Benthic Preview, Forbes Interview - Rise of Azshara, WoW Classic Hit Table Feedback

Rise of Azshara Preview: Navigate the Perils of Nazjatar in New Benthic Gear
Originally Posted by blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The odds are stacked against you in Queen Azshara’s home territory—but with the right equipment, you can turn the tides in your favor.

In Rise of Azshara, we’re introducing a new type of equipment called Benthic gear, which you’ll earn and collect while adventuring in the naga domain of Nazjatar.

As you explore Nazjatar, you’ll collect Prismatic Manapearls—soulbound currency you can spend to purchase Benthic tokens and upgrades. These bind-to-account tokens can be used to gain a piece of upgradable Benthic gear specific to your armor type (cloth, leather, mail, plate), starting at item level 385. With enough time and effort, players can dedicate their hard-earned Manapearls to upgrade pieces to ilvl 425, just shy of Heroic-level raid gear (ilvl 430).


Speak with Voidbender Zorlan in Newhome (Horde) or Voidbinder Sturzah in Mezzamere (Alliance) to upgrade your Benthic gear.

Besides purchasing Benthic tokens with Manapearls, you’ll also sometimes find them in treasure chests and on enemies throughout the zone.

Each piece of Benthic gear boasts a thematic bonus that applies in Nazjatar and the upcoming Azshara’s Eternal Palace raid. These bonuses might provide effects that boost your damage, slow down your foes, or even increase your mount speed while adventuring through this perilous region. Customize your character with up to six unique bonuses. Put together pieces to create a powerful set for combat, collect a set optimized for exploration, or mix and match to have the best from both worlds. Additionally, each piece has predetermined secondary stats which allow you to have more control over your character’s build.

Benthic gear is currently available for early testing on the Rise of Azshara Public Test Realm, so make sure you jump in to check it out!

Forbes Interview - Why Rise Of Azshara Is The Fix-It Patch For World Of Warcraft
Forbes recently interviewed Ion Hazzikostas again on the upcoming Patch 8.2.



  • Heart of Azeroth and Essences
    • Rise of Azshara is the fruits of a lot of Blizzard's reflection on feedback they've been hearing from the community since Battle for Azeroth first came out.
    • You will unlock the first major socket for your Heart of Azeroth just by being 120 and doing the Nazjatar introduction followed by the Magni quest chain to unlock it. There is no neck level requirement for the first major slot.
    • Smaller sockets on the neck will give boosts to stamina as you progress your neck between neck level 52 to 67 so that health pools stay in line with the damage and healing increases.
    • Heart of Azeroth Levels 55 and 65 are the unlocks for the two minor slots.
    • The Essence system functions much like the glyph system in that once you learn as essence, you are free to switch them in and out in either a rested area or by using a Tome of the Clear Mind.
    • The tuning of essences is on par with the Legion legendaries.
  • Nazjatar and Mechagon
    • There are cosmetic perks that come with leveling up your bodyguard in Nazjatar.
    • Is seems as if Nazjatar will not have any Jeremy Feasel "mad science" WoW Secret Finding Discord secrets.
    • The team is aiming for more variety in Nazjatar world quests. There are still some kill quests, however.
    • There is no emissary for Mechagon.
    • There will be no time-gating in Nazjatar, but some reputation requirements to pieces of the major story for pacing and passage of time.
    • Using reputation thresholds to advance the story feels better than rigid weekly chapters that you have to just wait until next week to unlock. There's something the player can do to speed it up.
    • The Mechagon dungeon and Eternal Palace raid will not be available on day 1 of the patch, but when season 3 starts a couple of weeks into the patch.
  • Season 3 Affix - Beguiling
    • Beguiling is the new affix for Mythic + Season 3. It represents the minions of Queen Azshara invading the dungeons of Kul Tiras and Zandalar. There are three types of handmaidens that will be present in a variety of pulls in different configurations from week to week.
    • These handmaidens can have shadow, arcane, or frost powers. They have different effects that will change the way you approach certain pulls. Certain pulls that you skip might have to be done this time around.
  • Flying
    • The Rustbolt Resistance reputation will be available on day 1.
    • They made sure to make Pathfinder Part II tied to outdoor content. There are no requirements to do any dungeons or raids.
    • They believe the amount of time it takes to unlock flying this time around will be on par with Legion.
  • Benthic Gear
    • Benthic gear will help fill gaps in gear acquisition.
    • The baseline Benthic tokens are BoA so you can use them to catch up your alts.
  • Rare Spawns
    • The rare spawns in Mechagon that have longer timers involve hours, not days.
    • Silver-bordered mobs these days have evolved into named targets, not rares. These new ones are more true rares in the style of Timeless Isle.
    • They have been looking at coordinating these spawns across servers ans shards so that there isn't any shard hopping.
    • These rares can have cosmetics, pieces of gear, and punch cards for the Mechagon trinket.
  • Operation: Mechagon Dungeon
    • The bosses in the dungeon are meant to feel more like a small raid encounter.
    • There are some hidden challenges in the dungeon for the more mythic-raiding types who want a bigger challenge, much like the Nightbane run from Legion Karazhan.
    • Mechagon dungeon loot is on part with the normal mode raid, and then scaled up a little bit beyond that.
    • Some of the most powerful punch cards for the Mechagon trinket are found in the dungeon.
    • There is an essence you can unlock from the dungeon.
  • Class Changes and Revamps
    • Full class overhauls are something that happens in a new expansion update and not a patch.
    • Legion was an exception because it reinvented so many specs from the ground up.
    • Rotational changes, removing/adding abilities, etc are a jarring experience. This is the sort of change that is best received within the broader sweeping changes of a new expansion.
    • They will always address under performing talents or classes in patches.
    • There are definitely specs on the radar for a rework, but nothing to announce now.


