Blasted Lands Quests and Orgrimmar Changes, Blue Posts, Connected Realms, Dark Below

I was playing around with Devouring Plague and Multistrike tonight.
Changed Devouring Plague to just heal for 100% of its damage done, to solve this.

do you devs have additional factors in for things like incorrect items such as a warrior or paladin wearing cloth int gear so it doesn't count towards the item level
Not currently. Fighting low-level content in that manner is an inherently self-regulated form of gameplay. If you're willing to do silly stuff like that, you also would be willing to just buy high ilvl BoEs.

1. Thrash impact crits are proccing Primal Fury (i.e. generating 5 additional Rage) per target hit. Intended? Note that this does not affect ticks.
We're going to change that. We had erred in the player's favor on that, but it's looking simply too strong to balance.

2. Theck noted that Sacred Shield can Crit and MS. There was some question around whether or not T&C can do the same thing. I assume not.
Correct.

I've also noticed some oddity with Sacred Shield tick amounts. (Full Post)
These are actually the same issue. Partial ticks in general are broken currently, and are doing the wrong amount of damage (usually 99.7% of a full tick or so)

Has the DR formula for Dodge / Parry from Agility / Strength respectively been posted? I don't remember seeing it anywhere.
It hasn't changed. I'd have to dig it up; I believe it's been fairly well documented elsewhere, hasn't it? If you can't find it, I can dig it up.

The latest Beta build has a new Multistrike passive for Unholy. Necrosis: Your Scourge Strike, Festering Strike, Plague Strike, Soul Reaper, and Pestilence multistrikes deal an additional (3% of Attack power) Shadow damage.

• Multistrikes with the slated abilities (Soul Reaper, Scourge Strike, Plague Strike, Festering Strike and Pestilence) trigger the Necrosis event to occur.
• Although triggered by mulstrikes from certain abilities, Necrosisis itself SEPARATE from the multistrikes that cause it. Its damage is in no way tied to the damage caused by those Multistrikes.
• The shadow damage it deals can Multistrike on its own, can Critically hit and also benefits from the Dreadblade Mastery. The base damage dealt by the event is dependent on Attack Power.
• Attacks with multiple components (Pestilence, Scourge Strike and Soul Reaper) have a chance to multistrike independently with each portion. Any of these multistrikes can trigger Necrosis

100% accurate.

Hoping for some clarification on Shadow Reflection intended behavior. (Full Post)
All of those are intended, with one exception. SV should work for its own Rupture; that's a bug that it's not working.

The FW one is unfortunately intended due to a technical reason, so we're just tuning around it.

Just confirming some of the interactions for the new Elemental Discharge mastery

Only the listed spells can proc charges (Chain Lightning, Earth Shock, Lightning Bolt for nature, Lava Beam, Flame Shock, Lava Burst for fire).
Charges can proc on multistrikes of the listed spells
Discharges can crit and multistrike, but will never proc charges as they are distinct spells which are not listed for Elemental Discharge

[edit]Brightleaf just confirmed that Discharges can multistrike, but it doesn't appear that multistrikes can proc charges. Forgot about double dipping so now it all makes sense.
All correct, counting the edit in this post. (Lightning Bolt multistrikes do not proc Lightning Charge). However, we're still considering revision to the Elemental Shaman mastery, FYI.

How much versatility rating is 1% increased damage?
At level 100: 130 Versatility Rating = +1% Dmg/Healing/Absorbs, -0.5% DmgTaken.

As an aside, is there any particular reason why mastery doesn't buff 5 mastery (550 rating)?
We don't use the term "Rating" in-game anymore, only under the hood and in talking to theorycrafters and experienced players. So when we say "5 Mastery" in-game, that refers to 5 Mastery Rating. For all of the other buffs, we can give the %. "5 Crit" means 5 Crit Rating, but "5% Crit" means 5% crit chance. However, that doesn't work for Mastery. I can't say "5% Mastery", since every spec's Mastery has a different conversion rate.

The current mana costs of "efficiency spells" and base regen at level 100 do not appear to at all be lining up with the design goal Celestalon explained in the active mana regen removal post. If I understand correctly, efficient heals are supposed to be mana positive, and you are supposed to be gaining back mana while using them, and you can then dump off excess mana in exchange for burst and using "throughput" spells. Currently, almost all of the efficient spells are actually severely mana negative.

These mana costs are fairly comparable across all classes. The mana costs on all healing spells, or at least those intended to be efficient seem to be upwards of 40% higher than they would need to be to even be mana neutral let alone mana positive. Is this intended, or are the mana costs currently way off?
There's a difference between spamming your efficient direct heal, and doing an efficient rotation. There are things like Holy Shock and HoPo spenders for Paladins, etc. For Druids, there's just Lifebloom in that regard. It's possible that it's mistuned, but we're not seeing Druids having mana problems in internal testing. In particular, we're concerned that Wild Growth is too much throughput, since it can be made free with Omen of Clarity, making AoE healing feel too reliant on OoC.

