Top 5 Barbarian Builds for Season 9

Whenever vs After - Design Philosophy Behind Triggered Abilities in Hearthstone

Mythic Nighthold Progression
Several guilds are now at 7/10!



Patch 7.2 - Druid Animations
Druids are getting some new spell animations in Patch 7.2!





Patch 7.1.5 Hotfixes - January 26
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes

Dungeons and Raids
  • The Nighthold
    • High Botanist Tel’arn
      • High Botanist Tel'arn should now correctly obey loot settings on Mythic difficulty.

Items
  • Artifact Power items now have a sell price.
  • Might of Krosus: Fixed a bug that caused Might of Krosus to deal less damage to its targets than intended

Patch 7.2 - Artifact Power
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As many of you have noted, Patch 7.2 will be introducing several new traits to Artifact Weapons. We'd like to clarify how these traits will unlock so that you can best prepare for them.

After Patch 7.2 is available, players who have an Artifact Weapon of at least rank 35 will be able to further empower that Artifact through a short quest chain. Completing this quest chain will consume any ranks beyond 35, increase the overall power of your Artifact Weapon (to ensure that losing ranks 35+ isn’t a downgrade), and unlock access to the new 7.2 traits. Any Artifact Power spent on traits beyond 35 will be refunded and you’ll immediately be able to spend that refunded Artifact Power on the new traits.

Note that any Artifact Power tokens acquired before Patch 7.2 will not be usable on an Artifact Weapon that has had its new traits unlocked. If you’ve already reached Rank 54, feel free to use any tokens you earn between now and then on alternate specs; there is no need to stockpile those tokens for Patch 7.2. We’re also planning to apply a hotfix in the near future that will allow the current Artifact Power tokens to be sold to vendors.

Please feel free to add any feedback, questions or thoughts to this thread.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Patch 7.2 - New Artifact Traits
Yeah, the new traits aren't accessible yet. Hope is to have them available next week. There's a short quest chain involved to unlock them, which is currently disabled. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 7.2 - Honor Requirement for Prestige 1
Thanks for the post. To address one issue you mentioned, in 7.2, we're reducing the amount of honor it requires to go from Honor Level 1 to 50 before prestiging the first time (aka Prestige 0). It will take roughly half the amount of honor as it does now. Prestige ranks 1 and higher will remain the same.

Hopefully, this helps everyone gain access to their honor talents faster. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PSA: Be Careful with your Essences
Quick update here from the development team. The quest is currently working as intended, and any essences over the limit will continue to be reset, as is normal quest function.

It's worth noting that this quest was designed to be able to be completed without too much time spent on it, so we don't see it necessary to adjust the quest to account for min-maxing.

TL;DR: If you're worried about going over your 50/50 limit, keep an eye on your Essences going forward! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 7.2 - Invasion Quests
All good feedback and thank you for it!

Current thinking on iteration is to modify the requirements of the cover quest. I.E. "Do X of Y" and some of the objectives within the WQ's themselves.

Going to be modifying the uptime of these. They will be more rare and short duration so that they feel more special when they are up and itemization should make them lucrative and appealing.

Exploring the option of having these available to do on alts who are still leveling up in the Broken Isles. Would be a way to breakup the level up experience and hearken back to that aspect of the pre-launch events that folks enjoyed.

Misc. behind the scenes tweaks and tuning happening as well.

The real itemization/reward pass hasn't occurred yet (waiting for this feedback round to settle out) so that will help once it is done.

Thanks again for the feedback and look forward to more after some of the updates above make it out to PTR in the coming weeks. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 7.2 Artifact Trait Unlock Quest
There is no way currently as we have it deactivated at the moment. The goal is to have this out next week.

Just focusing on client/server stability and some backend services migration in these early weeks, alongside Demon Assaults. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Female Blood Elf Face Bug
This honestly just looks like case of no rigging in the faces themselves, you know, the same way a model could be in it's t-pose.
This is pretty close, actually. There was a bug in this build that prevented the Female Blood Elf's face from articulating properly. We'll be fixing it in a future build. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Beast Mastery Hunter 2 Piece Bonus
One item we need Blizz to change is to change the 2pc Set piece bonus of EagleTalon Battlegear to include a buff for BM Hunters who uses Dire Frenzy talent instead of Stomp talent.
Agreed. We'll be doing this. I don't have specifics yet, but we'll be adding some sort of effect to the Tier 19 2-piece bonus that benefits Dire Frenzy. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Frost Mage and Brain Freeze
This is an issue currently, which is made more prominent this patch because the proc rate of Brain Freeze has gotten rather high (probably higher than is ideal). We're hesitant to go straight to "Brain Freeze stacks 2 times." For one, we're just repeating Fingers of Frost at that point (which has gone from a proc to a sort of a pooled psuedo-resource). But also, this is how rampant power/complexity/pacing creep happens--always fixing a problem by adding a new mechanic that makes something a lot more powerful.

Worth pointing out that "losing DPS" is a bit of a misnomer. Wasting a certain percentage of Brain Freeze procs (especially a very predictable percentage, as was pointed out) doesn't prohibit tuning the spec around that. That said, we get that it's a bad feeling to feel like you wasted one.

I can see exploring a solution like imperceptibly delaying the Brain Freeze proc. So that if you cast two Frostbolts and then an instant Flurry, the second Frostbolt's Brain Freeze proc will apply just after the Flurry. This is similar to the sort of invisible timing adjustment that happens around Hot Streak to make sure it works intuitively, which generally works well. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Upcoming Change to Group Finder Queues
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Since the launch of Legion, we've been keeping an eye on the challenges facing characters on Spanish realms when trying to enter Ashran. Some players have had trouble accessing the zone—due in most part to long queue times—and we've been monitoring the situation to find the best solution.

