Patch 6.1 PTR - Build 19597, Heirloom UI, BRF Tuning, Blue Tweets, AMR BRF Wipe Rates

Dardor's "Crafty Spirits" WD, Underused Skills and Sets, Blizzcon Sets, Wudijo Rank #1 Hardcore Run

Hearthstone Patch 7785, Hearthstone at 25 Million Registered Players

Upcoming Lost Vikings, Nazeebo, Jaina, Anub'arak, and Zeratul Skins

Patch 6.1 PTR - Build 19597
Build 19597 will be deployed to the PTR realms soon. The Mystic Runesaber model is finally in and it has wings. The tooltip only lists ground speed increases though, so we will have to see if Blizzard changes it to a flying mount in a future build.

New Models




New Icons



Achievement Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Feats of Strength
  • Hero of the Storm Owner of the Grave Golem Graves pet from the Heroes of the Storm promotion. Account Wide.

Garrisons

Pet Battles
  • The Longest Day Complete all of the pet battle daily quests listed below in a single day. Reward: Marked Flawless Battle Stone. 10 points. Account Wide.



Spell Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Mounts
  • Mystic Runesaber Summons and dismisses your Trained Snarler. 1.5 sec cast. Mystic Runesaber. Account wide. 1.5 sec cast.

Death Knight (Forums, Talent Calculator)
Talents
  • Breath of Sindragosa: The effect "Mark of Sindragosa causes you to be healed for 10% of spell damage dealt by afflicted enemies" now only works for Blood Death Knights.
  • Defile: The effect "Enemies standing in your Defile deal 10% less damage to you" now only works for Blood Death Knights.
  • Necrotic Plague: The effect "You gain 2 Runic Power whenever a target infected with Necrotic Plague attempts to attack you" now only works for Blood Death Knights.

Priest (Forums, Talent Calculator)

Rogue (Forums, Talent Calculator)
Assassination
  • Assassin's Resolve: Damage dealt while wielding daggers is now increased by 17%, up from 10%. (Tooltip fix.)

Professions
Alchemy
  • Primal Alchemy Alchemy. Instant 1.5 sec cast. Reagents: Primal Spirit, Fireweed x 2, Gorgrond Flytrap x 2, Nagrand Arrowbloom x 2, Starflower x 2, Talador Orchid x 2.

Raid & Dungeon Abilities
  • Crippling Suplex Picks up an enemy and smashes them against his highest threat target, dealing 100 Physical damage Physical damage equal to the maximum health of the picked up enemy. 100 yd range. 3 sec cast.
  • Incendiary Shot Inflicts 5,000 Fire damage, increasing damage taken from the Incendiary Shot by 20%. Stacks. Unlimited range. Instant. 10%. Stacks. Unlimited range. Instant.
  • Massive Shattering Smash The Massive Shattering Smash inflicts 562,500 Fire damage instantly and an additional 90,000 Fire damage every 1 split evenly among all targets within 6 yards, knocking the targets back and creating a Slag Crater. Blackhand will gain Energy if fewer than 4 enemies are hit. Unlimited range. 2 sec cast.
  • Volatile Fire Afflicts random enemies with a seed of Volatile Fire that will explode after 8 sec. When the seed explodes, it inflicts 100,000 Fire damage to all enemies within 8 yards of the explosion. Limited to 2 targets. 100 yd range. Instant. 100 yd range. Instant.



Strings Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
  • VIDEO_OPTIONS_DEPTH_EFFECTS_MEDIUM - Particle depth fading and low-resolution refraction.



