in designated PvP areas just to make sure that Conquest gear remains the best available for PvP.

What’s In the Box?!
The Warlords of Draenor expansion will also bring some major improvements to the way PvP gear is earned. For starters, we’re vastly improving the bonus rewards you can earn from doing Random or Call to Arms Battlegrounds. At the end of a match, you’ll earn a Bronze, Silver, or Gold Strongbox—or possibly all three. Which Strongboxes you earn depends on how well your team did in the match, but you can still earn them even if your team doesn’t win.

Take Warsong Gulch,for example. If your faction captured at least one flag before the game ended, you’ll get the Bronze Strongbox. Capture a second, and you’ll earn both the Bronze and Silver. And if you capture all three, not only do you win the game, but you’ll also earn all three Strongboxes. We’ll be restructuring the scoring of other Battlegrounds slightly (such as changing Arathi Basin to end at 1,500 points) so it’s easy to figure out what you need for each Strongbox.

Inside those Strongboxes could be any number of rewards: Honor points, Conquest points—even gear. Better Strongboxes can have better rewards, so even if your team is behind in the match, it’s worth keeping up the fight to try to earn the best reward you can.

Of course, Skirmishes (the unranked Arenas we announced a little while back) will have rewards as well. We’re still discussing exactly how we want to hand them out, but you’ll be able to earn gear and Honor by playing Skirmishes if you’d prefer.

A Veteran’s Honor
Another issue on our radar is the ever-increasing item level gap between the gear you can purchase with Honor and Conquest points. To help bridge that gap, in Warlords we’re going to have three separate tiers of PvP gear.

It starts with an introductory set of a quality similar to today’s Honor gear, except you’ll earn it much, much faster. That set comes primarily through the Strongboxes, and you’ve got a high chance of getting a piece in each Strongbox you earn. After that starter gear comes a new set: Veteran’s gear. There’s a small chance to find a piece of Veteran’s gear in a Silver or Gold Strongbox, but you can also purchase Veteran’s gear with Honor points. That gear’s PvP item level will be halfway between the starter gear and Gladiator’s gear.

Adding the Veteran’s tier accomplishes a lot of things for us. First, it helps make sure that someone who wants to step into rated PvP later on in the season isn’t nearly as far behind their opponents in gear. Second, since the basic gear is earned so quickly, that helps ensure players get those important set bonuses, trinkets, and so on without too much trouble, and helps put everyone on a decent baseline in their ability to compete. For players who enjoy PvP but aren’t really interested in jumping into rated competition, earning Veteran’s gear will feel a lot more rewarding.

As for Gladiator’s gear, we’ve been pretty happy with how Conquest points have worked in Season 15, but we are making one small change: Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will have the same base Conquest cap. That cap can then be increased by your rating in either Arenas or Rated Battlegrounds (whichever is higher). Instead of giving you extra Conquest points, winning a Rated Battleground will allow you to use a bonus roll token for a shot at a piece of Gladiator’s gear, similar to the Celestial world bosses on the Timeless Isle. This tweak makes the weekly Conquest cap easier to understand, while still providing an extra incentive for running Rated Battlegrounds and letting you use your bonus rolls on PvP gear through PvP.

The Island
While these changes will bring some pretty exciting changes to World of Warcraft PvP, there’s still another major piece to this puzzle: Ashran. We’ll be sharing more details on what you can earn from Ashran soon. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!

Creatures

• Elder Lin and Elder Liao now have significantly more health.
• [Requires a realm restart.] Elder Lin and Elder Liao will now respawn much more quickly.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

• Siege of Orgrimmar
  
  • The Fallen Protectors
    
    • Resolved an issue where movement-freeing abilities incorrectly forced Mark of Anguish to transfer to another player.
  • Garrosh Hellscream
    
    • During the Garrosh Hellscream encounter, Eternal Flame no longer generates threat during stages 2 and 3 to address an issue that was making the encounter more difficult than intended for raid groups with Protection Paladin tanks.

Battlegrounds and Arenas

• Matchmaking Ratings for Rated Battlegrounds has been increased by 100 for all players. Additional details for the change could be found in the forum thread titled: Rated Battleground MMR Hotfix.

UI

• Resolved an issue where players continue to be listed on the Raid Browser after accepting an invite from someone in a Flexible difficulty raid.

Warlords of Draenor Battlegrounds and Healers
Our matchmaking system does its best to even out healers between teams in Random Battlegrounds. So if one team has 3 healers, it will do its best to match up them up against a team with a similar number. Maybe it's 2 or 4 instead of 3, but it's still relatively even in the grand scope of things.

When we see cases like the OP describes where one team has a much higher number of healers than the other, that's almost always due to players misusing the queue system. See, when you queue for a BG, the system assumes you intend to play the role you've queued for (or if you've selected both, that you'll play whatever role it assigns you). As we've investigated these cases of heavy healer imbalance, we've discovered that's not always the case.