Quick clarification about multistrike and absorb interactions. As I reported earlier, in my tests with Sacred Shield, I observed the following numeric results (expressed in normalized form).... (Full Post)

This raises a few questions
1) Is this intended, or is it a bug?
2) If it is not a bug, then are crit modifiers applied in the obvious way (i.e. crit_mod would become 1.02)?
3) If it is a bug, and for damage and healing spells in general, do crit modifier bonuses apply to the multistrikes (I assume the answer to this is yes, but may as well ask)?
4) Is this crit/ms behavior intended for all absorbs in the game now, or is it just Sacred Shield?
1) Intended due to technical necessity. Absorbs (or rather, aura applications in general) cannot actually multistrike; we just simulate multistrikes by varying the amount of the absorb, based on your multistrike chance. Same as how Crit has been for Discipline on PW:s for a while now.
2) Yes. Crit multipliers should apply identically to how they do for an actual crit heal.
3) n/a?
4) It's not a blanket thing, no. Just on a few that we want to not decrease in value as your crit/multistrike go up. The full list of affected spells right now is Sacred Shield, Power Word: Shield, and Clarity of Will. Spirit Shell also accounts for Multistrike and Crit but it averages them out, no random chance (not that that really matters right now, since we've removed Spirit Shell, but just FYI in case it were to return in the future or something).

gainst the clump of 3 target dummies in shattrath, I'm either seeing 3, 3+3, or 3+3+3 chain lightning events (counting multistrikes). Seems to imply that multistrike roll(s) are done on spell cast rather than
This is actually only the case for Chain Lightning; we custom did how Multistrike works for Chain Lightning, in order to make it feel the same as Elemental Overload did. Here's the logic, in case it's not obvious: On cast, roll multistrike chance once. Instead of multistriking, cast that many copies of a second Chain Lightning Multistrike spell (different spellID) at a random target that was hit by the initial Chain Lightning (random target selection per cast; could be different targets for each of the two multistrikes).

In regards to responsiveness change and hunter traps. Other than the change with removal of arming time is the removal of the batches every 400ms the only thing influencing the more responsive traps? I haven't had the chance to get into any pve or pvp with fast moving units on beta to check, but currently on live anything moving above a certain speed simply would not trigger a trap (even well after the arming time had come and gone). Guessing this has something to do with these batch processes and the location check attached to traps. Did traps get further changes to fix those issues or did the arming time in addition to the 400ms removal lead to the incredibly responsive traps we are seeing on beta?
More than that. Traps have used this extremely archaic system for hit detection which was literally 13 years old and only use for Hunter Traps.... until now. Now they use the same, responsive system for hit detection as most other responsive area effects (everything from Void Zones to Rings of Peace).

Quick clarification needed. For mastery, the tooltip always rounds down to the closest percent. Is this just a tooltip display rounding? I did some tests with BM and if I didn't round down I would get slightly off numbers, but it's possible I was doing something else wrong.
In *most* cases the rounding is just a tooltip display thing. However, there *are* a couple rare cases where it is actually rounded, one way or another. Master of Beasts was one of those cases, I believe. However, I don't believe it needed to be. Just fixed it to not be rounded. Give it a try in a few builds. In general, assume that Mastery effects are not rounded, and if you ever find that they are, report that as a bug. There may be one or two cases where we have to round it for some reason, but we can evaluate that then.

Protection warrior blood craze seems to be behaving strangely, here are some questions.
I think most of your questions can be summed up by saying: It's a rolling periodic effect, just like Ignite (for example). The total healing amount should match the total expected healing amount. It's still a periodic though, and so refreshing it results in an extra tick. See if that explains all of your questions, and lemme know if anything is still unclear.

However, one thing is a bug: Blood Craze itself multistriking. It should not be able to. Fixed for next next build. That actually may have been re-triggering itself, even, not sure.

6: In battle/gladiator stance you lose the unwavering sentinel +15% HP buff. Is that intended? On live the HP is retained in battle stance, but is it different now so that gladiator DPS warriors don't benefit from the HP?
Yes, Unwavering Sentinel is intentionally Defensive Stance only. I'll update its tooltip to reflect that.

7: Impending victory seems to be healing for something like 21-22% of max HP, either in defensive stance or gladiator (lower HP) stance. Why is this different than tooltip 25%?
Bug. It was doing 20%. (And you were seeing a bit more due to Resolve, I'm guessing. Resolve should affect it).

Any updates on doom snapshotting? Currently, it is not snapshotting anything, whether it be the damage bonus from meta, or the mastery increase from dark soul, as shown below:
Just haven't gotten to it yet.

1: Will multistrikes attempt to proc from attacks that miss/parry/dodge?

1) Looks like they currently do, but shouldn't. (Or, alternatively, the Multistrikes should be able to miss). Will solve that and report back with which way we decided to go.

Follow-up testing to my previous question:

It looks like missed attacks are currently not proccing any multistrike rolls, while multistrikes from landed attacks are able to miss. This one-sided roll is punishing on auto-attacks. Shouldn't multistrikes be 2 completely independent rolls of the ability used?