WoW Classic Feedback - Bug Hit Table Thread
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
[Bug] Hit tables
As I suggested in my first reply, we did a deep dive on this one to compare combat table values directly between our Reference client and WoW Classic. Apologies for the data dump, but because your observations were so detailed, we wanted to be equally detailed in our reply!
We created Troll Warriors in both games and watched the combat table values for auto-attacks.

  • We checked three player levels – Levels 15, 40, and 60.
  • At each level, our weapon skill was maxed, and we used the same weapon for all tests.
  • All attacks were against enemy creatures, not other players, to remove any additional variables.
  • We tested attacking creatures at -5, +0, +1, +2, +3, +5, and +15 levels relative to our level (so for the level 15 test, we attacked level 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, and 35 mobs).
    • For our level 60 test, there were no normal mobs available at higher levels. We instead attacked elite raid creatures at +1, +2, and +3 levels.
  • The exact same creature IDs were tested against on both clients.

In all cases, the Reference client combat table values matched the Classic combat table values:
  • Creatures that are 3 levels above the player have a 14% Parry chance in our Reference client. This holds true for our Classic client as well.
  • Creatures at your level have a 5% chance to Dodge your attacks. Each additional level the target has over the player grants them 0.5% additional chance to dodge. This is observed in Reference client and in Classic.
  • Players have an 8% chance to miss a creature that is 3 levels above them in our Reference client. This holds true for our Classic client as well.
  • Critical Strike chance is reduced by 1% per each additional level the target has over the player. (So if you have a 4% chance to crit an at-level target, you have a 1% chance to crit a +3-level target, in both clients.)

A briefer look at having non-maxed weapon skills also showed identical values between the Reference client and Classic. We also ran several tests while dual wielding, and the results from those tests was also identical between Reference and Classic.

Based on these results, we are confident that the combat behavior in Classic properly reflects the combat behavior of 1.12 WoW. However, we’re always grateful for players looking out for discrepancies, so keep your feedback coming!

Stress Test Feedback
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Stress Test Complete -- THANK YOU!
We have now completed the WoW Classic Stress Test that began yesterday at 2:00 p.m. PDT. We’re very pleased with the amount of participation we saw, and we’re happy to report that we got a great deal of highly useful data, as well as new issues that were uncovered by your efforts to log in and play.

The closed beta realms remain available for those testers.

Thank you very much to everyone who participated in this stress test!
This article was originally published in forum thread: Benthic Preview, Forbes Interview - Rise of Azshara, WoW Classic Hit Table Feedback started by Stoy View original post
Published on 2019-05-31 01:13 PM
109 Comments
Comments 109 Comments
  1. Sarnaxxx's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    You have a really weird remembrance of classic if that's what you think.