Patch 6.0.3 Hotfixes - February 6
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
  • Blackrock Foundry
    • Blackhand
      • [Requires a realm restart.] Siegemaker's Black Iron Plating is now removed by Slag Bomb. Slag Bomb's damage dealt to Siegemakers now scales up based on the number of players in the Raid. To adjust for this change, damage dealt to Siegemakers has been reduced for Impaling Throw by 20% and Slag Bomb by 30% (but damage still scales up based on Raid size).
      • Blackhand's Impaled effect should no longer be incorrectly removed by abilities that remove damage-over-time effects.
      • Shaman's Searing Totem and Liquid Magma should now correctly target Iron Soldiers while on the balcony.
      • Fixed an issue where Exploding Iron Star may sometimes not trigger or deal damage during the transition to Stage Two.
  • Upper Blackrock Spire
    • Sentry Cannons now self-destruct on Heroic difficulty when a player with Engineering uses Safety Protocols.

Battlegrounds and Arenas
  • Eye of the Storm: Fixed an issue where Horde players were unable to capture the flag at Mage Tower.

User Interface 6.1 – New Heirloom System
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
With World of Warcraft patch 6.1, we’re implementing a new system for managing and using your heirloom items.

When we implement patch 6.1, all heirloom items will be automatically added into the new system and you’ll be credited for them across your account. At the time, heirlooms will be modified to obtain maximum levels that fall into one of three groups: 1-60, 61-90, and 91-100. Your heirloom items will all be grandfathered into whichever group is appropriate, with previous maximum levels being upgraded. This means that if you have an heirloom item that previously maxed out at level 85, it will now max out at 90.

Heirlooms with a View
You’ll use this new system much as you use other collections in WoW. After patch 6.1, you’ll log into a character, open your collections screen (default hotkey shift-P) and all of the heirloom items that you’ve previously obtained on any character in your account will appear there. (Please note that you’ll need to log in to every character that currently has heirloom items in their bags or bank or void storage in order to add their heirlooms to the collection. Heirloom items that are currently in the mail will need to be retrieved before they get credited to your master list.)


You can generate a new copy of any of your heirloom items for any of your characters by right-clicking on it, and the newly-generated item will appear in your bags.

A common question we’ve received about this new heirloom system is, “What’s going to happen with heirloom items that I’ve previously enchanted?” Nothing will change with those items. If you have a piece of enchanted heirloom gear on a character today, it will still be there exactly as before. You can still use it and send it to other characters on your account as always. With this new system, you’ll be able to generate additional, unenchanted copies of that item for your characters.

Mounting up at Level 1
We’re also introducing a new achievement and mount reward with Patch 6.1. The Heirloom Hoarder achievement requires 35 different heirloom items obtained on your account, and rewards the new Chauffeured Chopper mount. It’s a mount that can be used by all characters, even brand new level 1 characters. Of course, your new level 1 mage doesn’t know how to operate a mount yet, so he’ll ride passenger while driver Koak Hoburn mans the chopper.
Why drive yourself around when you can hire someone to do it for you?

Blackrock Foundry Boss Tuning
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
At this point, the terms "overtuned" and "undertuned" are mainstays on the forums in the days and weeks following the release of each new raid zone. My best definition for "overtuned" is "harder than it should be"; inversely, "undertuned" means "easier than it should be." But of course everyone has a different idea of should -- of what the tuning target is for a given boss. Some are voicing their own opinion as players, while others are guessing at the developers' intent based on our past history and comments. Unsurprisingly, this lack of context and common ground all too often leads to people talking past each other, accusations of trolling, and other fun forum interactions. To help ground the conversation, I'd like to share a few thoughts and goals about how we approach the difficulty and complexity of our raid bosses.

Tuning in general is a very interesting topic, and one that sees a huge amount of discussion around the office, whether in formal planning meetings early in the design process, or yesterday morning when a coworker stopped by our office to offer a stern glare and some choice words about Oregorger.

As background, Blackrock Foundry itself is a bit of an experiment with a significant split-release initial raid tier. In Cataclysm, the initial 4.0 patch had three raid zones that opened immediately, with a total of 13 bosses (14 on Heroic), and the amount of content felt overwhelming to many. In response, in Mists we partitioned 16 bosses into two separate releases, with Mogu'shan Vaults opening the second week of the expansion, and Heart of Fear and Terrace following a month later. While this helped somewhat, many players still felt rushed, with new bosses unlocking far faster than they could keep up.