Also, when you prevented missed attacks from proccing multistrikes, it looks like you forgot to extend that to avoided attacks as well, but that should be fine if you revert the missed multistrike change.
Way we're going to go with Multistrikes (it'll be a few builds before it gets working this way, FYI):

Missed/Dodged/Parried/Immuned/Evaded attacks cannot Multistrike. Multistrikes always hit.

I'd say that right now our Normal dungeons are harder than intended, with the exception of Bloodmaul Slag Mines which is in a pretty good place. We'll be opening Heroic dungeons for testing shortly, and there's a bit more room for the challenge and coordination you desire in that context.

Remember, these are Normal dungeons, which will gear players up for Raid Finder. When thinking about or giving feedback on whether they're "overtuned" or "just right" or the like, approach it from the perspective of how comfortable you'd feel doing the dungeon as a solo queuer with four random players on live servers. That's why we ask for feedback to be prefaced with information about the group makeup and background, because it's hard to overstate the difference between a LFG pick-up group and a group of 14/14H guildmates who are on Mumble.

Classes
i cant seem to find icy talons (45% attack speed) anywhere but i can tell frost has it looking at attack speed. thoughts?
We're trying out hiding some passives that you don't need to know about for gameplay, to reduce spellbook clutter. (Celestalon)
i like seing everything cause i wanna know exactly how my spec is working. Just my grain of salt
We're planning to keep it documented somewhere out of game, at least. (Celestalon)
lol.. Passives u dont need to know about... If i dont need to know it, why dont you just remove it entirely?
What's the "worst idea yet" for you, may not be for many others. Something like increased attack speed doesn't... (Celestalon)
...matter to your ability to understand how to play, what buttons to use, etc. Just a feel/throughput difference. (Celestalon)
You're going to end up with new players not understanding why their other melee don't attack as fast.
That's indeed the risk. But, does that matter to the new player's ability to play/enjoy/group/etc? (Celestalon)
New players aren't failing to learn b/c too many tooltips, just not enough demonstration/application
You'd be surprised. Remember that not every player is your type of player. (Celestalon)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Why Flurry change? Enh wasn't spammy and I don't want to play a spammy class.
It provides the option for haste to have a non-passive impact on your rotation. You could still avoid haste if you choose. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Explain gladiator stance in the context of Feral spec being forcibly slip into a DPS and Tanking spec please.
Just as with Feral/Guardian, you can't do both Gladiator/Tanking in the same fight. Same thing. (Celestalon)
with respect it's not, you made them 2 specs and now I can't DPS as guardian unless I respec, and have lost most cat skills
Right, which is the same deal as Prot. Perhaps you're missing that you can't swap in/out of Gladiator Stance in combat? (Celestalon)
and by all accounts gladiator stance is instant cast, a lot easier to switch roles with that then changing your whole spec.
Sure, it's instant vs cast time to switch. It's also a lot less of a change, far fewer abilities, powers, etc. Much more signif. (Celestalon)

PvE
Mostly concerned for casual guilds that don't do the weekly raid thing. Not really any income for them!
We want to increase gold income, in relative terms, from a variety of group activities (dungeons, etc.). (WatcherDev)

Will the testing for Heroic (due to flexing) occur similar to how LFR/Flex did for 6.0 while Mythic retains the set dates/times?
Normal and LFR will be more open-ended. Heroic and Mythic will have set times. (WatcherDev)

PvP
Hey you may have been asked this, but will there be an option to cap CQ points through playing only arena?
yes arena and RBG caps are the same (holinka)

maybe was answered but, in a pve server if i leave a finished battleground still pvp flagged for 5 min in wod?
We're considering changing that. (holinka)

Can the vicious saddle mounts b made account bound once learnt plz. The items r but not the mounts.
It's intentional. We want them to be a new goal each season. (holinka)
Why not add new mounts each season instead?
that's our hope but sometimes we don't have the resources (holinka)

Will we ever see the day that rating requirement is needed on certain gear other then a simple cosmetic.
Probably not. We didn't like the chicken & egg scenario it created at certain rating milestones (especially with weapons). (holinka)

As previously announced, we’ve been working toward connecting realms to increase the number of players on low-population realms. Here's a continuously updated list that contains currently planned connections, future plans, and completed realm connections, all in one convenient location.

*Please note this list does not encompass all potential future connections. Please check back for further updates.

Next Connections
We will be connecting the realms listed below on Thursday, July 10 during a scheduled maintenance beginning at 5 a.m. PDT through approximately 1:00 p.m. PDT. Once maintenance is finished, these realm connections will be complete.

• Ysera and Durotan
• Zuluhed and Andorhal, Scilla, and Ursin

We will be connecting the realms listed below on Thursday, July 17 during a scheduled maintenance beginning at 5 a.m. PDT through approximately 1:00 p.m. PDT. Once maintenance is finished, these realm connections will be complete.

• Dawnbringer and Madoran
• Deathwing and Executus, Kalecgos, and Shattered Halls

Future Connections
We do not have a date for the following realm connections, but will update this post when we do.

• Gilneas and Elune
• The Venture Co and Maelstrom

*Plans for these connections may change at any time, but we’ll provide additional updates on specific dates for future connections here as we can. Please note that as a part of the connection process realm times may change to match each other.