    You had one shadow priest for Shadoweaving to buff your locks.
    Balance wasn't required, but it did provide Spell crit so it was nice to have.
    Rogues were the best single target dps in the game and easily 4-5 were taken to every raid.

    Only thing you even got right was Warriors were the only full raid tank, but even that isn't entirely true. We used Druids to tank during ZG to negate some mechanics and, while not perfect, Paladins COULD tank dungeons.

    - - - Updated - - -



    Same thing with FFXI, group or die.

    WoW was super casual at the time, could level completely solo, had a HUGE emphasis on questing to level and very little grinding, you didn't lose XP when you died, etc etc.
    You are correct. In vanilla, we had a reasonably good raiding guild put together. We had at least one shadow priest most raids, plenty of rogues for DPS, a warrior tank, a druid tank and a prot pally tank.. yes, the paladin was able to tank everything in vanilla that we ever faced... if memory serves me, we cleared everything up to Naxx and 2 or 3 of the wings in Naxx... never made it to Sindragosa or Kel'thazad.
  1. Alcsaar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sarnaxxx View Post
    You are correct. In vanilla, we had a reasonably good raiding guild put together. We had at least one shadow priest most raids, plenty of rogues for DPS, a warrior tank, a druid tank and a prot pally tank.. yes, the paladin was able to tank everything in vanilla that we ever faced... if memory serves me, we cleared everything up to Naxx and 2 or 3 of the wings in Naxx... never made it to Sindragosa or Kel'thazad.
    The thing is, just because you bring ONE spec doesn't mean its good. We're talking one shadow priest out of 30ish DPS in 40 man raids. ONE moonkin. ONE feral druid.

    Just because you CAN clear with a prot paladin or bear doesn't mean its a good tank; it just means its passable if the raid picks up the slack.

    Then you compare it to the 10-15 mages/warlocks/etc and 10-15 warriors/rogues/etc.

    Hybrid dps is the laughing stock of vanilla once you meet the very low niche requirements.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Alcsaar View Post
    The thing is, just because you bring ONE spec doesn't mean its good. We're talking one shadow priest out of 30ish DPS in 40 man raids. ONE moonkin. ONE feral druid.

    Then you compare it to the 10-15 mages/warlocks/etc and 10-15 warriors/rogues/etc.

    Hybrid dps is the laughing stock of vanilla once you meet the very low niche requirements.
    No, but those ONE shadow priest or ONE moonkin or feral were very beneficial, almost required in some instances.

    Only real outlier though was warriors.... 9-10 warriors minimum per raid, warriors were fucking OP in vanilla.
  1. Donald Hellscream's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Alcsaar View Post
    Ho.....how is this any different than azerite gear?

    You're going to have people that get super lucky and get awesome benefits and then people who get incredibly unlucky with trash useless benefits. Its like legendaries all over again.


    On top of that you once again have to upgrade gear with azerite power (aka pearls but we have to implement a new system so that you have to start from scratch again).

    AP system was bad in Legion, it was still bad in BFA, and now you're reintroducing the same mechanic again IN THE SAME expansion - but this time its not character bound, its gear bound, so its even worse.

    Its looking like I will be remaining unsubbed for probably the rest of BFA. I'm not exactly disappointed. I was more disappointed when I was actually paying and trying to enjoy BFA despite hating the same mechanics I hated in Legion but for some unknown reason got recycled again.
    You are horribly misinformed. This is not at all similar to the legendary system, each equipment slot has a bonus assigned to them, so all you need to do is buy the correct equipment slot for the bonus you want, now they should probably add the bonus to the token tool tip for the sake of clarity but if people are too lazy to look up stuff online then that is kinda their problem and not blizzards.
  1. Softbottom's Avatar
    This is my favorite comment regarding unlocking the story - "Using reputation thresholds to advance the story feels better than rigid weekly chapters that you have to just wait until next week to unlock. There's something the player can do to speed it up."

    How can we speed it up when you only give us a limited amount of WQ's to gain rep? The story is still gated no matter how you cut it.
  1. ryanmahaffe's Avatar
    Bethnic Armor reminds me of enhancement systems found in many korean mmorpgs but without the RNG and p2w aspect, so I am looking forward to having something to grind.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Bluebottom View Post
    This is my favorite comment regarding unlocking the story - "Using reputation thresholds to advance the story feels better than rigid weekly chapters that you have to just wait until next week to unlock. There's something the player can do to speed it up."