And so for Warlords, we added a more significant two-month gap between Highmaul and Foundry, allowing a significant portion of the playerbase to make real headway in Highmaul before we unveiled the remainder of the initial raid content. But that larger gap, while offering what we consider improved pacing, also made Foundry feel like a whole separate tier, which changed expectations slightly. If you quickly cleared half of Normal Highmaul the week of release, would you be able to clear half of Foundry just as quickly? If you had finished working your way through Normal Highmaul and had moved on to Heroic Highmaul when Foundry opened, would Normal Foundry be comparatively easy since you've now been raiding Heroic content?

In several ways, we intended Foundry to complement, rather than supplant, Highmaul. If we had wanted Foundry to be a fresh start and a clean slate, we would have had it completely obsolete all Highmaul gear, the way Normal Jin'rokh dropped items that were 13 item levels better than loot from Heroic Sha of Fear. But Highmaul remains relevant, and Foundry exists as a direct continuation of that progression. While Normal Highmaul was designed with the expectation that players would arrive with dungeon items, Normal Foundry expects players who are mostly Highmaul geared. Thus the numerical targets, in terms of healing and damage throughput, for even an early boss like Gruul or Beastlord Darmac, are comparable to what Ko'ragh demands in Highmaul. So just because you now find Kargath to be simple, does not mean that Oregorger will be equally easy prey. But players who had success in Highmaul should all be able to continue into Foundry, stake a foothold there, and continue to progress in their difficulty of choice. And those who are still working their way through Highmaul will continue to find invaluable items there, which will help them eventually delve deeper into the Foundry.

As for the structure of the zone, Foundry is a winged instance, in the style of Naxxramas or Icecrown Citadel in the past, and we intend for bosses to become more challenging the deeper into a given wing you go, but for the different wings to be largely equal in overall difficulty. Groups who jumped right into the Blast Furnace encounter after downing Gruul and Oregorger likely found themselves in over their heads, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Furnace encounter is "overtuned" -- rather, in essence, you were skipping from bosses 1-3 all the way to bosses 7-9. The early bosses of other wings will offer a more suitable challenge, and will offer valuable item upgrades to help prepare you for the end bosses of each wing, and of course for Blackhand himself.

Our expectations regarding item progression through a zone also may not be obvious, and may contribute to perceptions of "overtuned" encounters. We generally assume that our target audience for a given piece of content is starting out largely (but not entirely) geared with items from the prior difficulty and/or zone. So Normal Foundry was designed to feel appropriately challenging for a group that enters the zone with a fair amount of Normal Highmaul gear. Heroic Foundry expects some amount of either or both Heroic Highmaul or Normal Foundry items. But that's just for the start of the zone. Guilds that are squarely in the target audience for a given difficulty aren't the ones who blaze a trail to the end of a zone: they progress steadily and surely through it, downing a boss or two each week and accumulating a significant amount of loot along the way. Thus, the deeper into the zone you get, the higher the item level we imagine you are likely to have. This, too, often causes guilds to feel that some bosses are "overtuned."

For example, imagine a guild that had fully cleared Heroic Highmaul and had 2 Mythic bosses down, coming straight into Heroic Foundry with an average item level of 672. This guild, being both skilled and somewhat overgeared (compared to the 665ish item level we might imagine for a typical guild entering Heroic Foundry), might steamroll through the first portions of Foundry. They're getting some item level 680 upgrades along the way, but one partial clear's worth of loot isn't enough to drastically change their overall power. But then, before they know it, they're face to face with wing bosses or even Blackhand, which were designed with the expectation that raids would have acquired a significant amount of ilvl 680 Foundry loot, perhaps with some tier set bonuses in play. And so those encounters might be unexpectedly challenging. But the seemingly sudden jump in difficulty isn't due to a tuning error, but rather because this group of trailblazers cleared so quickly that they went from being overgeared for early bosses to actually undergeared for the later ones!

