The Grand Tournament Final Card Reveal, Card Clarifications, TGT Deckbuilder
Upcoming Shop Sales, Epic Plays of the Week #42
Dev Interviews - Legion PvP
Holinka talked about Legion and Warlords PvP on the arena steam this weekend. You can watch the interview here.
Legion PvP
- There won't be gear with Resilience, PvP Power, dual item levels, or gear specifically made for PvP.
- The team doesn't want people to feel that they must have PvP gear to participate in PvP.
- When you enter a battleground or arena, the game will set your stats from your spec, not your gear. This means all of your stats will come from a template specific to your spec. If one spec isn't doing well in PvP, their spec's template can be tuned individually.
- PvP talents plus the spec stat templates will allow the team to tune balance in arenas and battlegrounds much better than they ever have been able to do before.
- PvP right now uses gear as a progression system. Once players get their full set of gear, many of them are done.
- PvP Talents try to take the place of the progression that came from gear.
- Trinkets, set bonuses, and enchants will not be active in PvP.
- Right now players stack enchants, set bonuses, and trinkets, lining them all up at once to do a lot of damage. Outside of when all of those are up, players don't feel like they are doing much damage. This should help to make sustained damage a bigger part of PvP.
- Once players reach the max PvP level, they can reset it to gain a Prestige level. This gives access to different cosmetic rewards.
- When a player reaches PvP level 10 (roughly 20% of the way there), they will have unlocked an option in every row.
- The CC break trinket has become very important in PvP, so adding it as a PvP talent will offset the loss of active trinkets. There will be some other options in that row that might be useful, such as reducing CC times by 20%.
- The team hasn't decided exactly what they are going to do with the Human racial. They could leave it alone and offer a different talent in that row to Humans. The racial plus the new options could be too good.
- As you get better gear, your stats are increased a smaller amount. For example, every 5 item levels may give you a 1% stat increase. This way gear still will increase your power, but it won't give you a huge advantage.
- There are plans for players to be able to get great gear from PvP, but it may not be as easy as it is today. It may be easier for high rated players to get better gear than more casual players.
- You won't have to raid to get the best gear for PvP.
Warlords PvP
- Spectator mode and the new player run tournaments have been exciting.
- The team was happy with how skirmishes worked out. It gave players who didn't have their arena partners online the opportunity to play some arenas, as well as other players that wanted a break from leveling or gearing up.
- Battleground strongboxes worked out well. Players were able to get different gear in a more unpredictable way.
- The Group Finder was a great addition. It allowed people to find others to play with.
- Ashran fell short of where the team and players would have liked to see it go. During the ramp up to Warlords, there were a lot of people excited about a new world PvP zone that had a large area and epic battles.
- The team didn't execute on that idea. They have tried to make changes based on player behavior and feedback, making mistakes along the way. They have done things like putting exclusive rewards in Ashran to make them feel special, which resulted in lots of negative feedback.
- The current state of Ashran can be fun for people that are interested in that type of experience. The people who don't want to do Ashran don't have to.
- They have learned a lot from the experience about rewards and driving players to fight each other. Hopefully next time the team tries something like Ashran they can execute better.
- The dual item level system worked, but it was ugly. Players had two item levels on their gear, with their item level increasing suddenly in combat, which means they couldn't see their states. PvE gear also hit the invisible item level ceiling. Players who didn't PvP full time still felt compelled to go and get PvP gear so that they could do PvP. It was a cool system, but it fell short in a lot of ways.
- MLG and ESL have shown interest in WoW.
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Computers - Setup of the Month
Each month or so we will post a couple of hardware setups for those of you who are thinking of upgrading their computer!
This month
The current SSD prices are fairly flat right now, with most SSDs under $0.50 per gigabyte when on sale.
New CPUs from Intel and GPUs from AMD are here, but they aren't huge improvements over the previous generation.
Depending on how much you want to overclock, you may need to spend a bit more for a better CPU cooler like the NH-D14.
Unless you are doing a lot of video rendering or streaming, you do not need the 6700K and should spend that money elsewhere.
Make sure to keep your AMD and Nvidia drivers up to date.
Don't forget to visit the Computer Forum for any extra questions!
Peripherals/Monitors
Component | Puppy | Dolphin |
---|---|---|
Monitor | ASUS VS228H-P 22-Inch Monitor - $115 | ASUS VS248H-P 24-Inch Monitor - $152 |
Keyboard | Kensington Pro Fit Media Keyboard - $22 | Cyborg V.5 - $53 |
Mouse | Logitech G402 - $47 | Razer DeathAdder - $58 |
Speakers | Creative A250 2.1 Speaker System - $31 | Logitech Z313 Speaker System - $35 |
Component | Narwhal | Unicorn |
Monitor | Dell P2414H Monitor - $225 | Dell U2412M - $268 |
Keyboard | Logitech G510s - $77 | Corsair Vengeance K70 - $120 |
Mouse | Logitech G502 - $54 | Razer Naga 2014 - $62 |
Speakers | Logitech Z323 2.1 Speaker System - $48 | Logitech Speaker System Z523 - $79 |
Puppy and Dolphin
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Puppy and Dolphin.
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Puppy and Dolphin.
Component | Puppy | Dolphin |
---|---|---|
Case | NZXT Source 210 - $43 | NZXT Source 210 - $43 |
Power Supply | EVGA 600B - $63 | EVGA 600B - $63 |
CPU | AMD FX-6300 - $100 | AMD FX-8320 - $142 |
Heatsink | Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - $27 | Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - $27 |
Motherboard | ASUS M5A97 R2.0 - $80 | ASUS M5A99FX PRO - $108 |
Memory | Kingston HyperX FURY 8GB 1866 - $45 | 8GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $57 |
Graphics Card | MSI R7 260X - $100 | R9 270X / GTX 960 - $160 / $181 |
Hard Drive | Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB - $52 | Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - $71 |
DVD | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $21 | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $21 |
Total | $531 | $692 - 713 |
Narwhal and Unicorn
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn.
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn.
Component | Narwhal | Unicorn |
---|---|---|
Case | Cooler Master HAF 912 - $50 | Corsair Air 540 - $130 |
Power Supply | XFX PRO 750W - $129 | XFX PRO 750W - $129 |
CPU | Intel 6600K - $250 | Intel 6600K - $250 |
Heatsink | Scythe Mugen 4 - $52 | Noctua 6 NH-D14 - $76 |
Motherboard | ASUS Z170-A - $165 | ASUS Z170-A - $165 |
Memory | 8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400 - $58 | 16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400 - $116 |
Graphics Card | Gigabyte R9 380 - $230 | Gigabyte R9 390 OR MSI GTX 970 - $330 |
Hard Drive | Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $71 | Western Digital 2TB Caviar Black - $121 |
SSD | Crucial BX100 250GB (Review) - $85 OR SAMSUNG 850 EVO 250GB (Review) - $90 | SanDisk Extreme PRO 240GB (Review) - $130 OR SAMSUNG 850 Pro 256GB (Review) - $133 |
DVD | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $21 | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $21 |
Total | $1111 - 1159 | $1423 - 1471 |
Wildstar - Free to Play Teaser
Carbine posted a short teaser for Wildstar's Free to Play update.
Dark Legacy Comics #501 - Making a Strink
DLC #501 takes a look at the Rogue class hall.
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