    How can we speed it up when you only give us a limited amount of WQ's to gain rep? The story is still gated no matter how you cut it.
    This is how it has always been and what people have been asking for. Rep gated story content instead of time gated story content.
    Sheesh I don't like BFA either but some of yall just try to bitch about it nonstop.
  1. Softbottom's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ryanmahaffe View Post
    Bethnic Armor reminds me of enhancement systems found in many korean mmorpgs but without the RNG and p2w aspect, so I am looking forward to having something to grind.

    - - - Updated - - -



    This is how it has always been and what people have been asking for. Rep gated story content instead of time gated story content.
    Sheesh I don't like BFA either but some of yall just try to bitch about it nonstop.
    Rep gated story content IS time gated content. There are only so many WQ's you can do to raise your rep.
  1. glowpipe's Avatar
    "There are definitely specs on the radar for a rework, but nothing to announce now"

    No shit. Every single class and spec needs a rework. They need new abilities and skills.

    Now when you level a new toon you go from the last talent at 100 and level 20 levels in a row without getting a single thing. That needs to change sooner rather then later
  1. Frozenbeef's Avatar
    Jesus wish they would release the next patch already so we can move onto something more interesting. Don't know how they managed to make azshara and her story so boring and predictable but they managed it...
  1. glowpipe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bluebottom View Post
    This is my favorite comment regarding unlocking the story - "Using reputation thresholds to advance the story feels better than rigid weekly chapters that you have to just wait until next week to unlock. There's something the player can do to speed it up."

    How can we speed it up when you only give us a limited amount of WQ's to gain rep? The story is still gated no matter how you cut it.
    Might be something repeatable you can do. Farming mobs, tokens of some sort. etc
  1. TheRevenantHero's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    You have a really weird remembrance of classic if that's what you think.

    You had one shadow priest for Shadoweaving to buff your locks.
    Balance wasn't required, but it did provide Spell crit so it was nice to have.
    Rogues were the best single target dps in the game and easily 4-5 were taken to every raid.

    Only thing you even got right was Warriors were the only full raid tank, but even that isn't entirely true. We used Druids to tank during ZG to negate some mechanics and, while not perfect, Paladins COULD tank dungeons.

    - - - Updated - - -



    Same thing with FFXI, group or die.

    WoW was super casual at the time, could level completely solo, had a HUGE emphasis on questing to level and very little grinding, you didn't lose XP when you died, etc etc.
    I never once saw shadow priests get taken to raids. Because of the debuff limit. Balance's spell crit buff was never enough to convince anyone to take them. rogues were often turned away form raids because they didn't have a reliable aggro dump.
  1. Soeroah's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bluebottom View Post
    This is my favorite comment regarding unlocking the story - "Using reputation thresholds to advance the story feels better than rigid weekly chapters that you have to just wait until next week to unlock. There's something the player can do to speed it up."

    How can we speed it up when you only give us a limited amount of WQ's to gain rep? The story is still gated no matter how you cut it.
    In BFA:

    -Anniversary token
    -Some holiday buffs
    -Darkmoon Fair buff
    -Human racial
    -Missions
    -Possibly rep tokens

    All those can increase the speed of story gain, if the story is gated by rep. If the story is gated by time, though, you're just SOL.

    Rep-based story is still gated but it's based on player progression instead of not playing the game.
  1. Zenfoldor's Avatar
    Who are these players that hate class changes? Honestly, complexity and adaptation are the things I look for in a video game. Games like Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma, and any MMO pretty much(even WoW with a new class/spec), gives you so many options and it is fun to change them out and experiment with them, and learn new things, and enjoy that depth of gameplay.

    Who is quitting games because they are too complex? Is this a mobile game? Who leaves the game for 6 months and comes back and quits because they got a buff? This is a PC-only-game, it should be MORE complex than games on other platforms, considering it is also a MMO. Revamps are meant to fix broken things, I assume. Do these players want to keep playing broken specs?