After considering our options, we feel that adding Spanish realms to the English queues for group content is the most appropriate fix. Not only should this get players into Ashran faster, it’ll also help with another minor but unpleasant problem—long queue times when using the Dungeon or Raid Finder tools.

So what does this mean for you? After maintenance on February 1, when a character from a Spanish realm queues for PVE (dungeons and raids) or PVP (battlegrounds, including Ashran) content using the Group Finder tool, they might be teamed up with players from both Spanish and English realms.

We understand that this solution may not appeal to everyone, but after strong consideration, we’re confident it’ll provide the most positive results.

We’d appreciate your thoughts on the change and welcome your feedback in this thread.

FinalBoss - Legion Hunters
FinalBoss took a look at Hunters this week!

This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 7.2 - Druid Spell Animations, Jan 26 Hotfixes, Artifact Power, Blue Posts started by chaud View original post
Comments 57 Comments
  1. Gasparde's Avatar
    Beast Mastery Hunter 2 Piece Bonus
    One item we need Blizz to change is to change the 2pc Set piece bonus of EagleTalon Battlegear to include a buff for BM Hunters who uses Dire Frenzy talent instead of Stomp talent.
    Agreed. We'll be doing this. I don't have specifics yet, but we'll be adding some sort of effect to the Tier 19 2-piece bonus that benefits Dire Frenzy. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
    Luckily they've acknowledged that for the first time ever... and only after 2 weeks of Nighthold and 3 months of daily PTR feedback!
  1. derpkitteh's Avatar
    when they said animations, i tend to expect new casting animations, not spell effects v.v

    if this is what can be expected in the future instead of new casting animations, i'm gonna be disappointed.

    also, live starfall looks so much better.
  1. Easo's Avatar
    I really like what they decided to do with artefact power and extra ranks.
  1. Deathknight1700's Avatar
    "Artifact Power items now have a sell price." Dafuq? Why would you want to sell artifact power? I can already see the missclicks coming...
  1. Phagelives's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkdeii View Post
    ... Spanish realms... and English realms... in lfg together.

    /facepalm

    I feel for the EU.
    the PVPing rage is gonna be EPIC when this goes live! the QQ will be strong !
  1. Tock20's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Deathknight1700 View Post
    "Artifact Power items now have a sell price." Dafuq? Why would you want to sell artifact power? I can already see the missclicks coming...
    It's for the people that have gotten all 54.
  1. derpkitteh's Avatar
    oh lord jesus. that efflorescence effect can be spammed and it causes me a horrible, horrible fps drop.
  1. Esper's Avatar
    I love all of the druid spell changes except for the Starfall one. You can't clearly see the edge of the spell effect anymore.
  1. Kanegasi's Avatar
    I'm a bit confused by the extra power 35+ players are getting. Is this a one-time deal that will place anyone lower at a permanent disadvantage for the rest of the expansion, or are they just getting a head start on the new final trait AP dump? If the former, could one hold off on the new quests until they reach 54?
  1. needbrainholinka's Avatar
    balance dru get second tıme new animaıtons but arcane mage still have vanilla efekts and animatıons ...note: new starsurge and starfall horrıble xd
  1. Nozuka's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Saafiaxo View Post
    What did they do to tranq exactly?

    Seems to have a higher polygon count
  1. avolation's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kanegasi View Post
    I'm a bit confused by the extra power 35+ players are getting. Is this a one-time deal that will place anyone lower at a permanent disadvantage for the rest of the expansion, or are they just getting a head start on the new final trait AP dump? If the former, could one hold off on the new quests until they reach 54?
    definitely worth asking.
  1. thilicen's Avatar
    So just how did that moonfire / sunfire change? Those were extremely underwhelming.
  1. Deix-EU's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kanegasi View Post
    I'm a bit confused by the extra power 35+ players are getting. Is this a one-time deal that will place anyone lower at a permanent disadvantage for the rest of the expansion, or are they just getting a head start on the new final trait AP dump? If the former, could one hold off on the new quests until they reach 54?
    It means quest unlocks once you have all of you artifacts traits, that is 35 (modulo the quest). Any Artifact Power put in Paragon points will be refunded to choose between paragon again (who would do that) OR new traits (obvious).
  1. Mstermeg's Avatar
    The "new" balance spell effects looks like crap, the lunar strike change is helpful so you can better tell which targets are getting hit but otherwise. Solar wrath now just looks like a slightly different fireball. Starsurge now looks like a spell from an mmo from 10+ years ago, I liked hurling a tiny flaming moon at enemies thank you very much. Starfall again looks like it went back 10 years in time. Fury of Elune is an improvement, too bad the talent choice is such a lackluster one and rarely sees action.

    Thanks blizz for making the game slightly worse for no reason whatsoever, they literally spent development time making spell effects objectively worse...
  1. mmocef366ff7e8's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkdeii View Post
    ... Spanish realms... and English realms... in lfg together.

    /facepalm

    I feel for the EU.
    A lot of the people on EU realms don't speak English anyway. The majority at least not as their primary language and a good deal of people not even as secondary...
  1. mmocfea0d65200's Avatar
    Glad to see Balance Druids getting some graphical love, can't wait until aff locks get the same. They really need it...
  1. Darksun80's Avatar
    Efflorescence looks so pretty , cant wait to use it that way
  1. boz0's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkdeii View Post
    ... Spanish realms... and English realms... in lfg together.

    /facepalm

    I feel for the EU.
    Errr, what exactly is wrong with that?
  1. Shorteh's Avatar
    Can't wait for the new caster & holy Paladin animations.
    Hopefully I finally get to put that book on my belt to good use. (think TBC intro)

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