All of the above said, that doesn't mean that we feel every boss in Foundry is perfectly tuned according to our goals. Blackhand is almost certainly a bit too demanding (though not drastically so - he's supposed to be hard!) and will likely see some adjustments going into the new raid lockout next week. And we're keeping a very close eye on raid-size scaling issues that may make certain fights excessively difficult with too few or too many players, and have adjusted a few such mechanics already. But in general, we're satisfied with how things are shaping up so far.

Thanks for reading through all this, and feel free to return to the tuning debates. It wouldn't be the Raids & Dungeons forum without them. But hopefully this shed some light on how we approach the topic on our end.

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
Does multistrike and crit share the same roll for special attacks?This page makes it seem that way: http://t.co/TC7mqD8ypW
No. (Celestalon)
When Nectrotic Plague is up, Blood Boil delays ticks. Is this intended for DKs?
Nope, bug. (Celestalon)

I'm seeing that cascade can hit the same target multiple times for healing... same for damage?
Yep. That's mentioned in our patch notes, though the wording is a little unclear. (Celestalon)

AskMrRobot - Blackrock Foundry Wipe Rate Stats
Our friends at AskMrRobot are using the data collected for their Blackrock Foundry Infographics feature to provide some stats on wipe rate by group item level. You can see more detailed stats about each boss mechanic and such if you upload your guild's logs.



This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 6.1 PTR - Build 19597, Heirloom UI, BRF Tuning, Blue Tweets, AMR BRF Wipe Rates started by chaud View original post
Published on 2015-02-07 12:14 AM
55 Comments
Comments 55 Comments
  1. Chickat's Avatar
    Bit disappointed in patch 6.1. Sure theres lots of quality of life changes, and stuff added that isnt content, but no new daily hub makes this patch a shell of what it should have been. If 6.2 doesn't amaze, WoD will go down as worse than MoP.
  1. Traveler Voltin's Avatar
    So 1-80 heirlooms get nerfed to 1-60 in a sense. Well thats bullcrap
  1. cuppycake's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkvoltinx View Post
    So 1-80 heirlooms get nerfed to 1-60 in a sense. Well thats bullcrap
    "Your heirloom items will all be grandfathered into whichever group is appropriate, with previous maximum levels being upgraded. This means that if you have an heirloom item that previously maxed out at level 85, it will now max out at 90."

    Items grandfathered in will get a boost not a nerf.
  1. Eliazer681's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkvoltinx View Post
    So 1-80 heirlooms get nerfed to 1-60 in a sense. Well thats bullcrap
    Reading sure is hard
  1. irda's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chaud View Post
    Gold replaces JP.
    Ah, nice. Thanks!
  1. Tenjen's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Chickat View Post
    Bit disappointed in patch 6.1. Sure theres lots of quality of life changes, and stuff added that isnt content, but no new daily hub makes this patch a shell of what it should have been. If 6.2 doesn't amaze, WoD will go down as worse than MoP.
    its not meant to be. it was never meant to be. And how it is, is how its always been in expansions.
  1. mmoc59b5827c7e's Avatar
    Iron Docks are scrapped.
  1. Duster505's Avatar
    It sounds to me that the BRF is very much overtuned and the result could be catastrophic for Blizzard. New players coming in will suffer most. And thats why we see these expansions loose subs after launch. Blizzard forgets that those players that couldn't play from start and those players will always have to suffer it the entire expansion. So ofc they don't show up... and if they do... they quit right away.
  1. Nerraw's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Duster505 View Post
    It sounds to me that the BRF is very much overtuned and the result could be catastrophic for Blizzard. New players coming in will suffer most. And thats why we see these expansions loose subs after launch. Blizzard forgets that those players that couldn't play from start and those players will always have to suffer it the entire expansion. So ofc they don't show up... and if they do... they quit right away.
    And that is why you do Highmaul. It's the earlier raid in the same tier. If people expect to be able to ding 100 and go into BRF, they deserve whatever they get.
  1. Arvandor's Avatar
    pseudo content (garrison)..

    no-functional pvp (ashran)..

    overtuned pve (brf)..