    Also, can these people who are holding up class redesigns by quitting be reasoned with? Can they just add a popup when they haven't logged in for 6 months that says "we buffed your class, it was broken, but it may play differently, here is 2 weeks game time to help you get accustomed to the new abilities" or something. I mean, if this really is the case, aren't these people who are protest quitting over class changes, and forcing the rest of us to wait years for these important changes, effectively hurting the game and the fans who understand the necessity for these changes?

    What about people from Legion who come back to play BFA and see their class has drastically changed, and desperately needs a revamp? I could definitely see that scenario play out more than the scenario mentioned above.
  1. Sevvy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by RushRush View Post
    The whole 3 months thing is such nonsense. Maybe if you only get to play 1 hour each day or something.
    I think the record is 5 or 6 days played to 60. Fastest I ever managed was just a hair under 10. That's close to 240 hours to get to level 60. So... 1 hour a day for 3 months probably isn't getting you to 60.


    Ahhh, I'm a little wrong, speed player did it in under 5.

    https://www.furiouspaul.com/wow/

    But that's all this guy does. Speed runs to lvl 60.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by TheRevenantHero View Post
    I never once saw shadow priests get taken to raids. Because of the debuff limit. Balance's spell crit buff was never enough to convince anyone to take them. rogues were often turned away form raids because they didn't have a reliable aggro dump.
    Later raids (bwl aq naxx) one shadow or a "support priest" with shadow weaving was a huge benefit. Balance was always questionable but there was a reason some took them.

    And your rogue comment is just silly, every raid had an average of 4-5 rogues, and since when is vanish not reliable? Sure it was a 5 min cool down but it was more reliable then what mages had
  1. Laqweeta's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Soeroah View Post
    In BFA:

    -Anniversary token
    -Some holiday buffs
    -Darkmoon Fair buff
    -Human racial
    -Missions
    -Possibly rep tokens

    All those can increase the speed of story gain, if the story is gated by rep. If the story is gated by time, though, you're just SOL.

    Rep-based story is still gated but it's based on player progression instead of not playing the game.
    I've bold the only one that doesn't need anything special, nor does it take a 20 hour "mission" to get a measly 250 rep.
  1. Nathiest's Avatar
    I haven't played in months.... a year maybe? I got only one max lvl toon.

    Rise will bring me back to the game, I might even lvl up some of my alts??
  1. Walross's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bennett View Post
    Blizzard think WoW players are literal retards. It's as simple as that
    They aren't wrong. This forum is a proof of that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozenbeef View Post
    Don't know how they managed to make azshara and her story so boring and predictable but they managed it...
    BfA is still Warcraft, so no surprises here.
  1. Lorgar Aurelian's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bluebottom View Post
    This is my favorite comment regarding unlocking the story - "Using reputation thresholds to advance the story feels better than rigid weekly chapters that you have to just wait until next week to unlock. There's something the player can do to speed it up."

    How can we speed it up when you only give us a limited amount of WQ's to gain rep? The story is still gated no matter how you cut it.
    They did the same thing back in mop, realistically rather it’s rep based or time based it’s the same people just feel like the rep thresholds are better when in reality they are worse.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Soeroah View Post
    In BFA:

    -Anniversary token
    -Some holiday buffs
    -Darkmoon Fair buff
    -Human racial
    -Missions
    -Possibly rep tokens

    All those can increase the speed of story gain, if the story is gated by rep. If the story is gated by time, though, you're just SOL.

    Rep-based story is still gated but it's based on player progression instead of not playing the game.
    On paper this sounds good but on practice it’s really not a benefit. Being able to boost your rep gains by minor things like the human racial won’t really get you to the next story point any faster until your near the end and all the little bits have added up. Then you have alts, if you want to get something at the end of a rep gated story you have to do the whole rep all over again compared to the soly times based system where you can just go though the storyline when it’s all unlocked.
  1. Lurker1's Avatar
    FInally took alot of years but Blizzard finally giveing us non-instance folks are endgame woot can't wait to grind ilvl 425 gear ftw!
Page 3 of 6 FirstFirst
1
2
3
4
5
... LastLast

Site Navigation

Social Media

Services

My Account

Support

Advertise

Resources

Terms of Service

Privacy Policy

Our Communities

© 2023 Magic Find, Inc. All rights reserved.