Sometimes, a player will queue as both roles, but not play the one they're assigned (either because they didn't notice it, or simply chose to ignore it). Some players queue as healer with the intention of playing as DPS, under the (incorrect) assumption that it will speed up their queue times. In some extreme cases, players will specifically queue as DPS with the intention of playing healer and causing an imbalance.

To alleviate this and help ensure that groups have equal numbers of healers, we plan to lock players into specs that align with the role they were assigned when the queue popped. So, for example, a Shaman who only selects the Damage Dealer option when queuing will be forced to play as either Enhancement or Elemental once they're in the battleground. A Priest who selects Healer can choose to play as either Holy or Discipline, but not Shadow. And a Monk who selects both Healer and Damage Dealer and is assigned to heal will be forced to play Mistweaver.

Keep in mind that the system doesn't look for a set number of healers when it's setting up games -- all it's doing is trying to match up teams with roughly the same number. The goal isn't necessarily to ensure that every single game has 3 healers, it's just to make sure that it doesn't match a team with 4 healers up against a team who only has 1. When everyone's playing the roles they're expected to, it can be much more successful.

Hopefully this doesn't mean having to be in spec while waiting for BGs.
It doesn't.

I seldom think to see what role I'm told I'm playing currently...I may be a bit cranky if I find my side has no heals while the other side has two, and I'm not allowed to switch spec to healing.
The first part is something a lot of people do, and it directly leads to the issue in the second part. Quite regularly, the reason your side has no heals and the other side has two is that someone on your team was assigned the Healer role and just didn't notice. It's probably not even malicious most of the time -- they just didn't notice the healer icon before they clicked the button. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlords of Draenor Healing and PvP
15 seconds to top someone off is a bit long of an estimate, unless you're purposefully choosing to use weaker heals in an effort to conserve mana. Our goal is that you can still top someone off in a hurry if you choose to do so, but it'll be expensive. Skilled healers will recognize when they need to spend that extra mana, or when it's okay to leave their teammate hovering around 50% or so and just sustain.

Burst windows will still be a thing. Creating opportunities via CC will still be a thing. Those are all important parts of Arena gameplay, we're just trying to get away from "if I don't keep the Shaman at 100% he might die." (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Interrupted Through Unending Resolve
To clarify, since it's kind of a confusing issue: when a Druid activates Unending Resolve gained through Symbiosis, they should be immune to all Interrupt effects, but not Silence effects. That's different from the Warlock version of the spell, which grants immunity to both.

The issue we're potentially seeing here is that the Interrupt portion of spells that also have Silence effects attached (such as Counterspell) is still going through, which is unintended. Silences will still interrupt casting, but the Druid should only have to wait for the Silence effect to wear off, and never be affected by the spell lockout from the Interrupt effect. That's the issue we're currently investigating. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Classes
What about Gorefiend's Grasp? Similar to gateway in situational strength.
Seems like a good example of utility to me. Not everything has to be a numerical % cooldown (WatcherDev)
If gateway is a problem then by extension seems like Gorefiend's is a problem as well.
And we're keeping Gateway in a form that's quite powerful. The goal isn't to water down all unique effects. (WatcherDev)

Will there be more of those class specific questline for a spell effect like for example Warlock in the future?
Ah, this was a question that we had hoped to get to, but didn't have time for in either interview... Class questlines are... (Celestalon)
...really cool. Hard to justify doing a lot of, because it's a lot of content to develop for a small audience, but... (Celestalon)
...some of the best content for that small audience. A lot of pros/cons. I don't have anything to announce quite yet, and there... (Celestalon)
...almost certainly will not be any in 6.0, but it's something we're strongly considering for patch content in the future. (Celestalon)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
dk horn runic power gain plugs a hole in dk rotation to stop being rune locked. worried about downtime
We do not see having a few empty GCDs per minute as a problem. (WatcherDev)

Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
new druid glyph,Glyph of Ursol’s Defense, looks mandatory for bear tanks. Will there be other choices like +HP or +dodge?
That glyph is only available to Feral, Balance, and Restoration. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
.Yup, these are the three new hunter families (with TONS of additions to older families) (Muffinus)
.Still no clefthoof/talbuk though, considering it for the future, we'll see how things shake out during beta. (Muffinus)