    WELCOME TO CATA!
  1. kamuimac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nerraw View Post
    And that is why you do Highmaul. It's the earlier raid in the same tier. If people expect to be able to ding 100 and go into BRF, they deserve whatever they get.
    they shouldnt - but at the same time normal brf shouldnt be tuned to 660-665 itlv min for intended audience. hell i doubt that those people will kill more then 3 bosses untill they hit 670+ or will have enough mythic friends to carry them.



    sorry to say but MoP at this stage feel much more fun and much more accesible - even without flex difficulty - hell we dont have it anymore - normal is back to old normal difficulty pre soo flex diffculty - why the fuck blizzdecided its good idea is compeltly beyond me with how much they admited in mop that constant rise of diffculty lv was a mistake.
  1. mmoc09234ff08e's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kamuimac View Post
    blizzard expalanation of "tuning" of BrF is completly idiotic - they tuned normal brf higher then hc hm and say that they are "complementary" - in what universe ? causecertainly not in ours - normal grull is harder then 6/7 hc hm - where the f is immersion ? progress should be normal hm -> normal brf not hc hm -> n brf :/ and if they deliberatly did it this way then wtf is brf droping 665 not 675 on normal to be in line with tuning :/ who the hell told them this will be a good idea - its recipe for disaster :/
    You're mistaking *progress* for *faceroll*. If you have 7/7 Normal with mostly Normal gear, you should also have a HC piece or two from garrison, then you can go into BRF Normal without any major problems, but you'll PROGRESS on those fights. Expect 10-20-30 pulls to get the mechanics down and maybe a lucky break.
    My guild has ~660 average ilvl and we killed most of bosses in 1-3 tries, except Thogar and Furnace which were 9 and 12. That's NOT progress. That's faceroll.

    So blue explanation is nowhere near idiotic. If you're HM normal geared you'll be killing wing starter bosses for a week or two to get some gear, including maybe HC HM if that's your thing, and then after few weeks you'll be able to snatch a few wing end bosses. That's what it means to progress.

    Buy you want to walk in there with ilvl655 and just stroll through wings? Nope. And that's how it should be. Because again, progress. If you want to walk through wings, there's LFR.
  1. elvor0's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kamuimac View Post
    blizzard expalanation of "tuning" of BrF is completly idiotic - they tuned normal brf higher then hc hm and say that they are "complementary" - in what universe ? causecertainly not in ours - normal grull is harder then 6/7 hc hm - where the f is immersion ? progress should be normal hm -> normal brf not hc hm -> n brf :/ and if they deliberatly did it this way then wtf is brf droping 665 not 675 on normal to be in line with tuning :/ who the hell told them this will be a good idea - its recipe for disaster :/
    What? Gruul was a loot pinyata. Also, you could do Normal HM > Normal Brf > Heroic HM. Like you said, normal BRF drops 665, while heroic HM drops 670. The only reason you're finding it harder than HM now is because we've been doing HM non stop for two months.

    Lastly immersion? Imperetor Mar'gok and Cho'gall most certainly more powerful lore wise than Gruul, regardless of mechanical difficulty. Heck, they're more powerful than Blackhand, who is just a dude. You want immersion it should be BRF then HM.

    Quote Originally Posted by Moogled View Post
    You're mistaking *progress* for *faceroll*. If you have 7/7 Normal with mostly Normal gear, you should also have a HC piece or two from garrison, then you can go into BRF Normal without any major problems, but you'll PROGRESS on those fights. Expect 10-20-30 pulls to get the mechanics down and maybe a lucky break.
    My guild has ~660 average ilvl and we killed most of bosses in 1-3 tries, except Thogar and Furnace which were 9 and 12. Maidens and Blackhand left for Sunday.