the new beast models look really, really cool, are the hippo's considered ''riverbeasts'' for taming? also those sporebats wow <3
Yep! That's a Riverbeast, the sporebats also have cool glowy bits/particles (it's hard to tell in screenies) (Muffinus)
and I assume some of those new boars will be tameable, correct?
Yep, lots of new and savage skins for the older families #teamsavage (Muffinus)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
will improved guard mean i can do it twice every min, or twice every 30 secs? Recharge time 15 or 30sec per charge?
Still 30sec recharge time, just let's you pool up to 2 charges. (Like how Roll works) (Celestalon)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Divine Purpose, while a fun, doesnt compete with the other talents in the tier. Any chance it'll be improved or made baseline?
Balancing/tuning talents like that will come much later in the process. (Celestalon)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
I'm checking WoWDB atm and I'm actually seeing alot of nerfs to Enhancement. Mana cost with Maelstrom and WF at 70%/swing?
We already have mana issues in PvP alot of times, and if our spells are going to cost mana w. Maelstrom, we're in real trouble.
Relax, you're not in real trouble. (Celestalon)
..when I say that we'd rather have it stay as-is. Rather have it be powerful on one hand than on 2, but weak on 1 so to speak.
The point is to remove haste breakpoints, not to nerf. Still not intended to be used on both hands. (Celestalon)
Yeah I read them, but take Stormstrike for example, WoWDB says that it's 180% in WoD, when its 380% on live, also bad datamine?
Those are ~equal, actually. 1% WD in WoD isn't the same as 1% WD in MoP. There were major changes to the way AP converts to WD. (Celestalon)

any plans to buff ele single target in wod since our cleave got nerfed also searing totem is boring when is that being removed
Yes. Not removing Searing Totem because it's iconic, useful, is movement DPS, and acts as a platform for totem gameplay. (Celestalon)

Character / Items
any chance for a fix to Druid tree minor glyph? You have it at the start but you revert back to human when in bear or cat.
Actually, yes, we're working on a system to let you retain cosmetic transforms after shifting in/out of form. (WatcherDev)
Will this mean i can retain Mr smite/skymirror/etc even after moonkin/bear/cat/travel shift in/out?
Yep! (WatcherDev)
Eeeee, does this include special-use items like potions, costumes, etc?
That's the plan. You'd turn into an Ascendant, than back into your transform when it ends. (WatcherDev)
Yes. Use Noggenfogger, turn into skeleton. Shift into cat. Now you're a cat. Shift out. Back to skeleton. (WatcherDev)
Why not skeleton all the time, like being a goblin (while in cat form) in that scenario?
Combat shapeshifts convey important information that matters for gameplay, which we don't want to conceal. (WatcherDev)

for WoD Challenge modes will Socket gear still give a little more than other gear? I know its not needed for gold but balance..
No, actually. The new design for sockets (bonus property on items) means that they can be disabled in WoD normalized content. (WatcherDev)
Will pre-WoD items retain their current sockets?
Yes. But you won't be able to put Draenor gems in those sockets (which is standard for a new expansion). (WatcherDev)

hello. Are we going to have tabards account wide in WoD expansion? please replay
It's on our list of things we want to add, but probably not for 6.0. Heirlooms and toys first. (WatcherDev)

Warlords of Draenor Stats
Will y'all be squishing the ilvl numbers as well? Or is WoD ilvl drops still say "606" for example?
ilvl stays the same. Timeless Isle gear is still 496/535, for example. But we flattened the power curve from ilvl 1-463. (WatcherDev)

Will all existing reforges revert to original stats at 6.0?
Yes. (Celestalon)

PvE
do you feel the SoO meta and drake mount reward worked well?
Yes. In the past the Glory of the Raider achievements often got completed during later tiers, even by Heroic-clearing guilds. (WatcherDev)
This way people who care about achievements can go do them, instead of having others potentially give up a shot at loot to do them. (WatcherDev)

Will some encounters be altered in 6.0 release patch that require interrupts?
Which are you most concerned about? We'll tweak Garrosh heart phases, certainly. We'll also have SoO open for testing in beta. (WatcherDev)

Can you make some fights in warlords like Fathom lord in SSC? it felt awesome (and now we are not limited cuz of 10man)
There's at least one fight in the Blackrock Foundry raid that I think will have a similar feel. (WatcherDev)

Really hope it's not true about Nerzhul being a friggin 5 man boss. You guys regretted doing that to an epic guy like Anubarak
Yes, Ner'zhul is the final boss of the Shadowmoon Burial Grounds. There is no lack of epic Warlords still left to fight in raids. (WatcherDev)

Can you describe to me with the number squash for WOD how we are still able to solo old content?
Those creatures are all getting scaled down as well, and you do more and take less damage from lower level creatures. (Celestalon)

What's the functional difference between Normal and Heroic next expansion? They're both flex, seems redundant
One is about 30% harder than the other and rewards better loot? Same as the difference between a 10-player Flex group and 10N today (WatcherDev)

Misc
A large part of your playerbase are casual players so don't have a high tech rig. How demanding will WoD be for family PCs?
Final specs not yet announced, but we're mindful of the importance of keeping our game playable on a wide range of hardware. (WatcherDev)