    Buy you want to walk in there with ilvl655 and just stroll through wings? Nope. And that's how it should be.

    mm, what this guy said.
  1. Shiroh's Avatar
    I like what blue is saying. It's exactly how I imagine it should be.
    Too many people are used to facerolling. They should just go play LFR if they cba to actually learn the fight.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chickat View Post
    WoD will go down as worse than MoP.
    So it will be 2nd best expansion ever? I'm fine with that.
  1. Nerraw's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kamuimac View Post
    sorry to say but MoP at this stage feel much more fun and much more accesible - even without flex difficulty - hell we dont have it anymore - normal is back to old normal difficulty pre soo flex diffculty - why the fuck blizzdecided its good idea is compeltly beyond me with how much they admited in mop that constant rise of diffculty lv was a mistake.
    No. No it was not.
  1. pankind's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kamuimac View Post
    blizzard expalanation of "tuning" of BrF is completly idiotic - they tuned normal brf higher then hc hm and say that they are "complementary" - in what universe ? causecertainly not in ours - normal grull is harder then 6/7 hc hm - where the f is immersion ? progress should be normal hm -> normal brf not hc hm -> n brf :/ and if they deliberatly did it this way then wtf is brf droping 665 not 675 on normal to be in line with tuning :/ who the hell told them this will be a good idea - its recipe for disaster :/
    Dude, Gruul is not even close to as hard as heroic ko'ragh.
  1. PhatSOB's Avatar
    The problem with BRF is that if a pug doesn't one shot the boss the group falls apart and doesn't keep trying. If you are not willing to wipe for an hour and learn the mechanics of a fight, wait another 2 weeks and do LFR BRF.
  1. mmoc59b5827c7e's Avatar
    I'm preparing for the shitstorm when people actually find out that Iron Docks daily quest hub wont be in 6.1 - this is going to be funny. Especially after announcing "there are many other types of outdoor content coming in 6.1"...
  1. kamuimac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by pankind View Post
    Dude, Gruul is not even close to as hard as heroic ko'ragh.
    numberwise those fights are very similiar - at least for healers - dmg incoming is very similiar on both - i facerolled it too on 675+ toons in main raid but thats not the gear u should be doin normal in - it should be tuned for 650 max - but blizzard went away from it for whatever reason.

    maybe because they know that there is nothing else in game to do expet for raiding and thats why they are forcing players to "progress" who were never interested in progression - those players for whom flex was designed for and so prudly bragged how much succes it was - how come that it could work perfeckly in SoO and cant work at all in WoD - what caused devs to change their mind - what was the cause of 180 degree turn toward what was pre SoO. that is what interest me most.
  1. mmoc09234ff08e's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Duster505 View Post
    It sounds to me that the BRF is very much overtuned and the result could be catastrophic for Blizzard. New players coming in will suffer most. And thats why we see these expansions loose subs after launch. Blizzard forgets that those players that couldn't play from start and those players will always have to suffer it the entire expansion. So ofc they don't show up... and if they do... they quit right away.
    You're saying "players that can't play" will leave. So from the tone of your comment it seems Blizzard should be the one fixing the situation by making content too easy, and chasing away the other part of the population who seek challenging content, instead of "players who can't play" putting some effort in the game they play.

    Something that I've wanted to say for a long time, there are guilds with disabled people in them.
    Last one I've found was 100% deaf guild with 3/7 Mythic progress in Highmaul. There's a reason voice comm programs are important part of raiding.
    There's a guild with 1/7 Mythic progress that has one 100% blind player that's being helped by audio cues and some target-of-target macros etc.
    These are guilds with MYTHIC progress!
    And then there's people who are whining they can't do Normal, or that LFR is their "end game progress". How someone isn't deeply ashamed to say he, as a fully functioning person, can't do what someone who is more or less heavily impaired, is beyond me.
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